Читать книгу Marked "Personal" - Anna Katharine Green - Страница 10

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Stanhope welcomed his friend as eagerly as if hours instead of minutes had passed since he last saw him.

“Well?” he demanded, with a haggard inquiry in his eyes that made Jack’s heart sink like lead into his bosom.

“I don’t know what to say. I have learned nothing that would seem to give color to your doubts; and yet something in the air, some emanation from your own fears perhaps, has made me feel that it was well for us that the jury gave their verdict from such evidence as appeared to-day.”

Stanhope sighed; the world was looking very dreary to him. The next minute he was opening the door; some one had knocked.

It was one of the maids of the house, as was shown by her neat print dress and white apron.

“O Mr. White—” she began impetuously, and as suddenly stopped. Jack’s presence in the room was unexpected to her.

“What is it?” Stanhope kindly inquired.

She essayed to whisper. “The missus—Mrs. White— wishes very much to see you down-stairs, I was to be very particular to say it was important, and that she hoped you would come right away.”

“Tell her I will do so,” was the quick reply. But as soon as the girl was gone Stanhope turned in real distress to his friend.

“What am I to do?” he asked. “I cannot see her— that is, alone; yet such a request cannot be slighted. Will you go with me, Jack?”

“I?”

“Yes; you are intimate enough with us to warrant it. I shall take it for granted that it is in reference to some matters about the funeral she wishes to consult me.”

“I—I am afraid she would consider it an intrusion.” Jack endeavored to steady his voice, but I am afraid it was not a very successful effort. “I do not think I am on such terms of intimacy with her, as to make it possible for me to enter her presence just now without an invitation.”

“You will go as my friend.”

“Impossible, Stanhope.”

“I do not see why.”

Jack in sudden agitation grasped Stanhope by the hand. “I thought you knew my secret,” said he. “I thought that was why you were troubled by these doubts—these fears—concerning your father. I have tried to control myself—to give you such help as I could, and to be your friend. But there are bounds to every man’s effort. I cannot go down with you into Mrs. White’s presence, because I love her—have always loved her, even before she became acquainted with your father.”

“Jack!”

The word came thickly; Stanhope was certainly taken aback.

“I see you have never suspected it,” Jack went on. “That strikes me as odd, for it has always seemed to me that I wore my heart upon my sleeve. But when a fellow sees such a rival as your father come between him and the girl he loves, he naturally puts a curb upon himself. I ought to put one upon myself now, but this tragedy has unnerved me. I am as weak as water, and not even for your sake could I trust myself.”

“Do not say any more,” broke in Stanhope. “I will go down alone.” There was suppressed excitement in his voice, and the face he half turned from Jack looked strange and unnatural. But the latter, in his relief, did not notice it. He was mainly anxious about one point.

“This—this confession of mine,” he said in some constraint, “will not weaken our friendship, will it, Stanhope? I have some sense of honor, I hope, and I shall never forget that she is your father’s widow.”

“I am sure not,” rejoined Stanhope, with gravity, and yet with an odd touch of eagerness in his voice. “Do not think of it any more, Jack. We are in troublous waters, and must strike out with what courage we can.” And he was gone from the room before Jack remembered that his friend had not once met his eye since the revelation of his wretched secret.

Stanhope walked rapidly down-stairs. Knocking at the door below, he heard a low “Come,” and, entering, encountered the twilight gloom of a heavily darkened apartment.

“I am here,” uttered a soft voice. “It is very good in you to come so soon. I would not have troubled you, but I have something to ask you before mamma returns; and she may be here any minute.”

Stanhope, with a very troubled face, which happily it was too dark for her to see, advanced slowly toward the corner from which the voice seemed to issue. Though he was in his father’s house, and in a room hallowed by memories of his mother, all seemed as strange to him as some new scene. As he moved forward, weird and beautiful objects started out of the darkness with faint gleams on their polished surfaces, while from the dim recesses about him rose odors of a spicy nature, that, mingling with the ever perceptible perfume of hot-house plants, gave a languorous weight to the atmosphere which seemed to transport him into foreign climes. A dull fire burned on the hearth, and it was from this alone that the room received any light.

