Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1883 — HELEN PRESTON. [ARTICLE]

HELEN PRESTON.

"Are there no underwriters for human hopes? For the most precious of interests is tiiere no insurance?" I had been tempted all day, tempted by fate and the devil. All summer long I had been trying to clasp hands for a life journey with a man I did not loVe; a man noble of soul and born to the purple, who set up his high lineage against my poor gifts of beauty and song. He threw some love into the scales, too, but I, God help me, had none to give in return. I had bartered erewhile my whole possessions for a few glances of a dark eye, and my note had gone to protest. Couljd I—could 1?. It kept following me about with fateful persistency, for to-night I was to give my answer to my high-born lover. I tried to look things in the face, to -count the cost. . Money was a good thing; it insured •one warmth in winter and delicious coolness in summer, and prettiness and •daintiness, and the entrance into good society. Yes, money was a good thing, •and position and power, and houses and lands. So far good; but my soul hungered and thirsted for a love commensurate with my own, which this man, who offered me purple and gold, had it not in his power to give, or, let me qualify that, had it not in his nature to give. The stars came out golden and soft, and the fragrant summer dnsk crept around me where I sat inhaling the scent of the roses. Ambition and love tore my heart by turn, and weariness, too, put in a poor pitiful plea, for I was •bo tired. It was a .brilliant future that Reginald Dacre offered -me, wherein foil and weariness could never come. I thought of the purple and fine liuen; "the luxurious rest; the emoluments! 'Then my daily life passed in review before me—that of a companion to a haughty, fine lady, and a regular singer : in a fashionable church, among fashionable saints and sinners. 1 began to croon over the old satire: * In a church which is garnished with mullion and gable, \ With altar and reredos, with gargoyle and groin, The penitents’ dresses are sealskin and sable, The odor ol sanctity can do cologne. But surely If Lucifer, flying from hades. Could gaze at this crowd with its pant rs and paints. He would s iy, looking round at the lords and the ladies, Oh, where is All Sinners if this is All Saints? I had entered upon this life from an unloved and unloving home, a home ■doled out to me by the tardy jtistice of a granduncle who had robbed me of my inheritance. I thought, at first I might And the sangreal somewhere iu this now country, which'seemed so fair; but alas! I had not even heard the swish of wings. I thought of it all —tlie fervor and the ; frat; the petty jars; bho misunderstandings; the,pain of incomprehension; the ungderdoned toil: the lagging hours; the awful pauses. This, or marriage; this, or marriage. It seemed written like a placard on earth anti skyi It seemed bound like phylactery, upon the brows of the people as'they pasflod to and fro; and soon the word marriage lost all its significance for me, as words do after oft re-

