Читать книгу One Night's Mystery - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 24

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harlotte, what time is it? If it isn't past four that confounded clock must be slow."

Captain Owenson—"Squire Owenson" as he is known to all men hereabouts—asks this question for the twentieth time within the hour, turning over with an impatient half sigh, half groan, in his big invalid chair. And Charlotte, otherwise Mrs. Owenson, looks up from her tatting, and answers placidly, as she has answered placidly also twenty times before:

"It wants twenty minutes of four, Reginald, and the clock is right to a second."

"Oh-h-h!" says the Captain. It is a half groan of pain, half grunt of anger, and impatiently the invalid flounces over on the other side, and shuts his eyes. He has not seen his Sydney, the "sole daughter of his house and heart," his one best treasure in life, for close upon a year, and all that year scarcely seems as long to his intolerable impatience, as do the hours of this lagging day that is to bring her home. At no period of his career has patience been the virtue upon which the friends of Reginald Algernon Owenson have placed their hopes of his canonization, and years of ill-health have by no means strengthened it, as his wife knows to her cost. He is a tall, gaunt man, with a face still handsome in spite of its haggardness, bright, restless eyes, and that particularly livid look that organic heart disease gives. The large, gray eyes, closed so wearily now, are the counterpart of Sydney's, and the abundant and unsilvered hair not many shades darker.

By the lace-draped bay window of this her husband's invalid sitting-room sits Mrs. Owenson, serenely doing tatting. A tall, thin, faded lady, with pale blue eyes, pale, fairish complexion, and a general air of cheerful insipidity. In early youth Mrs. Owenson was a beauty—in the maturity of seven and forty years, Mrs. Owenson fancies herself a beauty still.

There is silence in the room for a few minutes. It is a very large and airy room, furnished with the taste and elegance of culture and wealth. There are pictures on the walls, busts on brackets, statuettes in corners, bronzes on the chimney-piece, books and flowers on the table, and over all, more beautiful than all, the crisp golden sunshine of the November afternoon. From the window you saw a lovely view, spreading woodland all glowing with the rubies and orange of that most exquisite and poetic season the "Fall," emerald slopes of sward, and far away the great Atlantic Ocean, spreading until it melted into the dazzling blue sky.

The minutes drag like hours to the nervously irritable man, who bears suffering as most men bear it, in angry, vehement protest. A brave man in his day he has been, but brave under ill-health, slow, cruel pain, he is not. Placid Mrs. Owenson, who sits, seeing nothing of the gorgeous picture before her, whose whole small soul is absorbed in her tatting, who jumps on a chair, and shrieks at sight of a mouse, would have borne it all with the pathetic, matter-of-course, infinite patience of woman, had she been chosen for the martyrdom.

Presently the sick man opens his eyes, bright and restless with impatience.

"Bertie is late, too," he growls; "he was to return by the two o'clock train. A pretty thing for Sydney, a fine compliment indeed, to get here and find him gallivanting away in New York. It seems to me he does nothing but gallivant since his return from England—returning plucked too! Young dunderhead! I don't like it! I won't have it! He shall stay quietly at home or I will know the reason why!"

"My dear," says Mrs. Owenson, calmly measuring off her tatting, "you mustn't excite yourself, you know. Doctors Howard and Delaney both said particularly you were never, on any account, to excite yourself."

"Hang Doctors Howard and Delaney! Don't be a fool, Mrs. Owenson! I'm not talking of those two licensed quacks. I'm talking of Bertie Vaughan's gallivanting, and I say it shall end or I will know the reason why."

"Well, now," says Mrs. Owenson, more placid if possible than ever, "I don't believe Bertie's gallivanting, whatever that may be; and as for his going to New York two days ago, you know, Reginald, you gave him permission yourself. Lord Dearborn is stopping there at a hotel, before going to shoot what-you-call-'ems—buffaloes—and Bertie and he were bosom friends at college, and naturally Bertie wanted to see him before he left. And you told him yourself—now Reginald, love, you know you told him yourself, to invite him to the wedding, and——"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes! O Lord! what a thing a woman's tongue is! Men may come and men may go, but it goes on forever. Don't I know all that, and don't I know, too, that he promised faithfully to be here by the two o'clock train, in time to meet Sydney. And now it's nearly four. People who won't keep their promises in little things won't keep them in great. And this is no little thing, by George! slighting Sydney. Isn't it time for those confounded drops yet, Char? Lay down that beastly rubbish you are wasting time over and attend to your duties."

