CHAPTER XXVIII.
“Merton, you are not conscious of the extent of your infatuation, which has already excited comment in our limited circle of acquaintances.”
“Indeed! The members of ‘our limited circle of acquaintances’ are heartily welcome to whatever edification or amusement they may be able to derive from the discussion of my individual affairs, or the analysis of my peculiar tastes. You forget, my dear Constance, that to devour and in turn be devoured is an inexorable law of this world; and if my eccentricities furnish a ragout for omnivorous society, I should be 378 philanthropically glad that tittle-tattledom owes me thanks.”
The speaker did not lay aside the newspaper that partially concealed his countenance; and when he ceased speaking, his eyes reverted to the statistical table of Egyptian and Algerine cotton, which for some moments he had been attentively examining.
“My dear brother, you are spasmodically and provokingly philosophical! Pray do me the honor to discard that stupid Times, which you pore over as if it were the last sensation novel, and be so courteous as to look at me while you are talking,” replied the invalid sister, beating a tattoo on the side of her couch.
“I believe I have nothing to communicate just now,” was the quiet and unsatisfactory answer, as he drew a pencil from his pocket and made some numeral annotations on the margin of the statistics.
“Surely, Merton, you are not angry with your poor Constance?”
Merton Minge lowered his paper, restored the pencil to his vest pocket, and wheeling his chair forward, brought himself closer to the couch.
“I wish you were as far removed from fever as I certainly am from anger. Your eyes are too bright, my pretty one.”
He put his fingers on her pulse, and when he removed them, compressed his lips to stifle a sigh.
“Why will you so persistently evade me?—why will you always change the subject when I allude to that young lady?”
“Because, when a man attains the sober and discreet age of forty years, he naturally and logically thinks he has earned, and is entitled to, an exemption from the petty teasing to which sophomores and sentimentalists are subjected. While I gratefully appreciate the compliment implied in your forgetfulness, permit to remind you of the disagreeable fact that I am no longer a boy.”
“You lose sight of that same ugly and ill-mannered fact, much more frequently than I am in danger of doing; and I affectionately suggest that you stimulate your own torpid memory. Ah, brother! why will you not be frank, and confide 379 in me? Women are not easily hoodwinked, except by their lovers,—and you can not deceive me in this matter.”
“What pleasure do you suppose it would afford me to practice deceit of any kind towards my only sister? To what class of motives could you credit such conduct?”
“I think you shrink from acknowledging your real feelings, because you very well know that I could never sanction or consent to them.”
Mr. Minge arched his heavy brows, and the sternly drawn lines of his large mouth relaxed, and threatened to run into curves that belonged to the ludicrous, as he turned his twinkling eyes upon his sister’s face.
“What extraordinary hallucinations attack even sage, sedate, middle-aged men? Ten minutes ago I would have sworn I was your guardian; whereas, it seems your apron-strings are the reins that rule me. Don’t pout, my Czarina, if I demand your credentials before I bow submissively to your ukase.”
“Irony is not your forte; and, Merton, I beg you to recollect that I detest bantering,—it is so excessively ungenteel. No wonder you look nervous and ashamed, after your recent very surprising manifestation of—well, I might as well say what I mean—of mauvais goût.”
Constance Minge impatiently threw off the light worsted shawl that rested on her shoulders, and propped her cheek on her jewelled hand.
Her brother’s countenance clouded, and his lips hardened, but after one keen look at her flushed features, he once more resumed the perusal of the paper. Some moments elapsed, and his sister sobbed, but he took no notice of the sound.
“Merton, I never expected you would treat me so cruelly.”
“Make out your charges in detail, and when you are sure you have included all the petty deeds of tyranny as well as the heinous acts of brutality, I will examine the indictment, and hear myself arraigned. Shall I bring you some legal cap, and loan you my pencil?”
For five minutes she held her handkerchief to her eyes, and then Mr. Minge rose and looked at his watch.
