Читать книгу The Step On The Stair - Anna Katharine Green - Страница 17

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This gave me a great lift for the time. He had not changed his mind, then. He still meant me to marry Orpha; and some of the mystery of the last lawyer’s visit was revealed. That connected with the one which preceded it might rest. I needed to know nothing about that. The great question had been answered; and I trod on air.

Meanwhile Uncle seemed better and life in the great house resumed some of its usual formality. But this did not last. The time soon came when it became evident to every eye that this man of infinite force was rapidly losing his once strong hold on life. From rising at ten, it grew to be noon before he would put foot to floor. Then three o’clock; then five; then only in time to eat the dinner spread before him on a small table near the fireplace. Then came the day when he refused to get up at all but showed great pleasure at our presence in the room and even chatted with us on every conceivable topic. Then came a period of great gloom when all his strength was given to a mental struggle which soon absorbed all his faculties and endangered his life. In vain we exerted ourselves to distract him. He would smile at our sallies, appear to listen to his favorite authors, ask for music— (Orpha could play the violin with touching effect and Edgar had a voice which like all his other gifts was exceptional) but not for long, nor to the point of real relief. While we were hoping that we had at last secured his interest, he would turn his head away and the struggle of his thoughts would recommence, all the stronger and more unendurable because of this momentary break.

Orpha’s spirits were now at as low an ebb as his. She had sat for weeks under the shadow of his going but now this shadow had entered her soul. Her beauty once marked for its piquancy took on graver lines and moved the hearts of all by its appeal. It was hard to look at her and keep back all show of sympathy but such as was allowable between cousins engaged in the mutual tasks which brought us together at a sick man’s bedside. If the discipline was good for my too selfish nature, the suffering was real, and in some of those trying hours I would have given all my chance in life to know if Orpha realized the turmoil of mind and heart raging under my quiet exterior.

Meantime, a change had been made in our arrangements. Edgar and I were no longer allowed to leave town though we continued to keep religiously to our practice of spending alternate weeks in attendance on the invalid.

This, in these latter days included sleeping in the den opening off Uncle’s room. The portrait of Orpha which had made this room a hallowed one to me, had been removed from its wall and now hung in glowing beauty between the two windows facing the street, and so in full sight from Uncle’s bed. His desk also, with all its appurtenances had been in a corner directly under his eye, and as I often noted, it was upon one or other of these two objects his gaze remained fixed unless Orpha was in the room, when he seemed to see nothing but her.

He had been under the care of a highly trained nurse during the more violent stages of his illness, but he had found it so difficult to accommodate himself to her presence and ministrations that she had finally been replaced by Wealthy, who had herself been a professional nurse before she came to Quenton Court. This he had insisted upon and his will was law in that household. He ruled from his sick bed as authoritatively as he had ever done from the head of his own table. But so kindly that we would have yielded from love had we not done so from a sense of propriety.

His gloom was at its height and his strength at its lowest ebb when an experience befell me, the effects of which I was far from foreseeing at the time.

Edgar’s week was up and the hour had come for me to take his place in the sick room. Usually he was ready to leave before the evening was too old for him to enjoy a few hours in less dismal surroundings. But this evening I found him still chatting and in a most engaging way to our seemingly delighted uncle, and taking the shrug he made at my appearance as a signal that they were not yet ready for my presence, I stepped back into the hall to wait till the story was finished which he was relating with so much spirit.

It took a long time, and I was growing quite weary of my humiliating position, when the door finally opened and he came out. With every feature animated and head held high he was a picture of confident manhood. This should not have displeased me and perhaps would not have done so had I not caught, as I thought, a gleam of sinister meaning in his eye quite startling from its rarity.

It also, to my prejudiced mind, tinged his smile, as slipping by me, he remarked:

“I think I had the good fortune to amuse him to-night. He is asleep now and I doubt if he wakes before dawn. Lower his light as you pass by his bed. Poor old Uncle!”

I had no answer for this beyond a slight nod, at which, with an air I found it difficult to dissociate with a sense of triumph, he uttered a short good-night and flew past me down the stairs.

“He has won some unexpected boon from “Uncle,” I muttered in dismay as the sound of his footsteps died out in the great rooms below. “Is it fortune? Is it Orpha?” I could bear the loss of the first. But Orpha? Rather than yield her up I would struggle with every power with which I had been endowed. I would—

But here I entered the room and coming under the direct influence of the masterly portraiture of her who was so dear to me, better feelings prevailed.

