If I didn't, I should lose my run among certain people. And then," he added, as he thought of his mother and aunt, "then there would be trouble." Thenceforward Stanley came often to Ernst's room to watch the progress of "The Rescue," and to tell him that it was sure of success. It was not long either before he gave the young German another startling piece of information. "That old girl downstairs is in love with you," he said, through a cloud of tobacco smoke. "What old curl?" asked Ernst, staring with the calm innocence of a child. When Ernst, convinced that Janet "lofed him a great teal," felt himself bound to declare an affection for her, and ask her to be his wife, the poor, lonely, hitherto unloved girl was fairly broken down by the revelation. She burst into tears, threw herself on her old, hard sofa, buried her face in the threadbare cushion, and sobbed out a spasm of mingled joy and terror. "Oh! can this be true?" she finally burst forth, when she became conscious of his hand in hers. "Is it true?" she demanded, sitting up and looking eagerly at him. "If it isn't, take it back. Don't tell it me any more. It would kill me to find out that it isn't trueoh, it would kill me." "It is endirely drue, my tear Chanet," was the adorable falsehood of the chivalrous Ger man. "I owe all to you. My life will not bay the debt. But I do not insist upon marriage excebt when you wish it. You must chudge for yourself when it will be brudent." At this moment Janet caught a view of herself in her mirror. Flushed with joy and love Ernst became still more solemn, and was she looked almost handsome, and it seemed to evidently in profound thought. "You must be careful and not trifle with her young affections," Stanley continued, with a rather hard-hearted smile, such as we accord to the heart-troubles of old maids. "I shall not dryvle with them," replied Ernst, with a seriousness which silenced the American. During Stanley's next visit Ernst said to him, "I have peen seeing for myself, und I pelieve you are right." "Right? Oh, about the shadow." "No. Apout Miss Chanet Holcum. I pelieve she is in lofe with me." "Well, what are you going to do?" laughed Stanley. her for a moment that she was young and desirable. The illusion helped her to believe what she could not help longing to believe. Drawn by Ernst's pitying embrace, she believed that it was the embrace of affection, and she let her head fall upon his shoulder, with the words, "Oh, my darling!" Henceforward they were engaged, though when they would be married neither of them could say, not even the old and wise (only half wise) Janet. With her, life was a delicious dream, forgetful altogether of the hard past and careless often of the doubtful future. With him life was a point of honour and of duty, an obedience to self-respect and a rendering of obligations. His ways were naturally so caressing, and he was so conscientiously assiduous in his attentions to her, that he thoroughly deceived even the suspiciousness of her humble and shy nature. In the main she believed entirely in his affection, amazing as the acqui "I haf but one thing to do. If she wishes to marry me, I must marry her. I owe her my life. I owe her this picture, which you say is goot. I haf lived on her money. As a man of honour, I must sacrifice myself to her; that is, if she wishes it. What else can I do?"sition seemed to her, and much as she doubted "Good Lord! don't be a fool," remonstrated Stanley. "You don't love her, of course?" "I haf the very highest resbect for her. She is an atmirable woman." "Yes, I know. I suppose so. But this is carrying respect and gratitude a little too far. She is twelve or fifteen years older than you. You could not be happy with her. Come now! don't be hasty." "I will not be hasty. It all debends on whether she lofes me a great teal. We will see." her worthiness of it. It is quite possible that there was not at that time in New York a happier woman than this almost penniless old maid, betrothed to a young artist who was encumbered with debts, and who did not love her. Such are the joys of this world: half of them, at least, delusions; the other half transitory. At last "The Rescue" was sold. Stanley went with Ernst to the picture-dealer's; demanded, with much pomp of manner, a private CHANET. audience, exposed the canvas in the best light, and asked five hundred dollars for it. "It is worth it," confessed Mr. Moineau. "Only there is no name. If you would put your name to it, Mr. Stanley?" "Mine! I am only a portrait-painter." "Yes, but you are known. It would sell the picture." "Gif him the name," interposed Ernst, with the eagerness of a beggar grasping at alms. "It's a downright swindle," said the generous American. "I couldn't do such a group to save my life. I won't take the credit of it. "Both names?" suggested the dealer in genius. It was agreed to; the picture went on the market as the joint production of Stanley and Hartmann. The latter, perfectly satisfied, and indeed overjoyed, pocketed the five hundred dollars; the former, in spite of his private disclaimers, pocketed something considerable in the way of glory. At Ernst's request Janet Holcum had kept a strict account of her expenses in his behalf; and although he had used sharp economy, the balance against him amounted to four hundred and thirty dollars. On reaching home he went to her room, gave her a smile of child-like joy in response to her smile of anxiety, and tossed the sum of his earnings into her lap. Instead of hailing his good fortune with gladness, she seemed to shrink from the money, laid it coldly on a table, rose to her feet with a pale face, and said in a strange voice, "Well-you are free." "No, my tear Chanet," he replied, "I am your slave." "That is not what I want," she stammered, trembling visibly. "I cannot submit to any such understanding. Mr. Hartmann, it is my duty to tender you your liberty." 