it was on general principles you were speaking," she remarked with a soft laugh that undulated through an atmosphere suddenly grown too heavy for easy breathing. "I did not know; wives are so little apt to be appreciated in this world, Mr. Mandeville, I was afraid he might be giving you some homely advice founded upon personal experience." And she moved towards their guest with that strange smile of hers which some called dangerous but which he had always regarded as oppressive.
She saw him drop his eyes, and smiled again, but in a different way. This woman, whom no one accused of anything worse than levity, hailed every tribute to her power, as a miser greets the glint of gold. With a turn of her large but elegant figure that in its slow swaying reminded you of some heavy tropical flower, hanging inert, intoxicated with its own fragrance, she dismissed at once the topic that had engaged them, and launched into one of her choicest streams of inconsequent talk. But Mandeville was in no mood to listen to trivialities, and being of a somewhat impatient nature, presently rose and excusing himself, took a hurried leave. Not so hurried however that he did not have time to murmur to his uncle as they walked towards the door:
"You would make comparison between the girl I worship and other women in fashionable life. Do not I pray; she is no more like them than a star that shines is like a rose that blooms. My fate will not be like that of most men that we know, but better and higher."
And his uncle standing there in the grand hall-way, with the fresh splendors of unlimited wealth gleaming upon him from every side, looked after the young man with a sigh and repeated, "Better and higher? God in his merciful goodness grant it."
VIII.
SHADOWS OF THE PAST.
"Memory, the warder of the brain."—Macbeth.
It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, shedding its lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowed head and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.
It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartment with its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an air of remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of its reflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugs scattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, and what had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the brows and overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly, illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heart beat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose and put them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possible with more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eye had been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady's image shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had met with unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor, softened in the mellow glimmer of the fire-light to an etherial halo that left you at rest.
One, two, THREE, the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet no stir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath. What were the thoughts which could thus detain from his comfortable bed a man already tired with manifold cares? It would be hard to tell. The waters that gush at the touch of the diviner's rod are tumultuous in their flow and rush hither and thither with little heed to the restraining force of rule and reason. But of the pictures that rose before his eyes in those dying embers, there were two which stood out in startling distinctness. Let us see if we can convey the impression of them to other eyes and hearts.
First, the form of his mother. Ah grey-bearded men weighted with the cares of life and absorbed in the monotonous round of duties that to you are the be all and end all of existence, to whom morning means a jostling ride to the bank, the store or the office, and with whom night is but the name for a worse unrest because of its unfulfilled promises of slumber, what soul amongst you all is so callous to the holy memories of childhood, as not to thrill with something of the old time feeling of love and longing as the memory of that tender face with its watchful eye and ready smiles, comes back to you from the midst of weary years! Your mother!
But Edward Sylvester with that black line across his life cutting past from present, what makes him think of his mother to-night; and the cottage door upon the hillside where she used to stand with eager eyes looking up and down the road as he came trudging home from school, swinging his satchel and shouting at every squirrel that started across the road or peeped from the branches of the grand old maples overhead! And the garret-chamber under the roof, the scene of many a romp with Elsie and Sonsie and Jack, neighbors' children to whom the man of to-day would be an awe and a mystery! And the little room where he slept with Tom his own blue-eyed brother so soon to die of a wasting disease, but full of warm blood then and all alive with boyish pranks. He could almost hear the wild clear laugh with which the mischievous fellow started upon its travels, the rooster whose legs he had tied a short space apart with one of Sonsie's faded ribbons, a laugh that became unrestrained when the poor creature in attempting to run down hill, rolled over and over, cutting such a figure before his late admirers, the hens, that even Elsie smiled in the midst of her gentle entreaties. And Jocko the crow, whom taming had made one of the boys! poor Jocko! is it nearly thirty years since you used to stalk in majesty through the village streets, with your neat raven coat closely buttoned across your breast and your genteel caw, caw, and condescending nod for old acquaintances? The day seems but as yesterday when you marred the stolen picnic up in the woods by flying off with a flock of your fellow black-coats, nor is it easy to realize that the circle of tow-headed fellows who hailed with shouts your ignominious return after a day or so's experience of the vaunted pleasures of freedom, are now sharp featured men without a smile for youth or a thought beyond the hard cold dollar buried deep in their pockets.
And the church up over the hills! and the long Sunday walk at mother's side with the sunshine glowing on the dusty road and beating on the river flowing far beyond! The same road, the same river of Monday and Tuesday but how different it looked to the boy; almost like another scene, as if Sunday clothes were on the world as well as upon his restless little limbs. How he longed for it to be Monday though he did not say so; and what a different day Saturday would have been if only there was no long, sleepy Sunday to follow it.
But the mother! She did not dread that day. Her eyes used to brighten when the bell began to ring from the old church steeple. Her eyes! how they mingled with every picture! They seemed to fill the night. What a sparkle they had, yet how they used to soften at his few hurried caresses. He was always too busy for kisses; there were the snares in the north woods to be looked after; the nest in the apple-tree to be inquired into; the skates to be ground before the river froze over; the nuts to be gathered and stored in that same old garret chamber under the eaves. But now how vividly her least look comes back to the tired man, from the glance of wistful sympathy with which she met his childish disappointments to the flash of joy that hailed his equally childish delights.
And another scene there is in the embers to-night; a remembrance of later days when the mother with her love and yearning was laid low in the grave, and manhood had learned its first lessons of passion and ambition from the glance of younger eyes and the smile of riper lips. Not the picture of a woman, however; that was already present beside him, shining from its panel with an insistence that not even the putting out of the lights could quite quench or subdue, but of a child young, pure and beautiful, sitting by the river in the glow of a June sunshine, gazing at the hills of his boyhood's home with a look on her face such as he had never before seen on that of child or woman. A simple picture with a simple villager's daughter for its centre, but as he mused upon it to-night, the success and triumph of the last ten years faded from his sight like the ashes that fell at his feet, and he found himself questioning in vain as to what better thing he had met in all the walks of his busy life than that young child's innocence and faith as they shone upon him that day from her soft uplifted eyes.
He had been sitting