Trumps

CHAPTER L. — WINE AND TRUTH.

The conversation takes a fresh turn. Corlaer Van Boozenberg is talking of the great heiress, Miss Wayne. He has drunk wine enough to be bold, and calls out aloud from his end of the table,

“Mr. Abel Newt!”

That gentleman turns his head toward his guest.

“We are wondering down here how it is that Miss Wayne went away from New York unengaged.”

“I am not her confidant,” Abel answers; and gallantly adds, “I am sure, like every other man, I should be glad to be so.”

“But you had the advantage of every body else.”

“How so?” asks Abel, conscious that Grace Plumer is watching him closely.

“Why, you were at school in Delafield until you were no chicken.”

Abel bows smilingly.

“You must have known her.”

“Yes, a little.”

“Well, didn’t you know what a stunning heiress she was, and so handsome! How’d you, of all men in the world, let her slip through your fingers?”

A curious silence follows this effusion. Corlaer Van Boozenberg is slightly flown with wine. Hal Battlebury, who sits near him, looks troubled. Herbert Octoyne and Mellish Whitloe exchange meaning glances. The young ladies—Mrs. Plumer is the only matron, except Mrs. Dagon, who sits below—smile pleasantly. Sligo Moultrie eats grapes. Grace Plumer waits to hear what Abel says, or to observe what he does. Mrs. Dagon regards the whole affair with an approving smile, nodding almost imperceptibly a kind of Freemason’s sign to Mrs. Plumer, who thinks that the worthy young Van Boozenberg has probably taken too much wine.

Abel Newt quietly turns to Grace Plumer, saying,

“Poor Corlaer! There are disadvantages in being the son of a very rich man; one is so strongly inclined to measure every thing by money.. As if money were all!”

He looks her straight in the eyes as he says it. Perhaps it is some effort he is making which throws into his look that cold, hard blackness which is not beautiful. Perhaps it is some kind of exasperation arising from what he has heard Moultrie say privately and Van Boozenberg publicly, as it were, that pushes him further than he means to go. There is a dangerous look of craft; an air of sarcastic cunning in his eyes and on his face. He turns the current of talk with his neighbors, without any other indication of disturbance than the unpleasant look. Van Boozenberg is silent again. The gentle, rippling murmur of talk fills the room, and at a moment when Moultrie is speaking with his neighbor, Abel says, looking at the engraving of the Madonna,

“Miss Grace, I feel like those cherubs.”

“Why so, Mr. Newt?”

“Because I am perfectly happy.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, Miss Grace, and for the same reason that I entirely love and admire.”

Her heart beats violently. Sligo Moultrie turns and sees her face. He divines every thing in a moment, for he loves Grace Plumer.

“Yes, Miss Grace,” he says, in a quick, thick tone, as if he were continuing a narration—“yes, she became Princess of Este; but the fiery eyes burned her, and the sweet tongue stung her forever and ever.”

Mrs. Plumer and Mrs. Dagon are rising. There is a rustling tumult of women’s dresses, a shaking out of handkerchiefs, light gusts of laughter, and fragments of conversation. The handsome women move about like birds, with a plumy, elastic motion, waving their fans, smelling their bouquets, and listening through them to tones that are very low. The Prince of the house is every where, smiling, sinuous, dark in the eyes and hair.

It is already late, and there is no disposition to be seated. Sligo Moultrie stands by Grace Plumer, and she is very glad and even grateful to him. Abel, passing to and fro, looks at her occasionally, and can not possibly tell if her confusion is pain or pleasure. There is a reckless gayety in the tone with which he speaks to the other ladies. “Surely Mr. Newt was never so fascinating,” they all think in their secret souls; and they half envy Grace Plumer, for they know the little supper is given for her, and they think it needs no sibyl to say why, or to prophesy the future.

It is nearly midnight, and the moon is rising. Hark!

A band pours upon the silent night the mellow, passionate wail of “Robin Adair.” The bright company stands listening and silent. The festive scene, the hour, the flowers, the luxury of the place, the beauty of the women, impress the imagination, and touch the music with a softer melancholy. Hal Battlebury’s eyes are clear, but his heart is full of tears as he listens and thinks of Amy Waring. He knows that all is in vain. She has told him, with a sweet dignity that made her only lovelier and more inaccessible, that it can not be. He is trying to believe it. He is hoping to show her one day that she is wrong. Listening, he follows in his mind the song the band is playing.

Sligo Moultrie feels and admires the audacious skill of Abel in crowning the feast with music. Grace Plumer leans upon his arm. Abel Newt’s glittering eyes are upon them. It is the very moment he had intended to be standing by her side, to hold her arm in his, and to make her feel that the music which pealed in long cadences through the midnight, and streamed through the draped windows into the room, was the passionate entreaty of his heart, the irresistible pathos of the love he bore her.

