Читать книгу Abeniki Caldwell - Carolyn Wells - Страница 4

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High toward the blue-vaulted heavens waved the silvery branches of the cypress-trees. Drifting blossoms fell from the brambles, and, blown by the west wind, scampered across the heath toward the setting sun.

The frowning Palisades, crowned with their Autumn foliage as with a wreath, looked down upon the peaceful Hudson with an air of mingled protection and superiority.

Far to the south, the magnolia groves nestled among the hills of the Carolinas, and their waxen blossoms flashed in the pale moonlight with an eerie beauty all their own.

The reapers paused, and as the morning broke in unclouded splendor o’er the peaks of Darien, the mist of a dismal February evening was spreading its humid veil over the line of low sandhills between Lochaber and Liddesdale.

The verdure fairly rioted in the wild exuberance of early Springtime, and the freshly washed Day seemed to break forth in a glad, sweet smile that had been ripening for years. But the gayety of Nature struck no answering chord in the sooty heart of Claude Kildare.

Slamming the door of Lady Berenice’s coach until it seemed as if she must needs lose her balance, her angry cavalier sprang with one bound to the coachman’s box, and gathering up the ribbons started the six startled steeds off at a mad gallop.

By the bones of St. Dunstan, what a ride it was! The horses scarce touched ground at all between their pounding jumps, and the foam fairly flew from their fangs.

On, on, across the miry dunes,—on, Claude Kildare! spur thy horses through brake and brush, lash them o’er ditch and gorge; bravely balance the reeling vehicle, now on one wheel, now on another,—and, by the Pibroch of St. Winibald, thou shalt outstrip the pursuing hordes and win fair fame, forsooth, by thy high venture.

Within the coach the Lady Berenice lolled indolently on her satin cushions.

“Ha!” she said to herself, “methinks peril attendeth.”

With a faint interest manifest in their dark depths, the lovely eyes turned a glance of mild inquiry upon her new-found charioteer.

“Now, marry beshrew me!” cried the daughter of a hundred earls, “but the knight hath a marvellous skill. An a man can drive eight prancing steeds while he beareth his shield on his left arm, and holdeth a cocked revolver in his right, I need fear me no fears.”

And so, content of her safety, the beautiful Lady Berenice sank into a gentle slumber, little dreaming of the dark and deadly plots that seethed in the throbbing brain of Claude Kildare.

Thus they rode on, and as the sun’s dazzling disc dropped darkling into the horizon, they arrived at the postern gate of the Golden Grasshopper.

“Alight, O, Fair but False,” quoth Claude Kildare, throwing open the coach door; and with a firm, haughty step the Lady Berenice alit.

From the Inn, behold advancing, with a fat, unctuous waddle, Joseph McCann, this twelve years Keeper of the Golden Grasshopper.

His hostelry was marked by the rude simplicity of its period, and its façade of white marble rose unostentatiously toward the blue heavens to the height of twenty-two stories.

A simple flight of white marble steps, carpeted with plain red velvet, led to the main entrance.

Herr McCann, though now in his thirty-seventh year come Michaelmas, had a hasty and choleric temper and was greatly slow-witted withal.

His long yellow hair was parted amidships, and fell on either side his head down to his shoulders, while a steely glitter was in his either eye.

His dress was very sumptuous and magnificent. A scarlet tunic hung from his left shoulder, disclosing a green doublet edged with ermine.

“Odsbodikins, fair strangers,” he cried, “come in, and right welcome be. How are ye named?”

“I am Gaston K. Waldemar,” said Claude Kildare, “and this lady is my mother, Mrs. Waldemar.”

This statement was a lying falsehood, and Lady Berenice knew it, but awed by Kildare’s menacing glance, she said no word.

“Give this lady a suite of rooms,” continued Claude, “the finest your house affords, or, by the hammer of St. Dubric, I’ll break every skull of your head. Where is the lift?”

“This way, my lord,” replied the Innkeeper, trembling like an aspic leaf, and he preceded his guests along the electric-lighted palm-corridor.

Claude Kildare strode in the direction indicated and Lady Berenice glode silently by his side. He clasped her fair hand at parting.

