Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1880 — NINA’S NEW TEAR. [ARTICLE]

NINA’S NEW TEAR.

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD IN THE INDEPENDENT. . , 4 ’’ ' ’ One might think, who saw her life, that few people led a lonelier one than Nina Prentice did. An Orphan with narrow means, keeping up her dead father’s house, there was little visible excitemeat in such an existence. Yet hers was a temperment that did not require excitement and that found happiness where others would not dream of looking for it. Her garden and her flowers were like a household to her; thepoorall over the little hUltown afforded her occupation; she visited somewhat among a few wealthy acquaintances; and, for the rest, if she had such day-dreams as other young girls are wpnt to indulge, no ione was any the wiser for them. Nobody knew that her friend’s father, the wealthy Mr. Barnes, had made her a standing offer of marriage any time within the last three years; nobody knew from her that Bryce Hanscom went out to a Mexican ranche because she had no smiles to give him; nobody knew whether Harold Hartley’s face ever glanced out of the windows of her castles in the air; nobody knew whether one New Year’s day she looked forward to the next with any wonder as to what it might bring her of sorrow or joy. She was so sweet, so silent, so gentle that people in ■ general knew no more of her emotions than of those of the statute of some saint in its churchly niche. Yet it was only on the last New Year’s evening that, if any one had been able to look behind her curtains. they would have seen her on her knees before the low blaze of her fire, crying as if her heart would break, burying her face in her hands, and longing for the night when “this fever called living” .should be over at last. “New Years and New Years!” she sobbed. “Oh! how can I bear another so alone?” Perhaps Mrs. Hartley, her mother’s old intimate, had some idea of the fire that burned under this crust of snow. But Mrs. Hartley was not entirely impartial in her judgment of the girl, and it was her morning and evening prayer that Nina should at some day Htand in a eiiwer relation to her than she did at present. But, sis that would be impossible without her son Harold’s intervention, she left no stone unturned to that end. Mrs. Hartley thought she knew a great deal better what was good for her son than hp djd. and when she had made un her mind that he had better marry Nina Prentice, it was because she consulted his

best welfare—possibly- without complete regard to Nina’s. Bhe kuejv that Harold, although so affectionate, was ofa higli temper; and that Nina had inexhaustible stores of still patience, and that that still patience would await the time whpn he should come back to her, no longer the knight-errant, spurred by a restless nature, but a qyiet and dignified gentleman, ready to take his father’s honored place in the community. • Her approaches in the question Xvere exceedingly gentle; yet not so gentle that they aid not put Harold on his Suard, sp that he was like the hunted eer,' snuffing the gale afar off. “Well, mother, I thank goodness,” he said, with a light laugh, on detecting her meaning, “that we do not live in France, and that you ean’t go and inquire Nina’s dot and settle the—” 1 “It is a very good dot, Harold. Just a snug little Income to keep the wolf from tlw door and satisfy reasonably wants; and it would be vastly better for any husband than launching out on the tremendous fortune of Miss Barnes, with palaces, so to say, and yachts, and racing-horses.” “Just give me the chance to see if it is. Go to Miss Barnes, Mother,” cried Harold, gayly. “Ask the amorfnt of her dot, and if your scapegrace of a son is worth it. Yachts and racing horses! I like the idea.” 5 “Oh, Harold!” “Bui Mias Barnes is a beauty, too, Mother; and very sweet and gay. The roan that marries her needn’t marry for her money at all. She would have lovers if she hadn’t a penny in her own right, • ‘Don’t ee hiatrv fur money: but go wheer money be,” quoted Harold. “Excellentadvice that old Northern farmer’s. And I’ll go ‘wheer money be’ tonight,” as he drew on his gloves. “Don’t talk so,.Harold. Don’t talk so, even in jest, Mias Barnes may be well enough, for all I know; but her money would destroy you, who were not born to money. You would do nothing and come to nothing. Rut as for Nina Prentice, as I said, she’s a saint.” ’ .•

