Читать книгу Floyd Grandon's Honor - Amanda M. Douglas - Страница 12

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Love is forever and divinely new.—Montgomery.

Floyd Grandon, who always sleeps the sleep of the just, or the traveller who learns to sleep under all circumstances, is restless and tormented with vague dreams. Some danger or vexation seems to menace him continually. He rises unrefreshed, and Cecil holds a dainty baby grudge against him for his neglect of yesterday, and makes herself undeniably tormenting, until she is sent away in disgrace.

Madame Lepelletier rather rejoices in this sign. "You are not always to rule him, little lady," she thinks in her inmost soul. He explains briefly to his mother that Mr. St. Vincent is very ill, and that urgent business demands his attention, and is off again.

Somehow he fears Lindmeyer's verdict very much. If there should be some mistake, some weak point, the result must be failure for all concerned. Would Wilmarth still desire to marry Miss St. Vincent? he wonders.

Denise receives him with a smile in her bright eyes.

"He is very comfortable," she says, and Grandon takes heart.

Lindmeyer is waiting for him. His rather intense face is hopeful; and Grandon's spirits go up.

"The thing must be a success," he says. "Mr. St. Vincent has explained two or three little mistakes, or miscalculations, rather, and given me his ideas. I wish I had time to take it up thoroughly. But I have to leave town for several days. Could you wait, think? I am coming again to-night. What a pity such a brain must go back to ashes! He is not an old man, either, but he has worn hard on himself. There, my time is up," glancing at his watch.

Mr. St. Vincent receives Mr. Grandon with evident pleasure, but it seems as if he looks thinner and paler than yesterday. There is a feverish eagerness in his eyes, a tremulousness in his voice. The doctor is to be up presently, and Grandon is persuaded to wait. After the first rejoicing is over, Grandon will not allow him to talk business, but taking up Goethe reads to him. The tense, worn face softens. Now and then he drops into a little doze. He puts his hand out to Grandon with a grateful smile, and so the two sit until nearly noon, when the doctor comes.

Floyd follows him down-stairs.

"Don't ask me to reconsider my verdict," he says, in answer to the other's look. "The issues of life and death are not in our hands. If you really understood his state, you would wonder that he is still alive. Keep all bad tidings from him," the doctor adds rather louder to Denise. "Tell him pleasurable things only; keep him cheerful. It cannot be for very long. And watch him well."

"Where is Miss St. Vincent?" asks Grandon, with a very pardonable curiosity.

"She has gone out. He will have it so. She does not dream the end is so near." And Denise wipes her old eyes. "Mr. Grandon, is it possible that dreadful man must marry her?"

"Oh, I hope not!"

"He is very determined. And ma'm'selle has been brought up to obey, not like your American girls. If her father asked her to go through fire, she would, for his sake. And in a convent they train girls to marry and to respect their husbands, not to dream about gay young lovers. But my poor lamb! to be given to such a man, and she so young!"

"No, do not think of it," Grandon says, huskily.

"You shall see her this evening, sir, if you will come. I will speak to master."

Grandon goes on to the factory. Wilmarth is away, and he rambles through the place, questioning the workmen. There are some complaints. The wool is not as good as it was formerly, and the new machinery bothers. The foreman does not seem to understand it, and is quite sure it is a failure. Mr. Wilmarth has no confidence in it, he says.

Then Grandon makes a thorough inspection of some old books. They certainly did make money in his father's time, but expenses of late have been much larger. Why are they piling up goods in the warehouse and not trying to sell? It seems to him as if there was no real head to the business. Can it be that he must take this place and push matters through to a successful conclusion? It seems to him that he could really do better than has been done for the last six months.

It is mid-afternoon when he starts homeward. He will take the old rambling path and rest his weary brain a little before he presents himself to madame. She has a right to feel quite neglected, and yet how can he play amiable with all this on his mind? He wipes his brow, and sits down on a mossy rock, glancing over opposite. Did any one ever paint such light and shade, such an atmosphere? How still the trees are! There is not a breath of air, the river floats lazily, undisturbed by a ripple. There is a little boat over in the shade, and the man who was fishing has fallen asleep.

