The Sword of Damocles: A Story of New York Life

"At tea time I met the gentleman. He had evidently made his title good. I was not only favorably impressed with him but actually struck. Of all the high-bred, clear-eyed, polished and kindly gentlemen who had sat about the board since I first came into the family in Mrs. Japha's lifetime, here was surely the finest, the handsomest and the best; and surprised in more ways than one, I was giving full play to my relief and exhilaration, when I caught sight of Jacqueline's eye, and felt again the cold shudders of secret doubt and apprehension. Smile upon him as she would, coquet with him as she did, the flame and the glory that drew her like an inspiration to her feet when his name was announced, had fled, and left not a shadow behind. Had he failed in his expressions of devotion? Was he hard or cold or severe, under all that pleasant and charming manner? Had the hot soul of our motherless child rushed upon ice, and in the shock of the dreadful chill, fallen inert? No, his looks bespake no coldness; they dwelt upon Jacqueline's lovely but inscrutable face, with honest fervor and boundless regard. He evidently loved her most passionately, but she – if it had not been for that first moment of unconscious betrayal, I should have decided that she cared for him no more than she did for the few others who had adored her, in the short space of her incomprehensible life.

"The mystery was not cleared up when she came to me that night with a short, 'How do you like my lover, Margery?' I was forty years her senior, but she always called me Margery.

"'I think he is the finest, most agreeable man I ever met,' said I. 'Is he your lover, Jacqueline? Are you going to marry him?'

"She turned about from the vase which she was denuding of its flowers, and gave me one of her sphinx-like looks. 'You must ask papa,' said she. 'He holds the destinies of the Japhas in his hand, does he not?'

"'Does he?' I involuntarily whispered to myself; following the steady poise of her head and the assured movements of her graceful form, with a glance of doubt, but loving her all the same, O loving her all and ever the same!

"'Your father is not the man to cross you when the object of your affections is as worthy as this gentleman. He loved your mother too fondly.'

"'He did?' She had turned quick as a flash and was looking me straight in the eyes.

"'I never saw such union!' I exclaimed, vaguely remembering that her mother's name had always seemed to have power to move her. 'There was no parade of it before the world; but here at their own fireside, it was heart to heart and soul to soul. It was not love it was assimilation.'

"The young girl rose upon me like a flame; her very eyes seemed to dart fire; her lips looked like living coals; she was almost appalling in her terrible beauty and superhuman passion. 'Not love!' she exclaimed, her every word falling like a burning spark, 'not love but assimilation! Yet do you suppose if I told my father that my soul had found its mate; my heart its other half; that this, this nature,' here she struck her breast as she would a stone, 'had at last found its master; that the wayward spirit of which you have sometimes been afraid, was become a part of another's life, another's soul, another's hope, do you suppose he would listen? Hush!' she cried, seeing me about to speak. 'You talk of love, what do you know of it, what does he know of it, who saw his young wife die, yet himself consented to live? Is love a sitting by the fire with hand locked in hand while the winter winds rage and the droning kettle sings? Love is a going through the fire, a braving of the winter winds, a scattering of the soul in sparks that the night and the tempest lick up without putting out the germ of the eternal flame. Love!' she half laughed; 'O, it takes a soul that has never squandered its treasure upon every passing beggar, to know how to love! Do you see that star?' It was night as I have said and we were standing near an open window. 'It has lost its moorings and is falling; when it descries the ocean it will plunge into it; so with some natures, they soar high and keep their orbit well, till an invisible hand turns them from their course and they fall, to be swallowed up, aye swallowed up, lost and buried in the great sea that has awaited them so long.'

"'And you love – like this – ' I murmured, quailing before the power of her passion.

"'Would it not be strange if I did not,' she asked in an altered voice. 'You say he is everything noble, handsome and attractive.'