To see her happy should and must be my chief aim in life. If union with myself would ensure her that and I came to know it, then it would be time for me to exert my prowess and hold to my own in face of all opposition. But if her heart was his—truly and irrevocably his, then my very love should lead me to step aside and leave them to each other. For that would be their right and one with which it would be presumptuous in me to meddle.

The light which I had been told to extinguish was near my uncle’s hand as he lay in bed.

Seeing that he was, as Edgar said, peacefully asleep, I carefully pulled the chain attached to the flaming bulb.

Instantly the common-places of life vanished and the room was given over to mystery and magic. All that was garish or simply plain to the view was gone, for wherever there was light there were also shadows, and shadows of that shifting and half-revealing kind which can only be gotten by the fitful leaping of a few expiring flames on a hearth-stone.

Uncle’s fire never went out. Night or day there was always a blaze. It was his company, he said, and never more so than when he woke in the wee small hours with the moon shut out and silence through all the house. It would be my task before I left him for the night to pile on fresh fuel and put up the screen, which being made of glass, allowed the full play of the dancing flames to be seen.

Reveling in the mystic sight, I drew up a chair and sat before Orpha’s portrait. Edgar was below stairs and doubtless in her company. Why, then, should I not have my hour with her here? The beauty of her pictured countenance which was apparent enough by day, was well nigh unearthly in the soft orange glow which vivified the brown of her hair and heightened the expression of eye and lip, only to leave them again in mystery as the flame died down and the shadows fell.

I could talk to her thus, and as I sat there looking and longing, words fell from my lips which happily there was no one to hear. It was my hour of delight snatched in an unguarded hour from the hands of Fate.

She herself might never listen, but this semblance of herself could not choose but do so. In this presence I could urge my plea and exhaust myself in loving speeches, and no displeasure could she show and even at times must she smile as the shadows again shifted. It was a hollow amends for many a dreary hour in which I got nothing but the same sweet show of patience she gave to all about her. But a man welcomes dream food if he can get no other and for a full hour I sat there talking to my love and catching from time to time in my presumptuous fancy faint whispers in response which were for no other ears than mine.

At last, fancy prevailed utterly, and rising, I flung out my arms in inappeasable longing towards her image, when, simultaneously with this action I felt my attention drawn irresistibly aside and my head turn slowly and without my volition more and more away from her, as if in response to some call at my back which I felt forced to heed.

Yet I had heard no sound and had no real expectation of seeing any one behind me unless it was my uncle who had wakened and needed me.

And this was what had happened. In the shadow made by the curtains hanging straight down from the headboard on either side of his bed, I saw the gleam of two burning eye-balls. But did I? When I looked again there was nothing to be seen there but the shadowy outlines of a sleeping man. My fancy had betrayed me as in the hour of secret converse I had just held with the lady of my dreams.

Yet anxious to be assured that I had made no mistake, I crossed over to the bedside and, pushing aside the curtains, listened to his breathing. It was far from equable, but there was every other evidence of his being asleep. I had only imagined those burning eye-balls looking hungrily into mine.

Startled, not so much by this freak of my imagination as by the effect which it had had upon me, I left the bed and reluctantly sought my room. But before entering it —while still on its threshold—I was again startled at feeling my head turning automatically about under the uncanny influence working upon me from behind, and wheeling quickly, I searched with hasty glances the great room I was leaving for what thus continued to disturb me.

Orpha’s picture—the great bed—the desk, pathetic to the eye from the absence before it of its accompanying chair—books—tables—Orpha’s pet rocker with the little stand beside it—each and every object to which we had accustomed ourselves for many weeks, lit to the point of weirdness, now brightly, now faintly and in spots by the dancing firelight! But no one thing any more than before to account for the emotion I felt. Yet I remember saying to myself as I softly closed my door upon it all:

“Something impends!”

But what that something was, was very far from my thoughts as are all spiritual upheavals when we are looking for material disaster.

I had been asleep, but how long I had no means of knowing, when with a thrill such as seizes us at an unexpected summons, I found myself leaning on my elbow and staring with fascinated if not apprehensive gaze at the door leading into my uncle’s room left as I always left it on retiring, slightly ajar.

I had heard no sound, I was conscious of no movement in my room or in his, yet there I was looking—looking— and expecting—what? I had no answer for this question and soon would not need one, for the line of ruddy light running upward from the floor upon which my eyes were fixed was slowly widening, and presently I should see whose hesitating foot made these long pauses yet showed such determination to enter where no foot should come thus stealthily on any errand.