Somehow Grace Plumer is troubled. She fears the fascination she enjoys. She dreads the assumption of power over her which she has observed in Abel. She recoils from the cold blackness she has seen in his eyes. She sees it at this moment again, in that glittering glance which slips across the room and holds her as she stands. Involuntarily she leans upon Sligo Moultrie, as if clinging to him.

There is more music?—a lighter, then a sadder and lingering strain. It recedes slowly, slowly up the street. The company stand in the pretty parlor, and not a word is spoken. It is past midnight; the music is over.

“What a charming party! Mr. Newt, how much we are obliged to you!” says Mrs. Godefroi Plumer, as Abel hands her into the carriage.

“The pleasure is all mine, Madame,” replies Mr. Newt, as he sees with bitterness that Sligo Moultrie stands ready to offer his hand to assist Miss Plumer. The footman holds the carriage door open. Miss Plumer can accept the assistance of but one, and Mr. Abel is resolved to know which one.

“Permit me, Miss Plumer,” says Sligo.

“Allow me, Miss Grace,” says Abel.

The latter address sounds to her a little too free. She feels, perhaps, that he has no rights of intimacy—at least not yet—or what does she feel? But she gives her hand to Sligo Moultrie, and Abel bows.

“Thank you for a delightful evening, Mr. Newt. Good-night!”

The host bows again, bareheaded, in the moonlight.

“By-the-by, Mr. Moultrie,” says the ringing voice of the clear-eyed girl, who remembers that Abel is listening, but who is sure that only Sligo can understand, “I ought to have told you that the story ended differently. The Princess left the villa. Good-night! good-night!”

The carriage rattles down the street.

“Good-night, Newt; a very beautiful and pleasant party.”

“Good-night, Moultrie—thank you; and pleasant dreams.”

The young Georgian skips up the street, thinking only of Grace Plumer’s last words. Abel Newt stands at his door for a moment, remembering them also, and perfectly understanding them. The next instant he is shawling and cloaking the other ladies, who follow the Plumers; among them Mrs. Dagon, who says, softly,

“Good-night, Abel. I like it all very well. A very proper girl! Such a complexion! and such teeth! Such lovely little hands, too! It’s all very right. Go on, my dear. What a dreadful piece of work Fanny’s made of it! I wonder you don’t like Hope Wayne. Think of it, a million of dollars! However, it’s all one, I suppose—Grace or Hope are equally pleasant. Good-night, naughty boy! Behave yourself. As for your father, I’m afraid to go to the house lest he should bite me. He’s dangerous. Good-night, dear!”

Yes, Abel remembers with singular distinctness that it was a word, only one word, just a year ago to Grace Plumer—a word intended only to deceive that foolish Fanny—which had cost him—at least, he thinks so—Hope Wayne.

He bows his last guests out at the door with more sweetness in his face than in his soul. Returning to the room he looks round upon the ruins of the feast, and drinks copiously of the wine that still remains. Not at all inclined to sleep, he goes into his bedroom and finds a cigar. Returning, he makes a few turns in the room while he smokes, and stops constantly to drink another glass. He half mutters to himself, as he addresses the chair in which Grace Plumer has been sitting,

“Are you or I going to pay for this feast, Madame? Somebody has got to do it. Young woman, Moultrie was right, and you are wrong. She did become Princess of Este. I’ll pay now, and you’ll pay by-and-by. Yes, my dear Grace, you’ll pay by-and-by.”

He says these last words very slowly, with his teeth set, the head a little crouched between the shoulders, and a stealthy, sullen, ugly glare in the eyes.

“I’ve got to pay now, and you shall pay by-and-by. Yes, Miss Grace Plumer; you shall pay for to-night and for the evening in my mother’s conservatory.”

He strides about the room a little longer. It is one o’clock, and he goes down stairs and out of the house. Still smoking, he passes along Broadway until he reaches Thiel’s. He hurries up, and finds only a few desperate gamblers. Abel himself looks a little wild and flushed. He sits down defiantly and plays recklessly. The hours are clanged from the belfry of the City Hall. The lights burn brightly in Thiel’s rooms. Nobody is sleeping there. One by one the players drop away—except those who remark Abel’s game, for that is so careless and furious that it is threatening, threatening, whether he loses or wins.

He loses constantly, but still plays on. The lights are steady. His eyes are bright. The bank is quite ready to stay open for such a run of luck in its favor.

The bell of the City Hall clangs three in the morning as a young man emerges from Thiel’s, and hurries, then saunters, up Broadway. His motions are fitful, his dress is deranged, and his hair matted. His face, in the full moonlight, is dogged and dangerous. It is the Prince of the feast, who had told Grace Plumer that he was perfectly happy.