“You will not be so unkind as to leave me again this afternoon, and spend your time with that—”
“Constance, you transcend your privileges, and this is a most apropos and convenient occasion to remind you that presumption is one fault I find it particularly difficult to forgive. Since my forbearance only invites aggression, let me hear say (as an economy of trouble), that you are rashly invading a realm where I permit none to enter, much less to dictate. I hope you understand me.”
“I knew it,—I felt it! I dreaded that artful girl would make mischief between us,—would alienate the only heart I had left to care for me. Oh, how I wish she had been forty fathoms under the sea before you ever saw her!—before you ceased to love me!”
A flood of tears emphasized the sentence, which seemed lost upon Mr. Minge, as he lighted a cigar, tried its flavor, threw it away, and puffed the smoke from a second.
“I am sorry you can’t smoke and compose your nerves, as I am preparing to do,—though I confess I prefer to kiss your lips untainted by such odors. Shall I?”
He held his cigar aside to prevent the wind from wafting the curling column of smoke in her face, and bent his head close to hers; but she put up her hand to prevent the caress, and averted her face.
“As you like. But mark you, Constance, the next time our lips touch, you will find yourself in the nominative case, while I meekly fill an objective position. You are a poor, wilful, spoiled child, and I must begin to undo my own ruinous work.”
He picked up his hat and walked off, followed by a pretty Italian mouse-colored greyhound, whose silver bell tinkled as she ran down the steps.
“Merton, come back! Do not leave me here alone, or I shall die. Brother!—”
On strode the stalwart figure, looking neither to right nor left, and behind him trailed the vaporous aroma of the fine cigar. Raising herself on her couch, the invalid elevated her voice, and exclaimed,—
“Please, dear Merton, come back,—at least long enough to let me kiss you. Please, brother!”
He paused,—wavered,—drew geometrical figures on the ground with the tip of his boot, and finally took off his hat, turned and bowed, saying,—
“Show some flag of truce, if you really want me to return.”
She raised her hands and gracefully tossed him several kisses.
Slowly Mr. Minge retraced his steps, and, as he sat down once more close to his sister and pushed back his hat, she saw that he intended her to realize that her reign was at an end; and she trembled and turned pale at the expression with which he regarded her.
“Merton, don’t you know—don’t you believe—that I love you above everything else?”
She sat erect, and stole one arm around the neck that did not bend toward her, as was its habit.
“If you really loved me, you would desire to see me happy.”
“I do desire it, earnestly and sincerely; and there is no sacrifice I would not make to see you really happy.”
“Provided I selected your mode of obtaining the boon, and moreover consulted your caprices and antipathies; otherwise, my happiness would annoy and insult you.”
“Don’t scold,—kiss me.” She put up her lips, but he did not respond to the motion, and she pettishly drew his head down and kissed him several times. “How obstinate you have grown!—how harsh towards me! It is all the result of that—”
She bit her lip, and her brother frowned.
“Take care! You seem continually disposed to stumble very awkwardly into forbidden realms.”
The petted invalid nestled her pretty head on his bosom, and patted his cheek with one hot hand.
“Brother, Kate Sutherland was here this morning, and left—besides numerous kind messages for you—a three-cornered note that I ordered Adèle to place in your dressing-case, where I felt sure you would see it.”
“Yes, I saw it.”
“An invitation to ascend Monte Pellegrini?”
“Which I respectfully decline.”
“O Merton! Why not go?”
“Simply because I never premeditatedly, and with malice prepense, bore myself by joining parties composed of persons in whom I have not an atom of interest.”
“But Kate is so lovely?”
“Not to me.”
“Nonsense! She was the handsomest young girl in Paris, and was the acknowledged belle of the season.”
“Possibly. Henna-dyed nails are considered irresistible in Turkey, but your opalescent ones attract me infinitely more pleasantly.”
“Pray what have my nails to do with Kate’s beauty?”
“Nothing destructive, I hope,—as I am disposed to think she has little to spare.”
“Good heavens! You surely would not insinuate that you believe or consider,—or would admit, that she is not vastly superior to—to—there, Beauty, down! She is actually dining on the fringe of my pelerine!”
