XI
MISS STUYVESANT

 
"She smiled; but he could see arise
Her soul from far adown her eyes." – Mrs. Browning.
 

"She is a beauty; it is only right I should forewarn you of that."

"Dark or light?"

"Dark; that is her hair and eyes are almost oriental in their blackness, but her skin is fair, almost as dazzling as yours, Ona."

Mrs. Sylvester threw a careless glance in the long mirror before which she was slowly completing her toilet, and languidly smiled. But whether at this covert compliment to her greatest charm or at some passing fancy of her own, it would be difficult to decide. "The dark hair and eyes come from her father," remarked she in an abstracted way while she tried the effect of a bunch of snow-white roses at her waist with a backward toss of her proud blonde head. "His mother was a Greek. 'Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon,'" she exclaimed in a voice as nearly gay as her indolent nature would allow. For this lady of fashion was in one of her happiest moods. Her dress, a new one, fitted her to perfection and the vision mirrored in the glass before her was not lacking, so far as she could see in one charm that could captivate. "Do you think she could fasten a ribbon, or arrange a bow?" she further inquired. "I should like to have some one about me with a knack for helping a body in an emergency, if possible. Sarah is absolutely the destruction of any bit of ribbon she undertakes to handle. Look at that knot of black velvet over there for instance, wouldn't you think a raw Irish girl just from the other side would have known better than to tie it with half the wrong side showing?"

With the habit long ago acquired of glancing wherever her ivory finger chanced to point, the grave man of the world slowly turned his head full of the weightiest cares and oppressed by the burden of innumerable responsibilities, and surveyed the cluster of velvet bows thus indicated, with a mechanical knitting of the brows.

"I pay Sarah twenty-five dollars a month and that is the result," his wife proceeded. "Now if Paula – "

"Paula is not to come here as a waiting maid," her husband quickly interposed, a suspicion of color just showing itself for a moment on his cheek.

"If Paula," his wife went on, unheeding the interruption save by casting him a hurried glance over the shoulder of her own reflection in the glass, "had the taste in such matters of some other members of our family and could manage to lend me a helping hand now and then, why I could almost imagine I had my younger sister back with me again, who with her skill in making one look fit for the eyes of the world, was such a blessing to us in our old home."

"I have no doubt Paula could be taught to be equally efficient," her husband responded, carefully restraining any further show of impatience. "She is bright, I am certain, and ribbon-tying is not such a very difficult art, is it?"

"I don't know about that; by the way Sarah succeeds I should say it was about on a par with the science of algebra or – what is that horrid study they used to threaten to inflict me with at the academy whenever I complained of a headache? Oh I remember – conic sections."

"Well, well," laughed her husband, "she ought soon to to be an expert in it then; Paula is a famous little mathematician."

A silence followed this response; Mrs. Sylvester was fitting in her ear-rings. "I suppose," said she when the operation was completed, "that the snow will prevent half the people from coming to-night." It was a reception evening at the Sylvester mansion. "But so long as Mrs. Fitzgerald does not disappoint me, I do not care. What do you think of the setting of these diamonds?" she inquired, leaning forward to look at herself more closely, and slowly shaking her head till the rich gems sparkled like fire.

"It is good," came in short, quick tones from the lips of her husband.

"Well, I don't know, there might be a shade more of enamel on the edge of that ring. I shall speak to the jeweller about it to-morrow. But what were we talking about?" she dreamily asked, still turning her head from side to side before the mirror.

"We were talking about adopting your cousin in the place of our child who is dead," replied her husband with some severity, pausing in the middle of the floor which he was pacing, to honor her with a steady glance.

"O yes! Dear me! what an awkward clasp that man has given to these rings after all. You will have to fasten them for me." Then as he stepped forward with studied courtesy, yawned just a trifle and remarked, "No one could ever take the place of one's own child of course. If Geraldine had lived she would have been a blonde, her eyes were blue as sapphires."

He looked in his wife's face and his hands dropped. He thought of the day when those eyes, blue as sapphires indeed, flashed burning with death's own fever, from the little crib in the nursery, while with this same cool and self-satisfied countenance, the wife and mother before him had swept down the broad stairs to her carriage, murmuring apologetically as she gathered up her train, "O you needn't trouble yourself to look after her, she will do very well with Sarah."

She may have thought of it too, for the least little bit of real crimson found its way through the rouge on her cheek as she encountered the stern look of his eye, but she only turned a trifle more towards the glass, saying, "I forgot you do not admire the rôle of waiting maid. I will try and manage them myself, seeing that you have banished Sarah."

He exerted his self-control and again for the thousandth time buried that ghastly memory out of sight, actually forcing himself to smile as he gently took her hand from her ear and began deftly to fasten the rebellious ornaments.

"You mistake," said he, "love can ask any favor without hesitation. I do not object to waiting upon my own wife."

