Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1880 — THE GOLD SOVEREIGN. [ARTICLE]

THE GOLD SOVEREIGN.

“Red wins!” It was the croupier's hoarse cry, again and, again reiterated, only diversified with that of “red loses!” which broke the stillness in the superbly appointed room at Homburg, with the gamingtable in its .center, around 'which were gathered its votaries, behind whom were tiro scarcely less interested group of lookers-on. “Como away, my dear,” said a very lovely woman among the spectators, in a whisper, to her husband. “I am sorry that we came. This is noplace for Pearl, ” indicating with a nod of the head, as she spoke, an exquisitely beautiful girl, scarcely more titan a child, of some twelve or thirteen summers, who stood beside them. “Come, Pearl,” the father said. But the girl stood entranced, her eyes fixed upon a man’s face, seated at the farthest end of the table. It was a strikingly handsome face, even when wearing, as it now did, an expression of calm, born of desperation. No tinge of oolor was in either cheek or lips. His eyes shone with a strange and hard glitter, and were fixed upon the balls as they swung round, as though on the color uppermost hung his hope of life or death.

And so it was. He had sat down possessed of a fortune; lie arose a beggar! Fate had steadily pursued him with mocking hopelessness, until lie had placed his stake, only to see it mercilessly swept from him. He half arose from the table. What more was to be done, save to go out somewhere into the still night air and send a bullet through liis heart or brain. It was at this moment the girl, with flushed cheeks and half-parted lips, darted up to his side. “Take this,” she pleaded, “for my sake,” and pressed a gold piece into his hand. He turned. To his excited imagination she seemed searely mortal in her pure child-like loveliness. His first impulse was to return her offering—he was not yet an alms-taker—but again rang out the croupier's cry of command to place the stakes. The child stood breathless in her eager expectancy, her eyes burning with feverish interest. A. sudden impulse overmastered liimWithout placed the gold upon the table. The next minute a small pile of gold was at his elbow. He staked it all agaiu. And he won. A bright spot of scat-let replaced the pallor in his cheek, which ■spread and deepened as Dame Fortune, who had so persistently frowned upon him, now reserved for him only her smiles. Morning was breaking when he rose from the tables, no longer a desperate man, but with his fortune three-fold returned to him.

After his first winning ho had turned to return to the child her offering, but she had vanished. Should ho ever find her, ever repay the debt ? He knew not; but, standing at last out under the clear, blue sky, with a great weight lifted from his heart and brain, Harold Clayton vowed that it should be his life-search, but that the lesson taught him should never be forgotten, and the gaming-tables should know him never more. Six years passed, and Harold Clayton was winning name and fame in his own land, in his profession as an artist. Standing one night in a crowded assembly, some one in passing touched him lightly on the arm with her fan, and glancing around, he met the smiling face of his hostess. “Come,” she said, “I want to present you to my belle. If you can prevail upon her to give you a sitting, and transfer her coloring to canvass, you will render yourself immortal.” “Is she, then, so beautiful?” he questioned. “Judge for yourself,” she lightly rejoined, leading him to a little group doing homage to the fair girl in its center.

“Miss Reyburn—Mr. Clayton,” were the formal words of the introduction, as Harold bowed in acknowledgement before the woman whom his artistic eye confessed the most beautiful that in all liis wanderings he had ever met. Before the evening was ended he migfit have added, the first woman he over loved, since she had awakened in him an interest as new as it was strange. Through the next week her face haunted him. Then they met again, and the oharm grew and deepened. He could not define it; he scarcely acknowledged it to himself; only away from Miss Reybum he was restless and uneasy, until he again found himself within The scope of her fascinations. Yet her nature remained an enigma to him. Although so young in years, so beautiful in form and feature, she seemed cold even to haughtiness, reticent almost to scorn. It was as though some exquisite marble statue had risen in his pathway, which might some day warm into life. * She welcomed him whenever they met with a manner which, while it gave him no cause for complaint, yet chilled the hope springing within his breast. One day, on going to her home, theservant met him at the door with the announcement that she was very ill. This knowledge brought other knowledge —the fact that he could no longer conceal from himself that he loved her, and that “P° n hope of winning her hung his life s happiness.

