Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

He pulled her hands and the reins; she ceased to make any resistance. She was thinking; and thought can compass much in brief time. In that hour of her desolation, when about to fly her own dear home, whose whole atmosphere had been poisoned to her, there was a certain sort of fascination in the picture her mind painted at Sam's words, "Mother likes you,-father'll give you all the money you want." Yes, here was case, splendor, and affection. If Milla and Dassel should remain, as she wished them to, under her parents' roof, she need not abide with them, nor yet be without a home whose pride and idol she knew that she would be. It was true that Mrs. Grizzle was vulgar and uneducated; but she had a kind, motherly heart and way which atoned for many defects.

Sam Grizzle was esteemed a "good match" by most of the young ladies in the neighborhood. He had the outward dress of a gentleman, and might some time acquire refinement, in a limited degree. Then, to be married when Milla was, or before; to have a grand wedding, to step into a wealthy house,

dress richly, dispense bounty-would this not be a sort of balm to wounded pride, the best, the only pleasure now left to her? Would there not be triumph in it, under the circumstances? To show Mr. Dassel- She drew her breath in, not daring to look towards the flushed, eager face, venturing to bend nearer to her own.

"We'll be home in a minute more. Won't you give me an answer, Miss Lissa, just the least little thread to hold on by, until you've time to think it over? There's ma on the portico now; please do tell this horse to stop, for he won't mind me," despairingly.

"Whoa, Prince," said Lissa, and the carriage came to a stop, but it was at the gate of Rose Villa, and Mrs. Grizzle was hurrying down the lawn, to ask what this delightful drive meant.

"Jump out," cried Lissa, nervously. "I do not wish to meet any one now. I will send you my answer to-night;" and Sam jumped, feeling as if he were soaring to the stars instead of sinking to the earth. Prince started on, and in five minutes more Elizabeth stood in the centre of her own room, with flushed face, conscious of a high-beating pulse, and a very miserable, reckless mood.

(To be continued.)

THE GLORIA AND THE MISERERE.

I.

O SHEPHERDS, did you hear the angels singing
On Bethlehem's plain afar?

When the Gloria, through heaven's open arches ringing,

Reechoed from star to star?

The wide plain in dewy peace was sleeping,

The young lambs were folded to their rest;

The watchers gray their silent guard were keeping,
The whole earth was waiting to be blest.

O listeners to the melody elysian,

Abiding in the glory, were ye strong For the presence of the beatific vision, The rapture of the clear, celestial song.

II.

O shepherds, from the harmonies of heaven,
Attuned to lower notes, our spirits shrink;
The chalice of God's glory, to you given,
Was fairer than our paler lips may drink.

We list in our wandering faint and weary,
For the echo of the Gloria soft and low,
And our dull ears hear but the Miserere,

With its long, long wail of human woe.
It sobs with the sob the children smother,
Whose young lives no child-joys ever hold;
It wails with the wailing of the mother,

Whose thin lips are whitening in the cold.
It moans with the moaning of the dying,
When the night-dews are falling on the brave;
It sighs with the weary captive's sighing,
And groans with the groaning of the slave.

III.

Do ye hear the Miserere, O ye reapers,

Bending downward with crystal tears?
For deeper grows the burden of the weepers,
With the onward rush of years.

They list where moss and ivy blending,
Clothe wall and tower with verdant maze;
They hear the organ-tones ascending,

With its voice of lofty praise.

They list while the Gloria is pealing,
But its clear notes' upward flow,

To their souls no glory is revealing,

And deeper grows the settling dark below;
They wait in the silence deep and dreary,
Till, echoing sad and slow,

Swells the deep chant of the Miserere,
But that cannot reach their woe.

[blocks in formation]

O bearers of the heaven-harmonious gladness,
Let the glory shine around!

For our hearts are fainting with the sadness,
And our ears are deafened by the sound.
We list in the ebb of earth's commotion,
For the Gloria our souls can dimly hear,
And wait till the full flow of the ocean,
Of sound seraphic meets our longing ear.
We know its bright epiphany draws nearer,
And our listening souls grow brave,

For the symphony of joy is sounding clearer,
Since the clanking chains are fallen from the slavc.
Your wailing is not vain, O life-weeper,

For the gates of pearl unclose,

And the Gloria of heaven shall echo deeper,

Than the long Miserere of your woes.

AFTER THREE THOUSAND YEARS.

"Do you remember the last request you made of me, when we parted in Paris, you to return homeward, and I to bury myself in the tombs of the Pharaohs?" asked Vance, the latest lion of Eastern travel, of Marion Harleigh, as he took her out to dinner at Madame Belletoile's.

