Читать книгу The Mystery of Metropolisville - Eggleston Edward - Страница 18

Katy was fifteen and a half, according to the family Bible. Katy was a woman grown in the depth and tenderness of her feeling. But Katy wasn't twelve years of age, if measured by the development of her discretionary powers. The phenomenon of a girl in intellect with a woman's passion is not an uncommon one. Such girls are always attractive—feeling in woman goes for so much more than thought. And such a girl-woman as Kate has a twofold hold on other people—she is loved as a woman and petted as a child.

Albert Charlton knew that for her to love was for her to give herself away without thought, without reserve, almost without the possibility of revocation. Because he was so oppressed with dread in regard to the young man who walked and boated with Katy, courted and caressed her, but about the seriousness of whose intentions the mother seemed to have some doubt—because of the very awfulness of his apprehensions, he dared not ask Kate anything.

The suspense was not for long. On the second evening after Albert's return, Smith Westcott, the chief clerk, the agent in charge of the branch store of Jackson, Jones & Co., in Metropolisville, called at the house of Plausaby. Mr. Smith Westcott was apparently more than twenty-six, but not more than thirty years of age, very well-dressed, rather fast-looking, and decidedly blasé. His history was written in general but not-to-be-misunderstood terms all over his face. It was not the face of a drunkard, but there was the redness of many glasses of wine in his complexion, and a nose that expressed nothing so much as pampered self-indulgence. He had the reputation of being a good, sharp business man, with his "eye-teeth cut," but his conversation was:

"Well—ha! ha!—and how's Katy? Divine as ever! he! he!" rattling the keys and coins in his pocket and frisking about. "Beautiful evening! And how does my sweet Katy? The loveliest maiden in the town! He! he! ha! ha! I declare!"

Then, as Albert came in and was introduced, he broke out with:

"Glad to see you! By George! He! he! Brother, eh? Always glad to see anybody related to Kate. Look like her a little. That's a compliment to you, Mr. Charlton, he! he! You aren't quite so handsome though, by George! Confound the cigar"—throwing it away; "I ordered a box in Red Owl last week—generally get 'em in Chicago. If there's anything I like it's a good cigar, he! he! Next to a purty girl, ha! ha! But this last box is stronger'n pison. That sort of a cigar floors me. Can't go entirely without, you know, so I smoke half a one, and by that time I get so confounded mad I throw it away. Ha! ha! Smoke, Mr. Charlton? No! No small vices, I s'pose. Couldn't live without my cigar. I'm glad smoking isn't offensive to Kate. Ah! this window's nice, I do like fresh air. Kate knows my habits pretty well by this time. By George, I must try another cigar. I get so nervous when trade's dull and I don't have much to do. Wish you smoked, Mr. Charlton. Keep a man company, ha! ha! Ever been here before? No? By George, must seem strange, he! he! It's a confounded country. Can't get anything to eat. Nor to drink neither, for that matter. By cracky! what nights we used to have at the Elysian Club in New York! Ever go to the Elysian? No? Well, we did have a confounded time there. And headaches in the morning. Punch was too sweet, you see. Sweet punch is sure to make your headache. He! he! But I'm done with clubs and Delmonico's, you know. I'm going to settle down and be a steady family man." Walking to the door, he sang in capital minstrel style:

"When de preacher took his text

He looked so berry much perplext,

Fer nothin' come acrost his mine

But Dandy Jim from Caroline!

"Yah! yah! Plague take it! Come, Kate, stick on a sun-bonnet or a hat, and let's walk. It's too nice a night to stay in the house, by George! You'll excuse, Mr. Charlton? All right; come on, Kate."

And Katy hesitated, and said in a deprecating tone: "You won't mind, will you, Brother Albert?"

And Albert said no, that he wouldn't mind, with a calmness that astonished himself; for he was aching to fall foul of Katy's lover, and beat the coxcombry out of him, or kill him.

"By-by!" said Westcott to Albert, as he went out, and young Charlton went out another door, and strode off toward Diamond Lake. On the high knoll overlooking the lake he stopped and looked away to the east, where the darkness was slowly gathering over the prairie. Night never looks so strange as when it creeps over a prairie, seeming to rise, like a shadowy Old Man of the Sea, out of the grass. The images become more and more confused, and the landscape vanishes by degrees. Away to the west Charlton saw the groves that grew on the banks of the Big Gun River, and then the smooth prairie knolls beyond, and in the dim horizon the "Big Woods." Despite ail his anxiety, Charlton could not help feeling the influence of such a landscape. The greatness, the majesty of God, came to him for a moment. Then the thought of Kate's unhappy love came over him more bitterly from the contrast with the feelings excited by the landscape. He went rapidly over the possible remedies. To remonstrate with Katy seemed out of the question. If she had any power of reason, he might argue. Bat one can not reason with feeling. It was so hard that a soul so sweet, so free from the all but universal human taint of egoism, a soul so loving, self-sacrificing, and self-consecrating, should throw itself away.