CHAPTER LI. — A WARNING.

A few evenings afterward, when Abel called to know how the ladies had borne the fatigues of the feast, Mrs. Plumer said, with smiles, that it was a kind of fatigue ladies bore without flinching. Miss Grace, who was sitting upon a sofa by the side of Sligo Moultrie, said that it was one of the feasts at which young women especially are supposed to be perfectly happy. She emphasized the last words, and her bright black eyes opened wide upon Mr. Abel Newt, who could not tell if he saw mischievous malice or a secret triumph and sense release in them.

“Oh!” said he, gayly, “it would be too much for me hope to make any ladies, and especially young ladies, perfectly happy.”

And he returned Miss Plumer’s look with a keen glance masked in merriment.

Sligo Moultrie wagged his foot.

“There now is conscious power!” said Abel, with a laugh, as he pointed at Miss Plumer’s companion.

They all laughed, but not very heartily. There appeared to be some meaning lurking in whatever was said; and like all half-concealed meanings, it seemed, perhaps, even more significant than it really was.

Abel was very brilliant, and told more and better stories than usual. Mrs. Plumer listened and laughed, and declared that he was certainly the best company she had met for a long time. Nor were Miss Plumer and Mr. Moultrie reluctant to join the conversation. In fact, Abel was several times surprised by the uncommon spirit of Sligo’s replies.

“What is it?” said Abel to himself, with a flash of the black eyes that was startling.

All the evening he felt particularly belligerent toward Sligo Moultrie; and yet a close observer would have discovered no occasion in the conduct of the young man for such a feeling upon Abel’s part. Mr. Moultrie sat quietly by the side of Grace Plumer—“as if somehow he had a right to sit there,” thought Abel Newt, who resolved to discover if indeed he had a right.

During that visit, however, he had no chance. Moultrie sat persistently, and so did Abel. The clock pointed to eleven, and still they did not move. It was fairly toward midnight when Abel rose to leave, and at the same moment Sligo Moultrie rose also. Abel bade the ladies good-evening, and passed out as if Moultrie were close by him. But that young man remained standing by the sofa upon which Grace Plumer was seated, and said quietly to Abel,

“Good-evening, Newt!”

Grace Plumer looked at him also, with the bright black eyes, and blushed.

For a moment Abel Newt’s heart seemed to stand still! An expression of some bitterness must have swept over his face, for Mrs. Plumer stepped toward him, as he stood with his hand upon the door, and said,

“Are you unwell?”

The cloud dissolved in a forced smile.

“No, thank you; not at all!” and he looked surprised, as if he could not imagine why any one should think so.

He did not wait longer, and the next moment was in the street.

Mrs. Plumer also left the room almost immediately after his departure. Sligo Moultrie seated himself by his companion.

“My dear Grace, did you see that look?”

“Yes.”

“He suspects the truth,” returned Sligo Moultrie; and he might have added more, but that his lips at that instant were otherwise engaged.

Abel more than suspected the truth. He was sure of it, and the certainty made him desperate. He had risked so much upon the game! He had been so confident! As he half ran along the street he passed many things rapidly in his mind. He was like a seaman in doubtful waters, and the breeze was swelling into a gale.

Turning out of Broadway he ran quickly to his door, opened it, and leaped up stairs.

To his great surprise his lamp was lighted and a man was sitting reading quietly at his table. As Abel entered his visitor closed his book and looked up.

“Why, Uncle Lawrence,” said the young man, “you have a genius for surprises! What on earth are you doing in my room?”

His uncle said, only half smiling,

“Abel, we are both bachelors, and bachelors have no hours. I want to talk with you.”

Abel looked at his guest uneasily; but he put down his hat and lighted a cigar; then seated himself, almost defiantly, opposite his uncle, with the table between them.

“Now, Sir; what is it?”

Lawrence Newt paused a moment, while the young man still calmly puffed the smoke from his mouth, and calmly regarded his uncle.

“Abel, you are not a fool. You know the inevitable results of certain courses. I want to fortify your knowledge by my experience. I understand all the temptations and excitements that carry you along. But I don’t like your looks, Abel; and I don’t like the looks of other people when they speak of you and your father. Remember, we are of the same blood. Heaven knows its own mysteries! Your father and I were sons of one woman. That is a tie which we can neither of us escape, if we wanted to. Why should you ruin yourself?”

“Did you come to propose any thing for me to do, Sir, or only to inform me that you considered me a reprobate?” asked Abel, half-sneeringly, the smoke rising from his mouth.

Lawrence Newt did not answer.

