Fashion and Famine Part 57

"Mr. Gray, he looked at the letter, and then sort of sidewise into my face. 'S. G.,' says he, taking up the apple-skin, and eating it, as if it had been the first mouthful of a Thanksgiving dinner. 'How would you like to see them two letters on a new set of silver teaspoons?'

"I re'lly believe you could have lit a candle at my face, it burned so; but I couldn't speak more than if I'd been born tongue-tied."

"But did you never answer about the spoons?" asked Julia.

"Well, yes, I believe I did, the next Sunday night," said the old lady, demurely, smoothing her ap.r.o.n.

What was there in Mrs. Gray's simple narrative that should have brought confusion and warm blushes into those two young faces? Why, after one hastily withdrawn glance, did neither Robert Otis nor Julia Warren look at each other again that night?

CHAPTER XXVII.

STRUGGLES AND REVELS.

Wine, wine for the heart, in its struggle of pride, And music to drown all this with'ring pain!

The arrow, the arrow is deep in her side!

Bring music and wine with their madness again.

The pa.s.sions take their distinctive expression from the nature in which they find birth. The grief that rends one heart like an earthquake, sinks with dead, silent weight into another, uttering no sound, giving no outward sign, and yet is powerful, perhaps, as that which exhausts itself in tumult. Some flee from grief, half defying, half evading it, pausing, breathless, in the race, now and then, to find the arrow still buried in the side, rankling deeper and deeper with each fierce effort to cast it out.

Thus it was with the woman to whom our story tends--Ada, the insulted and suffering widow of Leicester. There had been mutual wrong between the two; both had sinned greatly; both had tasted deep of the usual consequences of sin. During his life her love for him had been the one wild pa.s.sion of existence; now that he was dead, her grief partook of the same stormy nature. It was wild, fierce, brilliant; it thirsted for change; it was bitter with regrets that stung her into the very madness of sorrow.

As an unbroken horse plunges beneath the rider's heel, the object of grief like this seeks for amelioration in excitement. It is a sorrow that thirsts for action; that arouses some kindred pa.s.sion, and feeds itself with that.

Ada Leicester was not known to be connected, even remotely, with the man for whose murder old Mr. Warren was now awaiting his trial. She was a leader in the fashionable world; her very anguish must be concealed; her groans must be uttered in private; her tears quenched firmly till they turned to fire in her heart. All her life that man had been a pain and a torment to her. The last breath she had seen him draw was a taunt, his last look an insult; and yet these very memories embittered her grief.

He had turned the silver thread of her life into iron, but it broke with his existence, leaving her appalled and objectless. She never had, never could love another; and what is a woman on earth without love as a memory, a pa.s.sion, or a hope?

Her grief became a wild pa.s.sion. She strove to a.s.suage it in reckless gaiety, and plunged into all the excitements of artificial life with a fervor that made every hour of her existence a tumult. The opera season was at its full height. Society had once more concentrated itself in New York, and still Ada was the brightest of its stars. Morning dances by gas-light took place in some few houses where novelty was an object. Not long after Leicester's death her n.o.ble mansion was closed for a morning revel; every pointed window was sealed with shutters and m.u.f.fled with the richest draperies. Light in every form of beauty--the pure gas-flame--the soft glow of wax-candles--the moonlight gleam of alabaster lamps flooded the sumptuous rooms, excluding every ray of the one glorious lamp which G.o.d has kindled in the sky. Dancers flitted to and fro in those lofty rooms; garlands of choice green-house flowers scattered fragrance from the walls, and veiled many a cla.s.sic statue with their impalpable mist.

Never in her whole life had Ada appeared more wildly brilliant.

Reckless, sparkling, scattering smiles and wit wherever she pa.s.sed; now whirling through the waltz; now exchanging bright repartees with her guests amid the pauses of the music; fluttering from group to group like a bird of Paradise, dashing perfume from its native flower thickets, she flitted from room to room; now sitting alone in a dark corner of the conservatory, her hands falling languidly down, her face bowed upon her bosom, the fire quenched in her eyes, she felt the very life ebbing, as it were, from her parted and pale lips.