Again! a furtive push and I caught the narrowest of glimpses into the room beyond. At which a sudden thought came, piercing me like a dart. Whoever this was, he must have crossed my uncle’s room to reach this door—may have stood at the sick man’s side—may have— Fear seized me and I sprang up alert but sank back in infinite astonishment and dismay as the door finally swung in and I beheld dimly outlined in the doorway the great frame of Uncle himself standing steadily and alone, he, who for days now had hardly moved in his bed.

Ignorant of the cause which had impelled him to an action for which he was so unfit; not even being able to judge in the darkness in which I lay whether he was conscious of his movements or whether he was in that dangerous state where any surprise or interference might cause in him a fatal collapse, I assumed a semblance of sleep while covertly watching him through half shut lids.

A moment thus, then I felt rather than saw his broad chest heave and his shaking limbs move bringing him step by step to my side. Had he fallen face downward on to my narrow couch I should not have wondered. But he came painfully on and paused, his heart beating so that I could hear it above my own though that was throbbing far louder than its wont.

Next moment he was on his knees, with his arms thrown over my breast and clinging there in convulsive embrace as he whispered words such as had never been uttered into my ears before; words of infinite affection laden with self-reproaches it filled me with a great compassion to hear.

For I knew that these words were not meant for me; that he had been misled by the events of the evening and believed it to be in Edgar’s ear he was laying bare his soul.

“I cannot do it.” These were the words I heard. “I have tried to and the struggle is killing me. Forgive me, Edgar, for thinking of punishing you for what was the result of my own shortsighted affection.”

I stirred and started up. I had no right to listen further.

But his hold on me tightened till the pressure became almost unendurable. The fever in his veins made him not only strong but oblivious to all but the passion of the moment,—the desire to right himself with the well-beloved one who was as a son to him.

“I should have known better.” Thus he went on. “I had risen through hardship, but I would make it easy for my boy. Mistake! mistake! I see it now. The other is the better man, but my old heart clings to its own and I cannot go back on the love of many years. You must marry Orpha and her gentle heart will—”

A sob, a sudden failing of his fictitious strength, and I was able to rise and help him to rise, though he was almost a dead weight in my arms.

Should I be able alone and unassisted to guide him back to his bed without his discovering the mistake he had made and thus shocking him into delirium? The light was dim where we stood and rapidly failing in the other room as the great log which had been blazing on the hearth-stone crumbled into coals. Could I have spoken, the task might have been an easier one; but my accent, always emphasized under agitation, would have betrayed me.

Other means must be taken to reassure him and make him amenable to my guidance. Remembering an action of Edgar’s which I had lately seen, I drew the old man’s arm about my shoulder and led him back into his room. He yielded easily. He had passed the limit of acute perception and all his desire was for rest. With simple, little soothing touches, I got him to his bed and saw his head sink gratefully into his pillow.

Much relieved and believing the paroxysm quite past, I was turning softly away when he reached out his hand and, grasping me by the arm, said with an authority as great as I had ever seen him display even on important occasions:

“Another log, Edgar. The fire is low; it mustn’t go out. Whatever happens, it must never go out.”

And he, burning up with fever!

Though this desire for heat or the cheer of the leaping blaze might be regarded as one of the eccentricities of illness, it was with a strange and doubtful feeling that I turned to obey him—a feeling which did not leave me in the watchful hour which followed. Though I had much to brood over of a more serious character than the mending or keeping up of a fire, the sense of something lying back of this constant desire for heat would come again and again to my mind mingling with the great theme now filling my breast with turmoil and shaping out new channels for my course in life. Mystery, though of the smallest, has a persistent prick. We want to know, even if the matter is inconsequent.

I had no further sleep that night, but Uncle did not move again till late morning. When he did and saw me standing over him, he mentioned my name and smiled almost with pleasure and gave me the welcoming hand.

He had forgotten what had passed, or regarded it, if it came to his mind at all, as a dream to be ignored or cherished according to his mood, which varied now, as it had before, from one extreme to the other.

But my mood had no ups and downs. It had been given me to penetrate the depths of my uncle’s heart and mind. I knew his passionate wish—it was one in which I had little part—but nothing must ever make me forget it.

However, I uttered no promises myself. I would wait till my judgment sanctioned them; and the time for that had not yet come.