The Sword of Damocles Part 15

_Oph._--What means this, my lord?

_Ham._--Marry, this is the miching mallecho; it means mischief."

--HAMLET.

A ride in the Central Park is an every-day matter to most people. It signifies an indolent bowling over a smooth road all alive with the glitter of pa.s.sing equipages, waving ribbons and fluttering plumes, and brightened now and then by the sight of a well known face amid the general rush of old and young, plain and handsome, sad and gay countenances that flash by you in one long and brilliant procession.

But to Paula and her friend Miss Stuyvesant starting out in the early freshness of a fair April morning, it meant new life, reawakening joy, the sparkle of young leaves just loosed from the bonds of winter, the sweetness and promise of spring airs, and all the budding glory of a new year with its summer of countless roses and its autumn of incalculable glories. Not the twitter of a bird was lost to them, not the smile of an opening flower, not the welcome of a waving branch. Youth, joy, and innocence lived in their hearts and showed them nothing in the mirror of nature that was not equally young, joyous and innocent. Then they were alone, or sufficiently so. The stray wanderers whom they met sitting under the flowering trees, were equally with themselves lovers of nature or they would not be seated in converse with it at this early hour; while the laugh of little children startled from their play by the prance of their high-stepping horses, was only another expression of the sweet but unexpressed delight that breathed in all the radiant atmosphere.

"We are two birds who have escaped thralldom and are taking our first flight into our natural ether," cried Miss Stuyvesant gaily.

"We are two pioneers lit by the spirit of adventure, who have left the cosy hearth of wintry-fires to explore the domains of the frost king, and lo, we have come upon a Paradise of bloom and color!" responded the ringing voice of Paula.

"I feel as if I could mount that little white cloud we see over there,"

continued Cicely with a quick lively wave of her whip. "I wonder how Dandy would enjoy an empyrean journey?"

"From the haughty bend of his neck I should say he was quite satisfied with his present condition. But perhaps his chief pride is due to the mistress he carries."

"Are you attempting to vie with Mr. Williams, Paula?"

Mr. Williams was the meek-eyed, fair complexioned gentleman, whose predilection for compliment was just then a subject of talk in fas.h.i.+onable circles.

"Only so far as my admiration goes of the most charming lady I see this morning. But who is this?"

Miss Stuyvesant looked up. "Ah, that is some one with whom there is very little danger of your falling in love."

Paula blushed. The gentleman approaching them upon horseback was conspicuous for long side whiskers of a decidedly auburn tinge.

"His name is--" But she had not time to finish, for the gentleman with a glance of astonished delight at Paula, bowed to the speaker with a liveliness and grace that demanded some recognition.

Instantly he drew rein. "Do I behold Miss Stuyvesant among the nymphs!"

cried he, in those ringing pleasant tones that at once predispose you towards their possessor.

"If you allude to my friend Miss Fairchild, you certainly do, Mr.

Ensign," the wicked little lady rejoined with a waiving of her usual ceremony that astonished Paula.

Mr. Ensign bestowed upon them his most courtly bow, but the flush that mounted to his brow--making his face one red, as certain of his friends were malicious enough to observe on similar occasions--indicated that he had been taken a little more at his word than perhaps suited even one of his easy and proverbially careless temperament. "Miss Fairchild will understand that I am not a Harvey Williams--at least before an introduction," said he with something like seriousness.

But at this allusion to the gentleman whose name had been upon their lips but a moment before, both ladies laughed outright.

"I have just been accused of attempting the role of that gentleman myself," exclaimed Paula. "If the fresh morning air will persist in painting such roses on ladies' cheeks," continued she, with a loving look at her pretty companion "what can one be expected to do?"

"Admire," quoth the red bannered cavalier with a glance, however, at the beautiful speaker instead of the demure little Cicely at her side.

Miss Stuyvesant perceived this look and a curious smile disturbed the corners of her rosy lips. "What a fortunate man to be able to do the right thing at the right time," laughed she, gaily touching up her horse that was beginning to show symptoms of restlessness.

"If Miss Stuyvesant will put that in the future tense and then a.s.sure us she has been among the prophets, I should be singularly obliged," said he with a touch of his hat and a smiling look at Paula that was at once manly and gentle, careless and yet respectful.

"Ah, life is too bright for prophesies this morning. The moment is enough."

"Is it Miss Fairchild?" queried Mr. Ensign looking back over his shoulder.

She turned just a bit of her cheek towards him. "What Miss Stuyvesant declares to be true, that am I bound to believe," said she, and with the least little ripple of a laugh, rode on.

"It is a pity you have such a dislike for whiskers," Cicely presently remarked with an air of great gravity.