"Yes, yes,' I murmured, 'but – '

"She did not wait to hear what lay behind that but. Picking up her flowers, she hastily crossed the room. 'Did my young mother shriek from joy, when my father's horses ran away with them along that deadly precipice at the side of the Southmore road? To lie for a few maddening moments on the breast of the man you love, earth reeling beneath you, heaven swimming above you, and then with a cry of bliss to fall heart to heart, down the hideous gap of some awful gulf, and be dashed into eternity with the cry still on your lips, that is what I call love and that is what I – '

"She paused, turned upon me the whole splendor of her face, seemed to realize to what an extent her impetuosity had lifted the veil with which she usually shrouded her bitterly suppressed nature, and calming herself with a sudden quick movement, gave me a short mocking courtesy and left the room.

"Do you wonder that for half the night I sat up brooding and alive to the faintest sounds!

"Next day Mr. Holt called again, and a couple of weeks after – long enough to enable Colonel Japha to make whatever inquiries he chose as to his claims as a gentleman of means and position – sent a formal entreaty for Jacqueline's hand. I had never seen Colonel Japha more moved. His admiration for the young man was hearty and sincere. From a worldly point of view, as well as from all higher standpoints, the match was one of which he could be proud; and yet to speak the word that would separate from him the only creature that he loved, was hard as the cutting off an arm or the plucking out of an eye. 'Do you think she loves him?' asked he of me with a rare condescension of which he was not often guilty. 'You are a woman and ought to understand her better than I. Do you think she loves him?'

"After the words I had heard her speak, what could I reply but, 'Yes, sir; she is of a reserved nature and controls her feelings in his presence, but she loves him for all that, with the intensest fervor and passion.'

"He repeated again, 'You are a woman and you ought to know.' And then called his daughter to him.

"I cannot tell what passed between them, but the upshot of it was, that the Colonel despatched an answer to the effect that the father's consent would not be lacking, provided the daughter's could be obtained. I learned this from Jacqueline herself who brought me the letter to post.

"'You see then, that your father understands,' said I.

"Her rich red lip curled mockingly, but she did not reply.

"Naturally Mr. Holt answered to this communication in person. Jacqueline received him with a fitful coquetry that evidently puzzled him, for all the distinguishing charm which it added to a beauty apt to be too reserved and statue-like. She however took his ring which blazed on her finger like a drop of ice on congealed snow. 'I am engaged,' she murmured as she passed by my door, 'and to a Holt!' The words rang long in my ears; why?

"She desired no congratulations; she permitted nothing to be said about her engagement, among the neighbors. She had even taken off her ring which I found lying loose in one of her bureau drawers. And no one dared to remonstrate, not even her father, punctillious as he was in all matters of social etiquette. The fact is, Jacqueline was not the same girl she had been before she gave her promise to Mr. Holt. From the moment he bade her good-bye, with the remark that he was going away to get a golden cage for his bride, she began to reveal a change. The cold reserve gave way to feverish expectancy. She trod these rooms as if there were burning steels in the floors, she looked from the windows as if they were prison bars; night and day she gazed from them yet she never went out. The letters she received from him were barely read and tossed aside; it was his coming for which she hungered. Her father noticed her restless and eager gaze, and frequently sighed. I felt her strange removed manner and secretly wept. 'If he does not amply return this passion,' thought I, 'my darling will find her life a hell!'

"But he did return it; of that I felt sure. It was my only comfort.

"Suddenly one day the restlessness vanished. Her beauty burst like a flame from smoke; she trod like a spirit that hears invisible airs. I watched her with amazement till she said 'Mr. Holt comes to-night,' then I thought all was explained and went smiling about my work. She came down in the afternoon clad as I had never seen her before. She wore one of her Boston dresses and she looked superb in it. From the crown of her head to the sole of her foot, she dazzled like a moving picture; but she lacked one adornment; there was no ring on her finger. 'Jacqueline!' cried I, 'you have forgotten something.' And I pointed towards her hand.

"She glanced at it, blushed a trifle as I thought, and pulled it out of her pocket. 'I have it,' said she, 'but it is too large,' and she thrust it carelessly back.

"At three o'clock the train came in. Then I saw her eye flash and her lip burn. In a few minutes later two gentlemen appeared at the gate.