Hark! There is a sudden cry and a splash. Has some one fallen in the river, or is it boys on a bathing frolic? He leans over the edge of the cliff, where he can command a sight of the river, but there is nothing save one eddy on the shore where no one could drown. And yet there are voices, a sound of distress, it seems to him, so he begins to scramble down. A craggy point jutting out shuts off the view of a little cove, and he turns his steps thitherward. Just as he gains the point he catches sight of a figure threading its way up among the rocks.

"Keep perfectly still." The wind wafts the sound up to him, and there is something in the fresh young voice that attracts him. "I am coming. Don't stir or you will fall again. Wait, wait, wait!" She almost sings the last words with a lingering cadence.

He is coming so much nearer that he understands her emprise. A child has fallen and has slipped a little way down the bank, where a slender birch sapling has caught her, and she is quite wedged in. The tree sways and bends, the child begins to cry. The roots surely are giving way, and if the child should fall again she will go over the rocks, down on the stony shore. Floyd Grandon watches in a spell-bound way, coming nearer, and suddenly realizes that the tree will give way before he can reach her. But the girl climbs up from rock to rock, until she is almost underneath, then stretches out her arms.

"I shall pull you down here," she says. "There is a place to stand. Let go of everything and come."

The tree itself lets go, but it still forms a sort of bridge, over which the child comes down, caught in the other's arms. She utters a little shriek, but she is quite safe. Her hat has fallen off, and goes tumbling over the rocks. He catches a glint of fair hair, of a sweet face he knows so well, and his heart for a moment stops its wonted beating.

He strides over to them as if on the wings of the wind. They go down a little way, when they pause for strength. Cecil is crying now.

"Cecil," he cries in a sharp tone—"Cecil, how came you here?"

Cecil buries her face in her companion's dress and clings passionately to her. The girl, who is not Jane, covers her with a defiant impulse of protection, and confronts the intruder with a brave, proud face of gypsy brilliance, warm, subtile, flushing, spirited, as if she questioned his right to so much as look at the child.

"Cecil, answer me! How came you here?" The tone of authority is deepened by the horrible fear speeding through his veins of what might have happened.

"You shall not scold her!" She looks like some wild, shy animal protecting its young, as she waves him away imperiously with her little hand. "How could she know that the treacherous top of the cliff would give way? She was a good, obedient child to do just what I told her, and it saved her. See how her pretty hands are all scratched, and her arm is bleeding."

He kneels at the feet of his child's brave savior, and clasps his arms around Cecil. "My darling," and there is almost a sob in his voice, "my little darling, do not be afraid. Look at papa. He is so glad to find you safe."

"Is she your child—your little girl?" And the other peers into his face with incredulous curiosity.

Cecil answers by throwing herself into his arms.

"She is my one treasure in this world," Floyd Grandon exclaims with deep fervor.

He holds her very tight. She is sobbing hysterically now, but he kisses her with such passionate tenderness, that though her heart still beats with terror, she is not afraid of his anger.

The young girl stands in wondering amaze, her velvety brown eyes lustrous with emotion. Lithe, graceful, with a supple strength in every rounded limb, in the slightly compressed red lips, the broad, dimpled chin, and the straight, resolute brows. The quaint gray costume, nun-like in its plainness, cannot make a nun of her.

"You have saved my child!" and there is a great tremble in his voice. "I do not know how to thank you. I never can."

The statue moves a little, and the red lips swell, quiver, and yet she does not speak.

"I saw you from the cliff. I hardly know how you had the self-command, the forethought to do it."

"You will not scold her!" she entreats.

"My darling, no. For your sake, not a word shall be said."

"But I was naughty!" cries Cecil, in an agony of penitence. "I ran away from Jane."

Grandon sits down on the stump of a tree, and takes Cecil on his lap. Her little hands are scratched and soiled by the gravel, and her arm has quite a wound.