Thus with the strongest contrasts, fierce alike in her gaiety and her grief, she spent that miserable morning. The transition from one state to another would have been startling to a close observer, but the changes in her mood were like lightning; the pale cheek became instantly so red; the dull eye so bright, that her guests saw nothing but the most fascinating coquetry in all this, and each new shade or gleam that crossed her beautiful face brought down fresh showers of adulation upon her. The usual quiet elegance of her manner was for the time forgotten.

More than once her wild, clear laugh rang from one room to another, chiming in or rising above the music, and this only charmed her guests the more. It was a new feature in their idol. It was not for her wealth or her beauty alone that Ada Leicester became an object of worship that day. Like a wounded bird that makes the leaves tremble all around with its anguish, she startled society into more intense admiration by the splendor of her agony.

At mid-day her guests began to depart, pouring forth from those sumptuous rooms into the noontide glare, when delicate dresses, flushed cheeks and languid eyes were exposed in all the disarray which is sometimes picturesque when enveloped in night shadows, but becomes meretricious in the broad sunshine.

A few of her most distinguished guests remained to dinner that day, for Ada dreaded to be alone, and so kept up the excitement that was burning her life out. If her spirits flagged, if the smile fled from her lips even for an instant, those lips were bathed with the rich wines that sparkled on her board, kindling them into smiles and bloom again. The resources of her intellect seemed inexhaustible; the flashes of her delicate wit grew keener and brighter as the hours wore on.

Her table was surrounded by men and women who flash like meteors now and then through the fashionable circles of New York, intellectual aristocrats that enliven the insipid monotony of those changing circles, as stars give fire and beauty to the blue of a summer sky. But keen-sighted as these people were, they failed to read the heart that was delighting them with its agony. All but one, and he was not seated at the table, he spoke no word, and won no attention from that haughty circle, save by the subdued and even solemn awkwardness of look and manner, which was too remarkable for entire oblivion.

Behind Ada's seat there stood a tall man, with huge, ungainly limbs, and a stoop in the shoulders. He was evidently a servant, but wore no livery like the others; and those who gave a thought to the subject saw that he waited only upon his mistress, and that once or twice he stooped down and whispered a word in her ear, which she received with a quick and imperious motion of the head, which was either rejection or reproof of something he had urged.

Nothing could be more touching than the sadness of this man's face as the spirits of his mistress rose with the contest of intellect that was going on around her. He saw the bitter source from which all this brightness flowed, and every smile upon those red lips deepened the gloom so visible in his face.

"Now," said Ada, rising from the table, and leading the way to her boudoir, for it had been an impromptu dinner, and the drawing-room was yet in confusion after the dance; "now let us refresh ourselves with music. An hour's separation, a fresh toilet, and we will all meet at the opera--then to-morrow--what shall we do to-morrow?"

She entered the boudoir while speaking, and as if smitten by some keen memory, lifted one hand to her forehead, reflecting languidly, "To-morrow--yes, what shall we do to-morrow?"

"You are pale; what is the matter?" inquired one of the lady guests, in that hurried tone of sympathy which is usually superficial as sweet. "We have oppressed you with all this gaiety!"

"Not in the least--nothing of the kind!" exclaimed the hostess, with a clear laugh. "It was the perfume from those vases. It put me in mind--it made me faint!"

She rang the bell while speaking, and the servant, who stood all dinner-time behind her chair, entered.

"Take these flowers away, Jacob," she said, pointing to the vases, "there is heliotrope among them, and you know the scent of heliotrope affects me--kills me. Never allow flowers to be put in these rooms again. Not a leaf, not a bud--do you understand?"

"Yes, madam," answered the servant, with calm humility, "I understand!

It was not I that placed them there now!"

Ada seated herself on the couch, resting her forehead upon one hand, as if the faintness still continued. Her lips and all around her mouth grew pallid. Though the flowers were gone, their effect still seemed to oppress her more and more. At length she started up with a hysterical laugh and went into the bed-chamber. When she came forth her cheeks were damask again, and her lips red as coral; but a dusky circle under the eyes, and a faint, spasmodic twitching about the mouth, revealed how artificial the bloom was. From that moment all her gaiety returned, and in her graceful glee her guests forgot the agitation that had for a moment surprised them.