“Wouldn't do at all for a wife, then. Wives mustn’t be too good ‘for Human nature’s daily food.’ Think of reproving a saint because the buckwheats were flat, or, the linen stiff, of the buttons off Adioa, you managing, mamma” and he was gone. It was a misty summer night, so thick one ooyld hardly see a star. But those ringing steps needed no guiding star to direct them; for, to tell the truth. Harold Hartley suspected himself of being already more than half in love with Miss Barnes. Undoubtedly, there was something in her superb surroundings that added to her <rwn charms: ana she seemed, too, as .entirely at home itr -them as the flower that blnaßoms in ‘the rich, moist air of the hot-house, That velvet lawn, set with its flaming exotics and bpds of flowers, with the lofty porches and wide hails behind it, the aimly-lit drewing-rooms, * and the dining-room, with its generous sideboard —all the consciousness of ease and comfort and delight of the senses about the place made visiting Miss Barnes a'very pleasant way of passing time; and then, moreover, as her father was a prominent man or affairs among the politician’s of the country. one met there people who enlarged the mental horizon and made a man think for himself and think more of himself. Miss Barnes’ father also looked with favor on Harold, His congressional life told him of the dangers his daughter ran, with her indeg endent fortune and pretty thee; and e preferred for her a husband in the neighborhood of their home, who, if Dot altogether perfect, was ‘ at least a responsible member of society, and likely to be made qiore so with the ogre of her property, apd not a foreign attache, seeling what he might devour in the way of marriage portions, not a pennipess adventurer, roaming round the world for the same

purpose. Thus Harold’s welcome at the place was always calculated to make a man come again, even if, with the bright, youthfui gayety there, one was not likely to come again any-To-night, however, as he went along, his mothers words gave him a little thought, and it did occur to him that it was unwise to let himself become bo used to all this splendor and luxury on a venture; for, after all, a girl of such wealth and fascination as Miss Barnes had her choice from a crowd of lovers, of whom he was but one and the least conspicuous. Just as these salutary reflections stole through his mind his ear was caught by the crying of a child, and he paused to look into the window of the cottage that he was passing, and to see a woman hushing a little child, whose face was now hidden in her neck—a slender, darklyclad woman, who moved here and there, with the baby on her arm, and attended to the wants of ; a parcel of other children, while a man sat at the table, with* his arms thrust out straight before him and his head fallen between them, in an attitude of abject despair. The woman’s back was toward him all the time; but something about her reminded him of Nina Prentice. “Pretty much what I might expect, I suppose,” groaned Harold, “if lobeyed my mother.” “By George!” as the woman half turned, a sweet, fair, sad face, and delicate profile of figure, “I believe it Is Nina!”

But its absurdity destroyed the fancy, and he went on his way, whistling a bar or two of the “Wanderer,” and would have been very shortly with Miss Barnes, had he not been detained by a discussion with a chance friend at a corner; and had not then stepped into a pool of water, and been obliged to hunt up a boot-black, the little wretch afterward keeping him waiting for his change. “I declare,” said he to Nina, when at last he reached Miss Barnes’s parlors. “I thought I saw you married to a drunken laborer, as I came along to-night, with a gang of babies clambering round —” “What made you think him drunken?” asked Nina, with her sweet seriousness. ; “Oh! the looks of him—the arms on the table, the fallen head, unkempt, unshorn, you know, and all the rest.” “I suppose,” said Nina, “that a poor man, whose wife lay deaa in the other room, might look much that way.” “I believe it was you!” cried Harold. . ’

