Читать книгу The Soldier from Virginia - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 7

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Toward the next dawn Sarah Mildmay woke up suddenly and shivered, watching the cold creeping light in her pleasant room and wondering what had roused her; she listened, and her sense of discomfort and slight terror increased, for she heard the distinct sounds of sobbing.

After a moment she connected this sobbing with Martha, who had been flushed and gay the previous evening, and carelessly reserved about that unlooked for visit of Mr. Washington that had so interested Sarah.

Mistress Mildmay, with her curiosity and pity aroused in equal parts, leaped out of bed, put on her blue mull mob and a pair of white doeskin slippers, beautifully embroidered by Indian hands in a design of beads, and crept out of her room and knocked at the door next to her own.

There was no answer to this timid rap, and Sarah turned the handle and entered.

Martha's bedroom faced the front of the house, which looked east, and as Sarah opened the door she was startled by the supernatural effect of the blue light that flooded the chamber from the two windows which had been set wide open on the early air. This effect of silver-azure light was increased by a lamp burning yellowly on a table at the foot of the bed with the white hangings and tumbled sheets.

This lamp was like amber and opal against the blue of the dawn, the flame being shielded by a drawn silk shade, on which was painted a circle of Chinese figures of black and grey.

Close beside it sat Martha, the radiant beams tangled in her loose brown hair, in her velvet sarcenet robe; she was sitting limply in a low, chintz-covered chair, which was wreathed with blooming roses. Her hands had fallen into her lap and she faced the-dawn spreading slowly above the house-tops opposite.

"Oh, Martha!" exclaimed Sarah slowly.

Martha started, stood up and pressed a wet twist of handkerchief to her pallid lips.

The bright young blonde beauty was pale, too, as she crept closer. "Oh, Martha, oh, love," she murmured; "I heard you crying."

"Please go away," was the faint answer. "I am perfectly well." She tried to turn away her tearstained face, but Sarah had come close and was looking at her.

"You are not well," declared that lady, snatching her hand. "You have been crying all night—and for Mr. Washington!"

"How dare you!" cried Martha; she sank into the chair again and hid her eyes in the soaked handkerchief.

Sarah slipped to her knees and pressed the hands she held captive to her cheek.

"Can't you talk of it to me, dear heart? Won't you tell me, my sweet, my dear? What has he done? Is he a wretch? Oh, I hate him already!"

Martha would not be wooed from the entrenchments of silence, but she did not withdraw her hand, which Sarah caressed with passionate kisses.

"Beloved—tell me—why did he come yesterday? What happened?" she pleaded. "It will help you to tell me."

Martha raised misty eyes unutterably sad, and gazed forlornly out at the blue beyond the long open window.

She seemed too utterly crushed for pride or resentment.

"You have it in three words," she said hoarsely and forlornly. "I love him—there you are, you child—I love the creature!"

Sarah opened her blue eyes wide. "But I knew that," she said ingenuously.

Martha turned to her in a kind of bitter desperation.

"There! I suppose all the city knew it—I suppose, like a poor fool, I had it written in my face for every one to see! Oh, I am indeed humiliated!"

Sarah caught hold of her strongly, for, indeed, it seemed as if she would rise and rush away. "Nay—but who should tell it if not I, Martha, who love you so dearly!"

"I have been in a bewilderment, a confusion—these tears are tribute to a dead folly—dead, ay, dead indeed!"

"He will come back—" urged Sarah.

"Not to me—never to me—to some other woman perhaps—oh, God, never to me! Don't you understand?"

She wrenched herself from Sarah and placed her two hands on the other's shoulders, while she gazed wildly down into the blue eyes.

"Don't you understand?" she repeated. "He does not care!"

"Oh!" gasped Sarah; then, sincerely, with warm loyalty, "but that is not possible—this is one of those hideous mistakes we read of in the romances, dear."

Martha shook her head.

"It is not a mistake. Believe me, I know. I did not believe it possible to be so utterly humiliated as I have been; I thought it was to be—I thought I knew him—" The proud fair head sank. "I thought he came yesterday to tell me that—that—he wanted me—he did not speak—" The proud head sank lower. "I called him back!"

Her long fingers twisted in an agony on her lap.

"I said," she continued in a low voice, "'Come back.' I said: 'You may speak to me'—I looked at him—and he at me. I gave him my face to read, I was holding out my heart in my hands—"

She paused a moment and struck her breast. Lower still went the proud head.