Later in the evening, Ada drove to the Opera House, where she again met the gay friends who had thronged her dwelling at mid-day. Still did she surpa.s.s them all in the superb but hasty toilet which she had a.s.sumed, after the morning revel. Many an eye was turned admiringly upon her sofa that night, little dreaming that the opera-cloak of rose-colored cashmere, with its blossom-tinted lining and border of snowy swan's-down, covered a bosom throbbing with suppressed anguish. Little could that admiring crowd deem that the brilliants interlinked with burning opal stones that glowed with ever-restless light upon her arms, her bosom, and down the corsage of her brocade dress, were to the wretched woman as so many pebbles that the rudest foot might tread upon.

Her cheeks were in a glow; her eyes sparkled, and the graceful unrest which left her no two minutes in the same position, seemed but a pretty feminine wile to exhibit the splendor of her dress. How could the crowd suppose that the heart over which those jewels burned, was aching with a burden of crushed tears.

She sat amid the brilliant throng, unmindful of its admiration. The music rushed to her ear in sweet gushes of pa.s.sion. But she sat smilingly there, unconscious of its power or its pathos. It sighed through the building soft and low as the spring air in a bed of violets; but even then it failed to awake her attention. Unconsciously the notes stole over her heart, and feeling a rush of emotions sweeping over her, she started up, waved an adieu to her friends, and left the Opera House.

Half a dozen of the most distinguished gentlemen of her party sprang up to lead her out. She took the nearest arm and left the house, simply uttering a hurried good-night as she stepped into the carriage. There was no eye to look upon her then. Those who had followed her with admiring glances as she left the opera, little thought how keen was her agony as she rolled homeward in that sumptuous carriage, her cheek pressed hard against the velvet lining; her fingers interlocked and wringing each other in the wild anguish to which she abandoned herself.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

ADA LEICESTER AND JACOB STRONG.

We drove him to that fearful gulf, In the sharp pangs of his despair, As angry hunters chase a wolf From open field and hidden lair.

The servant who sat waiting in the vestibule was startled by the hard, tearless misery of Ada's face, as she entered her own dwelling that night. He looked at her earnestly, and seemed about to speak, but she swept by him with averted eyes and ascended the stairs.

It was the same man who had stood beside her chair at dinner that day.

The look of anxiety was on his features yet, and he pressed his lips hard together as she pa.s.sed him, evidently curbing some sharp sensation that the haughty bearing of his mistress aroused. He stood looking after her as she glided with a swift, noiseless tread over the richly carpeted stairs, her pale hand now and then gleaming out in startling relief from the ebony bal.u.s.trade, and her stony face mocking the artificial scarlet of her mouth. She turned at the upper landing, and he saw her glide away in the soft twilight overhead. He stood a moment with his eyes riveted on the spot where she had disappeared, then he followed up the stairs with a step as firm and rapid as hers had been. Even his heavy foot left no sound on the ma.s.s of woven flowers that covered the steps, and the shadow cast by his ungainly figure moved no more silently than himself.

He opened several doors, but they closed after him without noise, and Ada was unconscious of his presence for several moments after he stood within her boudoir. A fire burned in the silver grate, casting a sunset glow over the room, but leaving many of its objects in shadow; for save a moonlight gleam that came from a lamp in the dressing-room, no other light was near.

Ada had flung her mantle on the couch, and with her arms folded on the black marble of the mantel-piece, bent her forehead upon them, and stood thus statue-like gazing into the fire. A clear amethystine flame quivered over the coal, striking the opals and brilliants that ornamented her dress, till they burned like coals of living fire upon the snow of her arms and bosom. Thus with the same prismatic light spreading from the jewels to her rigid face, she seemed more like a fallen angel mourning over her ruin than a living woman.

At length the servant made a slight noise. Ada lifted up her head, and a frown darkened her face.

"I did not ring--I do not require anything of you to-night," she said.

"I know it. I know well enough that you require nothing of me--that my very devotion is hateful to you. Why is it? I came up here, to-night, on purpose to ask the question--why is it?" answered the man, with a grave dignity, which was very remote from the manner which a servant, however favored, is expected to maintain toward his mistress. "What have I done to deserve this treatment?"

Ada looked at him earnestly for a moment, and then her lip curled with a bitter smile.