Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

“ For the rest of the day the house was besieged with callers and inquirers from all parts of the city, and Captain Clendenon found himself kept busy in replying.
In the midst of it all, in his deep grief and anxiety for his friend's life, in his pity and sympathy for the exiled duelist, a fair face brooded over all his thoughts, a pang for a woman's suffering struck coldly to his heart. To know that she was mourning alone, bowed to earth in her unmerited sorrow and shame, was the height and depth of bitterness to the man who loved her tenderly and purely as he did his own little sister. ”

“ Deeply as she had loved the first object of her young affections, purely and truly as she loved her gifted husband, the strongest, deepest, most intense passion of her life was her maternal love. Some one has written half jestingly that "the depths of a woman's love can never be sounded till a baby is dropped into her heart," but it is true of the majority of women. It was especially true of Grace Winans. That little, rosy, lace-robed slumberer, small as it was, enshrining a human soul, was the idol of the young mother's life. ”

“ That sounds like a novel, doesn't it, Lulu?"
"Poor Paul Winans!" she answered only; but the compassion in her voice for him was not so great as the pained sympathy that looked out of her speaking glance for Bruce Conway.
For Lulu saw with preternaturally clear vision, the struggle that was waging in the young man's soul; saw how truth, and honor and every principle of right were battling for one end—the overthrow of the love that having struck down its intertwining roots in his soul for years, was hard to be torn up. She pitied him—and, ah! pity is so near akin to love. ”

“ Rousing herself she walks over to the window, saying, with a faint, fluttering sigh:
"Ah, well! 'Fate is above us all.'"
How sweet the air is! The salt breeze catches the odor of the mignonette in her window, and wafts it to her, lifting the soft tresses from her aching temples with its scented breath, and with the sublime association that there is in some faint flower perfumes and grief, the bitter leaven at her heart swells again with all the painful luxury of sorrow.
"I am so weary of it all—life's daily treadmill round! What is it worth? How is it endurable when love is lost to us?" ”

“ On the low, white bed that occupies the center of the apartment is the recumbent figure of a man, in whose handsome features, even though his eyes are closed in a death-like sleep, we recognize Bruce Conway. He looks like marble as he lies there, his black hair flowing back from his broad, white brow, his closed eyes encircled with purplish rings, the dark mustache slightly shading his mouth, only revealing more plainly the deathly pallor and suffering of the lips.
Standing by the side of the bed, Captain Clendenon looks down at him with infinite pity and tenderness in his dark-gray orbs. ”

“ There are but few women who find the world so fair that the grave is not held as a refuge for their tired souls and bodies. But Grace came back, with a little gasping sigh, to the life that had never held much attraction for her, and with a trembling arm drew her baby to her breast.
"Poor little Paul!" she quavered, "he is hungry and fretful. Go and get his bath ready, Norah. I can't think how I came to faint. I feel well enough now, and it is quite unusual to me to lose consciousness so easily."
She was herself again. Pride sat regnant on her brow, on her curling lip, in her quiet eyes. ”

“ Only just now, as I drove up Main street in my little phaeton, taking a silly sort of triumph to myself at the sensation created by my pretty face and cream-white ponies, I met the funeral of a little child on its way to the cemetery—the casket was covered with lilies and roses—and, oh, Lulu, I thought of my own little one, and its probable fate! and, oh, I wished my heart would break! Why, why does not God let me die!" and, shivering with repressed agony, the young wife suffered Lulu to hold her in her close-clasped arms, while she wept and moaned on her breast. ”

“ Lulu whispers again in her loving tone, "and, Gracie," with a fluttering sigh. "I have been so happy in anticipating your happiness!"
Touched to the depths of her warm heart Grace bends to leave a tender kiss on the pale brow, and promising to come again, goes out. Her adieus are hastily made to the rest, and once more in the little pony phaeton she skims over the miles between her and home. The bright roses that blossom on her cheeks are sources of undisguised admiration to Norah, who opines that Mrs. Winans ought to drive every evening. ”

“ She will have it all over Norfolk to-morrow. Oh! how it mortifies my pride to have anything occur to disgrace me so! Bruce, I could almost find it in my heart to curse you!"
"And I you! You are to blame for it all. But for you and your foolish pride of wealth and position, I might have wooed and won her; but while I wavered in my shameful vacillation and selfishness, a better and nobler man has stepped in between us! You are proud to welcome him, proud to do him honor; proud to welcome her in her beauty and grace, now that you have put her forever out of my reach. ”

“ It rose higher and higher; delirium set in, and in restless visions the young mother babbled of her lost child; she was seeking him—seeking him everywhere, through the wide, thronged avenues of Washington, the long corridors of the capitol, the dull, narrow streets of Norfolk, by the moonlit shores of Ocean View; and the red light of a meteor in the sky was blinding her so that she could not see; and when it faded she was in darkness—and now burning reproaches scorched the sweet lips with their fiery breath, and Paul Winans' name was whispered, but with inexpressible bitterness. ”

“ And Grace Winans, brave, patient, tried by fire as she had been, was still only mortal. If he came, strengthened, purified, enobled by suffering and sad experience, they must still meet, she thinks, with a sharp heart-pang, as over a grave—the grave of their child; the winsome baby whom she sees in fancy at his childish play on the nursery rug, toddling over the floor, laughing in her arms, catching at her long, bright curls—what shall she say to the man whose folly has deprived her of all this joy, when he comes to ask forgiveness? ”

“ The black boy went in with footfalls noiseless as the captain's own. Lulu and her mother were there, one on each side of the bed, watching the sleeper with anxious eyes. They looked up at the strange face of the boy as he paused and gazed at the still, white face on the pillow. His dark skin seemed to grow ashen white as he looked, his thick, ugly lip quivered convulsively, and two tears darted from his black eyes and rolled down upon his breast. He gazed long and mournfully, seeming to take in every lineament of that beloved face ”

