The Sword of Damocles E-Book

Anna Katharine Green

• Herausgeber: Muhammad
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

One of detective fiction master Anna Katharine Green's earlier novels, The Sword of Damocles combines a budding romance set against the backdrop of New York City's hustle and bustle with a beguiling mystery. Green's best-known creation, master detective Ebenezer Gryce, makes a cameo appearance on the scene.
 

Leseprobe

The Sword of Damocles

Anna Katharine Green

.

I.

A WANDERER.

"There's no such word."--BULWER.

A wind was blowing through the city. Not a gentle and balmy zephyr, stirring the locks on gentle ladies' foreheads and rustling the curtains in elegant boudoirs, but a chill and bitter gale that rushed with a swoop through narrow alleys and forsaken courtyards, biting the cheeks of the few solitary wanderers that still lingered abroad in the darkened streets.

In front of a cathedral that reared its lofty steeple in the midst of the squalid houses and worse than squalid saloons of one of the dreariest portions of the East Side, stood the form of a woman. She had paused in her rush down the narrow street to listen to the music, perhaps, or to catch a glimpse of the light that now and then burst from the widely swinging doors as they opened and shut upon some tardy worshipper.

She was tall and fearful looking; her face, when the light struck it, was seared and desperate; gloom and desolation were written on all the lines of her rigid but wasted form, and when she shuddered under the gale, it was with that force and abandon to which passion lends its aid, and in which the soul proclaims its doom.

Suddenly the doors before her swung wide and the preacher's voice was heard: "Love God and you will love your fellow-men. Love your fellow-men and you best show your love to God."

She heard, started, and the charm was broken. "Love!" she echoed with a horrible laugh; "there is no love in heaven or on earth!"

And she swept by, and the winds followed and the darkness swallowed her up like a gulf.

 

II.

A DISCUSSION.

"Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to be so." RAY'S PROVERBS.

"And you are actually in earnest?"

"I am."

The first speaker, a fine-looking gentleman of some forty years of age, drummed with his fingers on the table before him and eyed the face of the young man who had repeated this assent so emphatically, with a certain close scrutiny indicative of surprise.

"It is an unlooked-for move for you to make," he remarked at length. "Your success as a pianist has been so decided, I confess I do not understand why you should desire to abandon a profession that in five years' time has procured you both competence and a very enviable reputation--for the doubtful prospects of Wall Street, too!" he added with a deep and thoughtful frown that gave still further impressiveness to his strongly marked features.

The young man with a sweep of his eye over the luxurious apartment in which they sat, shrugged his shoulders with that fine and nonchalant grace which was one of his chief characteristics.

"With such a pilot as yourself, I ought to be able to steer clear of the shoals," said he, a frank smile illumining a face that was rather interesting than handsome.

The elder gentleman did not return the smile. Instead of that he remained gazing at the ample coal-fire that burned in the grate before him with a look that to the young musician was simply inexplicable. "You see the ship in haven," he murmured at last; "but do not consider what storms it has weathered or what perils escaped. It is a voyage I would encourage no son of mine to undertake."

"Yet you are not the man to shrink from danger or to hesitate in a course you had marked out for yourself, because of the struggle it involved or the difficulties it presented!" the young man exclaimed almost involuntarily as his glance lingered with a certain sort of fascination on the powerful brow and steady if somewhat melancholy eye of his companion.

"No; but danger and difficulty should not be sought, only subdued when encountered. If you were driven into this path, I should say, 'God pity you!' and hold you out my hand to steady you along its precipices and above its sudden quicksands. But you are not driven to it. Your profession offers you the means of an ample livelihood while your good heart and fair talents insure you ultimate and honorable success, both in the social and artistic world. For a man of twenty-five such prospects are not common and he must be difficult to please not to be satisfied with them."

"Yes," said the other rising with a fitful movement but instantly sitting again; "I have nothing to complain of as the world goes, only--Sir," he exclaimed with a sudden determination that lent a force to his features they had hitherto lacked, "you speak of being driven into a certain course; what do you mean by that?"

"I mean," returned the other; "forced by circumstances to enter a line of business to which many others, if not all others are preferable."

"You speak strongly, speculation evidently has none of your sympathy, notwithstanding the favorable results which have accrued to you from it. But excuse me, by circumstances you mean poverty, I suppose, and the lack of every other opening to wealth and position. You would not consider the desire to make a large fortune in a short space of time a circumstance of a sufficiently determining nature to reconcile you to my entering Wall Street speculation?"

The elder gentleman rose, not as the other had done with a restless impulse quickly subsiding at the first excuse, but forcibly and with a feverish impatience that to appearance was somewhat out of proportion to the occasion. "A large fortune in a short space of time!" he reiterated, pausing where he had risen with an eagle glance at his companion and a ringing tone in his voice that bespoke a deep but hitherto suppressed agitation. "It is the alluring inscription above the pitfall into which many a noble youth has fallen; the battle-cry to a struggle that has led many a strong man the way of ruin; the guide-post to a life whose feverish days and sleepless nights offer but poor compensation for the sudden splendors and as sudden reverses attached to it. I had rather you had accounted for this sudden freak of yours by the strongest aspiration after power than by this cry of the merely mercenary man who in his desire to enjoy wealth, prefers to win it by a stroke of luck rather than conquer it by a life of endeavor." He stopped. "I am aware that this tirade against the ladder by which I myself have risen so rapidly, must strike you as in ill-taste. But Bertram, I am interested in your welfare and am willing to incur some slight charge of inconsistency in order to insure it," and here he turned upon his companion with that expression of extreme gentleness which lent such a peculiar charm to his countenance and explained perhaps the almost unlimited power he held over the hearts and minds of those who came within the circle of his influence.