To cover her confusion, Constance addressed herself to the diminutive dog at her feet, and taking her flushed face in his hands, the brother looked steadily down, and answered,—
“I never insinuate. It impresses me as a cowardly and contemptible bit of plebeian practice that found favor after the royal purple was trailed in agrarian democratic dust; and lest you should unjustly impute abhorred innuendoes to me, I will say perspicuously, that the most attractive and beautiful woman I have ever seen is not your fair friend Miss Sutherland, nor any other darling of diamond and satin sheen, but a young lady whom I admire beyond expression, Miss Salome Owen.”
An angry flush burned on the invalid’s face, and her mouth curled scornfully.
“She is rather handsome sometimes,—so are gypsies and other waifs; but it is a wild sort of beauty,—if beauty you persist in terming it; and low birth and blood are visible in everything that appertains to her. I never expected to see 383 my brother condescend to the level of opera-singers, and I am astonished at your infatuation. There! you need not expect to blast me with that fiery look, and besides, you know you mentioned her name, which I had scrupulously avoided. I confess I am very proud of my family, and of you, its sole male representative, and I wish it preserved from all taint.”
“Untainted it shall remain, while a drop of the blood throbs in my veins, and I, who am jealous of my honor, have carefully pondered the matter, and maturely decided that he who entrusts his happiness to Salome Owen will be indeed an enviable man, and pardonably proud of his prize. Once I bartered myself away at the altar, and gave my name and hand for wealth, for aristocratic antecedents, for fashionable status, and five years of purgatorial misery was the richly merited penalty for the insult I offered my heart. Death freed me, and for ten years I have lived at least in peace, indulging no thought of a second alliance, and merely amused, or disgusted by the matrimonial snares that have lined my path. I no longer belong to that pitiable class who feel constrained to marry for position, and who convert the altar-steps into so many rounds of the social ladder; and I have earned the right to indulge my outraged heart in any caprice that promises to mellow, to gild the evening of my life with that home-sunshine that was denied its gloomy tempestuous morning. My future, my fortune, my social standing, my unblemished name, are all my own,—and I shall exercise my privilege of bestowing them where and when I please, heedless of the sneers and howls of disappointed mercenary schemers. Come weal, come woe, I here announce that neither you nor the world need hope to influence me one ‘jot or tittle’ in an affair where I allow no impertinent interference. I warn you this is the last time I shall permit even an indirect allusion to matters with which you have no legitimate concern; and provided you do not obtrude them upon me, it is a question of indifference to me what your opinion and that of your ‘circle’ may chance to be. Constance, you here have your ultimatum. Defy me, if you please, but prompt separation will ensue; and you will unexpectedly find yourself en route for America. Peace or 384 war? Before you decide, recollect that all your future will be irretrievably colored by it.”
“In my state of health it is positively cruel for you to threaten me; and some day when you follow my coffin to Mount Auburn, you will repent your harshness. I wish to heaven I had never left home!”
A passionate fit of weeping curtailed the sentence, and, while the face was covered with the lace handkerchief, the brother rose and made his escape.
Despite the fact that forty years had left their whitening touches on his head and luxuriant beard, Merton Minge, who had never been handsome, even in youth, was sufficiently agreeable in appearance to render him an object of deep interest in the circle where he moved. Medium-statured, and very robust, a healthful ruddy tinge robbed his complexion of that sallow hue which mercantile pursuits are apt to induce, and brightened the deep-set black eyes which his debtors considered mercilessly keen, cold, and incisive.
The square face, with its broad, full forehead, and deep curved furrow dividing the thick straight brows,—its well-shaped but prominent nose, and massive jaws and chin partially veiled by a grizzled beard that swept over his deep chest,—was suggestive of ledgers rent-roll, and stock-boards, rather than æsthetics, chivalry, or sentimentality. The only son of a proud but impoverished family, who were eager to retrieve their fortune, he had early in life married the imperious spoiled daughter of a Boston millionaire, whose dower consisted of five hundred thousand dollars, and a temper that eclipsed the unamiable exploits of ancient and modern shrews.