“It is dark here,” ventured Stanhope, stopping near the shadowy form of his father’s wife.

The absence of light did not conceal her extreme agitation.

“Shall I not ring for candles, or are you willing I should light the gas?”

“Do you wish light?” sprang from lips he could not see, but of whose trembling he had no doubt “It seems to me as if light would kill me. I want darkness, Stanhope, if only to hide from my own eyes the sight of my own face.”

“Mrs. White—” Was this his voice, so chill, so harsh, so metallic! Starting himself at the sound, he modulated his tones, till something like gentleness pervaded them. “You have something to ask, some questions to put concerning the preparations necessary for the funeral before us. Let me hear them, for it is my earnest desire to fulfill all your wishes.”

A soft rustle came from the heap of cushions before him, but no words. Frowning slightly, perhaps to keep down the show of sympathy in which he did not dare indulge, he took a step nearer and waited. As he did so, a tongue of flame shot up from the smouldering coals in the fireplace, brightly illuminating for a moment his tall figure, and the regular beauty of his melancholy and earnest face; then the flame died down, and it was dark again. But a soft sigh had been uttered in that passing moment, and its faint, sweet echo seemed to be still lingering in the room.

“I feel,” he now ventured to say, “that any speech must be painful to you at this time. We have met with a loss so sudden, so disastrous—” He paused and started back. She had sprung to her feet and was standing before him.

“Light the gas,” she cried, “for your face I must see. There is something so strange in your voice. Do you—you too—think that he learned in some way of—”

“Hush!” interrupted Stanhope, with more sternness, perhaps, than he realized. “Let us not talk—let us not breathe—doubts—fears—suspicions. The jury have just given a verdict of accidental death. For God’s sake—” He paused, choked; something deeper than grief held him by the throat.

“Ac—ci—dent—al death!” The broken words fell from quaking lips. “O Mr. White, if it only were so! But to you I must reveal my whole mind, for the horror is maddening me. He was not himself at the ceremony. He was not himself at the reception. He was not himself when we came here. He tried to be amiable, tried to show his consideration and care for me; but it was no use, and I was not deceived for a moment. But I never dreamed—I never thought he would—would—”

“Wait!” came shortly from his lips. “This moment is horrible enough without darkness.” And he rapidly struck a match.

Instantly the young bride faltered back, and the head which had been lifted imploringly fell slowly till her chin rested on her breast. With the full blaze something of the horror went, but in its place came an embarrassment almost as painful.

“Oh, it is dreadful for me!” she murmured. “To be released in such a way is to rob the future of every hope.”

He would have liked to answer her with compassion, with tenderness almost; but ghostly hands were waving between them, and he saw them plainer than he did her face. Yet her face was one worth looking at, especially in this moment of deep feeling; for the charm which it sometimes lacked, of feminine softness, was there in all its fascination, and features which were frequently called haughty were now informed by a spirit so gentle, so timorous even, that perhaps for the first time in her life was their full beauty made apparent. She was clad in the rich travelling costume in which she had come to the house, but she had swathed herself in a long black shawl—obtained who knows where—and above this sweep of darkness, her pale face, with its dusky locks, rose in its tragic intentness, till it seemed to be the only thing in the room.

“I had rather you had not uttered your fears,” he declared slowly, feeling her presence too oppressive to be borne. “You have no real ground for them, and to have such a consciousness between us makes this sorrow unendurable to us both.”

“But I must speak. I cannot be alone with such a horror. Talk to me, Mr. White; do not leave me all alone with my fears and my remorse. There is no one but you who can help me; no one who could understand—”

He was pointing upward.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “you do not wish my confidence; you had rather not listen to my words. You are sure, then, that he did know what—what I tried so hard to keep from him—and that it was this which drove him to suicide on his wedding-day, almost at the foot of the altar.”