"You are very good, sir," murmured his young friend, who to explain matters at once was in reality the nephew of this Wall Street magnate, though from the fact of his having taken another name on entering the musical profession, was not generally known as such. "No one, not even my father himself, could have been more considerate and kind; but I do not think you understand me, or rather I should say I do not think I have made myself perfectly intelligible to you. It is not for the sake of wealth itself or the eclat attending its possession that I desire an immediate fortune, but that by means of it I may attain another object dearer than wealth, and more precious than my career."

The elder gentleman turned quickly, evidently much surprised, and cast a sudden inquiring glance at his nephew, who blushed with a modest ingenuousness pleasing to see in one so well accustomed to the critical gaze of his fellow-men.

"Yes," said he, as if in answer to that look, "I am in love."

A deep silence for a moment pervaded the apartment, a sombre silence almost startling to young Mandeville, who had expected some audible expression to follow this announcement if only the good-natured "Pooh! pooh!" of the matured man of the world in the presence of ardent youthful enthusiasm. What could it mean? Looking up he encountered his uncle's eye fixed upon him with the last expression he could have anticipated seeing there, namely that of actual and unmistakable alarm.

"You are displeased," Mandeville exclaimed. "You have thought me proof against such a passion, or perhaps you do not believe in the passion itself!" Then with a sudden remembrance of the notable if somewhat indolent loveliness of his uncle's wife, blushed again at his unusual want of tact, while his eye with an involuntary impulse sought the large panel at their right where, in the full bloom of her first youth, the lady of the house smiled upon all beholders.

"I do not believe in that passion influencing a man's career," his uncle replied with no apparent attention to the other's embarrassment. "A woman needs be possessed of uncommon excellences to justify a man in leaving a path where success is certain, for one where it is not only doubtful but if attained must bring many a regret and heart-ache in its train. Beauty is not sufficient," he went on with sterner and sterner significance, "though it were of an angelic order. There must be worth." And here his mind's eye if not that of his bodily sense, certainly followed the glance of his companion.

"I believe there is worth," the young man replied; "certainly, it is not her beauty that charms me. I do not even know if she is beautiful," he continued. 

"And you believe you love!" the elder exclaimed after another short pause.

There was so much of bitterness in the tone in which this was uttered, that Mandeville forgot its incredulity. "I think I must," returned he with a certain masculine naïveté not out of keeping with his general style of face and manner, "else I should not be here. Three weeks ago I was satisfied with my profession, if not enthusiastic over it; to-day I ask nothing but to be allowed to enter upon some business that in three years' time at least will place me where I can be the fit mate of any woman in this land, that is not worth her millions."

"The woman for whom you have conceived this violent attachment is, then, above you in social position?"

"Yes, sir, or so considered, which amounts to the same thing, as far as I am concerned."

"Bertram, I have lived longer than you and have seen much of both social and domestic life, and I tell you no woman is worth such a sacrifice on the part of a man as you propose. No woman of to-day, I should say; our mothers were different. The very fact that this young lady of whom you speak, obliges you to change your whole course of life in order to obtain her, ought to be sufficient to prove to you--" He stopped suddenly, arrested by the young man's lifted hand. "She does not oblige you, then?"

"Not on her own account, sir. This lily," lifting a vase of blossoms at his elbow, "could not be more innocent of the necessities that govern the social circle it adorns, than the pure, single-minded girl to whom I have dedicated what is best and noblest in my manhood. It is her father--"

"Ah, her father!"

"Yes, sir," the young man pursued, more and more astonished at the other's tone. "He is a man who has a right to expect both wealth and position in a son-in-law. But I see I shall have to tell you my story, sir. It is an uncommon one and I never meant that it should pass my lips, but if by its relation I can win your sympathy for a pure and noble passion, I shall consider the sacred seal of secrecy broken in a good cause. But," said he, seeing his uncle cast a short and uneasy glance at the door, "perhaps I am interrupting you. You expect some one!"

"No," said his uncle, "my wife is at church; I am ready to listen."

The young man gave a hurried sigh, cast one look at his companion's immovable face, as if to assure himself that the narrative was necessary, then leaned back and in a steady business-like tone that softened, however, as he proceeded, began to relate as follows:

 

III.

A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS.

"Without unspotted, innocent within, She feared no danger, for she knew no sin."--DRYDEN.

It was after a matinée performance at ---- Hall some two weeks ago that I stopped to light a cigar in the small corridor leading to the back entrance. I was in a dissatisfied frame of mind. Something in the music I had been playing or the manner in which it had been received had touched unwonted chords in my own nature. I felt alone. I remember asking myself as I stood there, what it all amounted to? Who of all the applauding crowd would watch at my bedside through a long and harassing sickness, or lend their sympathy as they now yielded their praise, if instead of carrying off the honors of the day I had failed to do justice to my reputation. I was just smiling over the only exception I could make to this sweeping assertion, that of the pale-eyed youth you have sometimes observed dogging my steps, when Briggs came up to me.

"There is a woman here, sir, who insists on seeing you; she has been waiting through half the last piece. Shall I tell her you are coming out?"

"A woman!" exclaimed I, somewhat surprised, for my visitors are not apt to be of the gentler sex.

"Yes sir, an old one. She seems very anxious to speak to you. I could not get rid of her no how."

I hurried forward to the muffled figure which he pointed out cowering against the wall by the door. "Well, my good woman, what do you want?" I asked, bending towards her in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the face she held partly concealed from me.

"Are you Mr. Mandeville?" she inquired in a tone shaken as much by agitation as age.

I bowed.

"The one who plays upon the piano?"