"O God!" he cried, between praying and swearing, "must this alabaster-box of precious ointment be broken upon the head of an infernal coxcomb?"

And then, as he remembered how many alabaster-boxes of precious womanly love were thus wasted, and as he looked abroad at the night settling down so inevitably on trees and grass and placid lake, it seemed to him that there could be no Benevolent Intelligence in the universe. Things rolled on as they would, and all his praying would no more drive away the threatened darkness from Kate's life than any cry of his would avail to drive back the all-pervading, awesome presence of night, which was putting out the features of the landscape one after another.

Albert thought to go to his mother. But then with bitterness he confessed to himself, for the first time, that his mother was less wise than Katy herself. He almost called her a fool. And he at once rejected the thought of appealing to his step-father. He felt, also, that this was an emergency in which all his own knowledge and intelligence were of no account. In a matter of affection, a conceited coxcomb, full of flattering speeches, was too strong for him.

The landscape was almost swallowed up. The glassy little lake was at his feet, smooth and quiet. It seemed to him that God was as unresponsive to his distress as the lake. Was there any God?

There was one hope. Westcott might die. He wished he might. But Charlton had lived long enough to observe that people who ought to die, hardly ever do. You, reader, can recall many instances of this general principle, which, however, I do not remember to have seen stated in any discussions of mortality tables.

After all, Albert reflected that he ought not to expect Kate's lover to satisfy him. For he flattered himself that he was a somewhat peculiar man—a man of ideas, a man of the future—and he must not expect to conform everybody to his own standard. Smith Westcott was a man of fine business qualities, he had heard; and most commercial men were, in Albert's estimation, a little weak, morally. He might be a man of deep feeling, and, as Albert walked home, he made up his mind to be charitable. But just then he heard that rattling voice:

"Purty night! By George! Katy, you're divine, by George! Sweeter'n honey and a fine-tooth comb! Dearer to my heart than a gold dollar! Beautiful as a dew-drop and better than a good cigar! He! he! he!"

At such wit and such a giggle Charlton's charity vanished. To him this idiotic giggle at idiotic jokes was a capital offense, and he was seized with a murderous desire to choke his sister's lover. Kate should not marry that fellow if he could help it. He would kill him. But then to kill Westcott would be to kill Katy, to say nothing of hanging himself. Killing has so many sequels. But Charlton was at the fiercely executive stage of his development, and such a man must act. And so he lingered about until Westcott kissed Katy and Katy kissed Westcott back again, and Westcott cried back from the gate, "Dood night! dood night, 'ittle girl! By-by! He! he! By George!" and passed out rattling the keys and coins in his pocket and singing:

"O dear Miss Lucy Neal!" etc.

Then Albert went in, determined to have it all out with Katy. But one sight of her happy, helpless face disarmed him. What an overturning of the heaven of her dreams would he produce by a word! And what could be more useless than remonstrance with one so infatuated! How would she receive his bitter words about one she loved to idolatry?

He kissed her and went to bed.

As Albert Charlton lay awake in his unplastered room in the house of Plausaby, Esq., on the night after he had made the acquaintance of the dear, dear fellow whom his sister loved, he busied himself with various calculations. Notwithstanding his father's "notions," as his mother styled them, he had been able to leave his widow ten thousand dollars, besides a fund for the education of his children. And, as Albert phrased it to himself that night, the ten thousand dollars was every cent clean money, for his father had been a man of integrity. On this ten thousand, he felt sure, Plausaby, Esq., was speculating in a way that might make him rich and respected, or send him to State's-prison, as the chance fell out, but at any rate in a way that was not promotive of the interests of those who traded with him. Of the thousand set apart for Katy's education Plausaby was guardian, and Kate's education was not likely to be greatly advanced by any efforts of his to invest the money in her intellectual development. It would not be hard to persuade the rather indolent and altogether confiding Katy that she was now old enough to cease bothering herself with the rules of syntax, and to devote herself to the happiness and comfort of Smith Westcott, who seemed, poor fellow, entirely unable to exist out of sight of her eyes, which he often complimented by singing, as he cut a double-shuffle on the piazza,