“Do I look like it?” she asked, lightlyl “And have I a dual existence, to be here and there too?” And then, gs Harold glanced her over, in her ajfy muslins and forget-me-nots, he smiled at the idea; and she seemed all at once as different from that woman, and from all other women, as if she had stepped out of another star. .'Yet, for all that, a man docs not ciire to marry a woman who is different from all other women simply to oblige his mother. “What are you talking about?” asked Miss Barnes, standing before them just then, the picture of a Bacchante, with ner head bound with currant leaves and her clustering curls like grape-bunches about her dark and laughing face, “Are you promising Nina that you will come to Washihgton this winter? Nina is to be with me there for the holidays, you know. If you should, swell my list on New' Year’s,” And then she went dancing down the room, for the misty night had driven everybody within dobrs; and a waiter was just bringing in a tray of juleps, enticing with the color and odor or their drowned fruits and leaves and long golden straws. “When I was a little confirmed drunkard of the age of ten I signed the pledge,” said Miss Barnes, conveying the waiter to Harold. But I didn’t know’ how nice juleps were. Now I am totally depraved. Here, Ms. Hartley, Nina! It’s ouite as immoral to drink lemonade with straws as mint-juleps. The sin lies altogether in the straws!” fit depends on the individual whether there is any sin about it, I think,” said Nina. “But I love lemade. A lemon seems to carry coolness into the tropics.” *|And you don’t know why you should burfl your threat—that long, white throat—out with the other? Get thee to a nunnery!” As the gay girl lifted her glowing glass to the wax lights, Harold whispered to Nina “1 don’t believe the Bacchantes used straws,” and was astonished that Nina did not laugh. But that night the faces of the two girls kept shining upon him out of the darkness, as ne walked home. The one the self-in-dulgent, laughing beauty i the other, if not beautiful, yet certainly a lovely face in its fairness and perfect calm. And the girl lifting her glass to the glow of the wax lights did not seem to him so charming as before. “Do you know,” said Mr. Hartley’s mother, one twilight, some time afterward, “I’m afraid I have been doing an injustice to Alias She really has a heart. Those poor McNulty’s! When Mrs McNulty died, she used to go down there every evening, and carry a supper, and hear the children’s prayers, and put them to ■bed, and leave a breakfast set out for the father in the morning. Just think of that girl doing such things!” “Did she tell you that she did, mother?” asked Harold.

“Well, no. That is, not exactly. I heard that one of thp Hill ladies was down at the McNultys, doing these thing, and spoke of ft accidently to Miss Barnes"; and she asked me to say nothing about it, and said she only did what she couldn’t help doing; and when I said I thought it a great deal for her to leave all her gay life every sunset, and godown there, night after night, and wait on that family, and then hurry home to her houseful of company, sfie colored up so prettily, and saia we were ail stewards, and It was duty and pleasure, too, to do what she could.”

“Humphr!” said Harold Hartley He knew very well now who it was that he saw through the windows of the McNulty cottage. But, after all, a pretty facp covers a multitude of sins. He set about forgetting the deceit: he reasoned that it was a girlish jest, signifying nothing; and He went to Washington all thesame, shortly after the Holiday season arrived, and presented himself among the first New Year’s callers at the great doors of Mr- Barnes’s residence there. “Ah! hftve you come?” cried Miss Barnes, hurrying t° meet him. “We were bo afraid you jyoijldn’t, And now you know so few people in town that you have no calls to make, and I want you to stay the whole day with us. I’ve a perfect crowd of pretty girls to help me receive, and a dear deaf-and-dumb old duena for chaperon, and it will be ope Iqqg festival! Will you have some refreshment now ? Champagne punch? There’s some Madeira, fifty years old. Ah! there’s the bell. Every man to his post! There are no privates here; but I’m captain-general!” and she danced back to her place, well content that Mr. Hartley should see the triumphal procession that the day was likely to And a triumphal procession it was —the jeuneeae aoree. Loungers, clerks, attaches, members, senators, secretaries, officers, in their splendid uniforms, all swelled the ranks, swept through the great house, and kept it thronged with groups in the rose drawing-room, groups 14 the gay parlor, in the music hall, the dinningroom, and the conservatory, 4s the day wore on, Mies Barnes, with a portion of her attendants, was as much In the dining-room as in the drawingroom, sauntering in with one and out with another, or standing under the heavy purtains between the room*. What a picture she made, Harold thought, in her scarlet satins, with

