Читать книгу The Senator's Bride - Alex. McVeigh Miller - Страница 6

Go with me, my reader, not many squares distant from that stately Winans' mansion, to an humbler home—a small brick edifice standing near to the street, and bearing over a side-door a small sign, with the name of Willard Clendenon, Attorney-at-law, inscribed thereon in very handsome gilt letters. But we have no business to transact with the gallant captain, so we will not even look into his dusty office, but pass on up the stairs, and without even knocking, enter the guest-chamber of the house.

It is a large, airy, prettily appointed chamber, but the shutters are closely akimboed, the lace curtains are drooped over the windows, and the quiet air of a sick-room pervades the apartment. On the low, white bed that occupies the center of the apartment is the recumbent figure of a man, in whose handsome features, even though his eyes are closed in a death-like sleep, we recognize Bruce Conway. He looks like marble as he lies there, his black hair flowing back from his broad, white brow, his closed eyes encircled with purplish rings, the dark mustache slightly shading his mouth, only revealing more plainly the deathly pallor and suffering of the lips.

Standing by the side of the bed, Captain Clendenon looks down at him with infinite pity and tenderness in his dark-gray orbs.

And standing by the captain's side is a little figure that looks fairy-like by contrast with his manly proportions. She clings to his arm as he stands there, and her brown head leans lightly against him, her fair girlish face wearing a look of sadness and pain as she gazes at the sufferer's sleeping face.

"Oh, Brother Willie," she whispers, "I am so sorry for him! Oh, it is so dreadful!"

And then her red lips quiver like a grieved child's, and two pearly tears start on her cheeks, and, rolling down, are lost in the ruffles on the breast of her blue morning-dress.

Captain Clendenon did not answer. He looked down at the quiet, handsome face that the surgeon thought might never wake from that death-like sleep, or if it did, it might only be to take on the deeper sleep of eternity. He had lain like that all day—it was noon now.

The duel had taken place a few days before, at a little distance out of Norfolk. The captain had done everything in his power to prevent the terrible affair, but in vain; had refused the application of Bruce that he should become his second, in the hope that he might be enabled to compromise the affair by prevailing on Bruce to offer Winans an apology for his untimely serenade.

Bruce had changed his mind about going away, and chose to feel offended at the view taken by the captain of the whole affair; so he left him out of his councils, and the duel came off without the captain's knowledge or consent. A mere accident had brought the matter to his knowledge at almost the hour appointed for it, and hurrying off to the scene of action, he had arrived only in time to see him fall at the first fire.

The appointed place was seven miles from Mrs. Conway's residence, and after the surgeon had dressed the wound and declared its serious nature, the captain took the right of an old friend to convey him to his own home in Norfolk, which was nearer, more especially as the surgeon thought the last lingering hope of recovery would be destroyed by jolting him over seven miles to his home at Ocean View.

That was how he came to be lying there in that pleasant chamber, with Captain Clendenon's pretty sister crying her brown eyes out over him.

"Poor boy! poor Bruce!" he murmured. "How the bitter consequences of his wrong-doing has followed him! And now, in all probability, he must die; yet, after all," thought this loyal heart, "it cannot be so very hard to die for her."

The noiseless entrance of his pleasant-faced mother made him look up. Taking a seat by the bed, she quietly dismissed them from the room.

"I will watch by him myself," she said, kindly, "and the fewer in the room the better, you know. Both of you go and rest yourselves."

They both withdrew with lingering steps, and eyes that seemed loth to quit that pale sleeper, but quietly obedient to their mother's wishes, and content in knowing that she would do for him all that lay in human power.

But down in the quiet little parlor the brother and sister sat down to talk it all over.

"Oh, brother! what did Mrs. Conway say when you told her?"

"Went off into strong hysterics. The maid had to put her to bed. I sent the doctor out there as I rode in town."

"How dreadful! all she had to love, poor, proud old lady; how I pity her!" and the little maiden's tears flowed afresh from her sympathizing soul.

"She may thank herself for the most of it," he answered, half bitterly. "Why did she tempt his weak mind with her wealth and pride? She knew better than any one else how wavering a will was his. Why did she continually thwart all his best impulses?"

"But, brother, he ought to have had more manliness. But it is too late to blame him now. I wonder if Mrs. Winans knows—how she feels about it? Do you know, brother Willie, I would give much to see this wonderful woman whose beauty has only been for bane. You have seen her. Is she so very beautiful? What is she like?"

"Like nothing you ever saw, little Lulu—like some fair saint, or angel."

The passion in his heart broke through his words. A faint red flushed his brown cheek, and his eyes drooped as his sister looked up with soft, astonished gaze.

"Why, brother, did you love her, too?

"That is the first time you have accused me of loving any one but yourself, little sister," he answered, lightly, parrying the question.

"Well, tell me this, brother. Did you ever go to see her at all? Did you like her—did she like you?"

"I went there sometimes—not often," his glance falling with unconscious pathos on the empty sleeve that lay between him and any aspiration toward woman's love. "I liked her very much indeed. She was very sweet and attractive, very obliging always. She liked me a little; I suppose, as a mere friend. I never presumed to ask for a deeper regard. I knew she loved Bruce. I felt, Lulu, it seemed to me then, in her dark days, every pang that struck home to that trusting and deceived young heart. I felt sorry for her, and admired her for the brave yet womanly strength that carried her through that bitter ordeal. I rejoiced with her when she married a better man than Bruce and seemed to have forgotten the past."

The tender brown eyes looked gravely at him as he spoke, reading his heart with a woman's quick intuition. She put both arms about his neck and touched her lips to the noble brow over which the brown curls fell so carelessly. The mute caress told him that she understood and sympathized in his unspoken grief. The man's heart in him could not bear it. He rose, putting her kindly and gently aside.

"Lulu, she has a noble husband; a handsome, generous fellow, a 'man among men,' but he is marred almost as much by his unreasoning jealousy as is Bruce by his unstable character. I pity her. She is worthy of confidence and all respect. It is an honor to any man to have loved her even though hopelessly."

"And Senator Winans has left her, they say, Brother Willie?"

"So rumor says," he answered, meditatively.

"Why don't you see him, brother, and talk with him, and try to make him look at things fairly? It seems a pity she should suffer so, through no fault of hers, too. My heart aches for her in her loneliness."

He did not answer. He was walking slowly up and down the floor, pausing now and then to look out of the window which overlooked the Elizabeth River and the wharves crowded with the shipping of all nationalities. His sister rose and paced the floor, also, her young heart full of sympathy for the four people whose life-paths crossed each other so strangely and sadly. She shuddered and hoped she would never love. Of the three men who each loved Grace Winans in his own fashion, she wondered which was the most unhappy; the husband who had stained his hands in human blood for his selfish passion; Bruce Conway who was dying for her, or her brother whose heart was silently breaking for her. The little maiden who was all unversed in the lore of life found herself bewildered in the maze of metaphysics into which she was drifting. She sat herself down with a sigh, and thought of the handsome face lying so deathly white up stairs, and half wishing her mother had not banished her from the room.

"Lulu!"

"Yes, Brother Willie."

He was looking at her as she looked up at him with a flitting blush on her round, dimpled face. She was wonderfully pretty, this Lulu Clendenon, with her arch brown eyes, and pink and white skin, the wavy brown hair that was gathered in a soft, loosely braided coil at the back of her small head, and her blue lawn dress, with its frillings, and flutings, and puffings, was very becoming, setting off the whiteness of her throat and wrists as no other color ever does for a pretty woman.