The Sword of Damocles Part 8

X.

THE BARRED DOOR.

"A school boy's tale; the wonder of an hour."

BYRON.

"Did you know that your niece was gifted with rare beauty as well as talents?" asked Mr. Sylvester of Miss Belinda as a couple of hours or so later, they sat alone by the parlor fire, preparatory to his departure.

"No, that is," she hastily corrected herself, "I knew she was very pretty of course, prettier by far than any of her mates, but I did not suppose she was what you call a beauty, or at least would be so considered by a person accustomed to New York society."

"I do not know of a woman in New York who can boast of any such claims to transcendent loveliness. Such faces are rare outside of art, Miss Belinda; was Mrs. Fairchild a handsome woman?"

"She was my sister and if I may say so, my favorite sister, but she was no more agreeable to the eye than some others of her family," grimly returned the heavy browed spinster with a compression of her lips. "What beauty Paula has inherited came from her father. Her chief charm in my eyes, however, springs from her pure nature and the unselfish impulses of her heart."

"And in mine," rejoined he quietly. Then with a sudden change of tone as he realized the necessity of saying something definite to this woman in regard to his intentions toward the child, he remarked, "Her great and unusual talents and manifest disposition to learn, demand as you say, superior advantages to any she can have in a small country town like this, fruitful as it has already been to her under your wise and fostering care and such shall she have; but just when and how I cannot say till I have seen my wife and learned what her wishes are likely to be in regard to the subject."

"You are very kind, sir," returned Miss Belinda. "I have no doubt as to the good-will of your intentions, and the child shall be prepared at once for a change."

"And will _the child_," he exclaimed with a smile as Paula re-entered the room, "be so kind as to give me her company in the walk I must now take to the cars?"

"Of course," replied her aunt before the young girl could speak, "we owe you that much attention I am sure."

And so it was that when he came to retrace his way through the village with its heavy memories, he had a guardian spirit at his side that robbed them of their power to sadden and oppress.

"What shall I say for you to the grim, city streets when I get back?"

inquired he as they hastened on over the snow covered road.

"Say to them from me? O you may give them my greeting," she responded half shyly, half confidingly. Evidently for her he was one of those rare persons whose presence is perfect freedom and with whom she could not only think her best but speak it also. "I should like to make their acquaintance, but indeed they would have to do well to vie in attraction with these white roads girded by their silver-limbed trees. The very rush of life must seem oppressive. So many hopes, so many fears, so many interests jostling you at every step! Yet the thought is exhilarating too; don't you find it so?"

It was the first question she had asked him and he knew not how to reply. Her eyes were so confiding, he could not bear to shake her faith in his imagined superiority. Yet what thoughts had he ever cherished in walking the busy streets, save those connected with his own selfish hopes and fears, plans and operations? "I have no doubt," said he after a moment's pause, "that I have felt this exhilaration of which you speak. Certainly the hurrying ma.s.ses in Broadway awaken a far different sensation in a man, than this solitary stretch of country road."

"Yet the road has its companions.h.i.+ps," she murmured. "In the city one thinks most of men, but in the country, of G.o.d. Its very solitude compels you."

"Compels _you_," he involuntarily answered. And shuddered as he said it, remembering days when he trod these very roads with anything but reverence in his heart for the Creator of the landscape before him. "Not every one has the inner vision, my child, to see the love and wisdom back of the works, or rather most men have a vision so short it does not reach so far. Yet I think I can understand what you mean and might even experience your emotions if my eyes had leisure to explore this s.p.a.ce and my thoughts to rise out of their usual depressing atmosphere of care and anxiety. You did not think I was a busy man, he continued,"

observing her gaze of wonder. "You thought riches brought ease; if you ever come to think, 'most of men' you will learn that the wealthy man is the greatest worker, for his rest comes not night or day."

She shook her head with a sudden doubt. "It is a problem," she said, "which my knowledge of geometry does not help me to solve."

"No," a.s.sented he; "and one in which even your fanciful soul would fail to find any poetry. But stop, Paula; isn't this the place where I found you that day, and you showed me the view up the river?"

"Yes, and it was on that stone I sat; it has a milk-white cus.h.i.+on now; and there is where you stood, looking so tall and grand to my childish eyes! The gates are of pearl now," she said, pointing to the snow-covered slopes in the west. "I wish the sky had been clear to-night and you could have seen the effect of a rosy sunset falling over those domes of ice and snow."

"It would leave me less to expect when I come again," he responded almost gayly. "The next time we will have the sunset, Paula."

She smiled and they hastened on, presently finding themselves in the village streets. Suddenly she paused. "Small towns have their mysteries as well as great cities," said she; "we are not without ours, look."

He turned, followed with a glance the direction of her pointing finger and started in his sudden surprise. She had indicated to him the house whose ghostly and frowning front bore written across its grim gray boards, such an inscription of painful remembrance. "It is a solitary looking place, isn't it?" she went on, innocent of the pain she was inflicting. "No one lives there or ever will, I imagine. Do you see that board nailed across the front door?"

He forced himself to look. He did more, he fixed his eyes upon the desolate structure before him until the aspect of its huge unpainted walls with their long rows of sealed-up windows and high smokeless chimneys was impressed indelibly upon his mind. The large front door with its weird and solemn barrier was the last thing upon which his eye rested.