"The very same," I declared.

"You are not deceiving me," she went on, looking up with a marked anxiety plainly visible through her veil. "I haven't seen you play and couldn't contradict you, but--"

"Here!" said I calling to Briggs with a kindly look at the old woman, "help me on with my coat, will you?"

The "Certainly, Mr. Mandeville," with which he complied seemed to reassure her, and as soon as the coat was on and he was gone, she grasped me by the arm and drew my ear down to her mouth.

"If you are Mr. Mandeville, I have a message for you. This letter," slipping one into my hand, "is from a young lady, sir. She bade me give it to you myself. She is young and pretty," she pursued as she saw me make a movement of distaste, "and a lady. We depend upon your honor, sir."

I acknowledge that my first impulse was to fling her back the note and leave the building; I was in no mood for trifling, my next to burst into a laugh and politely hand her to the door, my last and best, to open the poor little note and see for myself whether the writer was a lady or not. Proceeding to the door, for it was already twilight in the dim passage way, I tore open the envelope which was dainty enough and took out a sheet of closely written paper. A certain qualm of conscience assailed me as I saw the delicate chirography it disclosed and I was tempted to thrust it back and return it unread to the old woman now trembling in the corner. But curiosity overcame my scruples, and hastily unfolding the sheet I read these lines:

"I do not know if what I do is right; I am sure aunty would not say it was; but aunty never thinks anything is right but going to church and reading the papers to papa. I am just a little girl who has heard you play, and who would think the world was too beautiful, if she could hear you say to her just once, some of the kind things you must speak every day to the persons who know you. I do not expect very much--you must have a great many friends, and you would not care for me--but the least little look, if it were all my own, would make me so happy and so proud I should not envy anybody in the world, unless it was some of those dear friends who see you always.

"I do not come and hear you play often, for aunty thinks music frivolous, but I am always hearing you no matter where I am, and it makes me feel as if I were far away from everybody, in a beautiful land all sunshine and flowers. But nurse says I must not write so much or you will not read it, so I will stop here. But if you would come it would make some one happier than even your beautiful music could do." 

That was all; there was neither name nor date. A child's epistle, written with a woman's circumspection. With mingled sensations of doubt and curiosity I turned back to the old woman who stood awaiting me with eager anxiety.

"Was this written by a child or woman?" I asked, meeting her eye with as much sternness as I could assume.

"Don't ask me--don't ask me anything. I have promised to bring you if I could, but I cannot answer any questions."

I stepped back with an incredulous laugh. Here was evidently an adventure. "You will at least tell me where the young miss lives," said I, "before I undertake to fulfil her request."

She shook her head. "I have a carriage at the door, sir," said she. "All you have got to do is to get into it with me and we shall soon be at the house."

I looked from her face to the letter in my hand, and knew not what to think. The spirit of simplicity and ingenuousness that marked the latter was scarcely in keeping with this air of mystery. The woman observing my hesitation moved towards the door.

"Will you come, sir?" she inquired. "You will not regret it. Just a moment's talk with a pretty young girl--surely--"

"Hush," said I, hearing a hasty step behind me. And sure enough just then my intimate friend Selby came along and grasping me by the arm began dragging me towards the door. "You are my property," said he. "I've promised, on my word of honor as a gentleman and a musician, to bring you to the Handel Club this afternoon. I was afraid you had escaped me, but--" Here he caught sight of the small black figure halting in the door-way, and paused.

"Who's this?" said he.

I hesitated. For one instant the scale of my whole future destiny hung trembling in the balance, then the demon of curiosity got the better of my judgment, and with the rather unworthy consideration that I might as well enjoy my youth while I could, I released myself from my friend's detaining hand and replied, "Some one with whom I have very particular business. I cannot go to the Handel Club to-day," and darting out without further delay, I rejoined the old woman on the sidewalk.

Without a word she drew me towards a carriage I now observed standing by the curbstone a few feet to the left. As I got in I remember pausing a moment to glance at the man on the box, but it was too dark for me to perceive anything but the fact that he was dressed in livery. More and more astonished I leaned back in my seat and endeavored to open conversation with my mysterious companion. But it did not work. Without being actually rude, she parried my questions in such a way that by the end of five minutes I found myself as far from any knowledge of the real situation of the case as when I started. I therefore desisted from any further attempts and turned to look out, when I made a discovery that for the first time awoke some vague feelings of alarm within my breast. This was, that the window was not covered by a curtain as I supposed, but by closed blinds which when I tried to raise them resisted all my efforts to do so.

"It is very close here," I muttered, in some sort of excuse for this display of uneasiness. "Cannot you give us a little air?" But my companion remained silent, and I felt ashamed to press the matter though I took advantage of the darkness to remove to a safer place a roll of money which I had about me.

Yet I was far from being really anxious, and did not once meditate backing out of an adventure that was at once so piquant and romantic. For by this time I became conscious from the sounds about me that we had left the side street for one of the avenues and were then proceeding rapidly up town. Listening, I heard the roll of omnibuses and the jingle of car-bells, which informed me that we were in Broadway, no other avenue in the city being traversed by both these methods of conveyance. But after awhile the jingle ceased and presently the livelier sounds of constant commotion inseparable from a business thoroughfare, and we entered what I took to be Madison Avenue at Twenty-third Street.

Instantly I made up mind to notice every turn of the carriage, that I might fix to some degree the locality towards which we were tending. But it turned but once and that after a distance of steady travelling that quite overthrew any calculation I was able to make at that time of the probable number of streets we had passed since entering the avenue. Having turned, it went but about half a block to the left when it stopped. "I shall see where I am when I get out," thought I; but in this I was mistaken.

