University of Virginia Library

The Phantom Face.

BALDER DEAD.

DE QUINCEY.

A STORY FOR CHRISTMAS.

I HAD seen her all day long, just as she stood before
me that other Christmas morning. Her eyes
—those soft brown eyes, wore a timid, appealing look;
her chestnut hair fell around her neck in silken tangles.
She was clinging to Ralph Humphries' arm. I
was no believer in ghosts, apparitions, spiritualism, or
any other supernatural manifestations; and yet, all
that day, turn my eyes whither I would, I could see
nothing but that Face. She was our fifth child—fifth
and fairest, Mary said. The rest had all died in their
cradles, and it was not until she had been with us a
year that we gave her a name, so fearful were we that
she, too, would be borne from us into the valley. But
when, after that year of waiting, her soft eyes were
still bright and beaming, and the smiles still dimpled
her rose-bud lips, we named her Faith.

The world had always called me a hard, cold man,
money-loving and money-getting; but Mary knew
that low down in my heart was a fountain which the
angel's wing had troubled, whose sweet waters of tenderness
gushed ever for her. We knelt together by
our baby's cradle upon her christening day, and I said
amen with my whole heart to the prayer my wife's
low voice faltered. It was Christmas-day on which

the little one was baptized. This was also her birth-day;
for she came to us, the white, frail thing, with
the snows of a Christmas morning, and our fondest
pet name for her was “Our Christmas Child.”

God knows, as that child grew up, I loved her;
perhaps all the more tenderly because she was not yet
three years old when her mother closed her eyes, already
full of the glory of heaven, and died with her
head upon my bosom. I could never have married
any other woman. Other men—men far tenderer and
more affectionate than I, have done this; but I—no
matter; it may have been that there was little of the
affectional element in my nature, and what there was,
having sprung into full bloom at Mary's presence, left
for all after-comers only dead leaves and withered
boughs. Faith was all I had, and I loved her well
and fondly. I do think I made her motherless childhood
and girlhood very happy. She loved me, too,
with more than a daughter's affection. As she grew
up, she was child, companion, friend—the occupation
of all the hours not devoted to business. Why was
not this companionship enough for her as it was for
me?

I had had, for some years, a young man named
Ralph Humphries in my employ. Faith never saw
him until she was seventeen, and had left school.
Then, one evening, I invited him to the house. I
had a very good opinion of him. His business capacities
were excellent; his reputation was spotless; his
manners those of a gentleman. I knew he devoted
his evenings to lonely and indefatigable study. I
thought there would be no harm in lending to one of
them a little of the brightness which Faith's eyes and

Faith's presence shed upon my own life. I could see
at once that the two young people were interested in
each other, but I never thought of the faintest possibility
that this interest could grow into any deeper
feeling.

I noticed with pride that Faith had never looked
more lovely than that night. The coldest critic could
not have helped pronouncing her beautiful. It was
an autumn evening, crisp and cool. She wore a dress
of some soft, rich fabric, plaided in bright colors. It
was cut in such fashion as just to reveal the contour
of her small, white throat, round which her chestnut
hair fell in rings of dusky gold. Her loose sleeves
dropped away from her snowy and daintily-moulded
arms, round which were clasped golden chains. I remember
all these things well, for I gloried more in
Faith than any lover in his mistress. I enjoyed the
admiration with which Humphries evidently regarded
her.

He was a fine, handsome, manly-looking young fellow
of twenty-three. At first he seemed a little embarrassed.
He was not accustomed to meeting beautiful
women, surrounded with the appliances of taste
and luxury. But soon this mauvaise honte passed
away, and he charmed even me by the ease and brilliancy
of his conversation. He talked well not only,
but he possessed the rarer accomplishment of listening
well, which is a still surer passport to the favor of a
woman.

In the course of the evening it came out that he had
been studying French and German, the former with
the assistance of a fellow-lodger, the latter alone. I remarked
that with a good knowledge of these two

tongues he might make himself invaluable to me as
foreign corresponding clerk, and at once Faith, who
was herself a most loving student of German literature,
volunteered to assist him. If she had asked my
advice in this affair, perhaps I should have opposed
it; but I could not contravene her invitation when it
was once given, and, indeed, I saw no great harm in
the matter.

Thus it was that Ralph Humphries became almost
domesticated in my household, and three or four evenings
of every week were monopolized by him and his
German books. Quite frequently I left the two young
people together. Of the possibility of any love growing
into her heart stronger than the tie which united
her to me I never thought; but one day, late in November,
with terrible suddenness the truth was brought
home to me.