“I am like other young men,” continued Abel. “I am fond of living well, of a good horse, of a pretty woman. I drink my glass, and I am not afraid of a card. Really, Uncle Lawrence, I see no such profound sin or shame in it all, so long as I honestly pay the scot. Do I cheat at cards? Do I lie in the gutters?”

“No!” answered Lawrence.

“Do I steal?”

“Not that I know,” said the other.

“Please, Uncle Lawrence, what do you mean, then?”

“I mean the way, the spirit in which you do things. If you are not conscious of it, how can I make you? I can not say more than I have. I came merely—”

“As a handwriting upon the wall, Uncle Lawrence?”

Lawrence Newt rose and stood a little back from the table.

“Yes, if you choose, as a handwriting on the wall. Abel, when the prodigal son came to himself, he rose and went to his father. I came to ask you to return to yourself.”

“From these husks, Sir?” asked Abel, as he looked around his luxurious rooms, his eye falling last upon the French print of Lucille, fresh from the bath.

Lawrence Newt looked at his nephew with profound gravity. The young man lay back in his chair, lightly holding his cigar, and carelessly following the smoke with his eye. The beauty and intelligence of his face, the indolent grace of his person, seen in the soft light of the lamp, and set like a picture in the voluptuous refinement of the room, touched the imagination and the heart of the older man. There was a look of earnest, yearning entreaty in his eyes as he said,

“Abel, you remember Milton’s Comus?”

The young man bowed.

“Do you think the revelers were happy?”

Abel smiled, but did not answer. But after a few minutes he said, with a smile,

“I was not there.”

“You are there,” answered Lawrence Newt, with uplifted finger, and in a voice so sad and clear that Abel started.

The two men looked at each other silently for a few moments.

“Good-night, Abel.”

“Good-night, Uncle Lawrence.”

The door closed behind the older man. Abel sat in his chair, intently thinking. His uncle’s words rang in his memory. But as he recalled the tone, the raised finger, the mien, with which they had been spoken, the young man looked around him, and seemed half startled and frightened by the stillness, and awe-struck by the midnight hour. He moved his head rapidly and arose, like a person trying to rouse himself from sleep or nightmare. Passing the mirror, he involuntarily started at the haggard paleness of his face under the clustering black hair. He was trying to shake something off. He went uneasily about the room until he had lighted a match, and a candle, with which he went into the next room, still half-looking over his shoulder, as if fearing that something dogged him. He opened the closet where he kept his wine. He restlessly filled a large glass and poured it down his throat—not as if he were drinking, but as if he were taking an antidote. He rubbed his forehead with his hand, and half-smiled a sickly smile.

But still his eyes wandered nervously to the spot in which his uncle had stood; still he seemed to fear that he should see a ghostly figure standing there and pointing at him; should see himself, in some phantom counterpart, sitting in the chair. His eyes opened as if he were listening intently. For in the midnight he thought he heard, in that dim light he thought he saw, the Prophet and the King. He did not remember more the words his uncle had spoken. But he heard only, “Thou art the man! Thou art the man!”

And all night long, as he dreamed or restlessly awoke, he heard the same words, spoken as if with finger pointed—“Thou art the man! Thou art the man!”

CHAPTER LII. — BREAKERS.

Lawrence Newt had certainly told the truth of his brother’s home. Mr. Boniface Newt had become so surly that it was not wise to speak to him. He came home late, and was angry if dinner were not ready, and cross if it were. He banged all the doors, and swore at all the chairs. After dinner he told May not to touch the piano, and begged his wife, for Heaven’s sake, to take up some book, and not to sit with an air of imbecile vacancy that was enough to drive a man distracted. He snarled at the servants, so that they went about the house upon tip-toe and fled his presence, and were constantly going away, causing Mrs. Newt to pass many hours of the week in an Intelligence Office. Mr. Newt found holes in the carpets, stains upon the cloths, knocks upon the walls, nicks in the glasses and plates at table, scratches upon the furniture, and defects and misfortunes every where. He went to bed without saying good-night, and came down without a good-morning. He sat at breakfast morose and silent; or he sighed, and frowned, and muttered, and went out without a smile or a good-by. There was a profound gloom in the house, an unnatural order. Nobody dared to derange the papers or books upon the tables, to move the chairs, or to touch any thing. If May appeared in a new dress he frowned, and his wife trembled every time she put in a breast-pin.

Only in her own room was May mistress of every thing. If any body had looked into it he would have seen only the traces of a careful and elegant hand, and often enough he would have seen a delicate girl-face, almost too thoughtful for so young a face, resting upon the hand, as if May Newt were troubled and perplexed by the gloom of the house and the silence of the household. Her window opened over the street, and there were a few horse-chestnut trees before the house. She made friends with them, and they covered themselves with blossoms for her pleasure. She sat for hours at her window, looking into the trees, sewing, reading, musing—solitary as a fairy princess in a tower.