Hopeless of domestic happiness in a union to which affection had not prompted him, Mr. Minge devoted himself to the rapid accumulation of wealth, and by judicious and successful speculations had doubled his fortune, ere, at the comparatively early age of thirty, he was left a childless widower. Whether he really thanked fate for his timely release, his most intimate friends were never able to ascertain, for he wore mourning, badges for three years, and conducted himself in all respects with exemplary dignity and scrupulous propriety. 385 But the frigid indifference with which he received all matrimonial overtures indicated that his conjugal experience was not so rosy as to tempt him to repeat the experiment.
His mother was a haughty, frivolous woman, jealously tenacious of her position as one of the oligarchs of le beau monde, and his fragile sister had from childhood been the victim of rheumatism that frequently rendered her entirely helpless. To these two and their fashionable friends, he abandoned his elegant home, costly equipages, and opera-box, reserving only a suite of rooms, his handsome riding-horse, and yacht.
Grave and unostentatious, yet not moody,—neither impulsively liberal and generous nor habitually penurious and uncharitable,—he led a quiet and monotonously easy life, varied by occasional trips to foreign lands, and comforted by the assurance that his income-tax was one of the heaviest in the state. Two years after the death of his mother, he took his sister a second time to Europe, hoping that the climate of the Levant might relieve her suffering; and upon the steamer in which he crossed the Atlantic he met Salome Owen.
Extravagantly fond of music, though unable to extract it from any instrument, his attention had first been attracted by her exquisite voice, which invested the voyage with a novel charm and rendered her a great favorite with the passengers.
Human nature is wofully inflexible and obstinate, and not all the Menus, Zoroasters, Solomons, and Platos have taught it wisdom; wherefore it is not surprising that a caustic wit and savage cynic asserts, “The vices, it may be said, await us in the journey of life like hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would make us avoid them if we were to travel the same road a second time.”
Habit may be second nature, but it is the Gurth, the thrall of the first,—the vassal of inherent impulses; and even the most ossified natures contain some soft palpitating spot that will throb against the hand that is sufficiently dexterous to find it. In every man and woman there lurks a vein of sentiment, which, no matter how heavily crushed by the super-incumbent mass of utilitarian, practical commonplaceisms, 386 will one day trickle through the dusty débris, and creep like a silver thread over the dun waste of selfishness; or, Arethusa-like, burst forth suddenly after long subterranean wandering.
For forty years it had crawled silently and sluggishly under the indurated and coldly egoistic nature of Merton Minge,—had been dammed up at times by avarice and at others by grim recollections of his domestic infelicity; but finally, after tedious meandering in the Desert of Heartlessness, it struggled triumphantly to the surface one glorious autumn night, when a golden moon illumined the Atlantic waves and kindled a bewitching beauty in the face of Salome, who sat on deck, singing an impassioned strain from La Favorite.
Her silvery voice was the miraculous rod that smote his petrified affections, and a wellspring of tenderness gushed forth, freshening, softening, and clothing with verdure and bloom his arid, sterile, stony temperament. Long-buried dreams of his boyhood stirred in their chilly graves and flitted dimly before him, and a hope that had slumbered so soundly he had utterly ignored its memory, started up, eager and starry-eyed, as in the college days of eld,—the precious hope, underlying all other emotions in a man’s heart, that one day he too would be loved and prayed for by a pure womanly heart, and pure, sweet, womanly lips.
Fifteen years before, he had vowed “to cherish,” not the haughty girl whose hand he clasped, but the five hundred thousand dollars that gilded it; and faithfully he had kept his oath to the god of his idolatry, sacrificing the best half of his life to insatiate Kuvera.