“I will await thee,” he murmured, and his voice was as the cooing ring-dove’s, “at nine o’ the clock, by the moon-dial in the rose-garden.”

The Lady Berenice uttered no word, but she flashed on Kildare an eloquent glance which seemed to say, “Naught shall keep me from the tryst; I will be there unless perchance it should rain.”

Ah, little thought the fair Lady Berenice that already the knell of her happiness had tolled, already the memory of her future was menaced by poisoned shafts fired from the guns of envy, hatred, and malice.

Claude Kildare raised his head, and with a smile that dispelled the lowering clouds from his brow said gently: “Gramercy, good yeoman, and now hast ale in thy vaults?”

“Aye, my lord,” quoth the Innkeeper, “prime ale and wine of the best, long kept in store for such as thou. Ho, Varlets, a stoup of Malvoisie!”

His command was obeyed by a passing lackey, and our hero entered the Gothic grill-room and flung himself at table.

The crowd of merry roysterers carousing there paid no heed to his entrance, but continued boisterously to brawl a roundelay.

“Here’s to Hilarity,

Jolly good fellows we.

Fill up your stein with Rhenish wine

And drink with me.

“Drink to the death of care,

Drudgery, and despair;

Drink to a life with Laughter rife

And free as air.

“Here in content we sit,

Bothering not a bit,

Though in the world’s mendacious mart

Men fret and smart;

“Though in a morbid mood,

Greedy for solitude,

Anchorite grim in cloister dim

May sit and brood.

“We have the better lot,

Here from all fetters free;

Happy with Pipe and Pot,

Pledged to Hilarity.

Ha,ha,ha!”

But of a sudden their jollity was interrupted by the entrance of a sinister-looking, ill-favored man.

O’er his beetling brows was pulled low a black fur cap. Around him was wrapped a long, black cloak, from the folds of which gleamed a hidden rapier.

With angry frown and surly scowl he said,—

“A truce to this fooling! Cease these loudmouthed japes and jibes! Hath not the cause been neglected these many moons? Are not our spears rusty in their scabbards? Do not our truncheons hang idle on the walls? Go to! These things must not be! Boleslaus, dog of a slave, get a move on thee and arm for the conflict!”

“By the Great Horn Spoon,” quoth he addressed as Boleslaus, “that will I not do. Only yestreen Bertran of the Red Nose played on me a most scurvy trick. What did he? This did he! When that I would—”

“Hah, sirrah,” interrupted a burly youth, springing to his feet, “darest thou denounce me? Have a care!”

“Spine-of a Lobster!” roared the latest-entered one, “cease this buffoonery! This hall hath more the air of the den of a brawling brotherhood than the abode of peaceful gentlemen. Make short shift of thy quarrel, that we may dine orderly. But, soft,—an alien is here! Thy name, sir, and thy business?”

As he spoke, the fierce-looking intruder advanced upon Claude Kildare, and brandished his rapier in our hero’s face.

“Swashbuckle me no swashbucklers, thou miserable caitiff!” cried Kildare. “Know that I am a Kildare of Kildare, and he who tastes but once of my cutlass will never use any other.”

“Kildare!” muttered the aggressor, while his face went white and a sudden change o’erspread his features. “Kildare, sayest thou? Ah, my dear old Aunt Rhoda, my-mother’s second cousin twice removed, married a man whose first wife was a Kildare, ah, me! ah, me!” Claude was touched, but as he had his fingers crossed he wasn’t it, so he proceeded,—

“Foul craven, ‘tis but too true! And for that dastardly crime thou shouldst have been en-dungeoned for life.”

“Ha-a-ah, say not so,” muttered the other, in a blithering voice, for indeed right frighted was he, and of great dolor.

“Hist!” roared Claude, “utter no word, but utter silence! I command thee! What is thy name?”

“How may I tell thee if I may not speak?” sulkily muttered the other.

“Reptile! darest thou thus bespeak me? Silence! I say! and tell me thy unworthy name!”

“Don Giovanni Ziffkoffsky,” growled the victim, with a rough red glare at his tormentor.

“And thy business here?”

Kildare’s tone was forcefully mild, but his eyes shot venonomous darts at the man he questioned.

