Читать книгу St. Elmo - Augusta J. Evans - Страница 9

Those sweet, low, timid tones, "I am sorry for you," had astonished and mortified him. To be hated and dreaded was not at all unusual or surprising, but to be pitied and despised was a sensation as novel as humiliating; and the fact that all his ferocity failed to intimidate the "little vagrant" was unpleasantly puzzling.

For some time after Edna's departure he pondered all that had passed between them, and at length he muttered: "How thoroughly she abhors me! If I touch her, the flesh absolutely writhes away from my hand, as if I were plague-stricken or a leper. Her very eyelids shudder when she looks at me—and I believe she would more willingly confront Apollyon himself. Strange! how she detests me. I have half a mind to make her love me, even despite herself. What a steady, brave look of scorn there was in her splendid eyes when she told me to my face I was sinful and cruel!"

He set his teeth hard, and his fingers clinched as if longing to crush something; and then came a great revulsion, a fierce spasm of remorse, and his features writhed.

"Sinful? Ay! Cruel? O my lost youth! my cursed and wrecked manhood! If there be a hell blacker than my miserable soul, man has not dreamed of nor language painted it. What would I not give for a fresh, pure, and untrampled heart, such as slumbers peacefully in yonder room, with no damning recollections to scare sleep from her pillow? Innocent childhood!"

He threw himself into a chair, and hid his face in his hands; and thus an hour went by, during which he neither moved nor sighed.

Tearing the veil from the past, he reviewed it calmly, relentlessly, vindictively, and at last, rising, he threw his head back, with his wonted defiant air, and his face hardened and darkened as he approached the marble mausoleum, and laid his hand upon the golden key.

"Too late! too late! I can not afford to reflect. The devil himself would shirk the reading of such a record."

He fitted the key in the lock, but paused and laughed scornfully as he slung it back on his chain.

"Pshaw! I am a fool! After all, I shall not need to see them, the silly, childish mood has passed."

He filled a silver goblet with some strong spicy wine, drank it, and taking down Candide, brightened the gas jets, lighted a fresh cigar, and began to read as he resumed his walk:

"Lord of himself; that heritage of woe—That fearful empire which the human breast But holds to rob the heart within of rest."