"Yes," said he, and involuntarily asked what it meant.

"We do not know exactly," she responded. "It was nailed across there by the men who followed Colonel j.a.pha to the grave. Colonel j.a.pha was the owner of the house," she proceeded, too interested to observe the shadow which the utterance of that name had invoked upon his brow. "He was a peculiar man I judge, and had suffered great wrongs they say; at all events his life was very solitary and sad, and on his deathbed he made his neighbors promise him that they would carry out his body through that door and then seal it up against any further ingress or egress forever. His wishes were respected, and from that day to this no one has ever entered that door."

"But the house!" stammered Mr. Sylvester in anything but his usual tone, "surely it has not been deserted all these years!"

"Ah," said she, "now we come to the greatest mystery of all." And laying her hand timidly on his arm, she drew his attention to the form of a decrepit old lady just then advancing towards them down the street "Do you see that aged figure?" she asked. "Every evening at this hour, winter and summer, stormy weather or clear, she is seen to leave her home up the street and come down to this forsaken dwelling, open the worm-eaten gate before you, cross the otherwise untrodden garden and enter the house by a side door which she opens with a huge key she carries in her pocket. For just one hour by the clock she remains there, and then she is seen to issue in the falling dusk, with a countenance whose heavy dejection is in striking contrast to the expression of hope with which she invariably enters. Why she makes this pilgrimage and for what purpose she secludes herself for a stated time each day in this otherwise deserted mansion, no man knows nor is it possible to determine, for though she is a worthy woman and approachable enough on all other topics, on this she is absolutely mute."

Mr. Sylvester started and surveyed the woman as she pa.s.sed with an anxious gaze. "I know her," he muttered; "she was a connection of--of the family, who inhabited this house." He could not speak the name.

"Yes, so they say, and the owner of this house, though she does not live here. Did you notice how she looked at me? She often does that, just as if she wanted to speak. But she always goes by and opens the gate as you see her now and takes out the big key and--"

"Come away," cried Mr. Sylvester with sudden impulse, seizing Paula by the hand and hurrying her down the street. "She is a walking goblin; you must have nothing to do with such uncanny folk." And endeavoring to turn off this irresistible display of feeling by a show of pleasantry he laughed aloud, but in a strained and unnatural way that made her eyes lift in unconscious amazement.

"You are infected by the atmosphere of unreality that pervades the spot," said she, "I do not wonder." And with the gentle perversity that sometimes affects the most thoughtful amongst us, she went on talking upon the unwelcome subject. "I know of some folks who invariably cross to the other side of the street at night, rather than go through the shadows of the two gaunt poplars which guard that house. Yet there has been no murder committed there or any great crime that I know of, unless the disobedience of a daughter who ran away with a man her father detested, could be denominated by so fearful a word."

The set gaze with which Mr. Sylvester surveyed the landscape before him quavered a trifle and then grew hard and cold. "And so," said he in a tone meant more for himself than her, "even your innocent ears have been a.s.sailed by the gossip about Miss j.a.pha."

"Gossip! I have never thought of it as gossip," returned she, struck for the first time by the change in his appearance. "It all happened so long ago it seems more like some quaint and ancient tale than a story of one of our neighbors. Besides, the fact that a wilful girl ran away from the house of her father, with the man of her choice, is not such a dreadful one is it, though she never returned to its walls with her husband, and her father was so overwhelmed by the shock, he was never seen to smile again."

"No," said he, giving her a hurried glance of relief, "I only wondered at the tenacity of old stories to engage the popular ear. I had supposed even the remembrance of Jacqueline j.a.pha would have been lost in the long silence that has followed that one disobedient act."

"And so it might, were it not for that closely shut house with the sinister bar across its chief entrance, inviting curiosity while it effectually precludes all investigation. With that token ever before our eyes of a dead man's implacable animosity, who can wonder that we sometimes ponder over the fate of her who was its object."

"And no intimations of that fate have been ever received in Grotewell.

For all that is known to the contrary, Jacqueline j.a.pha may have preceded her father to the tomb."

Paula bowed her head, amazed at the gloomy tone in which this emphatic a.s.sertion was made by one whose supposed ignorance she had been endeavoring to enlighten. "You knew her history before, then," observed she, "I beg your pardon."

"And it is granted," said he with a sudden throwing off of the shadow that had enveloped him. "You must not mind my sudden lapses into gloom.

I was never a cheerful man, that is, not since I--since my early youth I should say. And the shadows which are short at your time of life grow long and chilly at mine. One thing can illumine them though, and that is a child's happy smile. You are a child to me; do not deny me a smile, then, before I go."

"Not one nor a dozen," cried she, giving him her hands in good-bye for they had arrived at the depot by this time and the sound of the approaching train was heard in the distance.

"G.o.d bless you!" said he, clasping those hands with a father's heartfelt tenderness. "G.o.d bless my little Paula and make her pillow soft till we meet again!" Then as the train came sweeping up the track, put on his brightest look and added, "If the fairy-G.o.dmother chances to visit you during my departure, don't hesitate to obey her commands, if you want to hear the famous organ peal."

"No, no," she cried. And with a final look and smile he stepped upon the train and in another moment was whirled away from that place of many memories and a solitary hope.

XI.

MISS STUYVESANT.