"'Mr. Holt and his brother!' were the words I heard whispered through the house. But I did not need that announcement to understand Jacqueline at last."

XXVI

A MAN'S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN'S MERCY

"Fair is foul and foul is fair." – Macbeth.

"Have you ever seen a man whose instantaneous effect upon you was electrical; in whose expression, carriage, or manner, there was concealed a charm that attracted and interested you, apart from his actual worth and beauty? Such a one was Mr. Roger Holt, the gentleman I now discerned entering the gate with Jacqueline's lover. It was not that he was handsome. He could not for one moment bear any comparison with his brother in substantial attraction, and yet when they were both in the room, you looked at him in preference to the other, and was vexed with yourself for doing so. He seemed to be the younger as he was certainly the smaller; yet he took the lead, even in coming up the walk. Why had he not taken it in the deeper and more important matter? Was it because he did not love her?

"I was not present when Jacqueline greeted her guests and presented Mr. Roger Holt to her father. But later in the day I spent a half hour with them and saw enough to be able to satisfy myself as to the falsity of my last supposition. Never had I seen on a human countenance the evidences of a wilder passion than that which informed his features, as he sat in the further window of the parlor, presumably engaged in admiring the autumn landscape, but really occupied in casting short side-long glances at Jacqueline, who sat listening with a superb nonchalence, but with a restless gleam in her wandering eye, to the genial talk between her acknowledged lover and the Colonel. I half feared he would rise from his seat, and flinging himself before her, demand then and there an explanation of her engagement.

"But beyond the impatience of those short burning glances, he controlled himself well, and it was Jacqueline who moved at last.

"I saw the purpose growing in her eyes long before she stirred. The face which had been a mystery to me from her cradle, was in the presence of this man, like an open page which all might read. Its letters were flame, but that did not make them any less clear. I felt her swaying towards him, before an eyelash trembled or a quiver shook her tall form.

He may have understood her purpose also, for his eye wandered towards the open piano. She rose like a queen.

"'Mr. Roger Holt is a singer,' said she in passing her father, 'I am going to ask him to give us one of the old ballads you profess to like so much.'

"The conversation at once ceased. The Colonel who made no secret of his fondness for music, turned at once towards the stranger, with an expression of great courtesy. Instantly that gentleman rose, and meeting the request of his hostess with a profound bow, proceeded at once to the piano. 'He will not leave it till he has spoken to her,' thought I. Nor did he, for that very moment as they stood turning her music over, I perceived his lips move in a hurried question, to which she as briefly responded, whereupon he caught up a sheet of music from the pile, and flinging back his head with a victorious smile, began to sing.

"Had I known what lay behind his words, I would have braved everything rather than have allowed him to utter a note in that room which had once rung with the carols of Jacqueline's mother. But what could I guess of the possible evil underlying the natural ebullition of unrestrained passion that from some cause of pride or pique, had met with a strange inexplicable check. So I sat still, shuddering perhaps, but quiet in my corner; while the haunting tones of his strange and thrilling voice, rose and fell in the most uncanny of Scottish love songs. Nor did I do more than wonder with all my agitated soul, when at the conclusion Jacqueline came back, and pausing beside the man to whom she had given her troth, looked down in his beaming face and smiled with that overflow of delight, which she dared not bestow upon his brother.

"Another little incident of that hour remains engraven upon my memory. She had been showing to the gentlemen a rare plant that stood in the front parlor window, and was dilating upon its marvels, when Mr. Robert Holt, her accepted lover, took in his clasp the small white hand wandering so invitingly among the leaves of the huge palm, and glancing at the finger which should have worn his ring, looked inquiringly into her face.

"'O,' said she, interrupting her little speech to draw away her hand, 'you miss your diamond? I have it, sir. It lies very safe in my pocket; it is a beautiful gem, but your ring does not fit me.'

"The way she said those words and the air with which she tossed back her head, must have made one heart in that room beat joyously, but it did not reassure me or subdue my secret apprehension.

"'Not fit!' her lover responded; and begged her to allow him to try it on and see, but she shook her head with wilful coquetry, and turning to the piano, commenced singing a gay little song that was like silver bells, shaken by a sudden and mighty tempest.