peating. Did it mean misery or happiness, bliss or woe ? - ( This marriage that rung its changes through my brain—was it God-appointed? Did it mean God's blessing *r His curse? You know I did not love this man who offered me rest from my labors. He had not power to evoke one thrill at his call. But then love is only one reason why one should marry a man. There might be love and plenty of money, and yet one go hungry all one’s life. 1 have known such thingß. I had tried to make my life straight and fair. I had tried to keep clean hands and a pure heart; tried —God, who knows the secrets of all hearts, knows this—to fight despair. . . . Long green days. Worn bare of grass and sunshine; long calm nights From which the silken sleeps were fretted out — Be witness for me. We see through shadows all our life long. We come into this world without our being given a choice as to our advent, and go out of it in the same manner. We have not been consulted as to birth or dea.th. More and more the pi’ayer of Epictetus haunts me. “Lead me, Zeus and Destiny, whitliersoev.er I am apppinted to go; I ( will follow without wavering; even though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow all the same. ” * Should I marry Mr. Dacre? Was he a good parti ? As" the world said. Too good for me, as my lady elegantly phrased it. I had been born into the world amid fierce throes of mental anguish. Through the pain of her travail my motiier’s heart was rent with the greater pain -«f my father’s sudden death—dro wned oil' the Cornish coast, for I was born at sea. She lived until I was 10 . years old, a life of sorrow, and poverty, and renunciation. Then she died, leaving me to a compassionate world and my uncle. My life dragged on the clogged wheels. I was alwayt at war with my surroundings. Though too proud to express it, I had never realized my idea of womanhood, or in any way grown up to my aspirations <apd dreams. If I had grown at all it had been through pain and repression—a fatal thing always for a warm-hearted, earnest woman. My uncle, Edward Earl, had procured me the friendship (?) of the lady in whose house I had passed a twelvemonth—Mrs. LuoienGranger, a distant cousin of his. own. I was ah unsalaried governess or companion, our remote cousinship being always made available by my uncle. It was during my residence with that lady that my fate came to me. A young nephew of Mrs. Granger’s came to the hall. He was an artist, young and handsome, and fresh from a four years’ sojourn in Borne. I need not worry you with the prologue or the epilogue of our love, for words are so peor to express the heart’s utterance. O golden day! O tender, passionate nights! O princely heart, come back to me ! Alan Leighton was the last son of a high-born family, and because of the blue blood—the united blood of all the Howards—flowing in his veins, Mrs. Granger interposed her'fiat against our love, dreading, doubtless, the plebeian admixture of mine. It is a pity that blood does not always tell. It was an inglorious triumph to me—yet still a triumph—to bare my white arms to the shoulder during our gala nights—to which my voice was always invited —contrasting their satiny smoothness and perfect contour with the lean, brown appendages of Mrs. Granger folded over her aristocratic heart. B.ut a cloud crept into the sky and its shadow fell across our path. Alan was called suddenly by telegram to England, Where his grand old father lay dying. We had but a moment lor our farewells, for Allan’s heart was rent with sorrow, and I helped to expedite his departure. But one letter ever reached mo. His father was dead, and he was Sir Alan now. My Precious Helen: My father, whom I loved and respected above all men, died yesterday. I need not tell you how dosolate we feel and how the light seems to -have died out of every nook and corner. My dear mother is prostrated with the blow which has taken away the lover of her youth, and I shall not be aide to return to you for some weeks. Announce our betrothal, dearest, I to my aunt and uncle, which you know was my intention the very night I was called away. Be true to me, my darling Relan, as I shall loe true to you. Good night, dear love; I shall write at length as soon as mother and I hate matured our plans for hor lonely luturo. Good-night, good-night! May angels guard you, and may the good Fa.her Sold about you His everlasting arms! Your friend and lover, Alan Leighton. Two year's had dragged their slow length about since that letter came, and I had never heard Irom Alan, ■though craving his presence as the prisoner craves the sunshine. I had written him once, and I had regretted even that. “He was soon to be wedded to an Earl’s handsome daughter,” Mrs. Granger read, aloud from an open letter in her handy “in fact, it was an old affair, his visit to the hall," etc., etqf / How ir regretted I had written, though the words had been few, merely asking him if he had been enabled to procure for me a certain book we had made mention of together, and the time yas more than a year ago wlien I had the right thus to address him. And now, another woman was to be his wife, and I must never tliink of the old days, or the old dreams, or look into his dark eyes, or feel Gis kisses upon my unkissed lips. Never! and I might live fifty years. And O, tfye pity of it, out of all this world’s million possibilities 1 bad only the chance of two—either to wed Boginald Dacre, a man old enough te