“ To Bruce Conway the months of slow and tardy convalescence seemed like dead weights on his impatient, restless soul; to Grace Winans, in her splendid but strangely silent home, where but few guests were received, and which she rarely left, time passed as it did to Mariana in the Moated Grange. But for all that, the summer passed like a painful dream, and the "melancholy days" had come; "time does not stop for tears."
Mrs. Conway had prevailed on Bruce to compromise his intention of going abroad again by spending the winter with her amid the gayeties of Washington—the "Paris of America." ”

“ The little sister that Captain Clendenon had wanted to keep a child forever was a child no longer. Love—the old, old story, old as the world, and yet new and sweet as the blushing [Pg 107] flowers of to-day's blossoming—had opened for her the portals of a broader existence, and Lulu was learning the strength and depth of her woman's heart first by its intense aching.
According to the verdict of the world, it is a woman's shame to love unsought; and yet I think that that is scarcely love which waits to be given leave to love. ”

“ Lulu [Pg 123] went on, as she toyed with the bright curls that lay against her shoulder still, "there is nothing on earth that so fills up vacant heart and life as the cross of Christ the Crucified; Gracie, do you ever pray?"
"I am too wretched," she answered, hopelessly.
"Too wretched! Oh, Gracie, dear friend, do you forget how in the darkest hours our Lord spent in the Garden of Gethsemane that, being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly? It is in hours of the deepest suffering that we should pray most. When we feel that earth offers no consolation, where can we look but to heaven? ”

“ The girlish mother leaned a little forward as she sat in the low rocking-chair, her bright curls falling over the loosely flowing white dress like a golden glory. Her pure, innocent eyes looked down at the babe that nestled in her arms, and a low murmur of tenderness escaped her lips.
"My Birdie! my baby!"
"Still sitting up, Grace?"
It was the voice of her husband entering to pay his nightly visit to the little bright-eyed babe—sole heir of his proud name and wealth.
"I am not tired," she answered, in her fresh young voice, "and our little darling is so sweet I cannot bear to lay him down. ”

“ Her heart is in a great whirl of painful feelings. Her baby! She wants her baby! The unhealed wound in the mother-heart will not be satisfied thus. Lulu's motherhood has thrilled that aching chord afresh; the years that have passed are but a dream, and she longs to hold her rosy, laughing boy again to her tortured breast. Mother-love never grows cold nor dead, mother-grief never can be healed nor even seared. It "lives eternal" in the mother's breast, the most exquisite joy, the most exquisite searching pain the human heart can know. ”

“ She put both arms about his neck and touched her lips to the noble brow over which the brown curls fell so carelessly. The mute caress told him that she understood and sympathized in his unspoken grief. The man's heart in him could not bear it. He rose, putting her kindly and gently aside.
"Lulu, she has a noble husband; a handsome, generous fellow, a 'man among men,' but he is marred almost as much by his unreasoning jealousy as is Bruce by his unstable character. I pity her. She is worthy of confidence and all respect. It is an honor to any man to have loved her even though hopelessly." ”

“ Sometimes, when the hot, delirious fever fell, and reason held her throne against the enemy, the young man's heart ached at the sight of the pale, worn faces that always wore a cheerful smile for his waking hours. In the contest that was waging he felt very sure which would come off conqueror; but with the fortitude which had marked his life, he kept his opinions to himself, unwilling to grieve his mother and Grace, and unwilling to hasten Lulu's return on account of the investigation she was pursuing, much as he longed to see her. ”

“ Conway and her nephew met her in the hall, both unaffectedly glad to see her, and in the midst of much whispering, they left Bruce below, and went up to Lulu's chamber.
It was so dark in here that Grace, coming directly in from the May sunshine, at first saw nothing; then, as the gloom cleared away a little, she distinguished Mrs. Clendenon's black-robed form sitting near the bed where Lulu lay, white, and still, and grief-stricken, under the white draperies, with a tiny mite of a girl-baby (prematurely hurried into the world by grief that oftenest hurries people out of it) on her arm. ”

“ She bent impulsively and pressed her cool, dewy lips on the fevered brow of the other, while she registered a vow in her unselfish soul, that she would stand between Grace Winans and every sorrow that effort or sacrifice of hers could avert.
How potent is the spell of sympathy! The light pressure of those soft lips touched a chord in Grace's tortured heart that never in after years ceased to vibrate. Her husband had spoken truly in saying that she had no intimate woman-friend, but it was scarcely her fault. Her nature was a singularly pure and elevated one ”

“ Love is not all of life. When love is lost life's cares and duties still remain. We must endure it. Well for us that God's love is over all.
Some thought like this calms the seething waves of passion in her heart. She picks up her journal from the floor where it had fallen, and listlessly tears out the page that holds the simple rhyme of her girlhood's folly. Leaning on the window she takes it daintily between her fingers and tears it into tiny bits that scatter like snow-flakes down on the graveled path of the garden below. ”

“ It is not like Grace Winans to be that. Promise me that you will forgive him freely! If he acted wrongly he has suffered for it. It is so easy to go wrong—to err is human, you know."
No wavering in that sternly curved red lip shows acquiescence. His voice rises higher, with a throb of pain in it:
"'If ye forgive not men their trespasses how shall my Father which is in heaven forgive you?' Gracie, say 'I promise.'"
[Pg 202]
All the sudden hot anger against the husband she had loved—the husband who had wronged her, and left desolate the sweetest years of her life—fades out of her heart. ”