The Gold Brick

by Ann S. Stephens

This was the general opinion of her guests. They could account for the brilliant beauty of her presence in no other way.

How could strangers guess at the quivering fear that trembled at her heart when any unusual noise arose in the crowd which surrounded her with flattery and soft adulation? How was it possible for them to know that the brilliant beauty of her face was lighted by the fever of anxiety so terrible that her heart quailed under it.

A few of the guests remarked upon the absence of Mr. Nelson. At first she evaded these inquiries, but, as the evening drew near its close, she whispered to one of her most intimate friends a secret that soon spread through the vast crowd:

Mr. Nelson was insane. The men that had been remarked with him in the hall were his keepers. The malady had been growing upon him for months, and could be kept secret no longer. She had done her best to conceal it, but of late his eccentricities had become so uncontrollable that a private asylum had been decided on. This it was which had made her so restless and excited all the evening. People thought it high spirits, but alas! how little the world knows of human suffering.

It had been against her will that the party had gone on. Indeed, her husband's malady had never become really violent until after the invitations were given out, but he was quite unfit to appear. It was a great affliction, but Mrs. Nelson was afraid of her life, and had with painful reluctance compelled herself to consign her dear husband entirely into medical hands. Early in the morning he would leave home.

These were the remarks which floated from lip to lip when the guests broke into groups after supper, and the dear friends who had met the lady of the mansion with congratulations, left with compassionate words of consolation, which she received with gentle grace, more attractive than her previous high spirits had been.

Ellen Mason was a magnificent actress—few women on the stage ever went through a difficult role so triumphantly. But when her guests were all gone, the facts of her position came upon her mind with bitter force. She looked around on the luxurious ruin of the supper table, the withered garlands, the groups of glasses stained with amber, or ruddy wine, the broken pyramids, and silver baskets, heaped with dying flowers and rejected fruit, with a feeling of absolute disgust. The glittering confusion made her faint. She longed to rush by the servants, who were closing the house, and seek the open air, late as it was. This impulse seized upon her with such force that she gathered up the scarf of Brussels point, which had fallen like frost-work over her dress, and vailing her head with it, stepped through an open window into the grounds.

The moon was down, but hundreds of colored lamps still burned in the trees, looking only the more brilliant from the deep shadows that lay in the leaves. The cool night air chilled the fever in her veins and gave her more vivid power of reflection. There is no time when the emptiness of fashionable life strikes the mind so forcibly as that which follows a successful entertainment. The ruins of a feast are always oppressive.

The hollowness of her whole life struck Ellen Mason full upon the heart. What was she after all but a gross impostor forced to work out the problem of her own falsehood without help? She began to realize the insufficiency of all that had been gained to her life. She thought of the honest love that had made her humble home in the pine wood so pleasant. In that home how often had she thought of scenes like the one before her, and longed to act a part in them. But these had been only dreams. They had never deepened to ambitious hopes till Thrasher came with his brilliant temptations and won her from that honest roof. What a worthless life hers had proved since then! would it always be so? had she tied herself forever and ever to all this emptiness? Would she indeed be permitted to revel still among these golden husks? That man had threatened her with his speech and more fiercely still with his eyes. Oh, how she dreaded him.

Lost in these thoughts she sat down on a garden chair, and clasping both hands in her lap, began to cry. This was an unusual weakness. She had wept when the news of her husband's death came, but seldom since then. Vanity thrives best in the sunshine, tears are unnecessary to its growth. And now Ellen Mason's life was all vanity.