How am I changed? My hopes were once like fire;
I loved and I believed that life was love.
Above heaven’s winds, my spirit once did move
All nature by my heart and mind, to make
A paradise on earth, for one dear sake.
I love—but I believe in love no more.
I still aspire—but hope not. And from sleep,
Its long lost flattery now. I wake to weep,
Since none in what I feel take thought or pleasure—
To my own soul its self-consuming treasure.
Shelley.
No words can describe its effect on Lilith.
She sat in the “gloaming,” silent and motionless, her still, white face invisible to the lady, who, after finishing her story, fell into thought, seeming to brood over the past.
124This, then—mused6 Lilith—this peerless, regal beauty was the Miss Von Kirschberg, the woman whom Tudor Hereward had passionately7 loved, and by whom he had been cast off, only on the evening before he had married her—Lilith—to please his dying father, and to be revenged upon his false love! Oh! the bitter wrong! the bitter, bitter dishonor of the wrong!
“Strange—strange; but since Herr Von Bruyin passed away I seem to understand his character better than I ever did before! More than ever before I seem to feel the pure, tender, unselfish love he lavished10 upon me, from my earliest infancy11, even until the day of his death—‘until the day of his death?’ What am I saying? Uttering hastily, and with parrot-like repetition, false, unmeaning words—for there is no death and no limit to love like his. From his home above, he loves me still. And, perhaps, when I, too, shall reach that bright world in which there is no winter and no age, I shall find no disparity between us; but shall see and love him even as he sees and loves me! And that shall be my comfort and his reward.”
The baroness spoke tenderly, meditatively12, with her beautiful head bowed upon her hand, and her fair hair, escaped from the widow’s cap, flowing down over her black-robed shoulders.
Lilith uttered not a word, but she thought:
“This is the woman whom Tudor Hereward denounced as vain, self-seeking, double-dealing; false to him, false to herself, false to her betrothed13, and all because, to keep her plighted14 faith, she had rejected him.”
125And Lilith, through all her own deep pain, felt a tender sympathy with the desolate15 heart of her rival.
At length the baroness spoke again:
“You are very silent, petite. Of what are you thinking?” she softly inquired.
“Of the story you have told me, madame,” gently replied Lilith.
“And what about it, dear?”
“It is very sorrowful. You are not happy, madame; and perhaps you never can be, unless, unless—by——”
“By what, my child?”
“By making others happy. You have such great power of doing good, dear lady!” earnestly replied Lilith.
“What good can I do? I seem of no use in the world!” sighed the baroness.
“By your great wealth, madame,” modestly suggested Lilith.
“Oh, of course, I subscribe16 to all worthy17 charities that are brought to my notice. Le Grange attends to all that! That is, of course, my bounden duty, and I try to do it,” said the baroness.
“Yes, I know you are very liberal and very conscientious18, but——”
“But what, my dear?”
“There are so many, many cases of great poverty, sickness and suffering outside of these organized charities! Aged19, or ill, men and women, and little children, suffering in extremity20 for want of the barest necessaries of life, helpless and dying for lack of help, even in the midst of all these organized charities! These do a vast deal of good, but they cannot do everything! They cannot reach all the suffering!”
“How do you know?” inquired the lady.
“I know from what I see, and hear, and observe 126in the streets, and from what I learn when I go into the poorest tenement21 houses with Aunt Sophie.”
“Aunt Sophie? Who is she, child?”
“Mrs. Downie. My good landlady22. She is a Methodist minister’s widow. She keeps a plain boarding-house, mostly for young ministers and teachers. She is very poor, but very charitable, and when she sees a poor, pale, ragged23 child on the streets trying to make a few pennies by selling matches or pins, she often takes such a child to its own home to see for herself into its circumstances and find out how she can permanently24 benefit it. She has adopted and brought up several of these forlorn children, and settled them respectably in life. She has always one or two on hand. She has one even now. Oh! if I had only plenty of money I would found a home for destitute25 children. I would set Aunt Sophie at its head with the carte blanche to take in all the needy26 children that the home could hold.”
