Fashion and Famine

by Ann S. Stephens

From these resources and the patient teachings of her grandfather, Julia had managed to obtain the most desirable of all educations. She had learned to think clearly and to feel rightly; but she felt keenly also, and a vivid imagination kindling up these acute feelings at midnight in the depth of a prison, made every nerve quiver with dread that was more than superstitious. One picture haunted her very sleep. It was her grandfather's white and agonized face stooping over that dead man. Never had the beautiful, stern face of the stranger beamed upon her so vividly before. She saw every lineament enameled on the midnight blackness.

She longed to arouse the child and ask it if the face were really visible, but was afraid to speak or move. The very sound of his soft breath as the boy slept terrified her. But while this wild dread was strongest upon her, the child awoke and began to feel over her face with his little hands. Softly, and with the touch of falling rose-leaves, his fingers wandered over her eyes, her forehead, and her mouth. They were like sunbeams playing upon ice, those warm, rosy fingers. The young girl ceased to feel frightened or alone. She began to weep. She pressed his hands to her lips, and drew the child close to her bosom, whispering softly to him, and pressing her lips to his eyes now and then, to be sure they were open. But all her gentle wiles were insufficient to keep the little fellow awake; he began to breathe more and more deeply, and, overcome by the soft mesmerism of his breath, she fell asleep also.

It would have been a lovely sight had any one looked upon those two calm, beautiful faces pillowed together upon that prison bed. Smiles dimpled round the rosy lips, upon which the breath floated like mist over a cluster of ripe cherries. The bright ringlets of the child fell over the tresses that shadowed the fair temple close to his, lighting them up as with threads, and gleams of gold. It was a picture of innocent sleep those green walls had perhaps never sheltered before since their foundation. It was natural that Julia should smile in her sleep, and that a glow like the first beams of morning when they penetrate a rose, should light up her face. She was dreaming, and slumber cast a fairy brightness over thoughts that had perhaps vaguely haunted her before that night. Memories mingled with the vision and the scenes which wove themselves in her slumbering thought had been realities—the first joyous realities of her young life. She was at an old farm-house, half hid in the foliage of two noble maples, all golden and crimson with a touch of frost. Her grandparents stood upon the door-stone with old Mrs. Gray, talking together, and smiling upon her as she sat down beneath the maples, and began to arrange a lapful of flowers that somehow had filled her apron, as bright things will fall upon us in our sleep. These blossoms breathed a perfume more delicate than anything she had ever seen or imagined, and, though coarse garden flowers, their breath was intoxicating.

Dreams are independent of detail, and the sleeper only knew that a young man whose face was familiar, and yet strange, stood by her side, and smiled gently upon her as she bent over her treasure. Was her slumbering imagination more vivid than the reality had been, or had her nerves ever answered human look with the delicious thrill that pervaded them in this dream? Was it the shadow of a memory haunting her sleep? Oh, yes, she had dreamed before—dreamed when those soft eyes had nothing but their curling lashes to veil them, and when the thoughts that were now floating through her vision left a glow upon that young cheek. It was true the angel of love haunted Julia in her prison.

The real and the imaginary still blended itself in her vision but indistinctly, and with that vague cloudiness that makes one sigh when the dream becomes a memory. An harassing sense that her grandfather was in trouble seemed to blend with the misty breath of the flowers. She still sat beneath the tree, and saw an old man in the distance, struggling with a throng of people, half engulphed in a storm-cloud that rolled up from the horizon. She could not move, for the blossoms in her lap seemed turning to lead, which she had no power to fling off. She struggled, and cried out wildly, "Robert—Robert Otis!"

The blossoms breathed in her lap again; flashes of silver broke up the distant cloud, and stars seemed dropping, one by one, from its writhing folds. Robert Otis was now in the distance, now at her side; she could not turn her eyes without encountering the deep smiling fervor of his glance. His name trembled and died on her lips in broken whispers, then all faded away. Balmy quiet settled on the spirit of the young girl, and she slept softly as the flowers slumber when their cups are overflowing with dew.

From this sweet rest she was aroused by a sharp clang of iron, and the tread of feet in the passage. The door of her own cell was flung open, and a tin cup full of coffee, with coarse, wholesome bread, was set inside for her breakfast. The dream still left its balm upon her heart, which all that prison noise had not power to frighten away. She smoothed her own hair, arranged her dress, and then arousing the child from its sleep with kisses, bathed and dressed him also. He was sitting upon her lap, his fresh rosy face lifted to hers, while she smoothed his tresses, and twisted them in ringlets around her fingers, when his mother entered the cell. She scarcely glanced at the child; but sat down, and supporting her forehead with one hand, remained in sombre stillness gazing on the floor. There was nothing reckless or coarse in her manner. Her heavy forehead was clouded, but with gloom that partook more of melancholy than of anger.

She spoke at length, but without changing her position or lifting her eyes from the floor.

"Will you tell me the name?—will you tell me who the man was they charge your grandfather with murdering? Was it—was it——" The low husky tones died in her throat; she made another effort, and added, almost in a whisper, "was it William Leicester?"

The question arrested Julia in her graceful task; her hands dropped as if smitten down from those golden tresses, and she answered in a faint voice, "that it was the name."