A Safe Investment [pp. 625-626]

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
;and her heart began to beat, and her brow to throbf The suggestion
shook her whole being somehow, though she had not quite fathomed
what it meant. And then the crimson color rose like a sudden flame,
and flew over all her face. The change, the trouble, the surprise, were
like so many variations in the sky, and they combined to take from
the young lover what little wits he had left.
"Would it be so dreadful? " he said, bending down over her.
" Alice, just you and I. What would it matter where we were so long
as we were together? I know it would matter nothing to me. I would
take such care of you. I should be as happy as the day was long. I
want nothing but to have you by me, to look at you, and listen to you.
I do not care if there were not another creature in the world," cried
the youth, "just you and I!"
"Oh, don't speak so! " cried Alice, trembling in her agitation and
astonishment. "Don't, oh, don't! You must not! How could I ever,
ever leave mamma?"
"Then it is not me you object to?" cried the lover, in triumph,
taking her hands, taking herself to him, in a tender delirium.
This was how it came about. With no more preparation on either
side, with every thing against it-friends, prudence, fortune, Nelly,
every influence you could conceive. And yet they did it without any
intention of doing it-on the mere argument of being left for half an
hour alone together. True, it took more than half an hour to calm
down the bewilderment of the girl's mind, thus launched suddenly at
a stroke into the wide waters of life. She looked back trembling upon
her little haven, the harbor where she had lain so quietly a few min utes before. But we can never go back those few minutes. The
thing was done, and nobody in the world could be more surprised at
it than the two young, rash, happy creatures themselves, holding each
other's hands, and looking into each other's faces, and asking themselves, Could it be true?
[To BE CONTINUED.]
A SAFE INVESTMENT.
N the second year of the late civil war, I was married, and went
to live with my husband in a small village on the Hudson, some
fifty or sixty miles from New York. The house we occupied was a
large, rambling mansion, of considerable antiquity for this country,
and stood a little apart from the rest of I v;il ge, surrounded by
broad fields, and commanding a giori.vus view of the river and the
hills of the Highlands. It had been built before the Revolution, by
my husband's great-grandfather, aitd, though destitute of many
"modern improvements," was still a comfortable and pleasant residence.
My husband was a lawyer and a large real-estate owner in the
neighborhood, and, at the period of which I write, was greatly perplexed, like many other persons in the North, by the perilous state of
the times, and especially about the safe investment of his funds, as
the suspension of specie payments, the great rise in gold, and the
military disasters in Virginia, made it almost impossible to tell where
it would be safe to deposit or to use one's money in any large
amount.
In the course of his transactions in real-estate, it happened, one
day, that he received what was for us then a large sum, about ten
thousand dollars, which he brought home and placed in my charge,
telling me at the same time that he should have to be absent during
the evening, attending to some business on the other side of the
river, and should not be at home till about midnight.
" You can place the money in the safe, dear," he said, as he gave
it to me, "and to-morrow I will try and find some way to invest it
securely."
So saying, he stepped into the buggy, which was standing at the
door, and drove away, taking with him our hired man Silas, and leaving me with no one in the house but Dinah, an old colored woman,
who fulfilled in our modest household the functions of cook and
maid-of-all-work, as she had long done in'the family of my own parents,
who, on my marriage, had yielded her to me as a valuable part of my
dower.
Dinah was indeed a character. She was tall and very stout, weighing, she would never tell how much, more than two hundred pounds.
She was very black, and as lazy as she' was black. I do not think
any one could move more deliberately than Dinah did, that is, to move
at all. And, by a wonderful dispensation, she seemed to feel that.
whatever her other faults might yl. she was strong on the point of
locomotion. For, when she had been moving with a ponderous slow ness, almost maddening to a person of ordinary quickness, one of her
favorite expressions was, "Well, Miss Lillie, what shall I fly onto
next?" How she accomplished all she did, the brownies only know.
We used sometimes almost to tremble when there was any special
hurry about our domestic arrangements, and yet Dinah always man aged to bring affairs to a consummation just when a minute more
would have ruined every thing; and, with undisturbed front, would
slowly enunciate, "Well, miss, what shall I fly onto next?"
It was nearly dark when my husband departed, and, after giving
I my orders to Dinah, or rather my suggestions, I left her, and made
the tour of the house, to see that all was safe and properly locked up.
This duty attended to, I went to my bedroom, intending to pass the
time in reading till my husband should return.
It was a large room on the ground-floor, with two French windows
opening on a broad veranda. The windows were draped with long
yellow-silk curtains, between which the moonlight faintly entered,
dimmed by the shadow of the roof of the piazza, and partly inter cepted by the fringe of woodbine which hung from it. Mv bed stood
with its foot toward the windows, and with its head about half a yard
; from the wall. It was an old-fashioned structure, hung with yellow
silk like the windows, but I slept with the hangings drawn back and
fastened to the head-board. The bed was so large that no one ever
thought of moving it, except in those seasons of household panic
called house-cleanings, when the combined strength of three or four
men was called into requisition to draw it into the middle of the room.
So elaborately carved was it that it went by the name of Westminster
Abbey in the family. At one end of the room, at no great distance from
the bed, was a large safe, built into the huge. chimney of the mansion,
with a door high enough for a person to enter standing upright. Here
I was accustomed to place, every evening, our silyer plate on shelves
which extended around the sides, on which also were placed boxes
containing papers and other valuables. Opposite the foot of the bed stead, between the windows, was a mirror, running from the floor al most to the ceiling. Like all the other furniture in the room, it was
old and handsome. How many, happy scenes it had reflected in the
hundred years it had stood there!
The night was exceedingly hot, and I therefore left the windows
open, though I drew the curtains before I seated myself at the table
in the centre of the room, lighted the candles, and began to read, in
order to pass the heavy time before the return of my husband.
After a while, I heard the clock strike nine, at which hour Dinah
qlways went to bed. Her chamber was iA the attic, the third story of
the house. Remembering some household matter about which I
wished to speak to her, I started hurriedly up, and went into the entry
to intercept her before she got up-stairs. I had to wait about a min ute before she came, and our colloquy continued three or four minutes
more.
When I returned to my bedroom, feeling somewhat tired, I resolved
to go to bed, as, at that late hour in the country, it was quite certain
that no visitors would call, and my husband could let himself in with
the latch-key, which he always carried. I thought, however, I would
try to keep awake by reading, and accordingly placed a light-stand
and the candles at the head of my bed. I then closed and fastened
the windows, undressed, and got into bed. The key of the safe I
placed, as usual, under my pillow.
After reading perhaps half an hour, I grew weary of-the book,
and, quietly laying it down, remained for some minutes meditating
with my eyes fixed on the mirror opposite the foot of the bed, in
which I could see myself reflected, together with the yellow silk cur tains behind my head. I was thinking, not unnaturally, how pretty I
looked, and how happy I was with such a loving husband and such a
large sum of money secure in our safe, when suddenly I saw in the
mirror a sight that made my heart stand still A hand appeared be tween the curtains, drawing them slowly apart, and grasping cau tiously the head-board. It was a man's hand, large and coarse and
dark, as if belonging to a mulatto, or to one greatly tanned by ex posure to the weather.
My first impulse was to start from the bed, and scream for help.
I repressed it by a strong effort of will, and lay perfectly motion less, except that I partially closed my eyes, keeping them only suft
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