Still serene, still unruffled, Mrs. Owenson obeys. To tell the truth, her liege lord's ceaseless grumbling has little more effect upon her well-balanced mind than the sighing of the fitful wind out among the trees. A perfect digestion, an unshattered nervous system, an unlimited capacity for sleep, raise Mrs. Owenson superior to every trial of life.

She lays down the obnoxious rubbish, pours out the drops carefully in a little crystal cup, and hands it to her husband. As he takes it the shrill shriek of the locomotive, rushing into the station two miles distant, rends the evening air.

"Thank God, there's the train," he says, with a sort of gasp—"Sydney's train. In fifteen minutes my darling will be here."

"And I will go and see about dinner, Reginald," remarks Mrs. Owenson, settling her cap with a pleased simper at herself in the glass, "if you can spare me."

"Spare you! What the devil good are you to any one I should like to know! sitting there with your eternal knitting——"

"Not knitting, Reginald, love," remonstrates Mrs. Owenson, "knitting's old-fashioned. Tatting."

A disgusted growl is the gentle invalid's answer. He closes his eyes and falls back among his pillows once more. Always a bit of a martinet, in his own household and neighborhood, as erstwhile on the quarter-deck, years of suffering have rendered him irritable and savage to an almost unbearable degree. Death is near, he knows, hovering outside his threshold by day and by night—may cry "come!" at any moment, and his passionate protest against the inexorable decree never ceases. His longing for life is almost piteous in its intensity—he holds his grasp upon it as by a hair, and each outbreak of anger or excitement may snap that hair in twain.

The great house is very still—the sick-room is far removed from all household tumult. It is a great house—"a house upon a hill-top," a huge red brick structure, with acres of farm and field, of orchard and kitchen garden, belts of lawn and wooded slopes. It stands nearly half-a-mile from any other dwelling—a whole mile from the town of Wychcliffe. A broad sweep of drive leads up to the portico entrance in front, sloping away in the rear down to the sea-shore. There are many great men in the smoky manufacturing town of Wychcliffe—as great as half a million dollars can make them, but ever and always Squire Owenson, the great man par excellence. He is the wealthiest, he lives in the finest house, he drives the finest horses, he owns the finest farms, he keeps the largest staff of servants, and above all he has the air of one born and bred to command. Loftily gracious and condescending, he has walked his uplifted way among these good people, and the rich, shrewd manufacturers submit good-humoredly to being patronized and smile in their sleeve over it. "A tip-top old swell," is the universal verdict, "in spite of his British airs, free with his money as a lord, ready to help any one in distress, and a credit to the town every way you take him." A haughty old sprig of gentility this Squire Owenson, setting a much greater value on birth and blood than either of these useful things are entitled to, and loving, with a love great and all absorbing, his slim, pretty, yellow-haired "little maid" and heiress. The one desire of his heart, when first he settled here, had been to found a house and a name, that would become a power in the land, to have "The Place" descend from Owenson to Owenson, for all time. But Mrs. Owenson, who disappointed him in everything, disappointed him in this. Six babies were born, and with the usual perversity of her contrary sex, each of these babies was a girl. To make matters worse, five died in infancy, and Sydney, "last, brightest, and best," alone shot up and flourished. Shot up, slender and pretty, an Owenson her father rejoiced to see in face and nature. It was then his thoughts turned to Bertie Vaughan. Since Providence deigned him no son, Bertie should be his son, should marry Sydney, should change his name to Vaughan Owenson, and so in spite of Mrs. Owenson hand down "The Place" to fame and posterity. The thought grew with every year. No exception could be taken to the orphan lad on the score of birth, and for his poverty the captain did not care—he had enough for both. Yes, yes! the very hour the boy and girl were old enough they should be married. It was the one hope, the one dream of his life, growing stronger as death came near. Of late he had been a little disappointed in young Vaughan. He had returned from Cambridge "plucked," his name never appeared in the "University Eight;" at nothing, either physical or mental, so far as the old sailor could see, had he distinguished himself. He was without ballast, without "backbone," and never had Captain Owenson sighed so bitterly over the realization as on his last return. Still, all things cannot be as we would have them here below. He would love Sydney and be good to her, he could hardly fail in that, and with that both she and her father must fain be content.