"Perfectly. I asked you to bring me some personal ornament from the mummy of a princess," replied the young lady with sang-froid.

"And you promised to wear it, remember," pursued. Vance, maliciously watching for the pallor that did not

came.

Exactly. I promised to wear it, and I am ready to keep my promise. Did you bring me the opportunity? "

"Could I have ventured to present myself before you without it?" replied the traveller, with smiling courtesy.

"And what is it?"

May I come to-morrow, and offer it ?."

"I shall be very glad to see you."

The next morning, at twelve o'clock, Vance rang at the door of Mr. Peter Harleigh's fine town-mansion, and, upon inquiring for Miss Harleigh, was shown at once to the drawing-room, graced by that young lady's presence. She came to meet him with outstretched hand.

"Welcome home!" said she, a little more earnestly, perhaps, than she would have spoken to Professor Byzantium, who also returned to New York from Eastern travel, by the Persia.

Millard Vance held the hand she affered, long enough to dart the piercing glance of his hazel eyes deep into the heart of the young girl, and then, releasing it, said softly,

men and women enough for family, at least in the present," said Marion, hating herself for the blush she could not restrain. Turning hastily, she added,

"This is Mr. Vance, Juliette. My cousin, Miss Randolph, Mr. Vance."

A little figure rose from the great arm-chair where she had been almost buried, and bowed smilingly in answer to the stately bow of the traveller. Then she seated herself upon the sofa beside Marion, and unconsciously offered her misty golden curls, pure com plexion, and sweet blue eyes, in contrast to her cousin's trained and statuesque brunette beauty.

Vance, studying the two without looking at either, found it impossible to award the palm to either, and gave both credit for arranging a contrasting tableau-a manœuvre for which Juliette was as yet too innocent, and Marion too proud.

After ten minutes, Vance drew a little Indian casket from his pocket and placed it in Miss Harleigh's hand.

"There is the Pharaonic spoil you have kindly allowed me to bring for you," said he.

Marion opened the box, and uttered a little cry of surprise. It appeared filled with golden beetles sparkling with phosphorescent gleams. Immediately she closed the lid upon them, and looked up into Vance's laughing face.

"They will not harm you; they are securely chained," said he, opening the case as it lay upon Marion's lap, and taking from it a necklace of golden scarabæi, with diamond eyes and green enamelled wings. Each insect was linked to each by a tiny chain, but so loosely as to admit of perfect freedom of

"You are kind; but I have no home, movement. The necklace was clasped you must remember."

"You should interpret the word more widely, and feel that your native land is enough for home, and your country

by a medal of burnished gold deeply graven with certain symbols or characters, not easily to be deciphered even as to form.

"Oh, the darling, lovely, odd thing!" exclaimed Juliette Randolph, while Vance lightly swung the glittering toy from his finger; but Marion turned pale, and slightly shivered.

"Where did it come from, Mr. Vance?" asked she.

"From the neck of a Pharaonic princess, as you desired that it should," returned Vance, watching with boyish zest the effect of his announcement.

“Oh, tell us all the story, please, Mr. Vance!-how you got it, and how she looked, and all," pleaded Juliette, settling herself in the sofa-corner with the impatient delight of a child about to listen to a fairy-tale.

Vance looked at her appreciatively, then suffered his regard to linger for a moment upon the proud, dark eyes . Marion Harleigh had almost unconsciously fixed upon his own, before he gayly answered:

"Oh, yes; we travellers are but too happy in finding audience for our adventures, you know; and this one in a manner belongs with the necklace. I wintered upon the Nile last year, partly, no doubt, for my own pleasure, but partly, as I hope you will not refuse to believe, Miss Harleigh, in the hope of fulfilling your commission more certainly than a mere passing visitor could have done; for a new mummy is not to be met with every day, even upon the Nile; and I promised, you will remember, to take the ornament you were so kind as to ask for, directly from the person of its original possessor. My inquiries, bribes, false hopes, and opportunities of allowing myself to be cheated in the neatest possible manner, were unlimited; so also was my patience and my faith in its final reward. That faith was justified upon the day when my dragoman mysteriously introduced into the cabin of the Sphynx a rascally-looking Arab calling himself Sheikh of El Kab, the village off which we lay, and who offered for a compensation to conduct the illustrious lord, of whom he had heard as desirous of opening a new tomb, to the door of one discovered only a few days previously

by himself and his son, who had resolved to sell their secret to the magnificent nobleman 'Inglis,' instead of to their own government, to whom it properly belonged.