“I know; but there are not enough, else why these poor, little, homeless and friendless ones in the street?”
“Well, petite, I do not feel just yet quite inspired to found such an institution, but, before we sail, I will place in your good Aunt Sophie’s hands a sum of money to aid her charitable work among the friendless children of the street,” said the baroness.
“Will you? Oh, will you, indeed? If you do, you will make a good heart so glad!” exclaimed Lilith, with a beaming face.
“I will, indeed! I will send Le Grange to the house with the check to-morrow,” said the lady.
“Oh! give it with your own hand, dear madame, and you will see what joy you will bring into the dear woman’s face.”
127“I hear what joy I bring into your voice, little one, and I am glad to hear it,” replied the baroness.
In her deep interest in the subject under discussion, Lilith had for the moment forgotten her own griefs.
Even Madame Von Bruyin seemed in better spirits as she said, cheerfully:
“We must have lights now, dear.”
Lilith arose from her low position on the hassock at the lady’s feet.
The baroness also stood up, and drawing her companion’s arm within her own, walked up and down the splendid, illuminated30 room in silence.
It happened that at each end of this room there was a broad and tall mirror that reached from floor to ceiling and reflected the two figures from head to foot—the grand beauty of the Baroness Von Bruyin and the petite grace of Lilith.
The young wife marked the contrast with a sinking and despairing heart. In her admiration31 she greatly exaggerated the power of her rival’s queenly charms, and in her humility32 as much underrated the effects of her own sweet loveliness.
“Ah!” she sighed, from the depths of her desponding spirit. “No wonder he worships this lady, for she is the crowned queen of beauty! No wonder he could not love me, for who am I beside her? No more than a little yellow duckling beside a royal white swan! No! I cannot blame him for adoring her and not liking33 me. But oh! he might have let me alone. He ought not to have married me so lightly and cast me off so easily because I was a duckling and not a swan. Now I remember that he never said 128he loved me. He never professed34 what he never felt for me. And I was so blind I never missed that. Because he asked me to be his wife, I truly thought he loved me, and I did so joyfully35 consent—letting him see how happy and how glad I was of the honor he had done me, the delight he had given me. Oh, the sin of it! Oh, the shame of it! Oh, my angel mother in heaven, if you had been on earth you would never have let your child fall into such a trap. You would have taught her; you would have warned her. Oh, he ought to have been generous; he ought to have remembered that I had no mother; he ought to have let me alone!”
“What is the matter with you, dear child?” inquired the baroness, breaking in upon Lilith’s grievous reverie. “You are so absorbed and distressed36 that you must be in some great trouble, either for yourself or for some one else. Can I do anything for you?”
“No, dear madame; nothing. My passing mood was not worth your attention. A vain regret given to lost treasures, or perhaps only to imaginary treasures that I never really possessed37. I will try to overcome my tendency to fall into these moods,” answered Lilith, with an effort to collect herself.
“Some day, my dear, you will tell me of your past life—a short story, it must be—as frankly38 as I have told you of mine. I will wait patiently until then. But, little one, we have talked and mused, and mused and talked, until the hours have slipped by us unheeded, and now it is so late that you must either stay all night, or allow me to send for a carriage at once to take you home.”
“Oh, thank you, madame. I must go home. Late as it is, Aunt Sophie will expect me,” said Lilith.
Madame Von Bruyin touched the timbre, and 129ordered the attendant who answered the summons to procure39 a carriage.
While Lilith was putting on her hat and gloves the baroness said:
“You may tell this dear Aunt Sophie of the power I intend to place in her hands to help the poor little children.”
“Oh, dear madame, how good you are! But I would rather not tell her. I would rather you should do so first, for the sake of seeing the happy surprise that will light up her face,” said Lilith.
“Very well, then. You may expect me to-morrow morning at the house,” said the baroness.
The attendant entered the room and announced the carriage.
“Ask Monsieur Le Grange to be good enough to step here,” said the baroness.
The man bowed and withdrew.