“Flora” (she was younger than he), “I only know that by a cruel fatality I have lost a father and you a husband. Beyond that let us cease all inquiry, since inquiry promises to bring us nothing but wretchedness.” Two gleams of sudden whiteness started from the straight blackness which enveloped her. They were her hands, which she threw up wildly over her head, then dropped before her with the moan, “True! true! One could never forget the echo of that pistol shot, or the sudden sight of blood!”

He shuddered as only a man can shudder. A stern change passed over him, and he looked at her searchingly for the first time.

“A moment ago,” said he, “I prayed you to drop a veil upon the past, and let appearances stand for facts; but I feel now that I can no more rest than you, with this hideous doubt preying like a canker upon our hearts. Let us attack it, then, and see if we cannot destroy it. It will take courage; but you have that, have you not?” She seemed to breathe a faint “Yes,” but her attitude contradicted this assurance. Surveying her downcast face, her shrinking form, he grew troubled, and again somewhat embarrassed, yet he went on, though with much gentleness:

“You say my father was not himself to-day. Was he himself yesterday?”

She shrank in bitter humiliation—this proud, almost commanding woman. “Yes,” she answered, but so low that he was forced to gather her meaning from the movement of her lips.

“He was like himself at the breakfast-table,” Stanhope declared; “but at half-past eleven, when we started for the church, he was not himself, though I did not thoroughly realize it then. Now, what could have happened in that interval? Did you send him any message, any word?”

“No; what could I have sent him? You told me—“ Stanhope did not need to raise his hand to stop her; her own heart stopped her—or was it the look of icy reserve which had crept into his face? “I meant to be his true wife,” she brokenly murmured. “Before I left the doors of my father’s house I had taken an oath to see no other face than his in my thoughts or in my dreams. I went to him clean-hearted, and—and then I found a bridegroom cold as stone, and so absorbed in miserable thought that he did not hear the clergyman when he asked him if he would take me for his wife—did not hear him, and did not answer, though Dr. De— thought he did, and went on with the ceremony as if all were well. It makes me feel,” she softly whispered. “as if I had not been married to him. Yet must I bear his name.”

Did she expect any reply to this? any flash of comprehension on his part which might ease the maddening pain that was so fiercely gnawing at her heart? If so, she was disappointed, for Stanhope had missed these final words, this latent appeal. He was thinking of his own sensations at the altar as the bridal couple turned and he caught his father’s eye. It had flashed from his bride to him, his son, and the look, short as it was, had told Stanhope such a tale of disappointment and despair, that the church, the bridal couple, and all about him had swum before his eyes as if he had been struck with a vertigo. It was this memory, and the memory of its probable cause, which had turned his grief into gall and wormwood. Not anything he had really done, but what his father had thought he had done.

She, watching him, saw not what was in his mind, but in her own. Visions of things which should have been forgotten, scenes innocent in themselves, but which yet brought a thrill which should have had no place in her breast on this day of mourning, would recur to her memory. A widow before the day was over which had made her a wife, she saw not the figure of her husband lying so near her in still and awful majesty, but the young face of his son as it had appeared to her in the memorable hour when she saw him for the first time. Happy, fatal hour, which it was both bliss and torture to remember. How it had overturned all her views of life, and made the marriage she contemplated seem a sin when it was too late to withdraw from it! The struggle all came back as she stood there staring with wild eyes upon the man who, wittingly or unwittingly, had provoked it. All her shame, her longing, her secret hesitations and vain opposition to the steady pressure urging her forward, rushed upon her recollection in a flood, till her thoughts broke upon one memory, and were swamped there in a chaos of fear and darkness.