"After hearing this story, I quietly remarked to my friend the Sheikh that I had been so many times imposed upon by the same account, and had lost so much time, patience, and money in consequence, that I had resolved to revenge myself upon the very next impostor for all that I had suffered at the hands of his fraternity, and that it was but fair to give him timely warning that I intended keeping to my resolution, and to offer him the chance of reconsidering his proposition.

"Without any pretence of being hurt in his feelings or wounded in his honor -pretences at which I should have only laughed-my Sheikh repeated his assertion that the tomb he mentioned was, and had been for ages, fast sealed, and that, from its situation and certain characters wrought upon the stone closing its door, he had no doubt it contained the remains of some person of consequence. Beyond this he knew nothing. and professed nothing, and stipulated that, in all events, he was to receive a certain sum for admitting me to the tomb, let the results be what they might. Should they prove considerable, of course the reward was to be augmented.

"Rather impressed, after all, with the fellow's apparent honesty, I acceded to his terms, and that night, accompanied only by my two servants, I met him just outside the village, and followed to the catacombs perforating like the cells of a honey-comb the sandstone cliffs behind the town. The scene was wild enough, and more picturesque than you get even in the new Park, ladies; and, were I an artist either in words or colors, I would give it you with all the accessories of swarthy Arabs in snowwhite drapery and turbans, flashing torches, gloomy subterranean passages, sculptured walls, and paintings yet glowing with all the richness of the original color. Sparing this, however,

I will merely say that the old Sheikh proved himself a man of his word, and even 'builded better than he knew;' for the tomb whose door he had discovered hidden behind the pile of bones and dust half-filling an outer tomb, rifled ages ago, had never been opened, to all appearance, since it was first sealed up, perhaps three thousand years ago."

"Three thousand years!" softly exclaimed Juliette Randolph, opening her great blue eyes. "Has the world lasted more than three thousand years, Mr. Vance?"

Miss Harleigh's downcast eyes glittered impatient scorn; but Vance smiled with the indulgence rarely refused by men to a pretty woman's ignorance, while he replied,

"For perhaps four times three thousand years, Miss Randolph, woman's beauty and man's devotion have enacted upon this earth of ours the same old-new story that makes it to-day so beautiful and fresh, to fresh and beautiful eyes."

A little quivering smile emphasized the look not yet died out of Miss Harleigh's haughty eyes; but Juliette, blushing like a rose, lifted her innocent gaze to meet the meaning Vance rather looked than spoke, and then she said,,

"But the story, Mr. Vance."

"Yes, the story. We penetrated the tomb at last, although not without much difficulty and hard work, for the cement was like stone, and the stone like-well, like stone itself. At last, however, we stood within the little chamber beside the single sarcophagus it contained. At the head lay, upon a sculptured pedestal, a lamp burned dry, but with the wick still clinging to the lip, and, at the foot, an exquisite vase of alabaster, three feet high.

"We lost no time, for the adventure was not without its peril had we been discovered by the Turkish authorities in opening the sarcophagus, and in removing the innumerable folds of mummy-cloth swathing the occupant by the expeditious means of slitting the whole series from neck to heel with a sharp

knife, and turning it back like the covers of a box. Within lay a slight, elegant figure, very dark in color, as mummies nearly always are, but retaining sufficient beauty of outline, both in face and form, to prove to my mind that a rare loveliness of the days gone by lay before me, neither preserved nor quite destroyed; and in my heart I wished that the too careful love that had laid it here had rather given that beautiful form to Nature, who would in those three thousand years have produced and reproduced from that germ, flowers enough to beautify the whole earth.

"But Miss Randolph's eyes are exclaiming, 'The story! the story!' and I return, contritely. This mummy, I had expected, would be richly decorated with amulets and ornaments, for such was the rule in the interment of women of the higher class among the Egyptians; but, to my surprise, there was absolutely no ornament about it, with the exception of the necklace you now hold, and a small square box or reliquary of gold suspended from it, and containing a bit of parchment inscribed with a brief hieroglyphic sentence. Carefully removing these, I folded the cerements once more about the silent figure, replaced the cover of the sarcophagus, and left my Pharaonic princess to resume the slumber so rudely disturbed. Let us hope that no evil dream connected with her lost necklace has marred her rest."

Vance ended smilingly; and Marion, who had listened with the utmost intentness, although never raising her eyes, suddenly looked at him, demanding,

"And what was written on the slip of parchment, Mr. Vance?" "Hieroglyphics."

"But they can be read by modern science," replied Marion, a little impatiently.

"Yes; and the parchment, with an impression from the clasp of the necklace, is now in the hands of the man best qualified to decipher them, of all our cryptic scholars. I left them with

« IndietroContinua »