“Monsieur,” said the baroness, when the old secretary made his appearance and respectfully saluted40 the company, “will you do me the favor to see Mrs. Wyvil home? The carriage waits.”
“With the greatest pleasure, madame,” answered the old gentleman, with his habitual41 deep bow, as he gallantly42 offered his arm to the young lady to lead her from the room.
The baroness drew Lilith up and kissed her cheek before giving her into the care of the polite old secretary, who took her in charge, and bowed himself out of his lady’s presence.
He led Lilith down the stairs, placed her in the carriage, took his seat by her side, and directed the coachman to drive to Mrs. Downie’s, number so and so, such a street.
It was so late when they reached their destination that all the lights were out in the house, except those of the front parlor43.
130The old Frenchman left the carriage, helped Lilith to alight, and led her up to the door. Nor did he leave her until his ring was answered and an old lady appeared to receive the returning guest.
Then he bowed himself down the steps to the carriage and drove off.
“Oh, my dear, I was that uneasy about you; I was thinking of starting out to the hotel to inquire after you,” said Aunt Sophie, as she went into the front parlor to turn off the gas.
“Why should you have been uneasy? What harm could have happened to me even if I had started to come home alone through the streets of a crowded city?” inquired Lilith, as they went upstairs together.
“What harm? Oh, child, you read the papers, and see how busy the devil is and how artful his children are. Every once in a while you see an account of some child or young girl kidnapped and made away with, and I suppose as there’s many and many a case that never even gets into the newspapers.”
“I am sorry to hear that, Aunt Sophie; but there was no danger in my case, for madame sent me home in a carriage, under the care of her aged secretary.”
“So I saw. So I saw. And she was in the right of it. Well, my dear, it is after one o’clock, and I think we had better get to bed as soon as we can,” said the old lady, as they entered the double-bedded chamber44, which they still occupied together.
The room vacated by the minister having been taken by the organist.
Early the next morning, as Aunt Sophie, having got through with the breakfast, was preparing to go to market, Lilith said to her:
“I cannot walk out with you to-day, dear. I am expecting the Baroness Von Bruyin, and as I do not know at what hour she may find it convenient to call, I must stay in until she does.”
131“I am awful jealous of that baroness,” said the little old lady, in a pathetic tone, shaking her little rumpled45 gray head.
“You need not be. There is no woman in the world I love half so much as I do you, dear Aunt Sophie,” said Lilith.
“Well, then, why won’t you live long of me always and be my child, instead of going off to foreign parts with that baroness?”
“Because it would not be right, dear Aunt Sophie.”
“To call on me, and I think she wishes to see you, too, so I shall keep her till you come back from market.”
“No, you needn’t! I don’t want to see that baroness! That I don’t,” said Aunt Sophie, as she tied on her little mashed47 black silk bonnet48, which, like her rumpled fine gray hair, and little baby face, was a part of her gentle personality.
“But I want you to see her, Aunt Sophie. I think you’d get over your prejudice against her.”
“No, I shouldn’t! I’m jealous of her. That’s where it is. I’m awful jealous of her, that I am! But I’ll hurry back from market to see her if you want me to. And if I have to do that I must hurry away now.”
And the dear little woman folded her rusty49 Canton crape shawl across her bosom50 and left the room.
Lilith set the bed-chamber in order and then went down to the front parlor to await the coming of Madame Von Bruyin.
But it was twelve o’clock before the baroness arrived. Aunt Sophie had come home from market and “fixed herself up” to receive the great lady, by putting on her Sunday gown, a thin, rusty black silk, and tying a bobbinet fichu crookedly51 around her neck, 132but she could not sit in state to receive her visitor. She was too busy overseeing the cook get dinner for the boarders.
“Besides, what does she want to see me for, I would like to know?” she asked herself.
So she was shelling peas in the kitchen when word was brought to her that there was a lady in the parlor waiting to see her.
She put the pan of peas on the table, took off her “check” apron52, shook down her dress and went upstairs to see the visitor.
