The Sword of Damocles Part 12

"Indeed--I was not aware--excuse me, I should be happy," stammered the young man. "As for the money, it is all in Governments and is at your command whenever you please."

"That is good, I'll notify you when I'm ready for the transfer. And now come," said he, with a change from his deep business tone to the lighter one of ordinary social converse, "forget for a half hour that you have discarded the name of Mandeville, and give us an aria or a sonata from Mendelssohn before those hands have quite lost their cunning."

"But the ladies," inquired the youth glancing towards the drawing-room where Mrs. Sylvester was giving Paula her first lesson in ceramics.

"Ah, it is to see how the charm will act upon my shy country la.s.sie, that I request such a favor."

"Has she never heard Mendelssohn?"

"Not with your interpretation."

Without further hesitation the young musician proceeded to the piano, which occupied a position opposite to my lady's picture in this anomalous room denominated by courtesy the library. In another instant, a chord delicate and ringing, disturbed the silence of the long vista, and one of Mendelssohn's most exquisite songs trembled in all its delicious harmony through these apartments of sensuous luxury.

Mr. Sylvester had seated himself where he could see the distant figure of Paula, and leaning back in his chair, watched for the first startled response on her part. He was not disappointed. At the first note, he beheld her spirited head turn in a certain wondering surprise, followed presently by her whole quivering form, till he could perceive her face, upon which were the dawnings of a great delight, flush and pale by turns, until the climax of the melody being reached, she came slowly down the room, stretching out her hands like a child, and breathing heavily as if her ecstacy of joy in its impotence to adequately express itself, had caught an expression from pain.

"O Mr. Sylvester!" was all she said as she reached that gentleman's side; but Bertram Mandeville recognized the accents of an unfathomable appreciation in that simple exclamation, and struck into a grand old battle-song that had always made his own heart beat with something of the fire of ancient chivalry under its breastplate of modern broadcloth.

"It is the voice of the thunder clouds when they marshal for battle!"

exclaimed she at the conclusion. "I can hear the cry of a righteous struggle all through the sublime harmony."

"You are right; it is a war-song ancient as the time of battle-axes and spears," quoth Bertram from his seat at the piano.

"I thought I detected the flas.h.i.+ng of steel," returned she. "O what a world lies in those simple bits of ivory!"

"Say rather in the fingers that sweep them," uttered Mr. Sylvester. "You will not hear such music often."

"I am glad of that," she cried simply, then in a quick conscious tone explained, "I mean that the hearing of such music makes an era in our life, a starting-point for thoughts that reach away into eternity; we could not bear such experiences often, it would confuse the spirit if not deaden its enjoyment. Or so it seems to me," she added naively, glancing at her cousin who now came sweeping in from the further room, where she had been trying the effect of a change in the arrangement of two little pet monstrosities of j.a.panese ware.

"What seems to you?" that lady inquired. "O, Mr. Mandeville's playing? I beg pardon, Sylvester is the name by which you now wish to be addressed I suppose. Fine, isn't it?" she rambled on all in the same tone while she cautiously hid an unfortunate gape of her rosy mouth behind the folds of her airy handkerchief. "Mr. Turner says the hiatus you have made in the musical world by leaving the concert room for the desk, can never be repaired," she went on, supposedly to her nephew though she did not look his way, being at that instant engaged in sinking into her favorite chair.

"I am glad," Bertram politely returned with a frank smile, "to have enjoyed the approval of so cultivated a critic as Mr. Turner. I own it occasions me a pang now and then," he remarked to his uncle over his shoulder, "to think I shall never again call up those looks of self-forgetful delight, which I have sometimes detected on the faces of certain ones in my audience."

And he relapsed without pause into a solemn anthem, the very reverse of the stirring tones which he had previously accorded them.

"Now we are in a temple!" whispered Paula, subduing the sudden interest and curiosity which this young man's last words had awakened. And the awe which crept over her countenance was the fittest interpretation to those n.o.ble sounds, which the one weary-hearted man in that room could have found.

"I have something to tell you, Ona," remarked Mr. Sylvester shortly after this, as the music being over, they all sat down for a final chat about the fireside. "I have received notice that the directors of the Madison Bank have this day elected me their president. I thought you might like to know it to-night."

"It is a very gratifying piece of news certainly. President of the Madison Bank sounds very well, does it not, Paula?"

The young girl with her soul yet ringing with the grand and solemn harmonies of Mendelssohn and Chopin, turned at this with her brightest smile. "It certainly does and a little awe-inspiring too;" she added with her arch glance.