b« my father, or to be a companion to some haughty woman. I had decided upon accepting Mr. Dacre. The tiny note of barely two lines I had placed between the leaves of a book it was his nightly custom to read. But Alan! but Alan! I had thonght him so trne, so noble. I had called him “my prince,” “my king,” alone in the warm dusk nnder the stars. “I will not soil thy purple with my dust,” had whispered in my heart. “Nor breathe my poison on thy Yenice glass.” * * * * I went down to the sea to listen to its sullen roar, hear it tell its tale of human misery; of fair dead under its waves; of gold and jewels lying on green beds of moss; of agonies gone down, the wail of human misery their requiem. I tried to remember all this, so that mine might not seem such a great thing amid a world of sobbing and tears. It was a good thing to think of the sufferings of others, and try to ignore your own; a good thing. But my misery! the misery of the girl called Helen Preston! The girl was somewhat of a genius, the people said. She possessed the gift of song and she was handsome, too, men said. And she had two chances in the world, and if she had had money enough to have utilized her gift of song she might have had three. But she had smirched her soul, for all her beauty and gifts; had been false to herself, to God and humanity; false, too, to Reginald Dacre, for she kept her love for Alan locked in her heart. “I have sold my soul for houses and lands,” she said, “and I am wretched. Mea culpa! Mea culpa!” “I have sold myself with open eyes,” she said, “knowingly, with malice prepense. I have no one to blame. That Alan forgot his vows did not make it right that I should forswear myself. ” But the sea with its fuss and fret, made my heart ache, and the turbulent water seemed wooing me thitherward. The chimes of our quaint old church, playing an old song, caused a choke in my throat. I would go and invoke grand airs from the organ, and mayhap I should forget the sea’s roar. It was my wont to go there to practice, and I knew the service would not be held for a half hour. The lights were turned down to a semi-darkness, and the old sextoif, with whom I was a favorite, had left the key # in the door for me. The moon shone across the organ keys and across my faoe, and the trailing olds of my white dress looked almost ghastly in its light. O, quaint old church! O, quaint old chimes! Too soon I would be far away from you, over the sea to my sailor’s lordly home, carrying with me a heavier heart than my years should warrant. But it was too late to look back; and the fault was mine. I had ruined my own life, and must pay the price. Because I had been forbidden the desire of mine eyes, I had sealed my fate. I had bound my hands, and had intoned Phoebe Cary’s wailing words; I have turned from the Rood Rifts Thy bounty supplied me, Because of the one which Thy wisdom denied me; I have bandaged mins eyes—yea, mine own hands have bound me; I have made me a darkness when light was around me. Now I cry by the wayside, 0 Lord, that I might receive back my sight. “Peccavi,” I cried, and my bead sank upon the organ and tears stained the red roses at mv throat. “Helen!” and my head was lifted gently and Alan Leighton's tender eyes met mine. “Alan!” was ail my astonishment could utter. “My girl, you have suffered,” he ejaculated, in a tone of exquisite tenderness. “Helen, my first and only love, how we have been wronged. I only learned an hour before I embarked that you were not the false woman you had been painted to me. Mrs. Granger wrote me eighteen months ago that you had ‘married Mr. Dacre, and left with him for Cuba.’ A subsequent letter, without date or signature, inclosing the tiny pearl pin I had given you, left me no room for doubt. I left England forever, and I have been on the wing ever since, finding no rest for my heart on sea or shore. Helen, I suffered as few men suffer because of losing you, and because of your apparent falseness. But I could not waste my whole life because of a woman’s untruth, so I tied up the broken threads and tried not to look back. It was by chance I met Herman Sloan, and in the midst of mutual confidences he asked me why I had never returned to America and to the beautiful Helen Preston, who had declined all suitors; and was still (unwed. Helen, I embarked that afternoon, and I am here, never to be parted from my darling. Wlien will we be married, sweet?" “Married! Alan,” and the dreary present recurring to me, I withdrew myself from his arms, and almost unconsciously my lips framed the words: I had died for this last year to know You had loved me. Who shall turn on fate? I care not If love oome or go Now; though your love seek mino for mate, It Is too late. “Too late! Helen, my only love explain yonr meaning for God’s sake.” Then came a broken disjointed tale of my sorrow and temptation when I heard of his handsome and highborn bride; of my weariness of the hall; of Mrs Granger; of myself, of Mr. Daore’s constant wooing, and at last of the little note only this night thrust between the leaves of his book, making Alan’s coming forever too "fete for my happiness. Rapid hoof-beats along the road, and my courtly love came in sight. “Saved! Alan,” and my words came thick and fast. “Engage hi inm conversation, Alan, regarding the hall, Mrs. Granger, the weather, stocks, etc., etc. I will escape by the vestry door, fly to the hall, secure the note! and then, O, Alan!" “My darling, my bright darling I” but I broke from his clasp and sped away

I like a chamois to the halL I did not heed that the roses fell from my throat, that a portion of my lace flounce graced a thornbush, or that my hair, unloosed from its' fastenings, bang about my shoulders. I think if I had possessed apiece of paper I should have held it aloft and shouted “a reprieve! a reprieve!” Shall I try to tell es how I secured the note, and hid it in my bosom, of how I ran np stairs and peeped for one moment into the mirror, twistjrrg np. my shining hair and trying to hush the loud beating of my heart, of how I rapidly traversed the path leading to the church, dodging behind an osage hedge to escape meeting Mr. Dacre, hurrying on as soon as I was free, to be folded close to Alan’s heart ? “And you will not laugh at me, “Laugh at you, my darling, and wherefore ?” “Oh, for my mad flight, for the red roses scattered all along the road; for my unbounded joy at your return; for proposing to run and steal the note, and, and—things.” For answer came tender kisses pressed upon brow and lips, and closed eyes, and Mr. Lord Level (Mr. Dacre) rode forth from the castle gates alone.