'My tarling Chanet, what does this mean?" asked Ernst, putting his arm around her waist and drawing her to him. "My self-respect impels me to it," she said, beginning to cry. "I fear that you proposed to me out of a sense of obligation. The obligation is now cancelled. It was weak in me to accept you. I must make amends for it. Indeed, indeed, I must-you are free.' The gentlest caresses, the sweetest protestations answered her and overwhelmed her fainting resolution. After a minute, and a very little minute it was too, she could not help letting her head go on his shoulder and sobbing out, "Oh! can I believe you? You make me so perfectly happy that I must believe 111 you. Oh, you are my life, my all. I worship you." For a week or more this sunshine of confidence and joy shone through an unclouded heart. She loved her man-her first man, remember-gathered late in her maying-with a sort of double affection-the love of a betrothed and of a mother. And because he returned it, or rather because she believed that he did, she felt that she owed him a life of gratitude, adoration, obedience, every sweet sentiment and every good work. She was amazingly influenced by him; one might almost say, revolutionized. A teetotaller, believing that the wine recommended by Paul to Timothy was not intoxicating, and that all drinkers of ale and cider deserved the names of tipplers and guzzlers, she found nothing hateful now in the smell of lager. A hater of tobacco, she filled Ernst's pipe. An admirer of Johnsonian diction, she talked to him like a little child. There is no knowing whither this youth might not have carried this mature woman. She was infatuated. From one point of view, it was laughable; from another, it was beautiful and pathetic. It is not in the nature of things that a weman of thirty-eight, who is engaged to a handsome man of twenty-five, should remain always calmly sure of her conquest. An event was approaching which was destined to cast upon this happy heart a shadow of uneasiness. As Janet sat, one holiday afternoon, beside her Ernst, watching the growth of meaning and beauty under his pencil, she said to him abruptly, "My little cousin will be here soon." "So?" replied the painter without stopping his work. "I must get her a bresent; shall it pe a toll?" "A doll! She wouldn't thank you. She is nineteen years old.” prise. "So!" exclaimed Ernst, looking up in sur"Then she cannot pe fery little." "I have got her a situation in my school. She has finished her education, and must begin to earn her living.' " "That is goot," smiled the artist. "We will make one family." "My darling, I wanted to tell you" hesitated Janet. "We must say nothing about our engagement for the present. That is, I would rather you would not, if it makes no difference to you." "Why?" asked the painter, stopping his work and staring at her in surprise. "Because," stammered and blushed this engaged old maid—“because I am ashamed. Not of you! Oh no, dearest. But she will think it so queer. And then it may never come to anything-we are so poor. At least it may be a long time first. Well, until our way is a little more clear before us, I would rather the engagement should be kept a secret. You are not annoyed, are you, Ernst?" "No," replied Ernst calmly, not understanding too well, and not caring quite enough. "Well," continued the shy and fastidious Janet, then it shall be so. We will be just good friends in the eyes of Nellie until-until it shall seem best to let her know On the morrow arrived Nellie Fisher, a plump, lively, laughing little blonde, with eyes of a deep turquoise blue, hair of the lightest and flossiest flaxen, a face somewhat broad and nose somewhat short, beautiful in the German peasant style, but undeniably beautiful. Ernst, who was present at the meeting of the two cousins, glanced at the visitor so frequently and with an expression so full of mysterious meaning, that Janet's interest was aroused. At the first chance for an aside she said to him, "Well, what do you think of her?" How?" he asked coolly, for she tempted him in a distressing manner, and he felt that he must allow himself no expansion. "Oh! you don't want to do it," she replied, with a little sunny pout which she had, and which was irresistible. "I am sure I wish to unable to bear her pout. you?" blease you," he said, "How can I flatter "You could put me into one of your pic "She looks like the one in Chermany," he Does the reader divine what she foresaw? Ernst's heart was empty. Janet did not inhabit it; had not even entered into it. The unnamed girl whom he had loved in Prussia had by heroic efforts been so far expelled from it, that he did not desire ever again to see her. But her former residence there had so moulded the abode, that any one who resembled her could seize upon it, occupy it, and fill it. What now happened to the young man was apparently love at first sight, but was really no more than the transferring