Читать книгу Miss Hurd: An Enigma - Anna Katharine Green - Страница 8

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“Judge not thy friend, until thou standest in his place.”

Rabbi Hillel

I did not see Miss Hurd again until near noon of the next day. Then I ran across her in the lower hall just as she was entering the rear door on her way from the woods. The two little sisters of Miss Dalrymple were with her, and the picture she made in her broad-brimmed hat, with her arms full of ferns and wild flowers, went far to rob her figure of the weird shadows with which my previous night’s experience had surrounded her in my imagination. Yet her face was not untroubled, and her eyes when they fell on my countenance wore a startled look which her ready smile of greeting failed to entirely dissipate.

“You have spent a profitable morning,” I remarked, in my anxiety to hear her voice and meet her eye.

The children, crowding up closely on either side, leaned their heads against her in loving devotion.

“Yes,” she returned, with an air of subdued constraint, as she glanced down at her numerous trophies, “these two little ones and myself have ransacked the forest for Miss Dalrymple’s fernery.”

“Can I not relieve you of a portion of your burden?” I asked, longing to prolong the interview, yet conscious that both the place and the hour were unfavorable.

“No,” she rejoined, with more gravity in the calm shake of her head than the moment seemed to warrant; yet, notwithstanding this somewhat abrupt refusal, she lingered for just a passing instant while I spoke to the children and admired their spoils, smiling with a sad grace, and a womanly sympathy with the little ones’ pleasure that touched me more than any open expression of happiness might have done.

But suddenly she started, and with a nervous movement, passed hurriedly upstairs. As she did so she dropped two little sprigs of laurel, and as I was stooping to pick them up I perceived the cause of her perturbation.

Mr. Murdoch, who had haunted the parlors since early morning, had stepped into the hall and was standing in full view of us both, with his eyes bent earnestly on her face. It was the undisguised interest visible in his glance that had startled her and sent her upstairs in confusion.

I dropped one of the sprigs which I had picked up, but kept the other in my hand. As I met his eyes I fastened it slowly in my button-hole, and then turned nonchalantly away towards the open door.

But he was not to be put off so easily. Advancing hurriedly to the foot of the stairs, he picked up the other sprig, and thrusting it as conspicuously as I had done into the lappet of his coat, came and stood beside me, with his face turned towards the forest.

Regarding this as an acceptance of the challenge I had just offered, I remained silent and a momentary constraint fell upon us both. Then he spoke in a slow, calm way, which gave unexpected emphasis to the words he chose to utter.

“Mr. Ruxton,” said he, “I might as well acknowledge at once that I feel myself greatly attracted towards the lady who has just gone upstairs. If she will listen to me, I am ready to take her from here as my wife; therefore if I seem to show any undue interest in her proceedings it is because I know my own purpose in her regard, and know it to be of a deeper and more considerate character than any which you or any other man is likely to cherish upon so short an acquaintance.”

I was stunned. For such plain speaking as this I had no answer. Though her beauty had deeply attracted me, though she struck me as being both physically and intellectually the most superb woman I had ever seen, I was not yet ready to acknowledge, even to myself, that I was ambitious to make her my wife. Yet I could not allow him to leave me under the impression that he had but to utter his wishes for me to withdraw all claim to her good graces, and so I stood for a moment irresolute, gazing like himself directly into the underwood that stretched in seemingly fathomless greenery before us.

“I am obliged to you,” I presently ventured, “for the confidence with which you have thought fit to honor me. I have seen Miss Hurd but twice, and both times, as you know, under circumstances which precluded conversation. I therefore do not feel myself sufficiently acquainted with her, either to compliment you upon your intentions toward her, or to say that I am prepared to regard her solely as the object of your preference.”

His reply was short but perfectly courteous.

“I have acquainted you with my intentions,” said he; “but that does not mean that I require or even desire a return of confidence on your part.” And drawing back, with a bow in which I in vain looked for some evidence of disrespect or ill-feeling, he disappeared into the room from which he had come.

As for myself, I remained transfixed, staring into the beeches. My brain was in a turmoil, and my heart bruised and irritated at being called upon to give evidence of itself thus prematurely. He had known Miss Hurd for no greater length of time, and under no more favorable conditions, than myself, yet he was not only ready, but willing, to avow his intention of courting her for his wife. It was strange, if not unprecedented, and yet she was just the woman to rouse such an instantaneous passion.

I did not quarrel with his precipitancy, but was I prepared to emulate it? I concluded that I was not, and found some comfort in the thought which came with this conclusion, that precipitancy sometimes alarms women, and that in this especial case her obviously unhappy past would make her much more likely to be won by a slow and growing regard, than by any frantic expression of wild and unreasoning passion.

Feeling the house oppressive, I went into the woods. But my walk there was short. Contemplation convinced me that instead of chafing at the situation in which I found myself, I should reconcile myself to it, and thereby cultivate the patience which I so sadly lacked. Besides, if I left the house to Murdoch, what opportunities might not be granted him; opportunities which I was by no means sure I wished to share, but which I was not yet ready to yield entirely to another.