"—and he stood silent—never moved nor spoke. And he must have known, he must know now—though I thank my pride I did what I could—I hope I hurt him; he went—perhaps to laugh at me—at Martha Dandrige, who offered herself to him!"

"Nay, nay," cried Sarah in great distress. "You have misapprehended this. 'Tis not possible—why, I have seen the man's eyes on you; one cannot be deceived; he did not dare—remember who you are—what he is—"

"Yes, what I am," answered Martha swiftly. "I put too high a value on myself, without a doubt—women generally do—what am I, indeed?"

"Martha, Martha, you are distracted; look at it clearly, as everyone else looks at it—as he looks at it; you are one of the richest heiresses in Williamsburg—you are known to be coveted by Mr. Custis, a very wealthy man—and he is a younger son—who has a mere fine plantation on the Potomac—just my Lord Fairfax's former land surveyor."

"'Tis the man of all others," said Martha, with sparkling eyes, "whom Governor Dinwiddie selected for this mission to Fort le Boeuf—"

"Oh, dearest, no need to defend him—I know what he seems to you; you must think him a hero; but try to imagine what he appears in his own eyes; think what your father would have said had this young man asked for your hand."

"But had he cared," said Martha unsteadily, "he would not have thought of any of that."

"But men do," answered Sarah, half sadly. "I think that is the great difference, dear—if a woman loves she hath no more pride at all—nothing matters, either what people say or what they think—and she finds it difficult to understand how a man's pride can still be so acute, nay, more acute, than it ever was before—she doesn't want it like that, I know, dear; she wants to help, to be one with him in his struggles, to believe in him when no one else does, to champion him—to give everything for nothing; but he—he is different: he wants to come crowned, successful, admired, rich; he wants to say: 'Here I am—this is what I am—this is what I own—this is what I can do; and you, pretty, useless thing, can come and share all these glories that I have achieved!"

Martha raised her head and fixed her tired, tear-stained eyes on the dawn that was beginning to flush from opal blue to gleaming pink behind the motionless lead weather-cock opposite.

Sarah rose softly and turned out the now useless lamp.

"I think," she said under her breath, "that Mr. Washington feels like that, Martha. I think he is waiting."

Martha stirred in her chair wearily. "No," she said in a lifeless voice, "no, no—"

"Wait till he returns," urged Sarah, "successful, Governor Dinwiddie's favourite."

"He may never return," answered Martha; "and he will not return to me, as I told you."

She rose and glanced at the china time-piece on the mantel-shelf.

"They will be just marching out of Williamsburg now, Sarah," she said faintly, and crushed the long pink ribbons of her gown under her heart. "Leaving Williamsburg—leaving Virginia, marching away—away! Oh, that I was a man and marching with them!"

Sarah got up from her knees and put her arms around the slender figure; the two women clung together in the steadily brightening, almost awful light of the dawn which was fast breaking in golden-rosy fire.

"You must never speak of this, even to me," said Martha, with her face hidden on the other's shoulder. "Never-never! 'Tis dead with the night fast dying now—dead, indeed: before the sun is up it must be buried deep in our hearts—yours and mine. Promise me, beloved."

"Until he returns," whispered Sarah.

Martha shuddered.

"No—no, you do not understand. It has happened; it is over. If I ever see him again, it will be as a stranger...promise me," she insisted.

"Dear love, why?"

"You know."

"Nay, because you are wrong; I am sure you are wrong; you are weaving unhappiness for yourself."

Martha disengaged herself from her friend's tender arms.

"I know what I am about," she answered almost sternly. "I am resolved what to do and I am right. If you had not chanced to come here to-night, you would never have guessed my secret; now you must swear on your honour not to betray me, even to myself—if you can, to forget."

"Well, if I must," sighed Sarah. She looked forlornly around the room. "I shall be back in Dumfries soon, and under no temptation to speak to you—but may I not write about him?"

"No."

"Oh, Martha—are you angry with me? Surely not, dearest?"

"Nay, not angry." The tears welled again in Martha's eyes and she cast herself into the rose-wreathed chair. "There is something else I must tell you—" she added with an effort.

"Oh! exclaimed Sarah dismayed.

"—to—to show you how utterly forgotten, dead, and buried this must be," went on Martha; she shook back her hair, against the shadows of which her face showed pallid and wan.

The first beams of the sun rose above the housetops and penetrated the soft obscurity of the delicate chamber.

"I wrote yesterday to Mr. Custis," continued Martha firmly, "promising to be his wife."