of an old love to a new object. A week after he first met Nellie Fisher the thought of her could fill him with delicious reveries, while the thought of his troth-plight to Janet Holcum was sufficient to make him meditate once more upon suicide. And the girl? He and she met every day, and two or three times a day. In spite of his conscientious efforts to control himself, there was in his manner toward her a tenderness, which, reinforced by his beauty, his graceful address, and the glamour of his artistic ability, could not but move the heart of a child of nineteen who had never hoped for so fine an admirer. In a little while Nellie began to flutter at sight of him, and to pet him in spite of her flutterings. "Isn't he charming?" she said to her cousin. "I should be charmed to do it," admitted the over-tempted artist. The next day the two women beheld Nellie's bewitching face, drawn and coloured with all the fervour of an art which loves, smiling from Ernst's canvas. The younger blushed and bridled with joy to see herself there and so beautiful; the elder wore a fixed, mechanical smile, and said repeatedly, “What an excellent likeness!" He had never put Janet's face into his creations. She did not blame him for that; she believed that he could do nothing agreeable with it; she surveyed herself in the glass and sighed, "I am so ugly!" But to see Nellie on that easel, painted by his hand, and painted so well, it was driving a dagger into her beating heart. That very day Ernst, in a fit of noble remorse and self-sacrifice, said to Janet in private, "I wish you would let me inform Nellie of our troth-plight. I think it would pe petter." She grew so faint under the terrible revelation which he had unintentionally made, that for a moment she could not answer him; and even when she spoke it was only to ask for delay. "Stop!" she said, pressing her hands upon her eyes. "Let me think. I must consider this." He offered to slide his arm around her waist in his usual caressing style; but she gently CHANET. stopped him, looked earnestly in his face, amiled with an unspeakable piteousness, and gently glided away; her whole manner saying, "Ah, my darling! you don't wish to do it, and why do you do it?" "Is it possible that she gomprehends me?" thought Ernst, folding his arms and shaking his head with the air of a man who is trying to stand firm against himself. He appreciated fully the self-abnegation and heroism of Janet's character; he knew that if he once confessed to her that he did not love her she would instantly free him from his engagement; and there was the image of Nellie pleading with him for his sake, if not for hers also, to make the confession. He shook his head and set his teeth until he had faced down the temptation, and had decided that, whether Janet permitted it or not, he would inform her cousin of the betrothal. But during the day, while superintending her classes with her usual conscientious thoroughness, Miss Holeum also came to a decision. On reaching home in the afternoon she sent Nellie out on some distant errand, and then walked slowly up to Ernst's room. “My tear Chanet! I am so glad to see you!" he said, coming towards her with extended hands and his sweetest smile. "My poor child, you look tired," he added, glancing pityingly at her unusually pale face. 'There, sit down, and take some rebose. Do you see my bicture? I have made some changes." Raising her patient eyes to the canvas, Janet perceived that the portrait of Nellie had been so altered as to be no longer recognizable. Throbbing with admiration for this man, who could divine her heart so perfectly, and who could do what must have been hateful to him at the mere bidding of his sensitive conscience, she rose up with suddenly flushed cheeks, seized both his hands, printed one hot kiss on his smooth, white forehead, and then drew back, holding him at arm's-length, in order to worship him. "Ernst, I know what you have done," she said, firmly. "I thank you for your noble intentions. But sacrifice for sacrifice. It is my turn now. Ernst, my own darling, we must separate. I was born for you, but you were not born for me. We must end this engagement. I must end it, or despise myself. I do end it. I break it. You are free. There." She tore herself away from him and attempted to rush out of the room. "Chanet! Chanet!" he called, springing after her and seizing her in his arms. "It VOL. VIII. 118 must not pe so. You are the noplest woman on earth. I worship you. I cannot lose you.” "Oh! don't!" implored Janet, looking up at him in despair, for he was taxing her almost beyond her strength. After a moment, rallying all the power of her soul, she added, "See here, Ernst! let us speak the truth. Do you love me better than you love any one else?" How could he have the seeming cruelty to answer her "No?" He did what most gentlehearted men would have done he told her a pitying, self-sacrificing falsehood. He said, "I do.' She was too clear-sighted to be deceived, and too high-souled to accept an unwilling heart. "Look at this Bible, Ernst," she continued, drawing from her pocket a little Testament that never quitted her. "Put your hand upon it;" and here, seizing his fingers, she clasped them around the book. "Now tell me whether you love me better than any other." "You trife me into a gorner," replied the artist, piteously. Well, I swear. I swear that I resbect und atmire you more than any other human peing. Is it not enough?" 