He went back to his studio, wretched and despairing, and seated himself at his easel. He had not meant to paint her face—his brain seemed unconscious of his fingers’s toil—yet, when the morning broke, it was her features smiling upon him from the canvas, and he remembered the words his hostess had uttered on the night he first had met her—that thus ho should render himself immortal. He grew pale and wan in the days of anxious suspense, when those who were watching over her couch knew not which would conquer, the angel of life or death. But there came an hour, never to be forgotten, when he was admitted into her presence. She was very white, very fragile, but more beautiful than in the coloring of perfect health. A new expression, too, was in the violet eyes raised to welcome him. “ I am very glad to see you again,” she said, gently. “I hear you have been anxious about me. You were very kind. ” Then the words he had not meant to speak burst from his lips. “ Anxious?” he said, “ can a man, Miss Reybura, perishing of hunger, hear of the famine without a shudder ? I am presumptuous, you will say. It is true. What is my life with its many settled pages in which your eyes could never look, that I should dare to offer it to you? And yet, purified by your love, I would try to make it more worthy. Tell me—answer me! If I serve as Jacob served for Rachel, is there hope that I may win you! My darling! My darling! I cannot live my life without you! Will you not share it?” Lower and lower dropped the lids, until the long dark lashes swept the marble cheek, while the sweet mouth trembled; but the momentary weakness passed as she spoke: “Forget all that you have said, Mr. Clayton. It can never l>e. ” ‘ ‘ You do not love me?” he questioned sadly. Again that swift expression of pain flitted across the lovely face. “ I shall never marry,” she answered; “but,” and in her voice crept an almost pleading tone, “I need my friends very much, Mr. Clayton. Do not desert me!” “I cannot,” he replied. To desert you would be to desert the hope of one day forcing you to unsay those cruel words—the hope which M ill go with me to my grave.” What M’as the barrier betM’een them ? This was the question ever ringing in Harold Clayton’s ear. As she looked when she pronounced his doom, so he had fancied she might have looked when the statue warmed into life. Since then, she had been colder, more distant than before; but he caught the momentary expression, and transferred it to the picture on which his every leisure moment was spent. He was thus engrossed one morning, ever striving to add new beauty to bis almost perfect Mork, when a low knock at the door aroused him.

“Come in!” lie called, then bent anew to his task, without so much as raising his head until a low, laughing voice sounded close beside him. “We Mere caught iu the shower, Mr. Clayton; and I persuaded Margaret to seek shelter with me here. I did not dream she would find herself forstalled. ” It Mas Mrs. Somers who spoke—the lady who had first presented him to Miss Reyburn—whose instruction lie had, unknown to her, carried out. “Margaret,” she asked, turning to her friend, “you have been sitting for your portrait, and did not let me know. Why have you kept it such a secret?” He had now sprung to his feet in time to see the rosy tide spread over Margaret Reyburn’s face. “It was liberty I took without Miss Reyburn’s knoM-ledge, Mrs. Somers,” he explained. “I assure you I have never been so fortunate as to secure a sitting. ” “Well, you shall have one now, and you must thank me for it,” she rejoined, while Margaret turned away to examine the sketches and studies lying about in profuse confusion. “Here are some sketches taken while I was studying abroad, Miss Reyburn,” said Harold. Will you amuse yourself by looking at them ? “I will return in a few moments,” interrupted Mrs. Somers. “Wait forme, my dear.” A M-ord of expostulation rose to Margaret’s lips, but too late. The door had closed behind the speaker. Silence fell betM-een the two thus left behind, M’hen alow cry arrested Harold’s attention. He sprang to Miss Reyburn’s side.

Her eyes were fixed upon a little sketch she held in her hand. It represented a gaming-table, at one end of which sat a man,, haggard, desperate, desparing, and -by him a child, holding out to him a single gold piece, with a smile in her eyes, and seemingly a prayer on her lips. “You would know the history of that Picture,” he said. “Let me tell you. ears ago I was in Hamburg. The gam-ing-tables attracted me, and every night found me beside them, losing or winning, according to the fortune of the hour. One evening the demon ill luck pursued me. I lost and lost till I found I was beggard. Maddened, desperate, I resolved to put an end to my miserable life, when some one touched my shoulder; a cnild angel stood before me and slipped into my hand a piece of gold. ‘For my sake!’ she whispered. The croupier's hoarse call warned me no time was to be lost.. I staked the gold and won, but turning to give back her own, she had fled. When I rose from the table I had recovered all and more, but I vowed to my unknown deliverer that I would never again hazard a dollar of the fortune I considered hers. I have never found her, Margaret. The child will never know her work, but 1 am not afraid to meet her, for I have kept my pledge. ” “Harold!”—it was almost a whisper, but something in the tone made his heart give a wild, joyous leap—“have I known you all this time, and you have just found me out? It was this, Harold, that separated us. I dared not give my life to a man whom I had first known as a gambler. I supposed you still played, and I thought that to see again the expression on your face I had seen that night would kill me. Tell me, is it true? Have you never touched a card since?” “Never!” he answered, solemnly. “And it is to you I owe it—it and life. Pearl—Little Pearl, can you not trust the man who has been so long faithful to the child to be still faithful to the woman? My own, you will not doom the life that you have saved?” But at this juncture, Mrs. Somers, opening the door beats a precipiate retreat. Harold’s statue has warmed into life, and, pressing the lovely lips to his, he thanks Gckl that it is breath which has awakened it.