She found a tall, beautiful woman, dressed in deep mourning, the black crape vail thrown back, revealing a fair face, with delicately blooming cheeks, large, soft, violet eyes, and rippling53 golden hair, just visible under the borders of her widow’s cap.
Gentle Aunt Sophie was won, despite herself, by the sweet, pensive54 smile with which the lady received her own rather cold greeting, when Lilith had introduced the parties to each other.
After some little preliminary conversation about the early setting in of summer; the unusual warmth of the weather for only the last week in May; the prospective55 sea voyage in June, and the probability of fair winds and good weather, the main object of Madame Von Bruyin’s visit was artfully introduced.
It required some tact56 on the part of the baroness and her young companion to deal with a woman as shy, jealous and peculiar57 as the minister’s widow, under such circumstances as these.
But when Madame Von Bruyin briefly58 explained that the news of Mrs. Downie’s mission among the street children had awakened59 her own interest to a very great extent, and had inspired her with a wish to serve them—which, owing to her swiftly approaching embarkation60 to Europe, she could not personally carry out—and when she begged as a great personal 133favor that Mrs. Downie would act as her almoner, with carte blanche to use the donation according to discretion61, and ended by placing a check for a thousand dollars in Aunt Sophie’s hands—
Well, she, good soul, did not utter one word of thanks!
But her whole form vibrated and her face beamed with joy and thankfulness. Tears of joy filled her eyes as she faltered62, almost inarticulately:
“Oh! how much good you will do with all this, madame! How much good you will do!”
“If so, it will be through your hands, dear friend,” replied the baroness, rising to take leave.
Mrs. Downie, with the most old-fashioned, time-out-of-mind hospitality, would have pressed her to stay to dinner, to stay to tea, to spend the whole evening, but the baroness smiled, pleaded a pressure of engagements, and departed.
“She’s good! she’s mighty63 good. But, oh! what a sinner I am. For I’m so awful jealous of her, all the same. But I can’t help it, and it’s all because of you, honey,” said Aunt Sophie, as soon as she was left alone with Lilith. “I must get the brethren to pray for me,” she added.
From that memorable64 evening on which Madame Von Bruyin had told her own heart history to Lilith Hereward, the two friends were drawn65 closer together in sympathy and affection.
It was strange that Hereward’s young wife, though she admired her husband’s first love so excessively, and underrated her own self so humbly66, yet felt no great jealousy67 of her rival.
Perhaps it was because Tudor himself had been the first to tell her of that first love, that mad though “brief infatuation,” as he had called it; and because, on referring to its object, he had spoken of her only in terms of contempt and displeasure; so, at any rate, 134for this cause or for that, Lilith, on cool reflection, saw no cause to be jealous of her beautiful rival. She felt even some compassion68 for her, as for a fellow-sufferer from Hereward’s great injustice—for had not Hereward denounced her as a false woman, a self-seeker, a double-dealer, a coquette, a traitress, a jilt? And all because Leda Von Kirschberg, after having promised her hand, discovered that she had a heart, and tried to do her duty between the two!
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1
aspire
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| vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于 | |
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implore
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| vt.乞求，恳求，哀求 | |
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gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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baroness
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| n.男爵夫人，女男爵 | |
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6
mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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10
lavished
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| v.过分给予，滥施( lavish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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meditatively
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| adv.冥想地 | |
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betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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plighted
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| vt.保证，约定（plight的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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subscribe
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| vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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tenement
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| n.公寓；房屋 | |
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landlady
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| n.女房东，女地主 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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asylums
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| n.避难所( asylum的名词复数 )；庇护；政治避难；精神病院 | |
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timbre
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| n.音色，音质 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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joyfully
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| adv. 喜悦地, 高兴地 | |
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distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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procure
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| vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条 | |
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saluted
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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gallantly
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| adv. 漂亮地，勇敢地，献殷勤地 | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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rumpled
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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mashed
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| a.捣烂的 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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crookedly
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| adv. 弯曲地，不诚实地 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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pensive
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| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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embarkation
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| n. 乘船, 搭机, 开船 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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62
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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63
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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64
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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65
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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66
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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67
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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68
compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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