On that cloudless October night, as he watched the shimmer of the moon on Salome’s silky hair, and noted the purely oval outline of her daintily carved face, and the childish grace of her fine form,—as he listened to flute-like tones, as irresistible as Parthenope’s, his cold, formal, non-committal mouth stirred, his hand involuntarily opened and closed firmly, as if grasping some “pearl of great price,” and his slow, almost stagnant pulses, leaped into feverish activity, and soon ran riot. Perhaps more regular features, and deeper, richer carnation bloom had confronted him, but love makes sad havoc of 387 ideals and abstract standards, and he who defined beauty, “the woman I love,” was wiser than Burke and more analytical than Cousin.
The freshness, the brusquerie, the outspoken honesty, that characterized Salome, strangely fascinated this grave, selfish, blasé aristocrat, who was weary of hollow, polished conventionalities and stereotyped society phrases; and, as he sat on deck watching her countenance, he would have counted out his fortune at her feet for the privilege of claiming her fair, slender hand, and her tremulous, scarlet lips, instinct with melody that entranced him.
Henceforth life had a different goal, a nobler aim, a tenderer and more precious hope; and all the energy of his vigorous character was bent to the fulfilment of the beautiful dream that one day that young girl would bear his name, grace his princely home, and nestle in his heart.
He did not ask, Can that fair, graceful, gifted young thing ever love a gray-haired man, old enough to call her his daughter? Nay, nay! Common sense was utterly dethroned and expelled,—romance usurped the realm, and draped the future with rainbows; and he only set his teeth firmly against each other, and said to his bounding heart and blinded soul, “Patience, ye shall soon possess her!”
To Paris, Lyons, Naples, he had followed her, and finally secured a villa at Palermo, where Prof. V—— had established himself and his household in a comfortable suite of rooms.
To-day, as he left his sister and approached the house where the professor dwelt, his countenance was moody and forbidding, but its expression changed rapidly, as he caught a glimpse of the white muslin dress that fluttered in the evening wind.
Salome was swiftly pacing the wide terrace that commanded a view of the Mediterranean, and her hands were clasped behind her, as was her habit when immersed in thought.
Over her head she had thrown a white gauze scarf of fringed silk, which, slipping back, displayed the elaborate braids of hair wound around the head, where a crescent of 388 snowy hyacinths partially encircled the glossy coil, and drooped upon her neck.
Her face wore a haggard, anxious, restless expression, and the thin lips had lost their bright coral tint,—the smooth, clear cheeks something of their rounded perfection.
As Mr. Minge came forward, she paused in her walk and leaned against the marble railing of the terrace, where a lemon tree, white with bloom, overhung the mosaiced floor and powdered it with velvety petals.
He held out his hand.
“I hope I find you better?”
“Do I look so, think you?” said she, eyeing him impatiently, and keeping her hands folded behind her.
“Unfortunately, no; and if I possessed the right I have more than once solicited, other physicians should be consulted. Why will you tamper with so serious a matter, and unnecessarily augment the anxiety of those who love you?”
“I beg you to believe that my self-love is infinitely stronger than any other with which I am honored, and prompts me to all possible prudential precautions. Three doctors have already annoyed me with worthless prescriptions, and this morning I paid their bills and dismissed them; whereupon, one of them revenged himself by maliciously informing me that I should not be able to sing a note for one year at least.”
“To what do they attribute the disease?”
“To that attack of scarlet fever, and also to the too frequent and severe cauterization of my throat. Time was when like other fond fools, I fancied Fate was not the hideous hag that wiser heads had painted her, but an affable old dame, easily cajoled and propitiated. With Carthaginian gratitude she repays my complimentary opinion by trampling my hopes and aims as I crush these petals, which yield perfume to their spoiler, while I could—”
She put her foot upon the drifting lemon blossoms, and bit her lip to keep back the bitter words that trembled on her tongue.
“Come and sit here on the steps, and confide your plans to 389 one whose every scheme shall be subordinated to your wishes, your happiness.”
Mr. Minge attempted to take her hand, but she drew back and repulsed him.
“Excuse me. I prefer to remain where I am; and when I am so fortunate and sagacious as to mature any plans, I shall be sure to lock them in my own heart beyond the tender mercies of meddling, marplot fortune.”