yellow poppies in her hair, against the background of the citrine-colored curtains. What a picture the whole scene was! The gay, bright saloon beyond, the Aubuseon tapestry under foot there, with the wreatiies of pale roses and ribbons on its pale sunsetgreen ground, the rosy satin and the lace draperies stretching over the windows, whose light was shut out for the soft gleam of the wax tapers swinging in their china cups and golden chains, the paintings and statues, the wonderful chinas and crystals, and the flowers—the whole room itgelf like a gay vignette on porcelain, and this scarlet-clad beauty just outside. Then, too, the conservatory in the vista, a place of little leas than fairy splendor in its lamps and palms and oranges and blossoms; and the magnificence of the dining-room, with its carved and ’ curtained wainscot, its shining side-boards, and its table heavy with gold and silver, with all rare viands, and with clusters of wine-glasses, the colors of the flowers themselves. There she was now, taking that Venetian gem of a decanter from a servant, and herself pouring wine for an old senator, who had perhaps already had too much. Here came a parcel of gold-laced officers, flushed and gay and handsome. What did she mean by urging that old port on that half-tipsy boy among them, while the others laughed and jested? Harold was not ordinarily troubled with scruples; but this seemed to him to limits of a lest, and he experienced a sense of relief as he saw a lady approach in the shadow of the curtain, and, placing her hand on his arm, lead the boy away. Gowned in gleaming white satin, her shining shape crossed that scarlet blaze like the passing of a moonbeam, and, knowing who it was, and thinking she might have trouble, Harold followed; but It was only to find Nina alone in the gray parlor, the boy having laughed her cup of bouUlon to scorn and left her out of hand.

“Isn’t it too bad?” she said, with a laugh that was half a sigh, after all. He as*ked me if I was a temperance lecturer, and called this delicious bouillon ‘slops.’ Will you have it?” “Where have you been all day?” he said, setting down the cup. “Oh! lam on duty on this side. We are all stationed by plan of battle; but most of my battalion have deserted to the other rooms. Isn’t this a lovely one? It almost unfits a person for quiet life at home, these gay nights and days. It would, at least, if one were quite at rest in it.” It wasa.lovely room. It tempted all Harold’s love of ease and luxury. The gray velvet on the floor, draping the Avails, covering the cushioned divans, wearing a frosty bloom u nder the silver chandeliers, the delicate carved jades, and ivorios, and spars, the one white-winged marble, it seemed somehow as if Nina herself had taken shape from all these pure, pearly shadows. He looked through the gleaming arches that led from room to room, and saw the scarlet-clad and goldencrowned beauty standing there, with the rudy glass suspended in her hand as she offered it to some new guest, and a strange shudder stole over him. Unjust as it might be, for that single moment the one of the two girls was like a picture of the incarnation of sin and the other of innocence. He remembered the icy morning, a few weeks ago, when he had seen Nina in her swansdown mantle holding up a sheaf of wheat against the blue sky and a hundred little belated birds hovering round it with whiring

wings and chirruping cries and he turned and looked at Nina with a piercing gaze again, before which her soft eyes fell, till the blushes streamed up to meet the lashes; and as he gazed the knowledge came slowly swelling up in Harold’s heart and soul that, whatever attraction dark and glowing beauty and luxurious surroundings had had for his senses, it had been for his senses alone, and that the love of his life had sprung full grown and winged for an eternal flight—so eternal that now, in the first moment of its recognition, he could no more tell it had ever had beginning than if it would ever have an end. So w’hite, so fair, so sweet, so Cure —was it possible he had been lind to it all for years ? So white, so fair, so sweet, so pure w’as it possible that he could win her? Would she take the poor remnant he had to give —his jeunesae epuiaee f For one brief moment Harold Hartley felt pangs of punishment, that seemed to nave lasted for years, and he felt like a sad old man as he still gazed at her. But he was not one’to oe long daunted, either by his own unworthfness or by the cruelty of fate. In a heartbeat or two he was himself again, and he plunged in, aware that, even if she would have none of him now, it gave him the vantage-ground of her compassion for the future. “I am glad,” he said, “that you are pot at rest iq this life. It is a different life that I wish vpu to share. Nina, is it impossible—“ And then a little hand stole ipto his, and he led her awry into the palm-shadows of the conservatory. “Ah! what a fool I have been!” he was saying, exultantly, as he bent over her. “Why did I never know that I loved you before?” “I always felt you did,” she was murmuring in reply. “I always knew you would—if not here, then hereafter. For I never remember the time when I did not love you! l ' “And this New Year’s day,” he said, “is the gateway ofa new life for both of us. Ah! with God’s help, what a life, my darling!”