The curse of gold

by Ann S. Stephens

As Catharine sat pondering over these thoughts, full of happiness and thanksgiving, the door was softly opened, and Elsie Ford stole in cautiously, like a timid child that had gone wilfully astray.

Catharine sat buried in the easy-chair with her back to the light, which lay full upon the two pictures. Languid from the emotions through which she had just passed, and held in thrall by the very quiet with which Elsie had entered, she sat motionless, watching the poor creature as she glided through the room.

The crimson drapery had been drawn over the arch of the window, falling a little apart in the centre, through which came a column of light upon the portraits, leaving the remainder of the library bathed, as it were, in the gloom of a warm twilight.

For a moment Elsie looked around as if bewildered. She had flung aside her crimson robe after one elaborate toilet, and now appeared in a plain morning-dress of pure white, loose from the shoulders down. A band of scarlet chenille, twisted lightly together, gathered up the long tresses of her hair, which she had arranged in fantastic waves and masses back of her head, as we find it in antique statues. In truth, all Elsie’s fantasies in dress had a classic grace about them, which perhaps sprung from some early taste, brightened into the picturesque by insanity. Thus, in her cloud-like white dress, and with the glowing scarlet in her hair, she moved across the room, pausing every step or two, and listening as if she feared that some one might follow her.

A gleam of sharp intelligence shot across her face as she saw the bird-cage, and darting toward it, she opened the door, chirping softly with her lips, as if to call the bird forth. But the jar that she had given to the cage, and the air set in motion by her drapery, took up the heap of plumage that she had taken for a bird, and sent it floating through the room.

Elsie dropped her hand from the cage-door, and drooping downward in sad despondency, turned her head from side to side, gazing with a woe-begone countenance at the feathers as they quivered from her sight and settled down like soft gleams of gold in the dusky corners.

“Gone, gone; all alike, all alike,” she muttered, in a low, tearful voice. “So it is always, always; everything that loves me dies—everything that I love melts into air, or turns into some wicked creature and stings me. My poor bird, my pretty canary, why did I come? Why did I let these wicked hands touch his cage? they have driven him off, turned him into a wasp that will sting, sting, sting, oh!”

She shrunk back from the light, and held out her hands with the palms outward, as if warding off the insects that she fancied herself to have created.

“I can’t help it—how can I? If these cruel things start to life with a touch of my finger, it is his fault, not mine; he drained the life from my soul and filled it with this wickedness. If it kills all beautiful things, and turns them into vipers and stinging insects that come back upon me for food, eating and biting at my temples day and night, how can I help it?”

The poor woman uttered these wild words with a low cry of anguish, fighting the air with one hand, and gathering the folds of her white robe up over her face with the other, as if to protect it from harm.