"Even the Colonel felt the change in his daughter, though he never guessed the cause, and came and went during the evening that followed, with certain odd sighs that made my heart ache with strange forebodings. Only her lover was unconscious, or if he felt the new and wayward force and fire in her manner, attributed it to his own presence and unspeakable devotion. Mr. Roger Holt, on the contrary, thoroughly understood it. Though he was strangely calm, as calm now as he had previously been alert and fiery, he never lost a gleam of her eye in his direction, or a turn of her form towards the chair where he sat. But the smile with which he contemplated her was not pleasant to me. It was informed with self-consciousness, and a certain hard triumph, that made it almost sinister. 'She has given her hand to the true man,' I mused, 'wherever her heart may be. But had she given it?' I began to doubt as I began to muse. With that uncontrollable will of hers, she was capable of anything; did she intend to break with Robert, now that she had seen Roger? I detected no signs of it beyond the evident delight they took in each other's presence. They were guilty of no further conversation of a secret or intimate character, and when with the striking of the clock at ten, Mr. Robert Holt rose to leave, his brother followed without any demur, even preceding him in his departure and limiting his farewell to a short brotherly pressure of Jacqueline's fair hand.

"But much may be conveyed in a pressure, or so I began to think as I heard the low laugh that rippled from Jacqueline's lips as she turned to go up to her room; and if I had been her mother —

"But that is not what you want to hear. Enough that I did not follow her, that I did not even acquaint Colonel Japha with my fears, that indeed I did nothing but lie awake, praying and asking what I ought to do. There had been so little said; there had been so little done. A word, a sentence between them, the interchange of a couple of songs, and – What else that I could communicate to another?

"A week, two weeks passed, and her look of wilful happiness did not fly. She was flooded with notes from her accepted lover, whose handwriting I had learned by this time to distinguish, but not one, so far as I could learn, from any other source; yet her feet tripped lightly through the house, and her form had a rich grace in its every movement, that bespoke a mind settled in some deep joy or quiet determination. I felt the impenetrability of a secretly cherished hope, whenever I looked at her. If I had not known to the contrary, I should have said that her prospective marriage had become to her a dream of unfathomable delight. Whence then came this rapture? Through what communication was born this secret hope? I could not guess, I could only watch and wait.

"Meanwhile some random guesses at the truth had been made by the neighbors. Jacqueline had a lover. That lover was a gentleman; but the Colonel was critical; he had refused his consent and the young people had parted. Such was the talk, begotten perhaps by the persistency with which Jacqueline remained in the house, and the almost severe look with which Colonel Japha trod the streets of his native village, which he soon felt would lose all their charm in the departure of his only child. I scarcely ventured out more than Jacqueline; for I have but little control over my feelings and did not know what I would do, if any one should closely press me with questions.

"The unexpected discovery that our pretty young servant girl was in the habit of stealing into Jacqueline's room late at night, was the first thing that startled me into asking whether or not my supposition was true, that Jacqueline received no messages from Mr. Robert Holt. And scarcely had I become certain that a clandestine correspondence was being carried on between them through the medium of this girl, then the climax came, and knowledge on my part and secrecy on hers availed no longer.

"It was a day in October. The stoves had been put up in the house, and seeing Jacqueline roaming about the halls, in a renewed fit of that strange restlessness which had affected her the day before Mr. Roger Holt's visit, I went into her room to light a fire, and make everything look cheerful before dusk. I found the atmosphere warm, and going to the stove, discovered that a fire had been already kindled there, but had gone out for want of fuel. I at once commenced to rake away the ashes, in order to make preparations for a new one, when I came upon several scraps of half burned paper.

"Jacqueline had been burning letters. Do you blame me for picking out those scraps and hastening with them to another room, when I tell you they were written in a marked and characteristic hand that bore little or no resemblance to that of her accepted lover, and that the words which flashed first upon my eye were those ominous ones of my wife!