She gave him a little look which he obligingly took as a guerdon for this speech, and languidly held out her bracelets. As he stood clasping them on her arms, she quietly eyed him over from head to foot. "I don't know of a man who has your figure," said she with a certain tone of pride in her voice; "it is well you married a wife who does not look altogether inferior beside you." Then as he bowed with mock appreciation of the intended compliment, added with her usual inconsequence, "I dare say it would give me something to interest myself in. I don't suppose she has a decent thing to wear, and the fact of her being a dark beauty would lend quite a new impulse to my inventive faculty. Mrs. Walker has a daughter with black eyes, but dear me, what a guy she does make of her!"

With a sigh Mr. Sylvester turned to the window where he stood looking out at the heavy flakes of snow falling with slow and fluctuating movement between him and the row of brown stone houses in front. Paula considered as a milliner's block upon which to try the effect of clothes!

"Even Mrs. Fitzgerald with all her taste don't know how to dress her child," proceeded his wife, with a hurried, "Be still, Cherry!" to the importunate bird in the cage. "Now I should take as much pride in dressing any one under my charge as I would myself, provided the subject was likely to do credit to my efforts." And finding the bird incorrigible in his shrill singing, she moved over to the cage, where she stood balancing her white finger for the bird to peck at, with a pretty caressing motion of her lip, the little Geraldine of the wistful blue eyes, had never seen.

"You are welcome to do what you please in such matters," was her husband's reply. He was thinking again of that same little Geraldine; a fall of snow like the present always made him think of her and her innocent query as to whether God threw down such big flakes to amuse little children. "I give you carte blanche," said he with sudden emphasis.

Mrs. Sylvester paused in her attentions to the bird to give him a sharp little look which might have aroused his surprise if he had been fortunate enough to see it. But his back was towards her, and there was nothing in the languidly careless tone with which she responded, to cause him to turn his head. "I see that you would really like to have me entertain the child; but – "

She paused, pursing up her lips to meet the chattering bird's caress, while her husband in his impatience drummed with his fingers on the pane.

– "I must see her before I decide upon the length of her visit," continued she, as weary with the sport she drew back to give herself a final look in the glass. "Will you please to hand me that shawl, Edward."

He turned with alacrity. In his relief he could have kissed the snowy neck held so erectly before him, as he drew around it the shawl he had hastily lifted from the chair at his side. But that would not have suited this calm and languid beauty who disliked any too overt tribute to her charms and saved her caresses for her bird. Besides it would look like gratitude, and gratitude would be misplaced towards a wife who had just indicated her acceptance of his offer to receive a relative of her own into his house.

"She might as well come at once," was her final remark, as satisfied at last with the lay of every ribbon she swept in finished elegance from the room. "Mrs. Kittredge's reception comes off a week from Thursday, and I should like to see how a dark beauty with a fair skin would look in that new shade of heliotrope."

And so the battle was over and the victory won; for Mrs. Sylvester for all her seeming indifference was never known to change a decision she had once made. As he realized the fact, as he meditated that ere long this very room which had been the scene of so much frivolity and the witness to so many secret heart-burnings, would reëcho to the tread of the pure and innocent child, whose mind had flights unknown to the slaves of fashion, and in whose heart lay impulses of goodness that would satisfy the long smothered cravings of his awakened nature, he experienced a feeling of relenting towards the wife who had not chosen to thwart him in this the strongest wish of his childless manhood, and crossing to her dressing table, he dropped among its treasures a costly ring which he had been induced to purchase that day from an old friend who had fallen into want. "She will wear it," murmured he to himself, "for its hue will make her hand look still whiter, and when I see it sparkle I will remember this hour and be patient." Had he known that she had yielded to this wish out of a certain vague feeling of compunction for the disappointments she had frequently occasioned him and would occasion him again, he might have added a tender thought to the rich and costly gift with which he had just endowed her.

"I expect a young cousin of mine to spend the winter with me and pursue her studies," were the first words that greeted his ears as an hour or so later he entered the parlor where his wife was entertaining what few guests had been anxious enough for a sight of Mrs. Sylvester's newly furnished drawing-room, to brave the now rapidly falling snow. "I hope that you and she will be friends."

Curious to see what sort of a companion his wife was thus somewhat prematurely providing for Paula, he hastily advanced towards the little group from which her voice had proceeded, and found himself face to face with a brown-haired girl whose appealing glance and somewhat infantile mouth were in striking contrast to the dignity with which she carried her small head and managed her whole somewhat petite person.

"Miss Stuyvesant! my husband!" came in musical tones from his wife, and somewhat surprised to hear a name that but a moment before had been the uppermost in his mind, he bowed with courtesy and then asked if he was so happy as to speak to a daughter of Thaddeus Stuyvesant.

"If it will give you especial pleasure I will say yes," responded the little miss with a smile that irradiated her whole face. "Do you know my father?"

"There are but few bankers in the city who have not that pleasure," replied he with an answering look of regard. "I am especially happy to meet his daughter in my house to-night."

There was something in his manner of saying this and in the short inquiring glance which at every opportunity he cast upon her bright young face with its nameless charm of mingled appeal and reserve, that astonished his wife.

