SYMBOLS. ROSE LEAVES. (HOPE.) If this were a night in June, love, I would clamber up to your casement I would blush at my boldness, darling, The night, the dewy silence, The south wind wandering slow, The deep blue slumberous heavens, The nested birds all sleeping, The flitting moths at play, PANSIES. (DOUBT.) My hands cup-hollowed bear your beauty up, Ye dusky shadowy flowers! did ye not grow In strange dim lands beside the stream of sleep, Whereon my dream drives down with hurrying quest Toward that which I most long to win and keep? The delicate aroma of your leaves Is faint and sad, like a half-uttered sigh; And vague and troubled thoughts in me arise, Of love that seemeth much, and yet can die. TUBE ROSES. (DESPAIR.) Ring, silver bells, and say your honeyed breath Only a bitter mockery of life Wed to the pulseless heart and winding sheet. Say that its piercing sweetness like a sword ADINA. IN TWO PARTS: PART II. SAM SCROPE looked extremely annoyed when I began to tell him of my encounter with our friend, and I saw there was still a cantankerous something in the depths of his heart intensely hostile to fairness It was characteristic of his peculiar temper that his happiness, as an accepted lover, had not, disposed him to graceful concessions. He treated his bliss as his own private property, and was as little in the humor to diffuse its influence as he would have been to send out in charity a choice dish from an unfinished dinner. Nevertheless, I think he might have stiffly admitted that there was a grain of reason in Angelo's claim, if I had not been too indiscreetly accurate in my report of our interview. I had been impressed, indeed, with something picturesquely tragic in the poor boy's condition, and, to do perfect justice to the picture, I told him he had flung down his hat on the earth as a gauntlet of defiance and talked about his revenge. Scrope hereupon looked fiercely disgusted and pronounced him a theatrical jackanapes; but he authorized me to drop him a line saying that he would speak with him a couple of days later. I was surprised at Scrope's consenting to see him, but I perceived that he was making a conscientious effort to shirk none of the disagreeables of the matter. "I won't have him stamping and shouting in the house here," he said. "I'll also meet him at the Coliseum." He named his hour and I despatched to Lariccia three lines of incorrect but courteous Italian. It was better,-far better,-that they should not have met. What passed between them Scrope requested me on his return to excuse him from repeating; suffice it that Angelo was an impudent puppy, and that he hoped never to hear of him again. Had Angelo, at last, I asked, received any compensation? "Not a farthing!" cried Scrope, and walked out of the room. Evidently the two young men had been a source of immitigable offense to each other. Angelo had promised to speak to him fair, and I inclined to believe had done so; but the very change in his appearance, by seeming to challenge my companion's sympathy in too peremptory a fashion, had had the irritating effect of a menace. Scrope had been contemptuous, and his awkward, ungracious Italian had doubtless made him seem more so. One can't handle Italians with contempt; those who know them have learned what may be done with a moderate amount of superficial concession. Angelo had replied in wrath, and, as I afterwards learned, had demanded, as a right, the restitution of the topaz in exchange for the sum received for it. Scrope had rejoined that if he took that tone he should get nothing at all, and the injured youth had retorted with reckless and insulting threats. What had prevented them from coming to blows, I know not, no sign of flinching, certainly, on my companion's part. Face to face, he had not seemed to Angelo so easy to strangle, and that saving grain of discretion which mingles with all Italian passion had whispered to the young man to postpone his revenge. Without taking a melodramatic view of things, it seemed to me that Scrope had an evil chance in waiting for him. `I had, perhaps, no definite vision of a cloaked assassin lurking under a dark archway, but I thought it perfectly possible that Angelo might make himself intolerably disagreeable. His simply telling his story up and down Rome to whomsoever would listen to him, might be a grave annoyance; though indeed Scrope had the advantage that most people might refuse to believe in the existence of a gem of which its Owner was so little inclined to boast. The whole situation, at all events, made me extremely nervous. I cursed my companion one day for a hungrier Jew than Shylock, and pitied him the