6. "Do you love Nellie?" "She is so like ," he stammered. "Well, she will soon be in love with you," said Janet, with a last supreme effort. "Take Make her happy." her. She had been leaning away from him. She now turned, with the revulsion of a billow, threw her arms around his neck, covered his face with kisses and tears, and then once more leaned back from him to look at him. "That is the end of all between us," she said, in a hoarse, deep voice, totally unlike her usual utterance. "Henceforward I shall do my duty, and you must help me do it. One thing-never tell Nellie of this; it would darken her happiness. And now-good-bye." She dragged herself away from him, ran downstairs, and locked herself in her room. "Mein Gott!" murmured Ernst, left to himself. "I shall lose a heart worth den tousand of mine. But it is petter. She is wiser. I could not lofe her. I should end by making her unhabby as now-und more so. She is wise for us poth." The next day, to the astonishment and annoyance of Nellie Fisher, but by the positive dictation of Janet Holeum, the two women removed from their lodgings to a cheap boarding-house. There was, however, one good thing about the change: the boarding-house had a parlour where Mr. Hartmann could be received with a sense of spotless propriety; and what was delightful, he always had to be re177 114 PAN'S SONG OF SYRINX, ceived by Miss Fisher, the elder cousin excus- | despair that was uttered by this martyr, at ing herself on pretence of business, illness, &c. | least in human ears. One can easily see that all this had to end in a second troth-plight, and that the parties to it could not be other than Ernst and Nellie. It was "petter;" youth must have youth; love must have love. In these bargains mere espect and gratitude are not a fair exchange for the unreasoning, instinctive, potent impulse of the heart. Almost the first use that Nellie made of her betrothal was to run down to Ernst's studio, entirely, as she declared, to look at the new picture, but mainly, no doubt, to look at the artist. She too, like Janet before her, observed a change in the personages of the little drama. She had never known that her like ness had been obliterated, and she did not discover it now, for it had been restored in all its beauty. But in the face of one of the principal female figures-a face which, though not absolutely handsome, was sublime with an expression of noble and tender resignationin this face, which looked up to heaven as if it had descended from thither, Nellie recognized the countenance of Janet Holcum. 66 " "Why! you have got in Cousin Jennie too," exclaimed the delighted girl. 'Oh, you creature! you have made her finer than me.' "I wanted to tignify the bainting," said Ernst simply, "with the bortrait of the pest woman in the world." "Isn't she!" replied Nellie, pressing her face gratefully against his shoulder. "I am so glad you do her justice. I owe everything to her. Oh! I wouldn't cause her a grief for the world." The picture having been sold to Moineau for the large sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars, it was decided that Ernst's prospects of success were good enough to justify marriage, and Janet ruled that Nellie must go home for that purpose to the residence of an old aunt in Connecticut. The girl having departed, Janet felt able to have one interview with Hartmann, not with the object of indulging in any weak reproaches or bemoanings, but to bid him a last farewell. She was going to Ceylon, she informed him, as English teacher in one of the schools of the "American Board of Foreign Missions." "Oh! it is too far!" implored the young man. "If you must go away, let it pe still in this gountry. There is the Freedmen's Bureau schools in the South." "People return from the South," she replied. "I must go whence I shall never return." It was the only complaint, the only cry of | When Stanley heard of Miss Holeum's proposed departure, he said to Ernst, in surprise, "I thought she was to be your missionary. What! have you taken the mitten! Oh, you clever dog! You know the difference between an old maid and a new one." "See here," said the German, with solemnity. "I do not want you, one of my pest vriends, to desbise me; und I want you to resbect Miss Holcum as she ought to be resbected. I will dell you everything, und you must dell no one." Before he had half finished his story of the broken engagement, Stanley rose from his seat, dropped his cigar, and walked up and down the room, rubbing his eyes with his hands, just like an affected boy. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, when the narrator had ceased. "If she wasn't in love with you, I'd be tempted to marry her myself. She's not a chicken, and she's not a beauty, but she's pure gold." "She's a berfect lady und a grand gentleman in one," said Ernst. The urgencies of the Board sent Janet off to Ceylon before the marriage. Hartmann and Stanley accompanied her as far as the Narrows, and then, from the deck of the tug, watched her as she leaned over the taffrail, waving farewell to friends and native land. As the lonely figure of this loving, selfsacrificing, heroic, sublime martyr faded from their sight, the American said, "God bless her!" And the German added, with his eyes full of tears, "Sancta Chanet, ora pro nobis!” PAN'S SONG OF SYRINX. Pan's Syrinx was a girl indeed, JOHN LYLY. |