It must be conceded that other things being equal, and granting the investiture of all insensate communication, that a psychic moment may or may not, in accordance with what under no circumstances could be termed irrelevancy, become warily regarded as a coherent symbol by one obviously of a trenchant humor. But, however, in proof of a smouldering discretion, no feature is entitled to less exorbitant honor than the unquenchable demand of endurance.

Though, of course, other things being equal, and granting the investiture of all insensate communication, no feature is entitled, in accordance Kildare's tone was forcefully mild, but his eyes shot venonomous darts at the man he questioned with what under no circumstances could be termed irrelevancy, to become warily regarded as a coherent symbol. And doubtless, in proof of a smouldering discretion, and in accordance with one obviously of a trenchant humor, it may or may not be warily regarded.

Though it cannot be denied that the true relevancy of thought to psychic action is largely dependent on the ever-increasing forces of disregarded symbolisms. And this, again, proves the pantheistic power of doubt, considered for the moment and for the subtle purposes of our argument, as faith. For, granting that two and two are six, the corollary reasoning must be that no premise is or may be capable of such conclusion as will render it sublunary to its agreed parallel.

But this view is ultra, and should be adopted with caution.

We are therefore forced to the conclusion that pure altruism is impossible in connection with neo-psychology.

In view of this and in consequence of which, Don Giovanni Ziffkoffsky answered and replied:

“Claude Kildare of Kildare of Kildare, I am a scion of proud and haughty lineage. I am haughty with the haught of a long line of noble nabobs, and, for myself, I scorn thee! Ay, scorn thee with all the objurgatory contumely of a proud soul. But—there are others. No longer am I a Solitary. No longer am I the Bachelor, the Misogynist, the Celebrated Celibate. To-day, ah, but only to-day, led I to the altar a blushing bride, a lily-like lady, who vowed unfaltering fealty—”

With one stride Claude Kildare crossed the great hall and clutching Don Giovanni by the throat shook him as a housemaid shaketh her dusting-clout.

“ ’Sdeath!” cried Claude Kildare, and his eyes blazed like headlights, while his voice was as a train which roareth in the tunnel.

Don Giovanni shook with alarm, but said no word for cause of Claude’s throttling thumbs.

“Ha, Poltroon, thou milksop, thou jelly! dost thou quiver with fear? Then will I scare thee stiff!”

Having made good his threat, Claude continued,—

“Scum o’ the earth, Dreg o’ the dust! where is she? What hast done with the fair maiden, the beauteous bride of an hour?” Don Giovanni hesitated; Claude Kildare waited,—waited and yet waited. The room was as still as silence.

Kildare held his breath, and waited.

The old Union clock struck. After an hour it struck again.

Then Claude Kildare, being of impatient humor, kicked Don Giovanni and hissed, “Answer, Varlet! ’Tis up to thee.”

Don Giovanni pouted and said, “Cease thou to badger me. I know not where she may be. Brigands attackted our wedding coach, and I was obliged to flee for my life.”

“Now, by St. Anthony!” cried Claude Kildare, “ ’tis as I guessed. And her name, proud bridegroom?”

“Lady Berenice—” began the Don, but Kildare raised a threatening hand.

“Enough!” he said, and his voice was quiet,—ay, even as a mill-pond is also quiet just before its dam breaks,—“enough, I perceive thy finish. But I am magnanimous of soul. ’Tis mine to kill thee,—and far be it from me to deny my joy therein,—but ’tis thine to choose the manner of thy taking-off.”

“Nay, not so,” quoth the Don, with politeness of speech; “duels of all sorts are to me but as child’s play. Do thou choose.”

“I command,” said Kildare, drawing himself up to his full height of seven feet six; “obey instantly and select thy choice of place and weapons, or, by the beard of St. Dunstan, I will bury thee alive!”

“Then, my lord,” said Giovanni, with a mocking gleam in his eye (he had but one), “then I choose a duel on a tight-rope that shall be stretched across and above the Black Devil Falls.”

Claude Kildare stood impassive, as one awaiting a matter of no great concern. Then hearing the Don’s choice, he carelessly flicked a stray caterpillar from his jerkin-sleeve, and said,—

“Aye, it shall be so. And, mark thee, it shall be to-night at midnight, our path unlighted, beneath a black and moonless heaven.”