next as the victim of a moral hallucination. If we gave him time, he would come to his senses; he would repay poor Angelo with interest. Meanwhile, however, I could do nothing, for I felt that it was worse than useless to suggest to Scrope that he was in danger. He would have scorned the idea of a ranting Italian making him swerve an inch from his chosen path. I am unable to say whether Angelo's "imprudence" had seemed to relieve him, generally, from his vow to conceal the intaglio; a few words, at all events, from Miss Waddington, a couple of evenings. later, reminded me of the original reservation he had made to the VOW. Mrs. I tried to laugh. "You mustn't investigate too closely the honesty of hunters for antiquities. It's hardly dishonest in their code to treat loose cameos and snuff-boxes as pickpockets treat purses." She looked at me in shy surprise, as if I had made a really cruel joke. "He says that I must wear it one of these days as a medallion," she went on. "But I shall not. The stone is beautiful, but I should feel most uncomfortable in carrying the Emperor Tiberius so near my heart. Wasn't he one of the bad Emperors-one of the worst? It is almost a pollution to have a thing that he had looked at and touched coming to one in such direct descent. His image almost spoils for me the beauty of the stone and I'm very glad Mr. Scrope keeps it out of sight." This seemed a very becoming state of mind in a blonde angel of New England origin. The days passed by and Angelo's "revenge" still hung fire. Scrope never met his fate at a short turning of one of the dusky Roman streets; he came in punctually every evening at eleven o'clock. I wondered whether our brooding friend had already spent the sinister force of a nature formed to be lazily contented. I hoped so, but I was wrong. We had gone to walk one afternoon,-the ladies, Scrope and I,-in the charming Villa Borghese, and, to escape from the rattle of the fashionable world and its distraction, we had wandered away to an unfrequented corner where the old moldering wall and the slim black cypresses and the untrodden grass made, beneath the splendid Roman sky, the most harmonious of pictures. Of course there was a mossy stone hemicycle not far off, and cracked bench es with griffins' feet, where one might sit and gossip and watch the lizards scamper in the sun. We had done so for some half an hour when Adina espied the first violet of the year glimmering at the root of a cypress. She made haste to rise and gather it, and then wandered further, in the hope of giving it a few companions. Scrope sat and watched her as she moved slowly away, trailing her long shadow on the grass and drooping her head from side to side in her charming quest. It was not, I know, that he felt no impulse to join her; but that he was in love, for the moment, with looking at her from where he sat. Her search carried her some distance and at last she passed out of sight behind a bend in the villa wall. Mrs. Waddington proposed in a few moments that we should overtake her, and we moved forward. We had not advanced many paces before she re-appeared, glancing over her shoulder as she came towards us with an air of suppressed perturbation. In an instant I saw she was being followed; a man was close behind her a man in whom my second glance recognized Angelo Beati. Adina was pale; something had evidently passed between them. By the time she had met us, we were also face to face with Angelo. He was pale, as well, and, between these two pallors, Scrope had flushed crimson. I was afraid of an explosion and stepped toward Angelo to avert it. But to my suprise, he was evidently following another line. He turned the cloudy brightness of his eyes upon each of us and poised his hand in the air as if to say, in answer to my unspoken charge-"Leave me alone, know what I am about." I exchanged a glance with Scrope, urging him to pass on with the ladies and let me deal with the intruder. Miss Waddington stopped; she was gezing at Angelo with soft intentness. Her lover, to lead her away, grasped her arm almost rudely, and as she went with him I saw her faintly flushing. Mrs. Waddington, unsuspicious of evil, saw nothing but a very handsome young man. "What I a beautiful creature for a sketch!" I heard her exclaim, as she followed her step-daughter. 