I was about leaving my counting-room for the day
when young Humphries came in and requested a few
moments' audience. I do not remember in what words
he told me that he loved Faith, that he was beloved
by her. At first my mind utterly refused to comprehend
him, but he forced upon me the unwelcome truth.
I was thunderstruck rather than angry. I did not
rave at him, or even forbid him my house. I only
spoke one sentence—

“You have stolen into my home to take away my
most precious thing, my one child: it is of no use.”

In vain he strove to plead with me. I would neither
hear nor speak another word. I buttoned up my
coat, went out of the office, and, stepping into an omnibus,
I was soon at home. Faith heard my key turn
in the door, and sprang down the stairs to meet me, as

her custom was. She looked like a celestial vision,
clad, as she was, for a dinner-party, all in white; her
lips softly and tenderly smiling, her eyes full of welcome.
I put my arm around her as we went up to
the parlor together. Somehow I felt as if she had never
in her life been so selfishly dear to me, and then a
fierce anger flamed up in my heart against the man
who would fain take my treasure from me. I waited
until I had taken my customary seat in the easy-chair,
and Faith had established herself on an ottoman at
my feet, and then I said, watching keenly her expression,

“Faith, Ralph Humphries has been speaking to me
about you this afternoon.”

A quick crimson overspread her face and neck; the
lashes drooped over her shy yet eloquent eyes. I
could see with what fullness of love she regarded him;
but this only hardened my heart. I went on.

“Of course I told him it was no use. I could not
give you up to any one, least of all to one like him,
every way unworthy of you, a mere employé in your
father's warehouse.”

The girl had my blood in her veins. The flush on
her cheek deepened. Her lip curled with pride. Her
voice was firm and strong.

“Father, Ralph Humphries is in no way my inferior.
You yourself introduced him to me; you told
me how unstained was his character, how untiring his
industry, how gentlemanlike his manners; I have seen
for myself how true and tender is his heart. Father,
I love Ralph Humphries, and I shall love him till I die.”

I saw that to contend with her roused spirit would
be useless. I must endeavor to soften her heart.

“Faith,” I said, “my only treasure in life, my dead
Mary's last child, would you break my heart? Would
you leave your poor old father to die alone? Think,
daughter—your mother loved me. She is looking on
you from heaven.”

She was touched. Tears gathered slowly in her
eyes and fell heavily, glittering like dew upon her silken
raiment. She knelt at my feet and clasped her
hands in a passionate entreaty.

“Father, I do not want to leave you alone. I want
to stay with you always; but only let Ralph be your
son. He is good and worthy; you are rich enough
for us all. Oh, father, you have been so good to me
all my life. Do not refuse to make your last child happy
now. If my mother could speak to you from heaven,
she would join my prayer, for oh, my father, even
as she loved you through life and death, so do I love
Ralph Humphries.”

She paused, but at the door of my heart I heard another
voice, a pleading voice that had stolen to my
ear many and many a midnight from under the gravemould.
God forgive me, but I barred my heart's door,
and shut even that pleader out. I spoke with stern
decision:

“Faith, just one month from to-day will be Christmas—your
birth-day. We will talk no more about
Ralph Humphries now, but on Christmas day you will
be eighteen, and you shall choose then between him
and your father; for, as God hears me, his wife and
my daughter you shall not be. If you go with him,
you must leave forever your father's home and hearth.”

She made no answer. She looked at me for a moment
with her reproachful eyes, and then she rose and

went out of the room. After a short absence she came
back. She had taken off her festal robes, and was attired
in a quiet dress of some sombre hue. She seated
herself at the table and took up a book.

“What, Faith,” I said, “are you not going out, after
all?”

“No, father, I am in no mood for merriment; and
as I have not the faculty of dissembling, I will not go
among happier people, to make a discord in their
mirth.”

We passed the rest of the evening in silence.

During the month that followed, not a single allusion
was made by either of us to Ralph Humphries.
I had told Faith that she must choose between us.
After that I was too proud to forbid him the house, or
to ask him if he came there. I presumed they met
almost daily; but as he never made his appearance
when I was at home, I did not take his name upon
my lips.

