The Sword of Damocles

spot. I leaned back sick and horror-stricken against the wall. There was no mercy in his voice: he had awakened to a full realization of the situation and the pride of the Japhas had made him steel.

“ ‘You are my child!’ he was saying. ‘I have loved you and do still; but proceed one step farther towards the man that awaits you at the gate, and the door that opens upon you, shuts never to open again!’

“ ‘Colonel!’ I exclaimed, starting forward; but he heard me no more than he would a fly buzzing or a bird singing.

“ ‘I desire it to shut; I have no wish to come back!’ issued from the set white lips of the girl beneath us. ‘There is no such charm for me in this humdrum house, that I should wish to exchange life with the man I adore, for its droning, spiritless existence!’ And she lifted her foot to proceed.

“ ‘Jacqueline!’ I shrieked, leaning forward in my turn, and holding her by my anguish, as I never believed she could be held by anything, ‘Think, child, think what you do! It is not life you are going to but death. A man who can take a young girl from her father’s house, from her lover’s arms, from her mother’s grave, from the shrine of all that is pure and holy, to dash her into a pit of all that is corrupt, loathsome and deadly, is not one with whom you can live. You say you adore him: can one adore falsehood, selfishness and depravity? Does hypocrisy win love? Can the embraces of a serpent bring peace? Jacqueline, Jacqueline, you are yet pure; come back to our love and our hearts, before we die here in our shame at the head of the stairs, where your mother was carried out to her grave!’

“She trembled. I saw the hand that clutched the banister loosen its grip; she cast one quick look behind her, and her eyes flashed upon her father’s face; it was set like a flint.

“ ‘If you come back,’ cried he, leaning towards her, but not advancing a step from where he stood, ‘you must come back of your own free will. I will hold no creature prisoner in my house. I must trust you implicitly, or not at all. Speak then, which shall it be?’ And he raised his hand above his head, with a supreme and awful gesture, ‘a father’s blessing or a father’s curse?’

“ ‘A father’s curse, then! since you command me to choose,’ rang out from her lips in a burst of uncontrollable passion. ‘I want no blessing that separates me from him!’ And she pointed towards the door with a look that, defiant as it was, spoke of a terrible love before which all our warnings and entreaties were but as empty air.

“ ‘Curses then upon your head, slayer of a family’s honor, a father’s love, and a mother’s memory! Curses upon you, at home and abroad! in the joy of your first passion and in the agony of your last despair! May you live to look upon that door as the gateway to heaven, and find it shut! May your children, if you are cursed with them, turn in your face, as you are turning now in mine! May the lightning of heaven be your candle, and the blackness of death your daily food and your nightly drink!’ And with a look in which all the terrors he invoked, seemed to crash downward from his reeling brain upon her shrinking terror-crouched head, he gave one mighty gasp and fell back stricken to the floor.

“ ‘God!’ burst from her lips, and she rushed downwards to the door like a creature hunted to its quarry. I saw her white face gleam marble-like in the fading light that came in from the chinks about the door. I saw her trembling hand fumbling with the knob, and rousing from my stupor, called down to her with all the force of a breaking heart,

“ ‘Jacqueline, beware!’

“She turned once more. There was something in my voice she could not withstand. ‘I do not hope to keep you,’ cried I, ‘but before you go, hear this. In the days to come, when the face that now beams upon you with such longing, shall have learned to turn from you in weariness, if not distaste, when hunger, cold, contumely and disease shall have blasted that fair brow and seared those soft cheeks, know, that although a father can curse, a woman who loves like a mother can forgive.’ The father cries, ‘Once go out of that door and it shuts upon you never to open!’ ‘Once come to that door, say I,’ pointing in the direction of the house’s other entrance, ‘and if I live and if I move, it shall open to you, were you as defiled and wretched and forsaken as Magdalen. Remember! Each day at this hour will I watch for you, kneeling upon its threshold. In sickness or in health, in joy or in sorrow, in cold or in heat. The hour of six is sacred. Some one of them shall see you falling weeping on my breast!’

“She gave me a quick stare out of her wide black eyes, then a mocking smile curled her lips, and murmuring a short, ‘You rave!’ opened the door, and rushed out into the falling dusk. With a resounding clang like the noise of a stone rolled upon an open grave, the great door swung to, and I was left alone in that desolated house with my stricken master.

XXVII

The Lone Watcher

“Hark! to the hurried question of Despair,
Where is my child?⁠—and Echo answers⁠—Where?”

Byron

“Colonel Japha recovered from his shock, but was never the same man again. All that was genial, affectionate and confiding in his nature, had been turned as by a lightning’s stroke, to all that was hard, bitter and suspicious. He would not allow the name of Jacqueline to be spoken in his presence; he would listen to