The Sword of Damocles

much as touched her head.
Twenty wretches lie below there with the brothers of Germain,
Twenty foemen of her honor that I, Enguerrand, have slain.

“But one other foe remaineth, one remaineth yet,” he cried,
“Which it fits this hand to punish ere you cross unto your bride.
It is I, Enguerrand!” shrieked he; “and as I have slain the rest,
So I smite this foeman also!”⁠—and his sword plunged through his breast.

O the horror of that moment! “Art thou mad my Enguerrand?”
Cried his master, striving wildly to withdraw the fatal brand.
But the stern youth smiling sadly, started back from his embrace,
While a flash like summer lightning, flickered direful on his face.

“Yes, a traitor worse than Sassard;” and he pointed down the stair,
“For my heart has dared to love her whom my hand defended there.
While the others fought for honor, I by passion was made strong,
Set your heel upon my bosom for my soul has done you wrong.

“But,” and here he swayed and faltered till his knee sank on the floor,
Yet in falling turned his forehead ever toward that silent door;
“But your warrior hand my master, may take mine without a stain,
For my hand has e’er been loyal, and your enemy is slain.”

A short silence followed the last word, then a burst of applause testified to the appreciation of her audience, and Paula crept away to hide her blushing cheeks in the comparative darkness of a little vine-covered balcony that jutted out from the anteroom. What were her thoughts as she leaned there! In the subsidence of any great emotion⁠—and Paula had felt every word she uttered⁠—there is more or less of shock and tumult. She did not think, she only felt. Suddenly a hand was laid on her arm and a low voice whispered in her ear,

“Did you write that poem yourself?”

Turning, she encountered the shadowy form of a woman leaning close at her side and appearing in the dim light that shone on her from the lamps beyond, an eager image of expectancy.

“Yes,” returned Paula, “why do you ask?”

The woman, whoever she was, did not answer. “And you believe in such devotion as that!” she murmured. “You can understand a man, aye, or a woman either, risking happiness and fame, life and death, for the sake of a trust! Such things are not folly to you! You could see a heart spill itself drop by drop through a longer vigil than the eight months watching on the ramparts, and not sneer at a fidelity that could not falter because it had given its word? Speak; you write of faithfulness with a pen of fire, is your heart faithful too?”

There was something in these words, spoken as they were in a tone of suppressed passion, that startled and aroused Paula. Leaning forward, she endeavored to see the face of the woman who thus forcibly addressed her, but the light was too dim. The outline of a brow covered by some close headgear was all she could detect.

“You speak earnestly,” said Paula, “but that is what I like. Fidelity to a cause, or fidelity to a trust, demands the sympathy and admiration of all honest and generous hearts. If I am ever called upon to maintain either, I hope that my enthusiasm will not have all been expended in words.”

“You please me,” murmured the woman, “you please me; will you come and see me and let me tell you a story to mate the poem you have given us tonight?”

The trembling eagerness of her tone it would be impossible to describe. Paula was thrilled by it. “If you will tell me who you are,” said Paula, “I certainly will try and come. I should be glad to hear anything you have to relate to me.”

“I thought everyone knew who I was,” returned the woman; and drawing Paula back into the anteroom, she turned her face upon her. “Anyone will tell you where Margery Hamlin lives,” said she. “Do not disappoint me, and do not keep me waiting long.” And with a nod and a deep strange smile that made her aged face almost youthful, she entered the crowd and disappeared from Paula’s sight.

It was the woman whose nightly visits to the deserted home of the Japhas had once been the talk and was still the unsolved mystery of the town.

XXIV

The Japha Mansion

“Ah what a warning for a thoughtless man,
Could field or grove, could any spot on earth
Show to his eye an image of the pangs
Which it has witnessed; render back an echo
Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod.

Wordsworth

Unexplained actions if long continued, lose after awhile their interest if not their mystery. The aged lady who now for many years had been seen at every nightfall to leave her home, traverse the village streets, enter the Japha mansion, remain there an hour and then reissue with tremulous steps and bowed head, had become so common a sight to the village eye, that even the children forgot to ask what her errand was, or why she held her head so hopefully when she entered, or looked so despondent when she came forth.

But to Paula, for reasons already mentioned, this secret and persistent vigil in a forsaken and mysterious dwelling, was fraught with a significance which had never lost its power either to excite her curiosity or to arouse her imagination. Many a time had she gone home from some late encounter with the aged lady, to brood by the hour upon the expression of that restless eye which in its wanderings never failed to turn upon her own youthful face and linger there in the manner I have already noted. She thought of it by night, she thought of it by day. She felt herself drawn to that woman’s suffering heart as by invisible cords. To understand the feelings of this desolate being, she had even studied the face of that old house, until she knew it under its every aspect. Often in shutting her eyes at night,