66 I'm not going to make a noise," said Angelo, with a somber smile; "don't be frightened! I know what good manners are. These three weeks now that I've been hanging about Rome, I've learned to play the gentleman. Who is that young lady?" My dear young man, it's none of your business. I hope you had not the hardihood to speak to her." He was silent a moment, looking after her as she retreated on her companion's arm. "Yes, I spoke to her-and she understood me. Keep quiet; I said nothing she mightn't hear. But such as it was, she understood it. She's your friend's amica; I know that. I've been watching you for half an hour from behind those trees. She is wonderfully beautiful. Farewell; I wish you no harm, but tell your friend I've not forgotten him. I'm only awaiting my chance; I think it will come. I don't want to kill him; I want to give him some hurt that he'll survive and feel -forever!" He was turning away, but he paused and watched my companions till they disappeared. At last-"He has more than his share of good luck," he said, with a sort of forced coldness. "A topaz-and a pearl! both at once! Eh, farewell!" And he walked rapidly away, waving his hand. I let him go. I was unsatisfied, but his unexpected sobriety. left me nothing to say. When a startling event comes to pass, we are apt to waste a good deal of time in trying to recollect the correct signs and portents which preceded it, and when they seem fewer than they should be, we don't scruple to imagine them-we invent them after the fact. Therefore it is that I don't pretend to be sure that I was particularly struck, from this time forward, with something strange in our quiet Adina. She had always seemed to me vaguely, innocently strange; it was part of her charm that in the daily noiseless movement of her life a mystic undertone seemed to murmur-“You don't half know me!" Perhaps we three prosaic mortals were not quite worthy to know her: yet I believe that if a practised man of the world had whispered to me, one day, over his wine, after Miss Waddington had rustled away from the table, that there was a young lady who, sooner or later, would treat her friends to a first class surprise, I should have laid my finger on his sleeve and told him with a smile that he phrased my own thought. Was she more silent than usual, was she preoccupied, was she melancholy, was she restless? Picturesquely, she ought to have been all these things; but in fact, she was still to the unillumined eye simply a very pretty blonde maiden, who smiled more than she spoke, and accepted her lover's devotion with a charming demureness which savored much more of humility than of condescension. It seemed to me useless to repeat to Scrope the young Italian's declaration that he had spoken to her, and poor Sam never intimated to me either that he had questioned her in suspicion of the fact, or that she I was had offered him any account of it. sure, however, that something must have passed between the young girl and her lover in the way of question and answer, and I privately wondered what the deuce Angelo had meant by saying she had understood him. What had she understood? Surely not the story of Scrope's acquisition of the gem; for granting what was unlikely-that Angelo had had time to impart it, it was unnatural that Adina should not have frankly demanded an explanation. At last I broke the ice and asked Scrope if he supposed Miss Waddington had reason to connect the great intaglio with the picturesque young man she had met in the Villa Borghese. My question caused him visible discomfort. "Picturesque?" he growled. "Did she tell you she thought him picturesque? But he is! You must "By no means. at least allow him that." "He hadn't brushed his hair for a week if that's what you mean. But it's a charm which I doubt that Adina appreciates. But she has certainly taken," he added in a moment, an unaccountable dislike to the topaz. She says the Emperor Tiberius spoils it for her. It's carrying historical antipathies rather far: I supposed nothing could spoil a fine gem for a pretty woman. It appears," he finally said, that rascal spoke to her." "What did he say?" 66 that "He asked her if she was engaged to 66 And what did she answer?" Nothing." I suppose she was frightened." "She might have been; but she says she was not. He begged her not to be; he told her he was a poor harmless fellow looking for justice. She left him, without speaking. I told her he was crazy-it's not a lie." "Possibly!" I rejoined. Then, as a last attempt-"You know it wouldn't be quite a lie," I added, "to say that you are not absolutely sane. You're very erratic, about the topaz; obstinacy, pushed under certain circumstances beyond a certain point, bears a dangerous likeness to crazi ness." I suppose that if one could reason with a mule it would make him rather more mulish to know one called him stubborn. Scrope gave me a chilling grin. "I deny your circumstances. If I'm mad, I claim the madman's privilege of believing