Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/83

Rh early morning he would stir them with loud accordant blasts upon the tin trumpet and the violin; when they turned away they had enjoyed their little drama as if it had been an actual occurrence.

As Elisabetta crossed the room to descend, she paused, by heaven knows what fatality, to arrange a toilet-cover, and as she did so, she stared full at herself in the mirror—a thing she had not done before for years—on Sundays a single sidelong glance had been more than enough for her. She had been thinking of Sebastian as her boy, naturally enough; then, incidentally, of herself as his fair young, brown-eyed mother. The rising of that aged, wrinkled, fanged and grizzly hag in the glass before her struck her such a blow as Death himself, rising in skeleton guise, with hour-glass and scythe, might have given. She leaned her two hands on the table and stared till every one of the hateful lineaments was cut in upon her. She went down stairs with her hands upon her heart, which had been beating so fiercely all day with the wildness of expectation.

Elisabetta sat down before the fire, and wished that Bessie were there with her caresses, to assure her she was not so detestable; and then she mocked herself for desiring all that brilliance to be the foil of her withered yellowness. She suddenly asked herself what had become of the pale-faced woman, who once had a lover, and whose beautiful brown hair had fallen forward and veiled her child's face on the day when his uncle came for him—so unselfish, she had forgotten her, her whole life had been love for others; the tears fell fast now as she bemoaned her. And Sebastian to come home to such a thing as this for his mother; he fresh from that enchanted land beyond the sea; his heart full of hope; his eyes of beauty, to be blasted with such a sight as she! That malevolent and disgustful face—look which way she would, she seemed to see it now. Ah! what an awakening to him. He never got that picture. What a pang for him! She wished the sea were running over her head—the ice-cold, cruel sea, that was roaring so like a beast for its prey. She went and pulled aside the curtain and looked out—a white wilderness of tempest swept by the black pane. What ailed all the lights to-night? Where was Pier Head light that she was wont to see laying its beams upon the water? Where the light of the Race, that wheeled from dark to dawn on its way, a star of many colors? Where were the white channel lights? Where the great golden sheet of the Bay Vue light? Had the thick and deathly weather drowned them all? She dropped the curtain, caught another glimpse of herself in the darkened window-glass as she did so, and returned to her chair and to the train of mildew-like thought. Could Sebastian love such an object, she asked, its fearful head coming out of the breast? Could he care for her with any feeling but compassion? Would he not loathe her before he could know