"Oh!" the young girl cries, "will you bring her up to the little cottage over yonder? You can just see the pointed roof. It is my home."

"You are Miss St. Vincent?" Grandon exclaims in surprise. He does not know quite what he has expected, but she is very different from any thought of his concerning her.

"Yes." She utters this with a simple, fearless dignity that would do credit to a woman of fashion. "Her hands had better be washed and her arm wrapped up. They will feel more comfortable."

"Thank you." Then he rises with Cecil in his arms, and makes a gesture to Miss St. Vincent, who settles her wide-brimmed hat that has slipped back, and goes on as a leader. She is so light, supple, and graceful! Her plain, loosely fitting dress allows the slim figure the utmost freedom. She is really taller than she looks, though she would be petite beside his sisters. Her foot and ankle are perfect, and the springy step is light as a fawn's.

This, then, is the girl whose future they have been discussing, whose hand has been disposed of in marriage as arbitrarily as if she were a princess of royal blood. If Eugene only would marry her! Fortune seems quite sure now, and he is not the man ever to work for it. It must come to him.

Once or twice Miss St. Vincent looks back, blushing brightly. She has a natural soft pink in her cheeks that seems like the heart of a rose, and the blush deepens the exquisite tint. They enter the shaded path, and she goes around to the side porch, where the boards have been scrubbed white as snow.

"O Denise," she exclaims, "will you get a basin of water and some old linen? This little girl has fallen and scratched her arms badly." Then, with a sudden accession of memory, she continues, "I believe it is the gentleman who has been to see papa."

"Mr. Grandon!" Denise says in amaze.

"Yes. Your young mistress has saved my little girl from what might have been a sad accident." And he stands Cecil on the speckless floor.

Miss St. Vincent throws off her hat. Denise brings some water in a small, old silver basin, and rummages for the linen. Grandon turns up the sleeve of his daughter's dress, and now Cecil begins to cry and shrink away from Denise.

"Let me," says the young girl, with that unconscious self-possession so becoming to her, and yet so far removed from boldness. "Now you are going to be very brave," she says to the child. "You know how you held on by the tree and did just as I told you, and now, after your hands are washed, they will feel so much better. It will hurt only a little, and you will be white and clean again."

She proceeds with her work as she talks. Cecil winces a little, and her eyes overflow with tears, but beyond an occasional convulsive sob she does not give way. The arm is bandaged with some cooling lotion, and Denise brings her mistress a little cream to anoint the scratched hands. Floyd Grandon has been watching the deft motions of the soft, swift fingers, that make a sort of dazzle of dimples. It certainly is a lovely hand.

"Now, does it not feel nice?" Then she washes the tears from the face, and wipes it with a soft towel that is like silk. "You were very good and brave."

Cecil, moved by some inward emotion, throws her arms around Miss St. Vincent's neck and kisses her. From a strange impulse the young girl blushes deeply and turns her face away from Grandon.

He has asked after Mr. St. Vincent, who is now asleep. He is no worse. Denise thinks him better. He has not fainted since morning.

"Cecil," her father says, "will you stay here and let me go home for the carriage? I am afraid I cannot carry you quite so far, and I dare say Jane is half crazy with alarm."

Cecil looks very much as if she could not consent to the brief separation. The young girl glances from one face to the other.

"Yes, you will stay," she answers, with cheerful decision. "Papa will soon return for you. Would you mind if I gave her some berries and milk?" she asks, rather timidly, of Mr. Grandon.

"Oh, no! I will soon come back." He stoops and kisses Cecil, and makes a slight signal to Denise, who follows him.

"She saved my darling from a great peril," he says, with deep emotion, "perhaps her very life. What can I do for her?"

"Keep her from that terrible marriage," returns Denise. "She is too sweet, too pretty for such an ogre."

"She shall not marry him, whatever comes," he says, decisively.