Her whole face grew dark, sinister, almost dangerous in its sudden transformation, and, leaning against the railing, she impatiently swept off the snowy lemon leaves. Mr. Minge took the end of her scarf, and as he toyed with the fringe, sighed heavily.
“Of course you are forced to abandon your contemplated début in Paris?”
“Yes. A début minus a voice, does not tempt me. Ah! how bright the future looked when I sang for the agent of the Opera-House, and found myself engaged for the season. How changed, how cheerless all things seem now.”
“Salome, fate is Janus-faced, and while frowning on you smiles benignantly on me. I joyfully hail every obstacle that bars your path, hoping that, weary of useless resistance, you will consent to walk in the flowery one I have offered you. My beautiful darling, why will you refuse the—”
“Silence! I am in no mood to listen to a repetition of sentiments which, however flattering to my vanity, have no power to touch my heart. Mr. Minge, I have twice declined the offer you have done me the honor to make; and while proud of your preference, my Saxon is not so ambiguous or redundant as to leave any margin for misconception of my meaning.”
“My dear Salome, I fear your decision has been influenced by the consciousness that my poor, petted Constance has occasionally neglected the courtesies which you had a right to claim from the sister of the man who seeks to make you his wife.”
“No, sir; your sister’s sneers, and the petty slights and persecutions for which I am indebted to her friend, Miss Sutherland, have not sufficient importance to affect me in any degree. 390 My decision is based upon the unfortunate fact that I do not love you.”
“No woman can withstand such devotion as I bring you, and time would soon soften and deepen your feelings.”
“Sir, you unduly flatter yourself. Neither time nor eternity would change me, and you would do well to remember that it is my voice, sir,—not my hand and heart,—that I offer for sale.”
“Your stubborn rejection is explicable only by the supposition that you have deceived me,—that you have already bartered away the heart I long to call my own.”
“I am a miller’s child,—you a millionaire, but permit me to remind you that I allow no imputation on my veracity. Why should I condescend to deceive you?”
She petulantly snatched her scarf from the fingers that still stroked it caressingly; but an instant later a singular change swept over her countenance, and pressing her hands to her heart, she said in a proud, almost exultant tone,—
“Although I deny your right to question me upon this subject, you are thoroughly welcome to know that I love one man so entirely, so deathlessly, that the bare thought of marrying any one else sickens my soul.”
Mr. Minge turned pale, and grasped the carved balustrade against which he rested.
“O Salome! you have trifled.”
“No, sir. Take that back. I never stoop to trifling; and the curse of my life has been my almost fatal earnestness of purpose. If I ever deliberated one moment concerning the expediency of clothing myself first with your aristocratic name, afterwards with satin, velvet, and diamonds,—if I ever silenced the outcry of my heart long enough to ask myself whether gilded misery was not the least torturing type of the epidemic wretchedness,—at least I kept my parley with Mammon to myself; and if you obstinately cherished hopes of final success, they sprang from your vanity, not my dissimulation. Mark you, I here set up no claim to sanctity,—for indeed my sins are ‘thick as leaves in Vallombrosa’; but my pedigree does not happen to link me with Sapphira, and deceit is not 391 charged to me in the real Doomsday Book. Theft would be more possible for me than falsehood, for while both are labelled ‘wicked,’ I could never dwarf and shrivel my soul by the cowardly process of mendacity. Mr. Minge, had I been a trifle less honest and true than I find myself, I might have impaired my self-respect by trifling.”
“Forgive me, Salome, if the pain I endure rendered me harsh or unjust. My dearest, I did not intend to wound you, but indeed you are cruel sometimes.”
“Yes; truth is the most savagely cruel of all rude, jagged weapons, and leaves ugly gashes and quivering nerves exposed, and these are the hurts that never cicatrize—that gape and bleed while the heart throbs to feed them.”
“Tell me candidly whether the heart I covet belongs to that Mr. Granville, who paid you such devoted attention in Paris.”