I ended by returning to the house and making my peace with Miss Dalrymple.

Mr. Murdoch, who seemed infected with a restlessness as great as my own, wandered in and out of the parlors during my long talk with this lady, and not till late in the afternoon did there occur any event of sufficient interest to stop him in his aimless meanderings, or myself in the flood of small talk in which I had become involved.

He had been standing in one of the windows overlooking the street, and was so still that I had become almost insensible to his presence, when a sudden movement on his part attracted my attention. Watching him, I noticed that a look of eagerness had supplanted his apathetic expression of a moment before, and perceiving that he was about to leave the room, I rose from my position at Miss Dalrymple’s side, and, with a murmured apology, crossed to the window he had just vacated, and glanced out. A carriage was standing in front of the door, and in it I could just discern a woman with a basket in her lap.

Was it Miss Hurd? Not being able to see her face I could not determine, but when in another moment I saw Mr. Murdoch issue from the house and approach the carriage with his hat on, and every evidence of being about to take his place at her side, I lost all doubt as to her identity, and only concerned myself as to how I was to preserve my equanimity in face of this evident triumph on the part of my demonstrative rival.

Happily I was not called upon to do so, for at that moment Miss Tewksbury came running into the room, exclaiming as she tied her bonnet-strings:

“Oh, Mr. Ruxton, won’t you come with us. John is going to the station, and he always expects some half dozen of us to accompany him. There’s plenty of room in the carriage, and we sometimes have lots of fun.”

My luck was in the ascendant. Nothing could have held me back after this invitation; but after I was safely seated in the carryall, with Miss Tewksbury at my side, and Mr. Murdoch, strange to say, on the front seat with the driver, and behind us all the silent and immovable figure of Miss Hurd, clad in a heavy veil that nearly concealed her features, I found it hard to decide, even in my own mind, whether I had been more influenced in my action by a desire to be near Miss Hurd on each and every occasion possible, or by an unworthy motive of jealousy and a wish to interrupt the tête-è-tête I had seen him so boldly plan under my very eyes.

The look she gave me as I appeared with my companion at the side of the carriage, assured me that she felt rather relieved than otherwise by my presence there; and strangely gratified by this evidence of her indifference to his admiration,—if it was indifference, for who can understand a woman!—I took but little offence at his glance, though, to tell the truth, it was strangely lacking in hostility and those evidences of open rivalry which I had been led to expect from the avowal he had so lately made to me.

The vivacity of my companion made any attempt on my part to address the lady behind me impossible; and as the ride was short, the station was reached without a word having been uttered to or by this severely silent woman. Indeed, she had drawn her veil so closely, that all temptation to address her was effectually stifled. Yet there were none of us who did not feel her presence. Even the laugh of my volatile companion showed constraint; and when, the platform reached, we all alighted, and Miss Hurd passed with her basket into an adjoining store, I noted that we all breathed easier, and that even Mr. Murdoch changed his brooding air into one more cheerful and companionable.

That all this sounds puerile and unworthy of careful noting, I am more than aware. But Miss Hurd possessed that pronounced and imposing individuality which gives to every movement more than ordinary meaning, and in the few days of our mutual stay at Beech Grove, she passed through a crisis of feeling so noteworthy, as to warrant those who loved her, in attributing the greatest importance to her least looks and slightest actions.

But of this, plain as it is to me now, I was but imperfectly aware at the time, and so when the Eastern Express came in, and I saw, amid the general hurry and rush, her fine figure mixing itself with the crowd that was hastening toward the train, I did not know what to make of Mr. Murdochs agitated rush after her, till I perceived she was herself mounting the steps of the last car, and recognized by the firm line into which her mobile lips had settled, that her intention was to go away upon this very train.

“Miss Hurd?” shouted the merry voice of Miss Tewksbury at my side. “Are you leaving us for good?”

The bell was ringing, and the whole train had that premonitory jarring tug, indicating departure; but the unhappy woman, hearing her name, turned instinctively, and, meeting my look, faltered, and in so doing stopped just long enough for Murdoch, who had made one bound around the end of the train, to mount the car from the other side. When she looked back, he was standing before her with his hand held out and a smile on his face which seemed to affect her strangely, for she shrank and then suddenly relinquished her purpose and stepped from the train. He bounded after her, but did not attempt to join her or speak to her again.

“How very queer!” exclaimed Miss Tewksbury in my ear. “Miss Hurd is a very odd person; do you not think so, Mr. Ruxton?”

I answered with a look that must have been somewhat meaningless, for the lady in question was at that moment passing us on her way back to the carriage. As she went by, she threw aside her veil.

“I had an errand in Darien,” she remarked, with sudden cold composure; “but I have decided to wait till to-morrow.” And without deigning any explanation of her extraordinary change of purpose, or offering the least apology for the peculiarities of her conduct, she took her seat in the carryall and again pulled down her veil.

This episode and the quiet satisfaction which it seemed to awaken in Mr. Murdoch, gave me enough to think about till tea time, and would have occupied me longer if the evening had not brought its own excitements.