Sometimes flowers came, with Uncle Lawrence’s love. Or fine fruit for Miss May Newt, with the same message. Several times from her window May had seen who the messenger was: a young man with candid eyes, with a quick step, and an open, almost boyish face. When the street was still she heard him half-singing as he bounded along—as nobody sings, she thought, whose home is not happy.

Solitary as a fairy princess in a tower, she looked down upon the figure as it rapidly disappeared. The sewing or the reading stopped entirely; nor were they resumed when he had passed out of sight. May Newt thought it strange that Uncle Lawrence should send such a messenger in the middle of the day. He did not look like a porter. He was not an office boy. He was evidently one of the upper-clerks. It was certainly very kind in Uncle Lawrence.

So thought the solitary Princess in the tower, her mind wandering from the romance she was reading to a busy speculation upon the reality in the street beneath her.

The blind was thrown partly back as she sat at the open window. A simple airy dress, made by her own hands, covered her flower-like figure. The brown hair was smoothed over the white temples, and the sweet girl eyes looked kindly into the street from which the figure of the young man had just passed. If by chance the eyes of that young man had been turned upward, would he not have thought—since one Sunday morning, when he passed her on the way to church, he was sure that she looked like an angel going home—would he not have thought that she looked like an angel bending down toward him out of heaven?

It was not strange that Uncle Lawrence had sent him. For somehow Uncle Lawrence had discovered that if there was any thing to go to May Newt, there was nothing in the world that Gabriel Bennet was so anxious to do as to carry it.

But while the young man was always so glad to go to Boniface Newt’s gloomy house—for some reason which he did not explain, and which even his sister Ellen did not know—or, at least, which she pretended not to know, although one evening that wily young girl talked with brother Gabriel about May Newt, as if she had some particular purpose in the conversation, until she seemed to have convinced herself of some hitherto doubtful point—yet with all the willingness to go to the house, Gabriel Bennet never went to the office of Boniface Newt, Son, & Co.

If he had done so it would not have been pleasant to him, for it was perpetual field-day in the office. A few days after Uncle Lawrence’s visit to his nephew, the senior partner sat bending his hard, anxious face over account-books and letters. The junior partner lounged in his chair as if the office had been a club-room. The “Company” never appeared.

“Father, I’ve just seen Sinker.”

“D—— Sinker!”

“Come, come, father, let’s be reasonable! Sinker says that the Canal will be a clear case of twenty per cent, per annum for ten years at least, and that we could afford to lose a cent or two upon the Bilbo iron to make it up, over and over again.”

Mr. Abel Newt threw his leg over the arm of the chair and looked at his boot. Mr. Boniface Newt threw his head around suddenly and fiercely.

“And what’s Sinker’s commission? How much money do you suppose he has to put in? How much stock will he take?”

“He has sold out in the Mallow Mines to put in,” said Abel, a little doggedly.

“Are you sure?”

“He says so,” returned Abel, shortly.

“Don’t believe a word of it!” said his father, tartly, turning back again to his desk.

Abel put both hands in his pockets, and both feet upon the ground, side by side, and rocked them upon the heels backward and forward, looking all the time at his father. His face grew cloudy—more cloudy every moment. At length he said,

“I think we’d better do it.”

His father did not speak or move. He seemed to have heard nothing, and to be only inwardly cursing the state of things revealed by the books and papers before him.

Abel looked at him for a moment, and then, raising his voice, continued:

“As one of the firm, I propose that we sell out the Bilbo and buy into the Canal.”

Not a look or movement from his father.

Abel jumped up—his eyes black, his face red. He took his hat and went to the door, saying,

“I shall go and conclude the arrangement!”

As he reached the door his father raised his eyes and looked at him. The eyes were full of contempt and anger, and a sneering sound came from his lips.

“You’ll do no such thing.”

The young man glanced sideways at his parent.

“Who will prevent me?”

“I!” roared the elder.

“I believe I am one of the firm,” said Abel, coldly.

“You’d better try it!” said the old man, disregarding Abel’s remark.

Abel was conscious that his father had this game, at least, in his hands. The word of the young man would hardly avail against a simultaneous veto from the parent. No transaction would stand a moment under such circumstances. The young man slowly turned from the door, and fixing his eyes upon his father, advanced toward him with a kind of imperious insolence.

“I should like to understand my position in this house,” said he, with forced calmness.

