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The Barred Door
“A school boy’s tale; the wonder of an hour.”
Byron
“Did you know that your niece was gifted with rare beauty as well as talents?” asked Mr. Sylvester of Miss Belinda as a couple of hours or so later, they sat alone by the parlor fire, preparatory to his departure.
“No, that is,” she hastily corrected herself, “I knew she was very pretty of course, prettier by far than any of her mates, but I did not suppose she was what you call a beauty, or at least would be so considered by a person accustomed to New York society.”
“I do not know of a woman in New York who can boast of any such claims to transcendent loveliness. Such faces are rare outside of art, Miss Belinda; was Mrs. Fairchild a handsome woman?”
“She was my sister and if I may say so, my favorite sister, but she was no more agreeable to the eye than some others of her family,” grimly returned the heavy browed spinster with a compression of her lips. “What beauty Paula has inherited came from her father. Her chief charm in my eyes, however, springs from her pure nature and the unselfish impulses of her heart.”
“And in mine,” rejoined he quietly. Then with a sudden change of tone as he realized the necessity of saying something definite to this woman in regard to his intentions toward the child, he remarked, “Her great and unusual talents and manifest disposition to learn, demand as you say, superior advantages to any she can have in a small country town like this, fruitful as it has already been to her under your wise and fostering care and such shall she have; but just when and how I cannot say till I have seen my wife and learned what her wishes are likely to be in regard to the subject.”
“You are very kind, sir,” returned Miss Belinda. “I have no doubt as to the goodwill of your intentions, and the child shall be prepared at once for a change.”
“And will the child,” he exclaimed with a smile as Paula reentered the room, “be so kind as to give me her company in the walk I must now take to the cars?”
“Of course,” replied her aunt before the young girl could speak, “we owe you that much attention I am sure.”
And so it was that when he came to retrace his way through the village with its heavy memories, he had a guardian spirit at his side that robbed them of their power to sadden and oppress.
“What shall I say for you to the grim, city streets when I get back?” inquired he as they hastened on over the snow covered road.
“Say to them from me? O you may give them my greeting,” she responded half shyly, half confidingly. Evidently for her he was one of those rare persons whose presence is perfect freedom and with whom she could not only think her best but speak it also. “I should like to make their acquaintance, but indeed they would have to do well to vie in attraction with these white roads girded by their silver-limbed trees. The very rush of life must seem oppressive. So many hopes, so many fears, so many interests jostling you at every step! Yet the thought is exhilarating too; don’t you find it so?”
It was the first question she had asked him and he knew not how to reply. Her eyes were so confiding, he could not bear to shake her faith in his imagined superiority. Yet what thoughts had he ever cherished in walking the busy streets, save those connected with his own selfish hopes and fears, plans and operations? “I have no doubt,” said he after a moment’s pause, “that I have felt this exhilaration of which you speak. Certainly the hurrying masses in Broadway awaken a far different sensation in a man, than this solitary stretch of country road.”
“Yet the road has its companionships,” she murmured. “In the city one thinks most of men, but in the country, of God. Its very solitude compels you.”
“Compels you,” he involuntarily answered. And shuddered as he said it, remembering days when he trod these very roads with anything but reverence in his heart for the Creator of the landscape before him. “Not everyone has the inner vision, my child, to see the love and wisdom back of the works, or rather most men have a vision so short it does not reach so far. Yet I think I can understand what you mean and might even experience your emotions if my eyes had leisure to explore this space and my thoughts to rise out of their usual depressing atmosphere of care and anxiety. You did not think I was a busy man, he continued,” observing her gaze of wonder. “You thought riches brought ease; if you ever come to think, ‘most of men’ you will learn that the wealthy man is the greatest worker, for his rest comes not night or day.”
She shook her head with a sudden doubt. “It is a problem,” she said, “which my knowledge of geometry does not help me to solve.”
“No,” assented he; “and one in which even your fanciful soul would fail to find any poetry. But stop, Paula; isn’t this the place where I found you that day, and you showed me the view up the river?”
“Yes, and it was on that stone I sat; it has a milk-white cushion now; and there is where you stood, looking so tall and grand to my childish eyes! The gates are of pearl now,” she said, pointing to the snow-covered slopes in the west. “I wish the sky had been clear tonight and you could have seen the effect of a rosy sunset falling over those domes of ice and snow.”
“It would leave me less to expect when I come again,”
