Mollie's Prince: A Novel

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

At the beginning of life he had had his good things—health, good looks, talents, and friends. Doors had opened to him, kindly hands had been held out to him, and one of them a woman's hand; but he had turned away in youthful caprice, and had chosen his own path.

He had meant to have carved his own fortunes, to have painted pictures that would have made the name of Everard Ward famous; and he was only a drawing-master who painted little third-rate pot-boilers.

How Everard loathed his poverty! His shabby coat, and Mollie's pitiful little makeshifts and contrivances, were all alike hateful to him. Too well he remembered the flesh-pots of Egypt—the Goshen of his youth, where he had fared sumptuously, when he had money to spend and the world smiled at him; and then, like a fool—the very prince of fools—he had flung it all away.

He had made a mess of his life, but he was not without his blessings; and in his better moments, when the children were singing their hymns, perhaps he would tell himself humbly that he was not worthy of them.

But as he stood by the river that morning, it seemed to him as though the cup of his humiliation was full to the very dregs. He had so broken with his old life that few ghostly visitants from the dim past troubled him; and now there had started up in his path the two women whom he most dreaded to see.

And one of them he had wronged, when, hot with a young man's passion, and tempted by Dorothy's sweet eyes and girlish grace, he had drawn back, suddenly and selfishly, from the woman he had been wooing.

Well, he had dearly loved his wife; but the disgrace of that shameful infidelity was never effaced from his memory. It was a blot, a stain upon his manhood, a sore spot, that often made him wince.

Would he ever forget that day they were in the old walled garden, gathering peaches, and Althea had just handed him one, hot with the sun, and crimson-tinted, and bursting with sweetness?

"You always give me the best of everything, Althea," he had said; but he was thinking of Dorothy as he said it, and of her love for peaches.

"I like to give you the best—the very best," Althea had answered sweetly, and her eyes had been so wistful and tender that he had felt vaguely alarmed. How he had made his meaning clear to her he never could remember. He had spoken of Dorothy, and perhaps his voice had trembled, for all at once she had become very silent, and there was no more gathering of peaches.