Walking rapidly homeward, he resolves to write again to Eugene. Miss St. Vincent is pretty, winsome, refined, spirited, too; quite capable of matching Eugene in dignity or pride, which would be so much the better. She is no "meke mayd" to be ground into a spiritless slave. They would have youth, beauty, wealth, be well dowered. He feels as anxious now as he has been disinclined before. A strange interest pervades him, and the rescue of the child brings her so near; it seems as if he could clasp her to his heart as an elder daughter or a little sister.

He meets Briggs on horseback, a short distance from the house. "O Mr. Grandon," the man exclaims, "the maid has just come in and Miss Cecil is lost!"

"Miss Cecil is safe. Get me the buggy at once. She is all right," as the man looks bewildered.

Just at the gate he meets the weeping and alarmed Jane and sends her back with a few words of comfort. The house is in a great commotion, which he quiets as speedily as possible. When Mrs. Grandon finds there is no real danger, she turns upon Floyd.

"You spoil the child with your foolish indulgence," she declares. "She pays no attention to any one, she does not even obey Jane."

Grandon cannot pause to argue, for the wagon comes around. He is in no mood, either. He cannot tell why, but he feels intuitively that Miss St. Vincent is quite different from the women in his family.

He finds everything quite delightful at the eyrie. Cecil and Miss Violet have made fast friends, and Duke, the greyhound, looks on approvingly, though with an amusing tint of jealousy. The child has forgotten her wounds, has had some berries, cake, and milk, and is chattering wonderfully.

"What magic have you used?" asks Grandon in surprise.

Miss St. Vincent laughs. She hardly looks a day over fifteen, though she is two years older.

"Will you not let her come for a whole day?" she entreats. "I get so lonesome. I can only see papa a little while, and he cannot talk to me. I get tired of reading and rambling about, and Denise is worried when I stay out any length of time."

"Yes, if you can persuade her," and Grandon smiles down into the bright, eager face. "In England she was with a family of children, and she misses them."

"Oh, are you English?" Violet asks, with a naive curiosity.

"My little girl was born there, but I always lived here until I went abroad, ten years ago."

"And I was born in France," she says, with a bright, piquant smile, "though that doesn't make me quite thoroughly French." Then, as by this time they have reached Cecil, she kneels down and puts her arm around her. "He says you may come for a whole long day. We will have tea out on the porch, and you shall play with my pretty china dishes and my great doll, and when you are tired we will swing in the hammock. Shall it be to-morrow?"

"I think she must rest to-morrow," Grandon replies, gravely.

"Oh, but the next day will be Sunday!"

"If she is well enough I will bring her in the morning," he answers, indulgently.

Violet kisses her and bundles her up in a white fleecy shawl. The sun has gone down and the air has cooled perceptibly. Cecil talks a while enthusiastically, as she snuggles close to her father in the wagon; then there is a sudden silence. She is so soundly asleep that her father carries her up and lays her on her pretty white cot without awaking her. Dinner has been kept waiting, and Mrs. Grandon is not in an angelic temper, but madame's exquisite suavity smooths over the rough places. Floyd feels extremely obliged for this little attention. He makes no demur when she claims him for the evening, and discusses the future, her future, with him. To-morrow she must go to the city.

"I have an errand down, too," he says, "and can introduce you at a banking house. They could tell you better about investments than I."

She is delighted with the result of the evening, and fancies that he is beginning to find the child something of a bore. It was a pretty plaything at first, but it can be naughty and troublesome. Ah, Madame Lepelletier, fascinating as you are, if you could see how his thoughts have been wandering, and witness the passion with which he kisses his sleeping child and caresses the bandaged arm, you would not be quite so certain of your triumph.

He does not write to Eugene, it is so late, and he has a curious disinclination. By this time he has surely decided. A letter may come to-morrow, and it may be better to wait until he hears.

When he wakes in the morning, Cecil is entertaining Jane with a history of her adventures wherein all things are mingled.

"A doll!" exclaims Jane. "Why, is she a little girl?"

"She isn't very big," says Cecil; "not like Aunt Gertrude or madame; and the most beautiful dishes that came from Paris! That's where madame was. And she laughs so and makes such dimples in her face, such sweet dimples—just a little place where I could put my finger, and she let me. It was so soft and pink," with a lingering cadence. "I like her next best to papa."