First we had stopped in the middle of a block of houses built, as far as I could judge, all after one model. Next the fact of the front door being open, though I saw no one in the hall, somewhat disconcerted me, and I hurried across the sidewalk and up the stoop in a species of maze hardly to be expected from one of my naturally careless disposition. The next moment the door closed behind me and I found myself in a well-lighted hall whose quiet richness betokened it as belonging to a private dwelling of no mean pretensions to elegance.

This was the first surprise I received.

"Follow me," said the old woman, hurrying me down the hall and into a small room at the end. "The young lady will be here in a moment," and without lifting her veil or affording me the least glimpse of her features, she retired, leaving me to face the situation before me as best I might.

It was anything but a pleasant one as it appeared to me at that moment, and for an instant I seriously thought of retracing my steps and leaving a domicile into which I had been introduced in such a mysterious manner. Then the quiet aspect of the room, which though sparsely furnished with a piano and chairs was still of an order rarely seen out of gentlemen's houses, struck my imagination and reawakened my curiosity, and nerving myself to meet whatever interview might be accorded me, I waited. It was only five minutes by the small clock ticking on the mantel-piece, but it seemed an hour before I heard a timid step at the door, and saw it swing slowly open, disclosing--well, I did not stop to inquire whether it was a child or a woman. I merely saw the shrinking modest form, the eager blushing face, and bowed almost to the ground in a sudden reverence for the sublime innocence revealed to me. Yes, it did not take a second look to read that tender countenance to its last guileless page. Had she been a woman of twenty-five I could not have mistaken her expression of pure delight and timid interest, but she was only sixteen, as I afterwards learned, and younger in experience than in age.

Closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment without speaking, then with a deepening of the blush which was only a child's embarrassment in the presence of a stranger, looked up and murmured my name with a word or so of grateful acknowledgment that would have called forth a smile on my lips if I had not been startled by the sudden change that passed over her features when she met my eyes. Was it that I showed my surprise too plainly, or did my admiration manifest itself in my gaze? an admiration great as it was humble, and which was already of a nature such as I had never before given to girl or woman. Whatever it was, she no sooner met my look than she paused, trembled, and started back with a confused murmur, through which I plainly heard her whisper in a low distressed tone, "Oh, what have I done!"

"Called a good friend to your side," said I in the frank, brotherly way I thought most likely to reassure her. "Do not be alarmed, I am only too happy to meet one who evidently enjoys music so well."

But the hidden chord of womanhood had been struck in the child's soul, and she could not recover herself. For an instant I thought she would turn and flee, and struck as I was with remorse at my reckless invasion of this uncontaminated temple, I could not but admire the spirited picture she presented as, with form half turned and face bent back, she stood hesitating on the point of flight.

I did not try to stop her. "She shall follow her own impulse," said I to myself, but I felt a vague relief that was deeper than I imagined, when she suddenly relinquished her strained attitude, and advancing a step or so began to murmur:

"I did not know--I did not realize I was doing what was so very wrong. Young ladies do not ask gentlemen to come and see them, no matter how much they desire to make their acquaintance. I see it now; I did not before. Will you--can you forgive me?"

I smiled; I could not help it. I could have taken her to my heart and soothed her as I would a child, but the pallor of womanhood, which had replaced the blush of the child, awed me and made my own words come hesitatingly.

"Forgive you? You must forgive me! It was as wrong for me," I went on with a wild idea of not mincing matters with this pure soul, "to obey your innocent request, as it was for you to make it. I am a man of the world and know its convenances; you are very young." 

"I am sixteen," she murmured.

The abrupt little confession, implying as it did her determination not to accept any palliation of her conduct which it did not deserve, touched me strangely. "But very young for that," I exclaimed.

"So aunty says, but no one can ever say it any more," she answered. Then with a sudden gush, "We shall never see each other again, and you must forget the motherless girl who has met you in a way for which she must blush through life. It is no excuse," she pursued hurriedly, "that nurse thought it was all right. She always approves of everything I do or want to do, especially if it is anything aunt would be likely to forbid. I have been spoiled by nurse."

"Was nurse the woman who came for me?" I asked.

She nodded her head with a quick little motion inexpressibly charming. "Yes, that was nurse. She said she would do it all, I need only write the note. She meant to give me a pleasure, but she did wrong."

"Yes," thought I, "how wrong you little know or realize." But I only said, "You must be guided by some one with more knowledge of the world after this. Not," I made haste to add, struck by the misery in her child eyes, "that any harm has been done. You could not have appealed to the friendship of any one who would hold you in greater respect than I. Whether we meet again or not, my memory of you shall be sweet and sacred, I promise you that."

But she threw out her hand with a quick gesture. "No, do not remember me. My only happiness will lie in the thought you have forgotten." And the last remnants of the child soul vanished in that hurried utterance. "You must go now," she continued more calmly. "The carriage that brought you is at the door; I must ask you to take it back to your home."

"But," I exclaimed with a wild and unbearable sense of sudden loss as she laid her hand on the knob of the door, "are we to part like this? Will you not at least trust me with your name before I go?"

Her hand dropped from the knob as if it had been hot steel, and she turned towards me with a slow yearning motion that whatever it betokened set my heart beating violently. "You do not know it, then?" she inquired.

"I know nothing but what this little note contains," I replied, drawing her letter from my pocket.

"Oh, that letter! I must have it," she murmured; then, as I stepped towards her, drew back and pointing to the table said, "Lay it there, please."

I did so, whereupon something like a smile crossed her lips and I thought she was going to reward me with her name, but she only said, "I thank you; now you know nothing;" and almost before I realized it she had opened the door and stepped into the hall.