Paula gave a start and cast a glance of reproach at her companion. "I did not notice his whiskers after the first word or two," said she, fixing her eyes on a turn of the road before them. "Such cheerfulness is infectious. I was merry before, but now I feel as if I had been bathed in suns.h.i.+ne."

Cicely's eyes flashed wide with surprise and her face grew serious in earnest. "Mr. Ensign is a delightful companion," observed she; "a room is always brighter for his entrance; and with all that, he is the only young man I know, who having come into a large fortune, feels any of the responsibilities of his position. The suns.h.i.+ne is the result of a good heart and pure living, and that is what makes it infectious, I suppose."

"Let us canter," said Paula. And so the glad young things swept on, life breaking in bubbles around them and rippling away into unfathomable wells of feeling in one of their pure hearts at least. Suddenly a hand seemed to swoop from heaven and dash them both back in dismay. They had reached one of those places where the foot path crosses the equestrian and they had run over and thrown down a little child.

"O heaven!" cried Paula leaping from her horse, "I had rather been killed myself." The groom rode up and she bent anxiously over the child.

It was a boy of some seven or eight years, whose misfortune--he was lame, as the little crutch fallen at his side sufficiently denoted--made appear much younger. He had been struck on his arm and was moaning with pain, but did not seem to be otherwise hurt. "Are you alone?" cried Paula, lifting his head on her arm and glancing hurriedly about.

The little fellow raised his heavy lids and for a moment stared into her face with eyes so deeply blue and beautiful they almost startled her, then with an effort pointed down the path, saying,

"Dad's over there in the long tunnel talking to some one. Tell him I got hurt. I want Dad."

She gently lifted him to his feet and led him out of the road into the apparently deserted path where she made him sit down. "I am going to find his father," said Paula to Cicely, "I will be back in a moment."

"But wait; you shall not go alone," authoritatively exclaimed that little damsel, leaping in her turn to the ground. "Where does he say his father is?"

"In the tunnel, by which I suppose he means that long pa.s.sage under the bridge over there."

Holding up the skirts of their riding-habits in their trembling right hands, they hurried forward. Suddenly they both paused. A woman had crossed their path; a woman whom to look at but once was to remember with ghastly shrinking for a lifetime. She was wrapped in a long and ragged cloak, and her eyes, startling in their blackness, were fixed upon the pain-drawn countenance of the poor little hurt boy behind them, with a gleam whose feverish hatred and deep malignant enjoyment of his very evident sufferings, was like a revelation from the lowest pit to the two innocent-minded girls hastening forward on their errand of mercy.

"Is he much hurt?" gasped the woman in an ineffectual effort to conceal the evil nature of her interest. "Do you think he will die?" with a shrill lingering emphasis on the last word as if she longed to roll it like a sweet morsel under her tongue.

"Who are you?" asked Cicely, shrinking to one side with dilated eyes fixed on the woman's hardened countenance and the white, too white hand with which she had pointed as she spoke of the child.

"Are you his mother?" queried Paula, paling at the thought but keeping her ground with an air of unconscious authority.

"His mother!" shrieked the woman, hugging herself in her long cloak and laughing with fiendish sarcasm: "I look like his mother, don't I? His eyes--did you notice his eyes? they are just like mine, aren't they? and his body, poor weazen little thing, looks as if it had drawn sustenance from mine, don't it? His mother! O heaven!"

Nothing like the suppressed force of this invocation seething as it was with the worst pa.s.sions of a depraved human nature, had ever startled those ears before. Clasping Cicely by the hand, she called out to the groom behind them, "Guard that child as you would your life!" and then flas.h.i.+ng upon the wretched creature before her with all the force of her aroused nature, she exclaimed, "If you are not his mother, move aside and let us pa.s.s, we are in search of a.s.sistance."

For an instant the woman stood awe-struck before this vision of maidenly beauty and indignation, then she laughed and cried out with shrill emphasis:

"When next you look like that, go to your mirror, and when you see the image it reflects, say to yourself, 'So once looked the woman who defied me in the Park!'"

With a quick shudder and a feeling as if the noisome cloak of this degraded being had somehow been dropped upon her own fair and spotless shoulders, Paula clasped the hand of Cicely more tightly in her own, and rushed with her down the steps that led into the underground pa.s.sage towards which they had been directed.

There were but two persons in it when they entered. A short thickset man and another man of a slighter and more gentlemanly build. They were engaged in talking, and the latter was bringing down his right hand upon the palm of his left with a gesture almost foreign in its expressive energy.

"I tell you," declared he, with a voice that while low, reverberated through the hollow vault above him with strange intensity, "I tell you I've got my grip on a certain rich man in this city, and if you will only wait, you shall see strange things. I don't know his name and I don't know his face, but I do know what he has done, and a thousand dollars down couldn't buy the knowledge of me."