“Good God! Sir, a bootblack, if I choose!” returned his father, fiercely. “The unluckiest day of my life was when you came in here, Sir. Ever since then the business has been getting more and more complicated, until it is only a question of days how long it can even look respectable. We shall all be beggars in a month. We are ruined. There is no chance,” cried the old man, with a querulous wail through his set teeth. “And you know who has done it all. You know who has brought us all to shame and disgrace—to utter poverty;” and, rising from his chair, the father shook his clenched hands at Abel so furiously that the young man fell back abashed.

“Don’t talk to me, Sir. Don’t dare to say a word,” cried Mr. Newt, in a voice shrill with anger. “All my life has come to nothing. All my sacrifices, my industry, my efforts, are of no use. I am a beggar, Sir; so are you!”

He sank back in his chair and covered his face with his hands. The noise made the old book-keeper outside look in. But it was no new thing. The hot debates of the private room were familiar to his ear. With the silent, sad fidelity of his profession he knew every thing, and was dumb. Not a turn of his face, not a light in his eye, told any tales to the most careful and sagacious inquirer. Within the last few months Mr. Van Boozenberg had grown quite friendly with him. When they met, the President had sought to establish the most familiar intercourse. But he discovered that for the slightest hint of the condition of the Newt business he might as well have asked Boniface himself. Like a mother, who knows the crime her son has committed, and perceives that he can only a little longer hide it, but who, with her heart breaking, still smiles away suspicion, so the faithful accountant, who supposed that the crash was at hand, was as constant and calm as if the business were never before so prosperous.

CHAPTER LIII. — SLIGO MOULTRIE vice ABEL NEWT.

Abel Newt had now had two distinct warnings of something which nobody knew must happen so well as he. He dined sumptuously that very day, and dressed very carefully that evening, and at eight o’clock was sitting alone with Grace Plumer. The superb ruby was on her finger. But on the third finger of her left hand he saw a large glowing opal. His eyes fastened upon it with a more brilliant glitter. They looked at her too so strangely that Grace Plumer felt troubled and half alarmed. “Am I too late?” he thought.

“Miss Grace,” said Abel, in a low voice.

The tone was significant.

“Mr. Newt,” said she, with a half smile, as if she accepted a contest of badinage.

“Do you remember I said I was perfectly happy?”

He moved his chair a little nearer to hers. She drew back almost imperceptibly.

“I remember you said so, and I was very glad to hear it.”

“Do you remember my theory of perfect happiness?”

“Yes,” said Miss Plumer, calmly, “I believe it was perfect love. But I think we had better talk of something else;” and she rose from her chair and stood by the table.

“Miss Plumer!”

“Mr. Newt.”

“It was you who first emboldened me.”

“I do not understand, Sir.”

“It was a long time ago, in my mother’s conservatory.”

Grace Plumer remembered the evening, and she replied, more softly,

“I am very sorry, Mr. Newt, that I behaved so foolishly: I was young. But I think we did each other no harm.”

“No harm, I trust, indeed, Miss Grace,” said Abel. “It is surely no harm to love; at least, not as I love you.”

He too had risen, and tried to take her hand. She stepped back. He pressed toward her.

“Grace; dear Grace!”

“Stop, Sir, stop!” said his companion, drawing herself up and waving him back; “I can not hear you talk so. I am engaged.”

Abel turned pale. Grace Plumer was frightened. He sprang forward and seized her hand.

“Oh! Grace, hear me but one word! You knew that I loved you, and you allowed me to come. In honor, in truth, before God, you are mine!”

She struggled to release her hand. As she looked in his face she saw there an expression which assured her that he was capable of saying any thing, of doing any thing; and she trembled to think how much she might be—how much any woman is—in the power of a desperate man.

“Indeed, Mr. Newt, you must let me go!”

“Grace, Grace, say that you love me!”

The frightened girl broke away from him, and ran toward the door. Abel followed her, but the door opened, and Sligo Moultrie entered.

“Oh, Sligo!” cried Grace, as he put his arm around her.

Abel stopped and bowed.

“Pardon me, Miss Plumer. Certainly Mr. Moultrie will understand the ardor of a passion which in his case has been so fortunate. I am sorry, Sir,” he said, turning to Sligo, “that my ignorance of your relation to Miss Plumer should have betrayed me. I congratulate you both from my soul!”

He bowed again, and before they could speak he was gone. The tone of his voice lingering upon their ears was like a hiss. It was a most sinister felicitation.

CHAPTER LIV. — CLOUDS AND DARKNESS.

“At least, Miss Amy—at least, we shall be friends.”

Amy Waring sat in her chamber on the evening of the day that Lawrence Newt had said these words. Her long rich brown hair clustered upon her shoulders, and the womanly brown eyes were fixed upon a handful of withered flowers. They were the blossoms she had laid away at various times—gifts of Lawrence Newt, or consecrated by his touch.