As I made haste to follow her, the sound of a low, "He is a gentleman, he will ask no questions," struck my ear, and looking up, I saw her just leaving the side of the old nurse who stood evidently awaiting me half down the hall. Bowing with formal ceremony, I passed her by and proceeded to the front door. As I did so I caught one glimpse of her face. It had escaped from all restraint and the expression of the eyes was overpowering. I subdued a wild impulse to leap back to her side, and stepped at once over the threshold. The nurse joined me, and together we went down the stoop to the street.

"May I inquire where you wish to be taken?" she asked.

I told her, and she gave the order to the coachman, together with a few words I did not hear; then stepping back she waited for me to get in. There was no help for it. I gave one quick look behind me, saw the front door close, realized how impossible it would ever be for me to recognize the house again, and placed my foot on the carriage step. Suddenly a bright idea struck me, and hastily dropping my cane I stepped back to pick it up. As I did so I pulled out a bit of crayon I chanced to have in my pocket, and as I stooped, chalked a small cross on the curbstone directly in front of the house, after which I recovered my cane, uttered some murmured word of apology, jumped into the carriage and was about to shut the door, when the old nurse stepped in after me and quietly closed it herself. By the pang that shot through my breast as the carriage wheels left the house, I knew that for the first time in my life, I loved. 

 

IV.

SEARCHINGS.

"Patience, and shuffle the cards."--CERVANTES.

If I had expected anything from the presence in the carriage of the woman who had arranged this interview, I was doomed to disappointment. Reticent before, she was absolutely silent now, sitting at my side like a grim statue or a frozen image of watchfulness, ready to awake and stop me if I offered to open the door or make any other move indicative of a determination to know where I was, or in what direction I was going. That her young mistress in the momentary conversation they had held before our departure had succeeded in giving her some idea of the shame with which she had felt herself overwhelmed and her present natural desire for secrecy, I do not doubt, but I think now, as I thought then, that the unusual precautions taken both at that time and before, to keep me in ignorance of the young lady's identity, were due to the elderly woman's own consciousness of the peril she had invoked in yielding to the wishes of her young and thoughtless mistress; a theory which, if true, argues more for the mind than the conscience of this mysterious woman. However, it is with facts we have to deal, and you will be more interested in learning what I did, than what I thought during that short ride in perfect darkness.

The mark which I had left on the curbstone behind me sufficiently showed the nature of my resolve, and when we made the first turn at the end of the block I leaned back in my seat and laying my finger on my wrist, began to count the pulsations of my blood. It was the only device that suggested itself, by which I might afterward gather some approximate notion of the distance we travelled in a straight course down town. I had just arrived at the number seven hundred and sixty-two, and was inwardly congratulating myself upon this new method of reckoning distance, when the wheels gave a lurch and we passed over a car track. Instantly all my fine calculations fell to the ground. We were not in Madison Avenue, as I supposed; could not be, since no track crosses that avenue below Fifty-ninth Street, and we were proceeding on as we could not have done had we gained the terminus of the avenue at Twenty-third Street. Could it be that the carriage had not been turned around while I was in the house, and that we had come back by way of Fifth Avenue? I could not remember--in fact, the more I tried to think which way the horses' heads were directed when we went into the house, the more I was confused. But presently I considered that wherever we were, we certainly had not passed over the narrow strip of smooth pavement in front of the Worth monument, and therefore could not have reached Twenty-third Street by way of Fifth Avenue. We must be up town, and that track we crossed must have been at Fifty-ninth Street. And soon, as if to assure me of this, we took a turn, quickly followed at a block's length by another, after which I had no difficulty in recognizing the smooth pavement of the entrance to the Park or the roll down Fifth Avenue afterwards. "They have thought to confuse me by an extra mile or so of travel," thought I, with some complacency, "but the streets of New York are too simply laid out to lend themselves to any such easy mode of mystification." Yet I have thought since then how, with a smarter man on the box, the affair might have been conducted so as to have baffled the oldest citizen in any attempt at calculation.

When we stopped in front of the Albemarle I quietly thanked the woman who had conducted me, and stepped to the ground. Instantly the door shut behind me, the carriage drove off, and I was left standing there like a man suddenly awakened from a dream.

Entering my hotel, I ordered supper, thinking that the very practical occupation of eating would serve to divert my mind into its ordinary channels. But the dream, if dream it was, had made too vivid an impression to be shaken off so easily. It followed me to the hall in the evening and mingled with every chord I struck.

I could scarcely sleep that night for thinking of the sweet child's face that had blossomed into a woman's before my eyes, and what a woman! With the first hint of daylight I rose, and as soon as it was in any degree suitable to be out, hired a cab and proceeded to the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, where, according to my calculations of the evening before, we had crossed the car track which had first interrupted me in that very original method of computing distance of which I have already spoken, a method by the way, which you must acknowledge is an improvement on the boy's plan of finding his way back from the woods by means of the bread-crumbs he had scattered behind him, forgetting that the birds would eat up his crumbs and leave him without a clew. Bidding the driver proceed at the ordinary jog trot down the avenue, I laid my finger on my wrist, and counted each throb of my pulse till I had reached the magical number seven hundred and sixty-two. Then putting my head out of the window, I bade him stop. We were in the middle of a block, but that did not disconcert me. I had not expected to gain more than an approximate idea of the spot where we had first turned into the avenue, it being impossible to regulate the horses' pace so as to tally with that taken by the span of the night before, even if the pulsations in my wrist were to be absolutely relied upon. Noting the streets between which we had paused, I bade the driver to turn down one and come back by the other, occupying myself in the meanwhile, in searching the curbstone for the small mark I had left in front of her door the night before. But though we drove slowly and I searched carefully, not a trace did I perceive of that tell-tale sign, and forsaking those two streets, I ordered my obedient Jehu to try the two outlying ones below and above. He did so, and I again consulted the curbstone, but with no better success. No mark or remnants of a mark was to be found anywhere. Nor, though we travelled through three or four other streets in the same way, did we come upon any clew liable to assist me in my search. Clean discouraged and somewhat out of temper with myself for my pusillanimity of the evening before in not having braved the anger of my companion by opening the carriage door at the first corner and leaping out, I commanded to be taken back to the hotel, where for a whole miserable day I racked my brain with devices for acquiring the knowledge I so much desired. The result was futile, as you may imagine; nor will I stop to recount the various expedients to which I afterwards resorted in my vain attempt to solve the mystery of this young girl's identity.

