The Sword of Damocles

her hand and hurried her back into the room below. “I will tell you where I have waited and watched so long. Only be patient till I light the lamp. It is getting late and any chance wanderer going by and seeing all dark, might think I had forgotten my promise and was not here.”

XXV

Jacqueline

“The cold in clime are cold in blood,
And love as scarce deserves the name,
But mine is like the lava flood
That burns in Etna’s breast of flame.”

Byron

“There are some men that have the appearance of being devoid of family affection, who in reality cherish it in the deepest and most passionate degree. Such a man was Colonel Japha. You have doubtless heard from your cradle what the neighbors thought of this stately, old fashioned gentleman. He was too handsome in his youth, too proudly reticent in his manhood, too self-contained and unrelenting in his age, not to be the talk of any town that numbered him among its inhabitants. But only from myself, a relative of the family and his housekeeper for years, can you learn with what undeviating faith and love he clung to the few upon whom he allowed his heart to fasten in affection. When he married Miss Carey, the world said, ‘He has chosen a beauty, because fine manners and a pretty face look well behind the Japha coffee-urn!’ But we, that is, this same young wife and myself, knew that in marrying her he had taken unto himself his other half, the one sweet woman for whom his proud heart could beat and before whom his stately head could bow. When she died, the world exclaimed, ‘He will soon fill her place!’ But I who watched the last look that passed between them in the valley of the shadow of that death, knew that the years would come and the years would go without seeing Colonel Japha marry again.

“The little babe whom she left to his care, took all the love which he had left. From the moment it began to speak, he centered in its tiny life all the hope and all the pride of his solitary heart. And the Japha pride was nearly as great as the Japha heart. She was a pretty child; not a beauty like her mother or like you, my dear, who however so nearly resemble her. But for all that, pretty enough to satisfy the eyes of her secretly doting father, and her openly doting nurse and cousin. I say secretly doting father. I do not mean by that that he regarded her with an affection which he never displayed, but that it was his way to lavish his caresses at home and in the privacy of her little nursery. He never made a parade of anything but his pride. If he loved her, it was enough for her to know it. In the street and the houses of their friends, he was the strict, somewhat severe father, to whom her childish eyes lifted at first with awe, but afterwards with a quiet defiance, that when I first saw it, made my heart stand still with unreasoning alarm.

“She was so reserved a child and yet so deeply passionate. From the beginning I felt that I did not understand her. I loved her; I have never loved any mortal as I did her⁠—and do; but I could not follow her impulses or judge of her feelings by her looks.

“When she grew older it was still worse. She never contradicted her father, or appeared in any open way to disobey his commands, or thwart him in his plans. Yet she always did what she pleased, and that so quietly, he frequently did not observe that matters had taken any other direction, than that which he had himself ordained. ‘It is her mother’s tact,’ he used to say. Alas it was something more than that; it was her father’s will united to the unscrupulousness of some forgotten ancestor.

“But with the glamour of her eighteen years upon me, I did not recognize this then, any more than he. I saw her through the magic glasses of my own absorbing love, and tremble as I frequently would in the still scorn of her unfathomable passion, I never dreamed she could do anything that would seriously offend her father’s affection or mortify his pride. The truth is, that Jacqueline did not love us. Say what you will of the claims of kindred, and the right of every father to his childrens’ regard, Jacqueline Japha accepted the devotion that was lavished upon her, but she gave none in return. She could not, perhaps. Her father was too cold in public and too warm in his home-bursts of affection. I was plain and a widow; no mate for her in age, condition or estate. She could neither look up to me nor lean upon me. I had been her nurse in childhood and though a relative, was still a dependent; what was there in all that to love! If her mother had lived⁠—But we will not dwell on possibilities. Jacqueline had no mother and no friend that was dear enough to her, to teach her unwilling soul the great lesson of self-control and sacrifice.

“You will say that is strange. That situated as she was, she ought to have found friends both dear and congenial; but that would be to declare that Jacqueline was like others of her age and class, whereas she was single and alone; a dark-browed girl, who allured the gaze of both men and women, but who cared but little for anyone till⁠—But wait, child. I shall have to speak of matters that will cause your cheeks to blush. Lay your head down on my knee, for I cannot bear the sight of blushes upon a cheek more innocent than hers.”

With a gentle movement she urged Paula to sit upon a little stool at her feet, pressed the young girl’s head down upon