She sat musing for a long time. The womanly brown eyes were soft with a look of aching regret rather than of sharp disappointment. Then she rose—still holding the withered remains—and paced thoughtfully up and down the room. The night hours passed, and still she softly paced, or tranquilly seated herself, without the falling of a tear, and only now and then a long deep breath rather than a sigh.

At last she took all the flowers—dry, yellow, lustreless—and opened a sheet of white paper. She laid them in it, and the brown womanly eyes looked at them with yearning fondness. She sat motionless, as if she could not prevail upon herself to fold the paper. But at length she sank gradually to her knees—a sinless Magdalen; her brown hair fell about her bending face, and she said, although her lips did not move, “To each, in his degree, the cup is given. Oh, Father! strengthen each to drain it and believe!”

She rose quietly and folded the paper, with the loving care and lingering delay with which a mother smooths the shroud that wraps her baby. She tied it with a pure white ribbon, so that it looked not unlike a bridal gift; and pressing her lips to it long and silently, she laid it in the old drawer. There it still remained. The paper was as white, the ribbon was as pure as ever. Only the flowers were withered. But her heart was not a flower.

“Well, Aunt Martha,” said she, several months after the death of old Christopher Burt, “I really think you are coming back to this world again.”

The young woman smiled, while the older one busily drove her needle.

“Why,” continued Amy, “here is a white collar; and you have actually smiled at least six times in as many months!”

The older woman still said nothing. The old sadness was in her eyes, but it certainly had become more natural—more human, as it were—and the melodramatic gloom in which she had hitherto appeared was certainly less obvious.

“Amy,” she said at length, “God leads his erring children through the dark valley, but he does lead them—he does not leave them. I did not know how deeply I had sinned until I heard the young man Summerfield, who came to see me even in this room.”

She looked up and about, as if to catch some lingering light upon the wall.

“And it was Lawrence Newt’s preacher who made me feel that there was hope even for me.”

She sewed on quietly.

“I thank God for those two men; and for one other,” she added, after a little pause.

Amy only looked, she did not ask who.

“Lawrence Newt,” said Aunt Martha, calmly looking at Amy—“Lawrence Newt, who came to me as a brother comes to a sister, and said, ‘Be of good cheer!’ Amy, what is the matter with you and Lawrence Newt?”

“How, aunty?”

“How many months since you met here?”

“It was several months ago, aunty.”

Aunt Martha sat quietly sewing, and after some time said,

“He is no longer a young man.”

“But, Aunt Martha, he is not old.”

Still sewing, the grave woman looked at the burning cheeks of her younger companion. Amy did not speak.

The older woman continued: “When you and he went from this room months ago I supposed you would be his wife before now.”

Still Amy did not speak. It was not because she was unwilling to confide entirely in Aunt Martha, but there was something she did not wish to say to herself. Yet suddenly, as if lifted upon a calm, irresistible purpose—as a leaf is lifted upon the long swell of the sea—she said, with her heart as quiet as her eyes,

“I do not think Lawrence Newt loves me.”

The next moment the poor leaf is lost in the trough of the sea. The next moment Amy Waring’s heart beat tumultuously; she felt as if she should fall from her seat. Her eyes were blind with hot tears. Aunt Martha did not look up—did not start or exclaim—but deliberately threaded her needle carefully, and creased her work with her thumb-nail. After a little while, during which the sea was calming itself, she said, slowly, repeating Amy’s words syllable by syllable,

“You do not believe Lawrence Newt loves you?”

“No,” was the low, firm whisper of reply.

“Whom do you think he loves?”

There was an instant of almost deathly stillness in that turbulent heart. For a moment the very sea of feeling seemed to be frozen.

Then, and very slowly, a terrible doubt arose in Amy Waring’s mind. Before this conversation every perplexity had resolved itself in the consciousness that somehow it must all come right by-and-by. It had never occurred to her to ask, Does he love any one else? But she saw now at once that if he did, then the meaning of his words was plain enough; and so, of course, he did.

Who was it?

Amy knew there was but one person in the world whose name could possibly answer that question.

But had Lawrence not watched with her—and with delight—the progress of Arthur Merlin’s feeling for that other?

Yes; but if, as he watched so closely, he saw and felt how lovely that other was, was it so wonderful that he should love her?

These things flashed through her mind as she sat motionless by Aunt Martha; and she said, with profound tranquillity,

“Very possibly, Hope Wayne.”

Aunt Martha did not look up. She seemed to feel that she should see something too sad if she did so; but she asked,

“Is she worthy of him?”

“Perfectly!” answered Amy, promptly.