Enough that they all failed, even the very promising one of searching the various photographic establishments of the city, for the valuable clew which her picture would give me. And so a week passed.

"It is time this mad infatuation was at an end," said I to myself one morning as I sat down to write a letter. "There is no hope of my ever seeing her again, and I am but frittering away the best emotions of my life in thus indulging in a dream that is not the prelude to a reality." But in spite of the wise determination thus made, I soon found my thoughts recurring to their old channel, and seized with sudden impatience at my evident weakness, took up the letter I had been writing and was about to read it, when to my great amazement I perceived that instead of inditing the usual words of a business communication, I had been engaged in scribbling a certain number up and down the page and even across the bottom where my signature should have been.

"Am I a fool?" I exclaimed, and was about to tear the sheet in two, when glancing again at the number, which was a simple thirty-six, I asked myself where I had got those especial figures. Instantly there arose before my mind's eye the vision of a brown-stone front with its vestibule and door. It was, then, the number of a house; but what house? a chateau en Espagne or a bona fide New York dwelling, which for some reason had unconsciously impressed itself upon my memory? I could not answer. There on the page was the number thirty-six, and equally plain in my mind was the look of the brown-stone front to which that number belonged--and that was all. 

But it was enough to awaken within me the spirit of inquiry. The few houses thus numbered in that quarter of the city where I had lately been, were not so hard to find but that a morning given to the business ought to satisfy me whether the vision in my mind had its basis in reality. Taking a cab, I rode up town and into that region of streets I had traversed so carefully a week before. For I was assured that if the impression had been made by an actual dwelling it had been done at that time. Following the same course I then took, I consulted the appearance of the various houses to which that number was assigned. The first was built of brick; that was not it. The next one had pillars to the vestibule; and that was not it. The third, to use an Irish bull, was no house at all, but a stable, while the fourth was an elegant structure of much more pretension than the plain and simple front I had in my mind or memory. I was about to utter a curse upon my folly and go home, when I remembered there was yet a street or two taken in my zig-zag course of the week before, which I had not yet tested. "Might as well be thorough," I muttered, and bade my driver proceed down ---- Street.

What was there in its aspect that dimly excited me at the first glance? A dim remembrance, a certain ghostly assurance that we had reached the right spot? As we neared the number I sought, I could not suppress an exclamation of surprise. For there before me to its last detail, stood the house which involuntarily presented itself to my mind, when my eye first fell upon that mysterious number scribbled at the foot of the page I was writing.

It was, then, no chimera of an overwrought brain, this vision of a house-front which had been haunting me, but a distinct remembrance of an actual dwelling seen by me in my former journey through this street. But why this house-front above all others; what was there in it to make such an impression? Looking at it I could not determine, but after we had passed, something, I cannot tell what, brought back another remembrance, trivial in itself, but yet a link in the chain that was destined sooner or later to lead me out of the maze into which I had stumbled. It was merely this; that as I rode along the streets on that memorable morning, searching for that mark on the curbstone from which I hoped so much, I had come upon a spot where the pavement had been freshly washed. With that unconscious action of the brain with which we are familiar, I looked at the sidewalk a moment, running even then with the water that had been cast upon it, and then gave a quick glance at the house. That glance, account for it as you will, took in the picture before it as the camera catches the impression of a likeness, and though in another instant I had forgotten the whole occurrence, it needed but a certain train of thought or perhaps a certain state of emotion to revive it again.

A noble cause for such an act of unconscious cerebration you will say, a freshly washed pavement: Le jeu ne faut pas la chandelle. And so I thought too, or would have thought if I had not been so interested in the pursuit in which I was engaged, and if the idea had not suggested itself that water and a broom might obliterate chalk-marks from curbstones, and that the imps that preside over our mental forces would not indulge in such a trick at my expense unless the play was worth the candle. At all events, from the moment I made this discovery, I fixed my faith on that house as the one which held the object of my search, and though I contented myself with merely noting the number of the street as we left it, I none the less determined to pursue my investigations, till I had learned beyond the possibility of a doubt whether my conjectures were not true. 

A perseverance worthy of a better cause you will say, but you are no longer twenty-five and under the influence of your first passion. I own I was astonished at myself and frequently paused in the pursuit I had undertaken, to ask if I were the same person who but a fortnight before laughed at the story of a man who had gone mad over the body of an unknown woman he had saved from a wreck only to find her dead in his arms.

The first thing I did was to ascertain the name of the gentleman occupying the house I have specified. It was that of one of our wealthiest and most respectable bankers, a name as well known in the city--as your own for instance. This was somewhat disconcerting, but with a dogged resolution somewhat foreign to my natural disposition, I persevered in my investigations, and learning in the next breath that the gentleman alluded to was a widower with an only child, a young daughter of about sixteen or so, recovered my assurance, though not my equanimity. Seeking out my friend Farrar, who as you know is a walking gazette of New York society, I broached the subject of Mr.--excuse me if I do not mention his name; allow me to say, Preston's domestic affairs, and learned that Miss Preston, "A naive little piece for so great an heiress," I remember Farrar called her, had left town within a day or two for a visit to some friends in Baltimore. "I happen to know," said he with that careless sweep of his hand at which you have so often laughed, "because my friend Miss Forsyth met her at the depot. She was intending to be gone--two weeks, I think she said. Do you know her?"

