"I dread vacation week," she said to her room-mate, one evening as they sat over their examination papers. "I was so lonely during the holidays while you were gone--I cried myself to sleep every night, and it will be just as hard this vacation. It seems a long time until next June, but I know my parents do not feel like affording the expense of my journey home before then."
"I wish you might go home with me," suggested Dolores, looking up suddenly from her books. "Can"t you? it is only a short distance--and I would gladly take you myself. It is rather a gloomy house, you will find, with just uncle and his books, and servants, but it would be a change for you at least. I know how dreary it is here in vacation; I tried it once, when uncle was away from home. Will you go with me, Lena?"
"You are so kind to ask me, and I think it would be delightful," Helena answered, her face beaming at the thought. "I will write to Mamma about it to-night. I am sure she will give her consent, for I have told her so much about you--how good and kind you are, and how fond I am of you;"
and Helena drew her companion"s face down with both hands and kissed her. Dolores received the salutation with a smile, but did not return it.
"Do you know, Dolores," said Helena, "that little smile of yours means just the same to me now, as a kiss? At first, when I used to caress you, your lack of responses chilled me; yet I was so fond of you, and you are so lovely, I could not refrain from demonstrations of affection. I must have some one to pet; it is a necessity with me; and now that faint little smile you give me, seems just the same as a kiss would seem from any other girl."
"I am glad it does--it means the same," Dolores replied. "I am very undemonstrative by nature. You are positively the only person, Lena, by whom I could endure to be caressed. I do not remember that I ever voluntarily kissed any one in my life. I could never see any meaning or sense in it; but it seems all right coming from you. Only I am glad you do not demand a response from me."
"But surely you kiss your uncle sometimes?" Helena queried.
"No, never. His nature and mine are similar in that respect. You will think him cold, and severe, but he has had some bitter sorrows in his life, and it is no wonder if they have frozen his heart"s blood. Yet he is very kind to me, and he has taught me much, and told me many things, which I might otherwise have had to learn as he did--by cruel experience. But come, dear, we must finish our examination papers, and you must write that letter to your mother. I think I will enclose a note, begging her to grant me the favor of your company, and promising to take the best of care of you."
Both letters were accordingly written and an affirmative reply to the request was received by the delighted girls before the school term closed.
Helena packed her trunk with all a young girl"s eager antic.i.p.ation of a new experience. Madame Scranton and a small body-guard of teachers and pupils accompanied the young ladies to the depot, and saw them safely seated in the car which would, in a few hours, bring them to their destination.
They were met at the station by a colored serving man, whom Dolores addressed as Daniel, and who informed her that "Master Laurence was well nigh sick: did not seem to have no appet.i.te and couldn"t sleep."
"Why was I not written to? Why was I not sent for, if Uncle is ill?"
cried Dolores, with so much distress in her face, that Helena, accustomed to the usual calm of her friend"s demeanor, looked upon her with surprise.
Daniel"s a.s.surance that his master was not sick, "only ailin"," did not remove the cloud from Dolores" face until they reached the mansion, which seemed to Helena, filled with a "well-bred gloom," as she afterwards expressed it.
As a garment becomes impregnated with the odors of the body, so the atmosphere of a house becomes saturated with the essence or the spiritual nature of its inhabitants. In Helena Maxon"s own home, humble and modest though it was, who ever crossed its threshold felt the rush of a vitalized current of love and good cheer, like a soft breeze about him.
And with her peculiarly sensitive nature she felt, like a finely organized human barometer, the cold and chilling atmosphere of this mansion: and her spiritual mercury ran down to the zeros.
A tall, grave man, with a clear-cut, beardless face and steel gray eyes, met them in the hall, "Welcome home, young ladies," he said, while the phantom of a smile played over his pale features, as a winter sunbeam falls on a marble statue. "I am glad to see you both. Dolores, child, you look pale; are you ill?"
He took her hand, as he had taken Helena"s, and he offered no more affectionate greeting, nor did Dolores.
"No--I am well," she said, "only Daniel frightened me: he said you were very _un_well. You should have sent for me, Uncle, at once."
"It was not necessary, child," replied her uncle, as he led them down the long hall and stood aside to let them pa.s.s up the broad stairway. "I have only been indisposed, as I always am in the Spring, you know. Why should I take you from your studies because my liver is refractory? But hasten, now, young ladies. You have only time to make your toilet before dinner is served."
"I heard two robins chirping in a bare tree this morning," Mr. Laurence said, as the young ladies took their places at the table a little later.
"That and your youthful voices in the lonely old hall just now, convinced me of the near approach of Springtime. Happy birds, and happy girls, I said. I wonder what the brief summer of life holds for you?
"What is your dream of the future, Miss Maxon?"
Finding this perplexing question addressed to her so suddenly, by an utter stranger, whose demeanor gave her a peculiar sensation of awe, Helena blushed, and hesitated for a reply.
"I think I can answer for you," continued her host, without waiting for her to find voice.