myself peculiarly sane. If you wish to preach to me, you must catch me in a lucid interval.' "A neighbor?" said I. "How 66 ?" Eh, per Dio! don't I live at Lariccia?' And he laughed in almost as simple a fashion as when we had awaked him from his dreamless sleep in the meadows. at dawn. Scrope had offered to go with me part of the way, and walk back to the inn before breakfast; but I declined to accept so onerous a favor, and departed The breath of early spring in Rome, alone, in the early twilight. A rickety though magical, as, you know, in its visible diligence made the transit across the Caminfluence on the dark old city, is often pagna, and I had a five minutes' walk to rather trying to the foreign constitution. the post-office, while it stood waiting for After a fortnight of uninterrupted sirocco, its freight. I made my way through the Mrs. Waddington's fine spirits confessed to little garden of the inn, as this saved me depression. She was afraid, of course, that some steps. At the sound of my tread on she was going to have "the fever," and the gravel, a figure rose slowly from a made haste to consult a physician. He bench at the foot of a crippled grim stareassured her, told her she simply needed tue, and I found myself staring at Angelo change of air, and recommended a month | Beati. I greeted him with an exclamation, at Albano. To Albano, accordingly, the which was virtually a challenge of his right two ladies repaired, under Scrope's escort. to be there. He stood and looked at me Mrs. Waddington kindly urged my going fixedly, with a strangely defiant, unembarwith them; but I was detained in Rome rassed smile, and at last, in answer to my by the arrival of some relations of my own, repeated inquiry as to what the deuce he for whom I was obliged to play cicerone. I was about, he said he supposed he had a could only promise to make an occasional right to take a stroll in a neighbor's garvisit to Albano. My uncle and his three den. daughters were magnificent sight-seers, and gave me plenty to do; nevertheless, at the end of a week I was able to redeem my promise. I found my friends lodging at the inn, and the two ladies doing their best to merge the sense of dirty stone floors and crumpled yellow table-cloth in ecstatic. contemplation, from their windows, of the great misty sea-like level of the Campagna. The view apart, they were passing delightful days. You remember the loveliness of the place and its picturesque neighborhood of strange old mountain towns. The country was blooming with early flowers and foliage, and my friends lived in the open air. Mrs. Waddington sketched in water colors. Adina gathered wild nosegays, and Scrope hovered contentedly between them-not without an occasional frank stricture on the elder lady's use of her pigments and Adina's combinations of narcissus and cyclamen. All seemed to me very happy and, without ill-nature, I felt almost tempted to wonder whether the most desirable gift of the gods is not a thick-and-thin conviction of one's own impeccability. Yet even a lover with a bad conscience might be cheated into a disbelief in retribution by the unbargained sweetness of such a presence in his life as Adina Waddington's. I spent the night at Albano, but as I had pledged myself to go the next morning to a funzione with my fair cousins in Rome,"fair" is for rhetoric; but they were excellent girls-I was obliged to rise and start If I had had so many other demands on my attention during my friend's absence that it never occurred to me that Scrope had lodged himself in the very jaws of the enemy. But I began to believe that, after all, the enemy was very harmless. Angelo confined his machinations to sitting about in damp gardens at malarial hours, Scrope would not be the first to suffer. I had fancied at first that his sense of injury had made a man of him; but there seemed still to hang about him a sort of a romantic ineffectiveness. His painful impulsion toward maturity had lasted but a day and he had become again an irresponsible lounger in Arcady. But he must have had an Arcadian constitution to brave the Roman dews at that rate. And you came here for a purpose," I said. "It ought to be a very good one to warrant your spending your nights out of doors in this silly fashion. If you are not careful you'll get the fever and die, and that will be the end of everything." He seemed grateful for my interest in his health. "No, no, Signorino mio, I'll not get the fever. I've a fever here"-and he struck a blow on his breast-" that 's a safeguard against the other. I've had a purpose in coming here, but you'll never guess it. Leave me alone; I shan't harm |