That last question sprung upon me unawares, and I am afraid I blushed. "No," I returned, "I have not that honor but an acquaintance of mine has--well--has met her and--"

"I see, I see," broke in Farrar with his most disagreeable smile. Then with a short laugh, meant to act as a warning, I suppose, added as he walked off, "I hope your friend is in fair circumstances and not connected with the fine arts. Music is Mr. Preston's detestation, while Miss Preston though too young to be much sought after yet, will in two years' time have the pick of the city at her command."

"So!" thought I to myself; "my little innocent charmer is an embryo aristocrat, eh? Well then, I was a greater fool than I imagined." And I walked out of the hotel where I had met Farrar, with the very sensible conclusion to drop a subject that promised nothing but disappointment.

But the fates were against me, or the good angels perhaps, and at the next comer I met an old acquaintance, the very opposite of Farrar in character, who with a long love story of his own fired, my imagination to such an extent that in spite of myself I turned down ---- Street, and was proceeding to pass her house, when suddenly the thought struck me, "How do I know that this unapproachable daughter of one of our most prominent citizens is one and the same person with my dainty little charmer? Widowers with young daughters are not so rare in this great city that I need consider the question as decided, because by a half superstitious freak of my own I have settled upon this house as the one I was in the other night. My inamorata may be the offspring of a musician for all I know." And inflamed at the thought of this possibility--I remembered the piano, you see--I gave to the winds all my fine resolutions and only asked how I could determine for once and all, whether I had ever crossed the threshold of the house before me. Some men would have run up the stoop, rung the bell and asked to see Mr. Preston on some pretended business he could easily conjure up to suit the occasion, but my face is too well known for me to risk any such attempt, besides I was too anxious to win the confidence of the young girl to shock her awakened sense of propriety by seeming to seek her where she did not wish to be found. And yet I must enter that house and see for myself if it was the one that held her on that memorable evening.

Pondering the question, I looked back at the door so obstinately closed against my curiosity, when to my satisfaction and delight it suddenly opened and a man stepped out, whom I instantly recognized as a business agent for one of the largest piano-forte manufactories in the city. "The heavens smile upon my enterprise," thought I, and waited for the man to come up with me. He was not only a friend of mine but largely indebted to me in various ways, so that I knew I had only to urge a request for it to be immediately granted, and that, too, without any questions or gossip.

You will not be interested in anything but the result, which was somewhat out of the usual course, and may therefore shock you. But you must remember that I am telling you of matters which young men usually keep to themselves, and that whatever I did, was accomplished in a spirit of respect only a shade less constraining in its power than the love that was at once my impelling force, and my constant embarrassment.

To come, then, to the point, a piano was to be set up in that house on that very day, Mr. Preston having yielded to the solicitations of his daughter for a new instrument. My friend was to be engaged in the transfer, and at my solicitation for leave to assist in the operation, gave his consent in perfect confidence as to my possessing good and sufficient reasons for such a remarkable request, and appointed the hour at which I was to meet him at the ware-rooms.

Behold me, then, at half-past two that afternoon, assisting with my own hands in carrying a piano up the stoop of that house which, four hours before, I had regarded as unapproachable. Dressed in a workman's blouse and with my hair well roughened under a rude cap that effectually disguised me, I advanced with but little fear of detection. And yet no sooner had I entered the house and seen at a glance that the aspect of the hall coincided with my rather vague remembrance of that through which I had been ushered a week before, than I was struck by a sudden sense of my situation, and experiencing that uncomfortable consciousness of self-betrayal, which a blush always gives a man, stumbled forward under my heavy burden, feeling as if a thousand eyes were fixed upon me and my cherished secret, instead of the two sharp but totally unsuspicious orbs of the elderly matron that surveyed us from the top of the banisters. "Be careful there, you'll knock a hole through that glass door!" though a natural cry under the circumstances, struck on my ears with the force and mysterious power of a secret warning, and when after a moment of blind advance I suddenly lifted my eyes and found myself in the little room, which like a silhouette on a white ground, stood out in my memory in distinct detail as the spot where I had first heard my own heart beat, I own that I felt my hands slipping from my burden, and in another moment had disgraced my character of a workman if I had not caught the sudden ring of a well known voice in the hall, as nurse answered from above some question propounded by the elderly lady with the piercing eyes. As it was, I recovered myself and went through my duties as promptly and deftly as if my heart did not throb with memories that each passing hour and event only served to hallow to my imagination.

At length the piano was duly set up and we turned to leave. Will you think I am too trivial in my details if I tell you that I lingered behind the rest and for an instant let my hand with all its possibilities for calling out a soul from that dead instrument, lie a moment on the keys over which her dainty fingers were so soon to traverse?

 

V.

THE RUBICON.

"I'll stake my life upon her faith."--OTHELLO.

Once convinced of the identity of my sweet young friend with the Miss Preston at whose feet a two year hence, the wealth and aristocracy of New York would be kneeling, I drew back from further effort as having received a damper to my presumptuous hopes that would soon effectually stifle them. Everything I heard about the family--and it seemed as if suddenly each chance acquaintance that I met had something to say about Mr. Preston either as a banker or a man, only served to confirm me in this view. "He is a money worshipper," said one. "The bluest of blue Presbyterians," declared another. "The enemy of presumption and anything that looks like an overweening confidence in one's own worth or capabilities," remarked a third. "A man who would beggar himself to save the honor of a corporation with which he was concerned," observed a fourth "but who would not invite to his table the most influential man connected with it if that man was unable to trace his family back to the old Dutch settlers to which Mr. Preston's own ancestors belonged."