It was not a far memory—it dated back only some twenty hours; but it seemed now as if it had always been a part of her. As she felt herself possessed by it, she tried to think what had been said and done. Had she stopped Stanhope as he was leaving her presence with his father, or had he stepped back to her side of his own accord? It was all done so quickly, she could not remember now which had been the first to make this move, and she did not dare to ask the troubled man before her. But she thought she had breathed his name, and that it was in response to this he had recrossed the threshold of the parlor. However that was, what she had said had been nothing—and yet it had been everything. The passion, the terror that was welling up in her at that moment would have outlet; and, driven as she was into marriage, she felt bound to know if her fate were as irrevocable as it seemed. So she had said what? Not that she loved him! Oh, no; even she could not have said that. But she asked—yes, that was it—asked if she should keep her word to his father; if she should go on with a marriage in which she had no heart? And when he looked his astonishment—noble, loyal soul that he was—she had cried out, not loud—oh, no, not loud— but fervently, for she meant every word she uttered, that she did not see her way clear before her, that she threw herself upon his mercy, and would do just what he bade her. And he had bidden her; had bidden her keep her word and make his father happy, and she had obeyed him, and this was the result—a dead husband lying in the other room, and before her this statue of frozen manhood trying to be patient with her and to show her no hate.

As she reached this point in her thoughts a look of shrinking came into her face.

“Could your father have overheard what we said?” she asked.

Stanhope recoiled, but soon regained his assurance.

“No,” he declared. “When I joined him in the carriage he was quite natural, and spoke tenderly, proudly of you, like one who felt his happiness unassailable.”

“Ah!” she ejaculated, with an involuntary gesture of pain, which, however, soon gave way to an impulsive rush of hope. “Then perhaps we have mistaken his trouble, or—or exaggerated it. If so, may we not hope that the pistol did go off unexpectedly, and that we have only his loss to deplore?”

She looked so eager, he had not the heart to gainsay her; but with the memory of the look he had received from his father at the altar, he could not himself obtain much comfort from any such supposition.

“You have the right to hope that,” said he. Did she notice that he had said you, while she had said we? I have no doubt she did, for there was great intelligence in the wide low brow, now frowning in its pain and perplexity, above the searching eyes with which she regarded him. But her tones as she answered showed that she meant to gather comfort from his words, whether he would have her do so or not.

“Then I will take that right,” she cried. “I will hope, I will believe that I am in no wise accountable for what has happened. How could I live if I did not? How could I live?”

He shook his head: what other answer had he for such questions, and his eyes turned imploringly toward the door. Seeing this, her lips quivered, and a cry, involuntary as her grief, broke impetuously from them.

“You wish to go!” she exclaimed. “My fears and my perplexities weary you. Well, you are wise. My mother will be coming soon, and it is only folly for us to talk, since speech brings but little comfort. If you could have told me of some other trouble he had, or if I could have seen that you believed what those men said—that it was all accident and a stroke of Providence—then I might have felt justified in having asked for this interview. But now another regret has been added to those that went before, and that is that I have disturbed you in your grief by any plaint of mine.”

Instantly his manner altered. “Do not say that,” he protested, all eagerness now. “I am happy to be of service to you; I desire to show you my respect. We are members of one family, remember; and, though I may soon go away myself, this is your home and must always remain so.”

For a moment the bitterness in her soul seemed to choke her. Then a look of self-scorn rose in her eyes and breathed in her voice as she cried:

“Yes, this is now my home. I married its splendors, and it is meet that I should enjoy them.”

Hurt so that he showed it, Stanhope hesitated, opened his lips, and hesitated again. “I would rather think,” he ventured at last, “that this house would be dear to you because it was the abode of a husband who in his lifetime devotedly loved you.”

Was it a rebuke? She felt so and accepted it Bursting into tears, she exclaimed, “Oh, you are good—good and strong and noble! Go from me now, I pray; as your father’s widow I promise to make myself respected.”

He bowed low, and with such deference that the blush stole softly up into her cheek. Then he stepped back, and with the action a heavy pall of reserve fell between them.