A short, scornful, mirthless laugh rang sharply on the air, and turning quickly, Salome exclaimed contemptuously,—
“I said I loved a man,—a true, honest, brave, noble man,—not that perfumed, unprincipled, vain, foppish automaton, who adorns a corner of the diplomatic apartment where attachés of the American embassy ‘most do congregate’! Gerard Granville is unworthy of any woman’s affection, for maugre the indisputable fact that he is betrothed to a fond, trusting girl, now in the United States, he had the effrontery to attempt to offer his addresses to me. If an honest man be the noblest work of God, then, beyond all peradventure, the disgrace of creation is centred in an unscrupulous one, such as I have the honor to pronounce Mr. Granville.”
Seizing her hands, Mr. Minge carried them forcibly to his lips, and said, in a voice that faltered from intensity of feeling,—
“Is it the hope that your love is reciprocated which bars your heart so sternly against my pleadings? Spare me no pangs,—tell me all.”
She freed her fingers from his grasp, and retreating a few steps, answered with a passionate mournfulness which he never forgot,—
“If I were dowered with that precious hope, not all the crown jewels in Christendom and Heathendom could purchase it. Not the proudest throne on that continent of empires that lies yonder to the north, could woo me one hour from the only kingdom where I could happily reign,—the heart of the man I love. No—no—no! That hope is as distant as the first star up there above us, which has rent the blue veil of heaven to gaze pityingly at me; and I would as soon expect to catch that silver sparkle and fold it in my arms as dream that my affection could ever be returned. The only man I shall ever love could not bend his noble, regal nature to the level of mine, and towers beyond me, a pinnacle of unapproachable purity and perfection. Ah, indeed, he is one of those concerning whom it has been grandly said: ‘The truly great stand upright as columns of the temple whose dome covers all,—against whose pillared sides multitudes lean, at whose base they kneel in times of trouble.’ Mr. Minge, it is despair that crouches at my heart, not hope that shuts its portals against your earnest petition; for a barrier wider, deeper than a hundred oceans divides me from my idol, who loves, and ere this, is the husband of another.”
She did not observe the glow that once more mantled his cheek, and fired his eyes, until he exclaimed with unusual fervor,—
“Thank God! That fact is freighted with priceless comfort.”
Compassion and contempt seemed struggling for mastery, as she waved him from her, and answered, impatiently,—
“Think you that any other need hope to usurp my monarch’s place,—that one inferior dare expect to wield his sceptre over my heart? Pardon me,—
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‘If there were not an eagle in the realm of birds, Must then the owl be king among the feathered herds?’ |
Some day a gentler spirit than mine will fill your home with music, and your heart with peace and sunshine; and, in that hour, thank honest Salome Owen for the blessings you owe to her candor. I must bid you good-night.”
She drew the scarf closer about her head and throat, and turned to leave the terrace.
“Will you not allow me to drive you to-morrow afternoon on the Marino? Do not refuse me this innocent and inexpressibly valued privilege. I will not be denied! Good-night, my—Heaven shield you, my worshipped one! Hush!—I will hear no refusal.”
He stooped, kissed the folds of the scarf that covered her head, and hurried down the steps of the terrace.
The glory of a Sicilian sunset bathed the face and figure that stood a moment under the lemon-boughs, watching the retreating form which soon disappeared behind clustering pomegranate, olive, and palm; and a tender compassion looked out of the large hazel eyes, and sat on the sad lips that murmured,—
“God help you, Merton Minge, to strangle the viper that coils in your heart, and gnaws its core. My own is a serpent’s lair, and I pity the pangs that rend yours also. But after a little while, your viper will find a file,—mine, alas! not until death arrests the slow torture. To-morrow afternoon I shall be—where? Only God knows.”
She shivered slightly, and raised her beautiful eyes towards the west, where golden gleams and violet shadows were battling for possession of a reef of cloud islets, which dotted the azure upper sea of air, and were reflected in the watery one beneath.
“Courage! courage!
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‘Those who have nothing left to hope, Have nothing left to dread.’” |