"Miss Stuyvesant was in the carriage with Mrs. Fitzgerald," said that lady with a certain dignity she knew well how to assume. "I am afraid if it had not been for that circumstance we should not have enjoyed the pleasure of her presence." And with the rare tact of which she was certainly a mistress, as far as all social matters were concerned, she left the aspiring magnate of Wall Street to converse with the daughter of the man whom all New York bankers were expected to know, and hastened to join a group of ladies discussing ceramics before a huge placque of rarest cloissone.

Mr. Sylvester followed her with his eyes; he had never seen her look more vivacious; had the hope of seeing a young face at their board touched some secret chord in her nature as well as his? Was she more of a woman than he imagined, and would she be, though in the most superficial of ways, a mother to Paula? Flushed with the thought, he turned back to the little lady at his side. She was gazing in an intent and thoughtful way at an engraving of Dubufe's "Prodigal Son" that adorned the wall above her head. There was something in her face that made him ask:

"Is that a favorite picture of yours?"

She smiled and nodded her small and delicate head.

"Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that far-away expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like none of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy."

"You look deep," said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady's face with strongly awakened interest. "You see more perhaps than the painter intended."

"No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it was on exhibition here. I was a wee thing, but I never forgot that girl's face. It spoke more than all the rest to me; perhaps because I so much honor reserve in one who holds in his breast a great pain or a great hope."

The eye that was resting upon her, softened indescribably. "You believe in great hopes," said he.

The little figure seemed to grow tall; and her face looked almost beautiful. "What would life be without them?" she answered.

"True," returned Mr. Sylvester; and entering into the conversation with unusual spirit, was astonished to find how young she was and yet how thoroughly bright and self-possessed.

"Lovely girls are cropping up around me in all directions," thought he; "I shall have to correct my judgment concerning our young ladies of fashion if I encounter many more as sensible and earnest-hearted as this." And for some reason his brow grew so light and his tone so cheerful that the ladies were attracted from all parts of the room to hear what the demure Miss Stuyvesant could have to say to the grave master of the house, to call forth such smiles of enjoyment upon his usually melancholy countenance.

Take it all together, the occasion though small was one of the pleasantest of the season, and so Mrs. Sylvester announced when the last carriage had driven away, and she and her husband stood in the brilliantly lighted library, surveying a new cabinet of rare and antique workmanship which had been that day installed in the place of honor beneath my lady's picture.

"I thought you seemed to enjoy it, Ona," her husband remarked.

"O, it was an occasion of triumph to me," she murmured. "It is the first time a Stuyvesant has crossed our threshold, mon cher."

"Ha," he exclaimed, turning upon her a brisk displeased look. He was proud and considered no man his superior in a social sense. "Do you acknowledge yourself a parvenue that you rejoice at the entrance of any one special person into your doors?"

"I thought," she replied somewhat mortified, "that you betrayed unusual pleasure yourself at her introduction."

"That may be; I was glad to see her here, for her father is one of the most influential directors in the bank of which I shortly expect to be made president."

The nature of this disclosure was calculated to be especially gratifying to her, and effectually blotted out any remembrance of the break by which it had been introduced. After a few hasty inquiries, followed by a scene of quite honest mutual congratulation, the gratified wife left her husband to put out the lights himself or call Samuel as he might choose, and glided up stairs to delight the curious Sarah with the broken soliloquies and inconsequent self-communings which formed another of her peculiar habits.

As for her husband, he stood a few minutes where she left him, abstractedly eying the gorgeous vista that spread out before him down to the further mirror of the elaborate drawing-room, thinking perhaps with a certain degree of pride, of the swiftness with which he had risen to opulence and the certainty with which he had conquered position in the business as well as in the social world when he could speak of such a connection with Thaddeus Stuyvesant as a project already matured. Then with a hasty movement and a quick sigh which nothing in his prospects actual or apparent would seem to warrant, he proceeded to put out the lights, my lady's picture shining with less and less importunity as the flickering jets disappeared, till all was dark save for the faint glimmer that came in from the hall, a glimmer just sufficient to show the outlines of the various articles of furniture scattered about – and could it be the tall figure of the master himself standing in the centre of the room with his palms pressed against his forehead in an attitude of sorrow or despair? Yes, or whose that wild murmur, "Is it never given to man to forget!" Yet no, or who is this that calm and dignified, steps at this moment from the threshold? It must have been a dream, a phantasy. This is the master of the house who with sedate and regular step goes up flight after flight of the spiral staircase, and neither pauses or looks back till he reaches the top of the house where he takes out a key from his pocket, and opening a certain door, goes in and locks it behind him. It is his secret study or retreat, a room which no one is allowed to enter, the mystery of the house to the servants and something more than that to its inquisitive mistress. What he does there no man knows, but to-night if any one had been curious enough to listen, they would have heard nothing more ominous than the monotonous scratch of a pen. He was writing to Miss Belinda and the burden of his letter was that on a certain day he named, he was coming to take away Paula.