Faith had never been so entirely lovely as during
that month. Sadness gave an added charm to her
beauty, a tenderer light to her eyes, a more pathetic
melody to her voice. She strove very hard to please
me—to make herself necessary to me. No sooner did
my key click in the latch, than her light feet would
steal down the stairs to meet me. She brought my
dressing-gown and slippers, she read to me, she sang
my favorite songs, she arranged her hair after a simple,
graceful fashion, in which she knew I used to love
to see her mother's. So dressed, I could sometimes
have thought that Mary's self had come out of her
grave to walk and sit beside me.

And yet, will you believe it, all this time my heart

grew harder and harder. She was not practicing these
gentle endearments, so I persuaded myself, for my
sake, but for that of Ralph Humphries. She wanted
to make herself so necessary to me that, rather than
give her up, I should be induced to accept him. So I
steeled my heart against her.

Shall I ever forget that Christmas morning which
came at last? I was too full of anxiety to leave the
house. I sat in my study, hoping and fearing. At
twelve o'clock she came in, and with her Ralph Humphries.
Together they stood before me, and Faith
spoke:

“Oh, father, will you not relent? Will you not let
us both be your children?”

“No, Faith.”

“But, father, listen. You have told me, on this my
eighteenth birth-day, to choose—choose between you
and him. I do choose. Kind father as you have been
to me, dearly as all my life long I have loved you, even
as my mother left home and kindred to follow you, so
will I give up all things, even you, for Ralph Humphries.
But, father, if you send me forth, my heart will
break. I can not, can not live and bear your curse.”

Once more she sank on her knees before me, with
her white face, her pleading eyes, her hands clasped in
a passionate prayer. But my heart was not softened.
I answered in cold, firm tones:

“Remember, Faith, I called God to witness that if
you chose him I would cast you off forever. I shall
keep my oath. But I will not curse you. Mrs. Ralph
Humphries will be no child of mine, but I shall wish
her well. Do you still persist?”

She rose. With a sudden, fond movement she clung
to her lover. Her eyes met his, and she murmured,
in the words of Scripture,

“`The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught
but death part thee and me.'”

He put his arm round her trembling figure and drew
her closer to him in my very sight. Then he said, in
a firm, respectful voice,

“Mr. Gardner, for loving your daughter I can make
no apology. No man, with a man's heart, who had
known her as I have known her, could help that; but
I would not take her from you to share my humble
destiny did I not know that to her pure, womanly nature
love is all the sunshine of life. I can not leave
her here to break her heart.”

I smiled scornfully.

“Since my day hearts have grown strangely brittle;
but sit down, both of you.”

I summoned a servant, to whom I addressed a few
words in a low tone. He went out, and in ten minutes
returned, and stood bowing at the door. I motioned
him to close it, and then I said,

“You have had a few moments for consideration.
Are you still resolved to be Ralph Humphries' wife?”

Her tone was as determined as my own.

“I am.”

“Well, then, you must be married before you leave
my house under his protection. I have sent for a
clergyman, and I will witness the ceremony.”

The Rev. Mr. Wilde must have thought it a strange
bridal, but he made no comments. As soon as it was
over, I placed his fee in his hands and he departed. I
turned to the bride.

“Mrs. Humphries,” I said, in a mocking voice, “I
congratulate you; I wish you long life, an easy conscience,
and many happy returns of this day. This is
my bridal present.”

I laid in her nerveless hand a check for five thousand
dollars. Her husband took it from her and
placed it upon the table.

“I thank you, Mr. Gardner,” he said, proudly, “but
I can not allow my wife to be a pensioner on her father's
bounty when she is an outcast from his home
and love. I have strong hands and a willing heart.
You are not afraid to trust me, Faith?”

He needed no answer save her look of entire reliance,
of perfect love. They rose and stood before me.
I have that picture framed and hung away in my
heart. Its colors will never fade until the morning
light of eternity breaks over them.

Faith, my daughter Faith, is leaning on her newmade
husband's arm. Marble white is her brow; her
chestnut hair droops round her pale face with its soft,
silken tangles; her sorrowful brown eyes are full of
a prayer which eternity itself can never shut out of
my memory.

Thus she stood before me for one moment, and then
they went out of the room, out of the house, those two
young things, so utterly helpless and alone in the
world. God forgive me! God forgive me! Every
night this prayer goes up from my lips, through the
midnight, to the far-off throne. Will He hear me?

Twelve years passed on after that Christmas morning,
and I knew not whether the earth still held my
child. At first letters had come to me now and then,

in her handwriting, post-marked from a distant city,
but I was afraid they would soften my heart, and I
had burned them all unread. For years none had
come, and, in spite of my resolution, my heart had begun
to grow sick with fear. All that twelfth Christmas-day
after she left me, turn my eyes whither I
would, they rested only on Faith. Old superstitions
about ghosts and wraiths came to me, but I am no believer
in the supernatural — I dismissed them resolutely.
I could not so dismiss Faith. Turn wheresoever
I might, the Face turned also.

