Anna Green - The Sword of Damocles - A Story of New York Life

Mr. Sylvester started and surveyed the woman as she passed 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 assailed by the gossip about Miss Japha."

"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 Japha 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 Japha may have preceded her father to the tomb."

Paula bowed her head, amazed at the gloomy tone in which this emphatic assertion 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.

"God bless you!" said he, clasping those hands with a father's heartfelt tenderness. "God 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-godmother 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.

"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.