"And you've only seen her once!" says Jane, reproachfully.

"But—she kept me from falling on the rocks, you know. I might have been hurt ever so much more; why maybe I might have been killed!"

"You were a naughty little girl to run away," interpolates Jane, with some severity.

"I shall never run away again, Jane," Cecil promises, with solemnity. "But I didn't mean to slip. Something spilled out below and the tree went down, and Miss Violet was there. Maybe I should not have found her if I hadn't fallen."

"Is she pretty?" inquires Jane.

"Oh, she is beautiful! ever so much handsomer than madame."

"I don't think any one can be handsomer than madame," says Jane.

"Now I can go to papa." And Cecil opens his door softly. "O papa, my hair is all curled," she cries, eagerly, "and——"

Has he a rival already in the child's heart? the child so hard to win! A curious pang pierces him for a moment. If Miss St. Vincent can gain hearts so easily, Eugene had better see her, he decides.

The affair is talked of somewhat at the breakfast-table. Floyd Grandon takes it quietly. Mrs. Grandon reads Cecil a rather sharp lecture, and the child relapses into silence. Madame Lepelletier considers it injudicious to make a heroine of Cecil, and seconds her father's efforts to pass lightly over it. A girl who plays with a doll need fill no one with anxiety.

So Mr. Grandon drives his little daughter over to the eyrie just in time to catch Lindmeyer, who is still positive and deeply interested.

"I shall get back as soon as I can next week," he says, "and then I want to go in the factory at once. I shall be tremendously mistaken if I do not make it work."

There is a curious touch of shyness about Violet this morning that is enchanting. She carries off Cecil at once. There sits the lovely doll in a rocking-chair, and a trunk of elegant clothes that would win any little girl's heart. Cecil utters an exclamation of joy.

Mr. St. Vincent is very feeble, yet the fire of enthusiasm burns in his eyes.

"You have the right man," he says, in a tremulous voice that certainly has lost strength since yesterday; "if he was not compelled to go away; but he has promised to hurry back."

Grandon chats as long as his time will allow, then he goes to say good by to Cecil.

"You think you will not tire of her?" and he questions the bright, soft eyes, the blooming, eager face.

"Oh, no, indeed!"

"Then I will come this evening. Oh," with intense feeling, "you must know, you do know, how grateful I am!"

Her eyes are full of tears, then she smiles. What a bewitching, radiant face! He is quite sure it would capture Eugene, and he resolves to write at once.

"God must have sent you there," he says; then, obeying a strong impulse, he kisses the white, warm brow, while she bends her head reverently.

It is a busy and not an unpleasant day to Floyd Grandon. Minton & Co., the bankers, greet him quite like an old friend, though they find him much changed, and are most courteous to Madame Lepelletier; extremely pleased with so rich and elegant a client, believing they see in her the future Mrs. Grandon. There is a dinner at a hotel, a little shopping, and the delightful day is gone. She has had him all to herself, though now and then he has lapsed into abstraction, but there is enough with all the perplexing business to render him a trifle grave.

She is due at Newport next week. She is almost sorry that it is so soon, but if he should miss her—and then he has promised a few days as soon as he can get away. If that tiresome St. Vincent would only die and be done with it! If he was not mixed up with all these family affairs—but they will be settled by midwinter. He is not thinking of marriage for himself, that she can plainly see, and it makes her cause all the more secure. She feels, sitting beside him in the palace car, quite as if she had the sole claim, and she really loves him, needs him. It is different from any feeling of mere admiration, though he is a man of whom any woman might be justly proud. She has learned a little of his own aims to-day: he is to make a literary venture presently that will give him an undeniable position.

But the child is the Mordecai at the gate. He must go for her, so he merely picks up the mail that has come and steps back into the carriage. If she could have dared a little more and gone with him, but Floyd Grandon is the kind of man with whom liberties are not easily taken. And perhaps she has won enough for one day. Sometimes in attempting too much one loses all.