At this word Aunt Martha did look up, and her eyes met Amy’s. Amy Waring burst into tears. Her aunt laid aside her work, and gently put her arms about her niece. She waited until the first gush of feeling had passed, and then said, tenderly,

“Amy, it is by the heart that God leads us women to himself. Through love I fell; but through love, in another way, I hope to be restored. Do you really believe he loves Hope Wayne?”

“I don’t know,” was the low reply.

“I know, Amy.”

The two women had risen, and were walking, with their arms clasped around each other, up and down the room. They stopped at the window and looked out. As they did so, their eyes fell simultaneously upon the man of whom they were speaking, who was standing at the back of his lofts, looking up at the window, which was a shrine to him.

“There she stood and smiled at me,” he said to himself whenever he looked at it.

As their eyes met, he smiled and waved his hand. With his eyes and head he asked, as when he had first seen her there,

“May I come up?” and he waved his handkerchief.

The two women looked at him. As Amy did so, she felt as if there had been a long and gloomy war; and now, in his eager eyes and waving hand, she saw the illumination and waving flags of victory and peace.

She smiled as she looked, and nodded No to him with her head.

But Aunt Martha nodded Yes so vehemently that Lawrence Newt immediately disappeared from his window.

Alarmed at his coming, doubtful of Aunt Martha’s intention, Amy Waring suddenly cried, “Oh! Aunt Martha!” and was gone in a moment. Lawrence Newt dashed round, and knocked at the door.

“Come in!”

He rushed into the room. Some sweet suspicion had winged his feet and lightened his heart; but he was not quick enough. He looked eagerly about him.

“She is gone!” said Aunt Martha.

His eager eyes drooped, as if light had gone out of his life also.

“Mr. Newt,” said Aunt Martha, “sit down. You have been of the greatest service to me. How can I repay you?”

Lawrence Newt, who had felt during the moment in which he saw Amy at the window, and the other in which he had been hastening to her, that the cloud was about rolling from his life, was confounded by finding that it was an account between Aunt Martha, instead of Amy, and himself that was to be settled.

He bowed in some confusion, but recovering in a moment, he said, courteously,

“I am aware of nothing that you owe me in any way.”

“Lawrence Newt,” returned the other, solemnly, “you have known my story; you knew the man to whom I supposed myself married; you have known of my child; you have known how long I have been dead to the world and to all my family and friends, and when, by chance, you discovered me, you became as my brother. How many an hour we have sat talking in this room, and how constantly your sympathy has been my support and your wisdom my guide!”

Lawrence Newt, whose face had grown very grave, waved his hand deprecatingly.

“I know, I know,” she continued. “Let that remain unsaid. It can not be unforgotten. But I know your secrets too.”

They looked at each other.

“You love Amy Waring.”

His face became inscrutable, and his eyes were fixed quietly upon hers. She betrayed no embarrassment, but continued,

“Amy Waring loves you.”

A sudden light shot into that inscrutable face. The clear eyes were veiled for an instant by an exquisite emotion.

“What separates you?”

There was an authority in the tone of the question which Lawrence Newt found hard to resist. It was an authority natural to such intimate knowledge of the relation of the two persons. But he was so entirely unaccustomed to confide in any body, or to speak of his feelings, that he could not utter a word. He merely looked at Aunt Martha as if he expected her to answer all her own questions, and solve every difficulty and doubt.

Meanwhile she had resumed her sewing, and was rocking quietly in her chair. Lawrence Newt arose and found his tongue. He bowed in that quaint way which seemed to involve him more closely in himself, and to warn off every body else.

“I prefer to hear that a woman loves me from her own lips.”

The tone was perfectly kind and respectful; but Aunt Martha felt that she had been struck dumb.

“I thank you from my heart,” Lawrence Newt said to her. And taking her hand, he bent over it and kissed it. She sat looking at him, and at length said,

“Mayn’t I do any thing to show my gratitude?”

“You have already done more than I deserve,” replied Lawrence Newt. “I must go now. Good-by! God bless you!”

She heard his quick footfalls as he descended the stairs. For a long time the sombre woman sat rocking idly to and fro, holding her work in her hand, and with her eyes fixed upon the floor. She did not seem to see clearly, whatever it might be she was looking at. She shook out her work and straightened it, and folded it regularly, and looked at it as if the secret would pop out of the proper angle if she could only find it. Then she creased it and crimped it—still she could not see. Then she took a few stitches slowly, regarding fixedly a corner of the room as if the thought she was in search of was a mouse, and might at any moment run out of his hole and over the floor.

And after all the looking, she shook her head intelligently and fell quietly to work, as if the mystery were plain enough, saying to herself,

“Why didn’t I trust a girl’s instinct who loves as Amy does? Of course she is right. Dear! dear! Of course he loves Hope Wayne.”