Violets and Other Tales

								

blushing beneath the ardent gaze of her handsome lover. "And Jacob loved
Rachel, and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel, thy younger
daughter."
How different the next scene! Heaven's wrath burst loose upon a single
community. Fire, the red-winged demon with brazen throat wide opened,
hangs his brooding wings upon an erstwhile happy city. Hades has climbed
through the crater of Vesuvius, and leaps in fiendish waves along the
land. Few the souls escaping, and God have mercy upon those who stumble
through the blinding darkness, made more torturingly hideous by the
intermittent flashes of lurid light. And yet there come three, whom the
darkness seems not to deter, nor obstacles impede. Only a blind person,
accustomed to constant darkness, and familiarized with these streets
could walk that way. Nearer they come, a burst of flames thrown into the
inky firmament by impish hands, reveals Glaucus, supporting the
half-fainting Ione, following Nydia, frail, blind, flower-loving Nydia,
sacrificing life for her unloving beloved.
And then the burning southern sun shone bright and golden o'er the
silken sails of the Nile serpent's ships; glinted on the armor and
weapons of the famous galley; shone with a warm caressing touch upon her
beauty, as though it loved this queen, as powerful in her sphere as he
in his. It is at Actium, and the fate of nations and generations yet
unborn hang, as the sword of Damocles hung, upon the tiny thread of
destiny. Egypt herself, her splendid barbaric beauty acting like an
inspiration upon the craven followers, leads on, foremost in this fierce
struggle. Then, the tide turns, and overpowered, they fly before
disgrace and defeat. Antony is there, the traitor, dishonored, false to
his country, yet true to his love; Antony, whom ambition could not lure
from her passionate caresses; Antony, murmuring softly,--


Egypt, thou knowest too well
My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings,
And thou should'st tow me after.
Over my spirit
Thy full supremacy thou knewest,
And that thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command me.
Picture after picture flashed through the maiden's mind. Agnes, the
gentle, sacrificing, burrowing like some frantic animal through the
ruins of Lisbon, saving her lover, Franklin, by teeth and bleeding
hands. Dora, the patient, serving a loveless existence, saving her rival
from starvation and destitution. The stern, dark, exiled Florentine
poet, with that one silver ray in his clouded life--Beatrice.
She heard the piping of an elfish voice, "Mother, why does the minister
keep his hands over his heart?" and the white drawn face of Hester
Prynne, with her scarlet elf-child, passed slowly across her vision. The
wretched misery of deluded Lucius and his mysterious Lamia she saw, and
watched with breathless interest the formation of that "Brotherhood of
the Rose." There was radiant Armorel, from sea-blown, wave-washed