This latter statement I have no doubt was exaggerated for I myself have seen him at dinners where half the gentlemen who lifted the wine glass were self-made in every sense of the term. But it showed the bent of his mind and it was a bent that left me entirely out of the sweep of his acquaintanceship much less that of his exquisite daughter, the pride of his soul if not the jewel of his heart.

But when will a man who has seen or who flatters himself that he has seen in the eyes of the woman he admires, the least spark of that fire which is consuming his own soul, pause at an obstacle which after all has its basis simply in circumstances of position or will. By the time the two weeks of her expected absence had expired, I had settled it in my own mind that I would see her again and if I found the passing caprice of a child was likely to blossom into the steady regard of a woman, risk all in the attempt to win by honorable endeavor and persistence this bud of loveliness for my future wife.

How I finally succeeded by means of my friend Farrar in being one evening invited to the same house as Miss Preston it is not necessary to state. You will believe me it was done with the utmost regard for her feelings and in a way that deceived Farrar himself, who if he is the most prying is certainly the most volatile of men. In a crowded parlor, then, in the midst of the flash of diamonds and the flutter of fans Miss Preston and I again met. When I first saw her she was engaged in conversation with some young companion, and I had the pleasure of watching for a few minutes, unobserved, the play of her ingenuous countenance, as she talked with her friend, or sat silently watching the brilliant array before her. I found her like and yet unlike the vision of my dreams. More blithesome in her appearance, as was not strange considering her party attire and the lustre of the chandelier under which she sat, there was still that indescribable something in her expression which more than the flash of her eye or the curve of her lip, though both were lovely to me, made her face the one woman's face in the world for me; a charm which circumstances might alter, or suffering impair, but of which nothing save death could ever completely divest her and not death either, for it was the seal of her individuality, and that she would take with her into the skies.

"If I might but advance and sit down by her side without a word of explanation or the interference of conventionalities how happy I should be," thought I. But I knew that would not do, so I contented myself with my secret watch over her movements, longing for and yet dreading the advance of my hostess, with its inevitable introduction. Suddenly the piano was touched in a distant room and not till I saw the quick change in her face, a change hard to explain, did I recognize the selection as one I was in the habit of playing. She had not forgotten at least, and thrilled by the thought and the remembrance of that surge of color which had swept like a flood over her cheek, I turned away, feeling as if I were looking on what it was for no man's eyes to see, least of all mine. 

My hostess' voice arrested me and next moment I was bowing to the ground before Miss Preston.

I am not a boy; nor have I been without my experiences: life with its vicissitudes has taught me many a lesson, subjected me to many a trial, yet in all my career have I never known a harder moment than when I raised my eyes to meet hers after that lowly obeisance. That she would be indignant I knew, that she might even misinterpret my motives and probably withdraw without giving me an opportunity to speak, I felt to be only too probable, but that she would betray an agitation so painful I had not anticipated, and for an instant I felt that I had hazarded my life's happiness on a cast that was going against me. But the necessity of saving her from remark speedily restored me to myself, and following the line of conduct I had previously laid out, I addressed her with the reserve of a stranger, and neither by word, look or manner conveyed to her a suggestion that we had ever met or spoken to each other before. She seemed to appreciate my consideration and though she was as yet too much unused to the ways of the world to completely hide her perturbation, she gradually regained a semblance of self-possession, and ere long was enabled to return short answers to my remarks, though her eyes remained studiously turned aside and never so much as ventured to raise themselves to the passing throng much less to my face, half turned away also.

Presently however a change passed over her. Pressing her two little hands together, she drew back a step or two, speaking my name with a certain tone of command. Struck with apprehension, I knew not why, I followed her. Instantly like one repeating a lesson she spoke.

"It is very good in you to talk to me as though we were the strangers that people believe us. I appreciate it and thank you very much. But it is not being just true; that is I feel as if I were not being just true, and as we can never be friends, would it not be better for us not to meet in this way any more?"

"And why," I gently asked, with a sense of struggling for my life, "can we never be friends?"

Her answer was a deep blush; not that timid conscious appeal of the blood that is beating too warmly for reply, but the quick flush of indignant generosity forced to do despite to its own instincts.

"That is a question I would rather not answer," she murmured at length. "Only it is so; or I should not speak in this way."

"But," I ventured, resolved to know on just what foundations my happiness was tottering, "you will at least tell me if this harsh decree is owing to any offence I myself may have inadvertently given. The honor of your acquaintance," I went on, determined she should know just what a hope she was slaying, "is much too earnestly desired, for me to wilfully hazard its loss by saying or doing aught that could be in any way displeasing to you."

"You have done nothing but what was generous," said she with increasing womanliness of manner, "unless it was taking advantage of my being here, to learn my name and gain an introduction to me after I had desired you to forget my very existence."

I recoiled at that, the chord of my self-respect was touched. "It was not here I learned your name, Miss Preston. It has been known to me for two weeks. At the risk of losing by your displeasure what is already hazarded by your prudence, I am bound to acknowledge that from the hour I left your father's house that night, I have spared no effort compatible with my deep respect for your feelings, to ascertain who the young lady was that had done me such an honor, and won from me such a deep regard. I had not intended to tell you this," I added, "but your truth has awakened mine, and whatever the result may be, you must see me as I am."