"Your congratulations are also requested for our new a.s.sistant cas.h.i.+er.

Arise, Bertram, and greet the ladies."

With a blush his young nephew arose to his feet.

"What! are you going into the banking business?" queried Mrs. Sylvester.

"Mr. Turner will be more shocked than ever: he chooses to say that bankers, merchants and such are the solid rock of his church, while the lighter fry such as artists, musicians, and let us hope he includes us ladies, are its minarets, and steeples. Now to make a foundation out of a steeple will quite overturn his methodical mind I fear."

Mr. Sylvester looked genially at his wife; she was not accustomed to attempt the facetious; but Paula seemed to have the power of bringing out unexpected lights and shadows from all with whom she came in contact.

"A clergyman who rears his church on the basis of wealth must expect some overturning now and then," laughed he.

"If by means of it he turns a fresh side to the sun, it will do him no harm," chimed in Paula.

Seldom had there been so much simple gaiety round that fireside; the very atmosphere grew lighter, and the brilliance of my lady's picture became less oppressive.

"We ought to have a happy winter of it," spoke up Mr. Sylvester with a glance around him. "Life never looked more cheerful for us all, I think; what do you say, Bertram my boy."

"It certainly looks promising for me."

"And for me," murmured Paula.

The complacent way with which Mrs. Sylvester smoothed out the feathers of her fan with her jewelled right hand,--she always carried a fan winter and summer, some said for the purpose of displaying those same jewelled fingers--was sufficient answer for her.

At that moment there was a hush, when suddenly the small clock on the mantel-piece struck eleven, and instantly as if awaiting the signal, there came a rush and a heavy crash which drew every one to their feet, and the brilliant portrait of my lady fell from the wall, and toppling over the cabinet beneath, slid with the various articles of bronze and china thereon, almost to the very chair in which its handsome prototype had been sitting.

It was a startling interruption and for an instant no one spoke, then Paula with a look towards her cousin breathed to herself rather than said, "Pray G.o.d it be not an omen!" And the pale countenances of the two gentlemen standing face to face on either side of that fallen picture, showed that the shadow of the same superst.i.tion had insensibly crossed their own minds.

Mrs. Sylvester was the only one who remained unmoved. "Lift if up,"

cried she, "and let us see if it has sustained any injury."

Instantly Bertram and her husband sprang forward, and in a moment its glowing surface was turned upward. Who could read the meaning of the look that crossed her husband's face as he perceived that the sharp spear of the bronze horseman, which had been overturned in the fall, had penetrated the rosy countenance of the portrait and destroyed that importunate smile forever.

"I suppose it is a judgment upon me for putting all the money you had allowed me for charitable purposes, into that exquisite bit of bronze,"

observed Mrs. Sylvester, stooping above the overturned horseman with an expression of regret she had not chosen to bestow on her own ruined picture. "Ah he is less of a champion than I imagined; he has lost his spear in the struggle."

Paula glanced at her cousin in surprise. Was this pleasantry only a veil a.s.sumed by this courtly lady to hide her very natural regret over the more serious accident? Even her husband turned toward her with a certain puzzled inquiry in his troubled countenance. But her expression of unconcern was too natural; evidently the destruction of the picture had awakened but small regret in her volatile mind.

"She is less vain than I thought," was the inward comment of Paula.

Ah simple child of the woods and streams, it is the extent of her vanity not the lack of it, that has produced this effect. She has begun to realize that ten years have elapsed since this picture was painted, and that people are beginning to say as they examine it, "Mrs. Sylvester has not yet lost her complexion, I see."

A break necessarily followed this disturbance, and before long Bertram took his leave, not without a cordial pressure from his uncle's hand and a look of kindly interest from the stranger la.s.sie, upon whose sympathetic and imaginative mind the hints let fall as to his former profession, had produced a deep impression. With his departure Mrs.

Sylvester's weariness returned, and ere long she led the way to her apartments up stairs. As Paula was hastening to follow Mr. Sylvester stopped her.

"You will not allow this unfortunate occurrence," he said, with a slight gesture towards the picture now standing with its face against the wall, "to mar your first sleep under my roof, will you Paula, my child?"

"No, not if you say that you think Cousin Ona will not be likely to connect it with my appearance here."

"I do not think she will; she is not superst.i.tious and besides does not seem to greatly regret the misfortune."

"Then I will forget it all and only remember the music."

"It was all you antic.i.p.ated?"

"It was more."