“I could not have believed my stricken heart capable of the joy that throbbed through all its pulses, as I entered the painter’s room with my treasure-laden purse in my hand. I know my voice faltered—but oh, Heaven! how it died within me when I heard a firm denial of my request! Tears and pleadings—all a mother’s agony availed not; for some purpose of his own, some artists’ exhibition—what, I could not wholly comprehend—he would have the picture for his own—he would not yield it up, but coldly and calmly persisted in his refusal. Day after day I have been to him, but in vain. The time of our departure is drawing near, and I know that duty to my father demands that I leave him not to go down the way of life alone. I must go—I must leave my child, that blessed, pictured face forever!”
The woman’s frame trembled violently, and passionately exclaiming—“Oh, Loring, Edgar Loring!” she laid her face upon the grave and wept convulsively.
Emily had been listening, her upturned eyes wet with tears, and when the last, wild exclamation of the stranger reached her ear, she started quickly, a deadly faintness came over her heart, a paleness to her cheek, and she too drooped her young head, bowed with a sudden wretchedness, upon the grave before her. Swiftly thought after thought, memory after memory crowded upon her brain, all forcing with an anguish unalterable, the fearful dread that Edgar was cold and selfish—Edgar was untrue. That picture of Elise, with the deep eyes so like the mother’s beside her—yes, she had seen it, and Edgar had told her it was an ideal work—and oh, mockery! that her loveliness was remembered in the vision. And she felt that a fearful moment in her life was now come: it was only necessary to prove the identity of the picture she had seen with that of the stranger’s child, to convict Edgar of the basest falsehood; and he who could deceive a heart young and trusting as hers, of what was he not capable!
Then awoke the latent power, the unrevealed energy of her spirit, and with an intense effort she calmed the tumultuous heavings of her heart, and strove to bring back her own quiet smile to those quivering lips. For some moments neither spoke, and when Emily lifted her head from the sod where the mother still lay, her face was calm, save a bright, uneasy flush upon her cheek. Lightly she touched the prostrate form before her, and said gently —
“I know this artist, and it may be that I can do something for you; describe to me this picture—I think that I have seen it.”
Then minutely, Mrs. Revere (for my readers must know it was she,) described the face of her Elise—and the faint ray of hope died out in the breast of Emily. Calmly she gathered from the mother all needful information—her name and residence and time of sailing, then giving her own address, and uttering words of hope and consolation, arose and left the spot.
There was no joy in the sunshine, no music in the song of birds, as she wended her way homeward over the very ground where a few hours before she had passed lightly, restless for very happiness. Reaching her home she slowly ascended to her own room, and closing the door, flung herself upon a couch and buried her face in its crimson cushions. Not till then did she know how great had been the strength exerted to keep down her rising tears, to command her trembling voice, to hide from other eyes her bitter sorrow. Long and passionately she wept now, but it was a weeping over the awakening from a dream. Edgar was cold-hearted—Edgar was false! That which she had thought to be the beautiful struggle of genius toward perfection, was but a selfish ambition. And she had been trifled with—duped—and as the humiliating thought rushed upon her, she lifted her sweet head, and the proud flush crimsoned cheek, neck and brow.
Emily’s love for Edgar was but in its early bloom—scarcely known even to herself; yet her pure, true soul would have risen above even a stronger, deeper, more engrossing passion. She had not loved the being now revealed to her, but “a creature of her dreams,” invested with all the beauty and nobleness which he seemed to possess; and it was with her young faith in human goodness still unshaken, that she mourned over the vanishing of this first, and dearest vision of her womanhood.
Emily did not meet the family at tea that evening, she “had a headache, and required rest”—but at night when her beloved mother came fondly to inquire if she were ill, she flung herself into her arms and told her all: all Edgar’s flattery and half-revealed love, all his falsehood, all the sad story of the childless mother, and besought her advice and aid in the course upon which she was now resolved.
Happy for that young heart that it could breathe out its first sorrow against a mother’s fond cheek—that the pillow of that stricken head was a mother’s loving bosom.