"It is a dream of pleasant duties, of culture and travel, of realized ambitions and labors rewarded, but all merging in the supreme hope of the unwise young heart--love and marriage; am I not right?"
For a moment, Helena remained in abashed silence, the flush deepening upon her cheek. Then she lifted her soft dark eyes fearlessly to the old man"s face, as she answered him:
"I have never thought very seriously about my future," she said. "I am young to make plans. But whatever else it holds for me, I think it would be more complete at last to be crowned with love and marriage, if the love were true love and the marriage a happy one."
Mr. Laurence shook his head as he murmured: "Ah! ah! poor child--poor foolish child! Better give up this thought at once. There is no true love between man and woman; there are no happy marriages; it is all a dream--a dream--and the awakening is cruel. Better put it all out of your mind now, child, before it is too late. Build your castle without the frail tower of love, else it will topple to the ground and carry the whole structure with it."
"But surely you would not have me think there is no such thing as true love in the world?" cried Helena, in wondering and pained surprise.
"There is no true and enduring love, no grand eternal pa.s.sion between the s.e.xes. There is a possibility--yet that even is rare--of a lasting platonic affection--of a kind, unselfish friendship. But it is a mockery and blasphemy for two human beings to stand at the altar and in the name of G.o.d bind themselves to be true to a sentiment which cannot last--which never lasts. One or both must change, both must suffer from the unholy bondage. Women are fickle, and men are base. I would rather see Dolores, my only human tie, laid in her grave, than led to the marriage altar. No, no, child; listen to an old man who has seen much of the world, and let no thought of marriage ever enter your life plans."
Mr. Laurence"s face was very pale, and his voice trembled with the excitement which this subject always produced. Dolores saw that he was in a highly nervous state, and adroitly changed the conversation by requesting Helena to come into the music room and sing for them.
She possessed a voice of remarkable beauty and sweetness--a voice which already was beginning to develop into wonderful flexibility and power, under the vocal training she received at the Academy.
Like most of Orpheus" devotees, Helena was much more absorbed in the music than in the words of her songs; and so, quite unconsciously she ill.u.s.trated the old man"s theory of the ephemeral nature of love, in her selection of this song, which was set to a brilliant air and accompaniment.
A little leaf just in the forest"s edge, All summer long, had listened to the wooing Of amorous birds that flew across the hedge, Singing their blithe sweet songs for her undoing.
So many were the flattering things they told her, The parent tree seemed quite too small to hold her.
At last one lonesome day she saw them fly Across the fields behind the coquette summer, They pa.s.sed her with a laughing light good-by, When from the north, there strode a strange new comer; Bold was his mien, as he gazed on her, crying, "How comes it, then, that thou art left here sighing!"
"Now by my faith thou art a lovely leaf---- May I not kiss that cheek so fair and tender?"
Her slighted heart welled full of bitter grief, The rudeness of his words did not offend her.
She felt so sad, so desolate, so deserted, Oh, if her lonely fate might be averted.
"One little kiss," he sighed, "I ask no more----"
His face was cold, his lips too pale for pa.s.sion.
She smiled a.s.sent; and then bold Frost leaned lower, And clasped her close, and kissed in lover"s fashion.
Her smooth cheek flushed to sudden guilty splendor, Another kiss, and then complete surrender.
Just for a day she was a beauteous sight, The world looked on to pity and admire This modest little leaf, that in a night Had seemed to set the forest all on fire.
And then--this victim of a broken trust A withered thing, was trodden in the dust.
Mr. Laurence sat silent as if buried in deep thought, while she sang a few songs, and then, excusing himself on a plea of indisposition, retired to his room.
"It is useless for Uncle to tell me he is not ill," Dolores remarked, after he had left them alone, "for I notice a great change in him since I last saw him. He looks years older, and he is in a state of great nervousness. I am alarmed about him."
"He is a strange man, is he not?" mused Helena, "but I can not help thinking he would be happier and healthier if he did not live alone. If he had married when young, and was now surrounded by a nice family, how different all his ideas would be. Papa says a bachelor"s blood turns to vinegar because he has no one to sweeten life for him."
"But Uncle Laurence is not a bachelor," Dolores said. "He married a very beautiful girl when he was quite young."
"Indeed! then he is a widower? And it was the loss of her, that made him so bitter! But I think it is lovely that he has been true to her memory.
There is just romance enough about it to please me."
"No, no!" interrupted Dolores, hastily, "you do not understand. He married her and worshiped her, with a young man"s first poetic pa.s.sion; they lived together two years, and then--and then, Lena, she ran off and left him, and he has never been the same man since."
"Ran off and left him!" echoed Helena in shocked amazement, "why, was she homesick--or was he unkind to her? And did her parents take her back?"
"No, she did not go home. She was--oh, Lena dear, you are too innocent to understand how wicked the world is. I know all about it, because Uncle has told me; he thinks it better for me to be forewarned since I may be left alone to defend myself. Lena, his wife was faithless, and his nearest friend false, and two homes were disgraced forever."