Читать книгу The 13th District - Brand Whitlock - Страница 15

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ETHAN HARKNESS was sitting in his library, as the architect who had remodeled his old house had named the pleasant apartment that opened off the living-room. Here, out of deference to the idea, Emily had her books, as well as the few her father read, disposed upon low shelves; and here the old man passed his hours at home, because, as he loved to say, in his whimsical pretense that he was in the way, he would bother no one. His habit was to sit here every evening and smoke his cigar over his newspaper. Perhaps he would read some book Emily had urged upon him, though he never liked the books she recommended. Once in every year he read Scott’s novels through, at least he was one of those persons of whom that highly colored tale is told. Emily, in her new appreciation of the realistic, had joined in the cultured revolt against the romantic school, and would not own to the least respect for Scott. Once in a while, when her father, in his devices to induce her to read the Wizard, would complain of his eyes hurting him, and ask her to read Rob Roy to him, she would do so until he nodded, and then when he had gone to bed, would take the book to her room and read until the house was still and cold with the silence and chill of midnight, so that she was afraid to move. But such occasions she declared to be literary debauches, and would tell her father at breakfast that she was ashamed of herself.

He was sitting thus one evening, under the lamp, its soft mellow light falling on his silver hair; his glasses far down upon his high-bridged nose, his book held up before them. He breathed heavily as he read, and Emily, pausing an instant in the doorway, gazed upon him, thinking, with a love that to her had a touch of pathos, of all his kindly ways.

“All alone, as usual?” she said.

The old man took off his glasses slowly, closed his book upon them to mark his place, and then looked gravely up, waiting for her to speak.

“Father,” she said, “I’ve something to tell you.”

The tone was one to alarm the old man, and he sighed. He had reached the time of life when he dreaded change, and her tone had the note of change in it.

She sat down in a little rocking-chair before him, knitting her fingers together, her white hands lying in her lap. Her eyes were fixed upon a ring that sparkled on her finger—a ring that Garwood had bought, on credit, at Maxwell the jeweler’s, that morning. Harkness waited for her to speak with the same gravity with which he had waited for Garwood to speak an evening long ago, when the voting man had ventured in upon him, trying to assume a dignity the beating of his heart threatened, just as the beating of the old man’s heart now threatened the gravity he had assumed. Though there was a difference; the old man was aware that it was not well for him that his heart should beat as it was beating in that moment.

“Father,” the girl said, twirling the ring on her finger, the light from the lamp flashing a dozen spectra from the facets of the diamond, “Jerome and I are going to be married.”

The old man made no reply.

“Soon,” she added, thinking he had not caught the full significance of her words.

“Soon,” he said, in hollow repetition. But he did not turn his head or move.

He had expected it some day, he had even wished it, for in his old-fashioned conservatism he did not like to think of Emily as an old maid, but he had hoped that it would be a day long in coming.

Emily raised her eyes and looked at him. His hair seemed whiter, his face suddenly older, he appeared so lonely. As she looked a tear oozed from his eye and slid down his cheek and beard. And then she leaned forward, folded her arms on his knees, pillowed her head upon them, and wept.

The old man placed his hand upon her coils of hair, patting them softly. But he was silent. The mood passed, the old man possessed himself, laid his book on the table, and sighed with relief, as if at the end of some painful scene. He grew restless, but the girl held him; drew closer, embraced him passionately at the last, and cried:

“But I won’t leave you, father, I won’t—I won’t! It’ll be just the same for us—tell me it will!”

The old man smiled.

“Oh, yes,” he said, “that part of it’ll be all right. But tell me—what’s the rush?”

“Why, father, there isn’t any rush—only, don’t you know how every one’s against him just now?”

“Humph!” he said, “not if the reports of his meetings is correct, they hain’t.”

“Well, I know; but they tell such stories about him, and this horrible roorback—isn’t that what they call it?”

“Depends on who you mean by they,” he answered.

“Well, you know,” she said, in the assumption that avoided explanations, “I want to show them that I believe in him, anyway.”

“That’s like you, Em,” he said, smiling at her. “It’s like your mother, too.”

She was touched by this. He seldom spoke of her mother. And she drew nearer to him, and ran her fingers fondly through his white hair.

“Have you been thinking of her?” she asked, with a tender reverence.

“Some—to-night,” he said. “She stuck up for me once.” And then he was silent again.

The girl, with the impatience of youth, tried to coax him away from his sad humor, and assumed a happy tone, though she blinked to keep back her tears.

“Oh, it won’t be for a long time, really, father—not till fall, not till after election, anyway. And it shan’t make any difference, shall it? No, we’ll all be so happy together. You and Jerome can play cards in the evening—and it’ll be ever so much livelier in this big, empty old house.”

The old man conceived the picture she imagined for him, but one of his grotesque humors came upon him.

“D’ye think Mother Garwood’ll like the board?” he asked.

“Father!” Emily protested, “you’d joke at a funeral!”