At last, toward night, in very desperation, I seized
my coat and hat, and hurried out of doors. Among
my tenants in a humble quarter of the city was a
pawnbroker. I knew the man well. I had often
talked with him for half an hour. Seized by some
unaccountable impulse, I went toward his shop. I
did not see the Face now, but I had an impression as
vivid as it was strange that Faith was walking beside
me. I entered the shop. As soon as the man saw
me, he left a customer with whom he was engaged,
and came toward me.

“I should have come to you to-night, Mr. Gardner,”
he said, respectfully. “Something has happened in
the course of my business which I have been feeling
for several days that you ought to know. Five days
ago a child came here, about nine years old I should
think her, and pawned a locket containing a miniature
of you. It must have been taken when you were
younger, but the likeness is perfect.”

As he spoke he laid the miniature in my hand. It
was one I had given Faith fourteen years before, on
her sixteenth birth-day. Oh, how the sight softened

me. I could not see the Face now, but I heard, stealing
up through the silence of twelve long years of estrangement,
Faith's voice, calling me father. Was it
the tears of some pitying angel which began to soften
the hard, dry soil of my heart?

“Do you know where the little girl lives?” I asked,
eagerly. He handed me an address, written upon
a crumpled piece of paper.

“I asked her,” he said, “because she seemed to be
suffering. She said that her mother would have been
willing to bear any thing but death rather than part
with the picture, but it was all she had left, and they
could not starve.”

I did not see the Face, but I heard that voice still,
calling upward through the years. How full of reproach
its tones were now!

“I must keep the picture,” I said, hurriedly. “You
shall have twice its value. It is priceless to me.”

So saying, I went out of the shop, and hurried on
through a miserable street and along a blind alley to
the number indicated on the paper I held in my hand.
It must have been but the illusion of fancy, but still
Faith seemed to walk beside me. By dint of inquiry
I found, in a great, rambling house, a room in which
they told me a woman named Humphries lived. My
heart grew sick. The hand with which I opened the
door was almost powerless, but I did open it, and I
stood there looking in, and the Face, oh, heaven! the
Face seemed to pause and look in beside me.

On a straw bed in one corner of the room lay a
woman's form, and beside it knelt a girl, older than
her years, her face, so like Faith's own, frozen into the
white stillness of despair. She did not heed my approach.

I went up and stood over the bed, and there,
after twelve long, silent years, I found once more Faith,
my child—dead, dead, dead!

I was possessed by a strange calm. I roused the
girl; I said to her,

“I am your grandfather. Look up; you shall
never suffer any more.”

The tears gushed now from her stony eyes. She
sank at my feet.

“Oh, grandfather, you are come here. She told me
to go to you—to give you this paper. See, she has it
fast in her hand. I can not get it.”

I loosened the death-grasp of those thin, cold fingers.
I smoothed the paper and read, in Faith's handwriting,
only these words:

“Father, let death plead for my child: forgive! forgive!”

Oh, it was too late. The tears I rained over that
still form could not waken the dead; those closed ears
could not hear moans or prayers; but when I clasped
her child to my bosom and promised to be a father
to the fatherless, in a far-off corner of the room I seemed
to see the Face, with a misty, golden glory bathing
its hair, and a smile upon its lips, such as I think only
the blessed ones of heaven can wear.

I learned Faith's story afterward. It was the old,
old story of hopeless struggles with want and poverty;
suffering; despair; death. But, thank God, their love
never grew dim; their faith in each other never wavered.
Ralph Humphries died first, but his wife was
not long in following him to the far-off City—

I will not sadden your Christmas fireside with my
own remorse and despair—the agonies of my broken
heart. For me, in this world, is no more peace; but,
thank God, I have made her child happy, and I can
see over the Distant Hills the coming light of an eternal
morning, which shall break, by-and-by, even for
me. Every Christmas day I see, or seem to see, the
Face. Wherever I go, it goes beside me. It is bright
as ever. No tears dim those eyes of brown. No shadow
of age dims the lustre of that ever-shining hair.

Soon will come the last Christmas day on earth, and,
I know, beside my bed of death the Face will smile;
its lips, its forgiving lips, will be the first to speak my
welcome into heaven.