"They were three in number, and while more or less discolored and irregular, were still legible. Think child with what a thrill of horror and sharp motherly anguish, I read such words as 'Love you! I would press you in my arms if you were plague-stricken! The least turn of your head makes my blood cringe, as if a flame had touched me. I would follow you on my knees, if you led me round the world. Let me see Robert take your hand again and I will – '

"'Forget you! Do we forget the dagger that has struck us? I am another man since – '

"'I will have you if Robert goes mad and your father kills me. That I am burdened with a wife, is nothing. What is a wife that I do not – ' 'You shall be my true wife, my – '

"'To-night then, be ready; I will wait for you at the gate. A little resolution on your part, and then – '

"I could read no further. The living, burning truth had forced itself upon me, that Jacqueline, our darling, our pride, the soul of our life, stood tottering upon the brink of a gulf horrible as the mouth of hell. For I never doubted for an instant what her answer would be to this entreaty. In all her past life, God pity us, there had been no tokens of that immovable hold on virtue, that would save her in such an extremity as this. Nevertheless, to make all sure, I flew back to her room, and tearing open bureau drawers and closet doors, discovered that her prettiest things had been sent away. She was going, then, and on that very night! and her father did not even know she was untrue to her betrothed lover. The horror of the situation was too much for me; I faltered as I left her room, her dainty, maidenly room, and actually crouched against the wall like a guilty thing, as I heard the sound of her voice singing some maddening strain in the parlors below. What should I do? Appeal to her, or warn her father of the frightful peril in which his honor and happiness stood? Alas, any appeal to her would be useless. In the glare of this awful revelation I had come to a full comprehension of her nature. But her father was a man; he could command as well as entreat, could even force obedience if all other methods failed. To him, then, must I go; but I had rather have gone to the rack. He was so proud a man! Had owned to such undeviating trust in his daughter's honor, as a Japha and his child! The blow would kill him; or daze him so, he might better have been killed. My knees shook under me, as I traversed the hall to his little study over the parlor, and when I came to the door, I rather fell against it than knocked, so great was my own anguish, and so deep my terror of his. He was a ready man and he came to the door at once, but upon seeing me, drew back as if his eye had fallen upon a phantom.

"'Hush!' said I, scarcely knowing what I uttered; and going in, I closed the door and latched it firmly behind me. 'I have come,' said I in a voice that made him start, 'to ask you to save your daughter. She is in deadly peril; she – ' a strain of her song came in at that moment from the staircase. She was ascending to her room. He looked at me in a doubt of my sanity.

"'Not physical peril,' I stammered, 'but moral. She loves madly, unreasonably, and with a headlong passion that laughs at every obstacle, a man whom neither you nor heaven can look upon with aught but execration. She – '

"'Mrs. Hamlin!' – How well I remember his cool, calm voice, so deliberate in his impressive moments, so deliberate now, when perhaps she was donning hat and shawl for her elopement – 'You are laboring under a great mistake. Instead of execrating Mr. Holt, I admire him most profoundly. Since the time has come for me to give up my daughter, I know of no one to whom I would rather surrender her.'

"'But Mr. Holt is not the man,' I cried, half wild in my fear and desperation. 'Do you remember the gentleman who came with him on his last visit? He called him his brother, and he is I believe, but – '

"The way he turned his grand white forehead towards me at that, made every fibre in my being quiver. 'Jacqueline does not love him!' exclaimed he. How sharp his voice, how changed his eye! I shrank back, trembling as I bowed my head, thinking of the word yet to be said.

"'But he won't compare – ' he went on with a severe intonation. 'Besides her honor is engaged. You are dealing in fancies, Mrs. Hamlin.'

"I tore out of my breast the scraps of paper which had enlightened me so horribly, and held them towards him; then bethought myself, and drew back. 'I have proof,' said I; 'but first I must tell you that Jacqueline is not as good a girl as you have thought her. She is not her mother's child in the qualities of love and honor. She is destined to bring a great woe upon your head. In her passion for this man, she has forgotten your trust in her, the incorruptibility of your name, the honor of your house. Be strong, sir, for God is about to smite you in your tenderest spot.