"We can't make statesmen, or orators, or great reformers to order," the captain thought. "The lad's a good lad, as the class go—has no vice in him that I can see; will make a respectable, easy-going gentleman farmer, quite willing to be tied to his wife's apron-strings all his life; and as that's the sort of men women like, why, I dare say, it will be all the better for the little one that he's not clever. Your clever man rarely makes a good husband."

He lay thinking this for the thousandth time, with knitted brows and that expression of repressed pain that never left his face, more strongly marked than ever.

Twenty minutes had ticked off on the clock, the yellow lines of the slanting afternoon sun were glimmering more and more faintly through the brown boles of the trees, when carriage wheels came rattling loudly up the drive. He started upright in his seat, a red flush lighting his haggard face, his heart throbbing like a sledge-hammer against his side. There was the sound of a sweet, clear girlish voice and laugh, then a footstep came flying up the stairs, the door was flung wide, and fresh, and fair and breezy, his darling was in the room, her arms about his neck, her kisses raining on his face.

"Papa! papa! dear, darling, blessed old papa! how glad I am to be with you again!"

He could not speak for a moment; he could only hold her to him hard; gasping with that convulsive beating of the heart. The heavy, labored pulsations frightened Sydney; she drew herself away and looked at him.

"Papa, how your heart beats! Oh, papa, don't say you are any worse!" she cried out, in a terrified voice.

"No—darling," he answered, a great pant between every word; "only—the joy—- of your—coming—" he stopped and pressed his hand hard over the suffocating throbs. "Give me—that—medicine, Sydney."

"I'll do it, Sydney," her mother said, coming in. "I told you, Reginald, not to excite yourself. I'm sure you knew Sydney was coming, and there was no need to get into a gale about it like this."

The squire's answer was a glare of impotent fury as he took the cordial from the exasperatingly calm partner of his bosom. Sydney's great compassionate eyes were fixed upon him as she nestled close to his shoulder, one arm about his neck.

"Lie back, papa," she said, "among the pillows. I am sorry—oh, darling papa! sorrier than sorry—to see you like this. Now let me fan you. Please don't excite yourself the least bit about me, or I shall be sorry I came."

Little kisses, light as thistle-down, sorrowfully tender as love could make them, punctuated this speech. The father's gaze dwelt on her, as men do gaze upon that which is the apple of their eye.

"I am better now, little one. Stand off, my baby, and let me look at you. Charlotte, look here—Sydney is as tall as yourself."

"Sydney takes after me in figure," says Mrs. Owenson, with a simper. "I was always considered a very fine figure when a girl. They used to call me and my two cousins, Elizabeth and Jane Bender, the Three Graces. It runs in our family."

"Runs in your fiddlestick!" growled her husband, with ineffable disgust. "Sydney is an Owenson, figure and face, wonderfully grown and marvellously improved. Ah, Bertie's going to get a golden treasure, that I foresee. You don't ask after your sweetheart, little one," her father said, pinching her ear.

"My sweetheart? Oh, how droll," laughed Sydney. "Yes, to be sure, where is Bertie? I rather expected to have met him at the station."

"And you ought to have met him at the station," answered her father, his frown returning. "Whatever else a man may be, he shouldn't be laggard in love. The truth is he has gone to New York to see his college friend, young Lord Dearborn, and something must have detained him. However, he is pretty sure to be here at eight. He has altered as much as you, little one, and grown a fine, manly, handsome lad."

"Bertie was always nice-looking," said Sydney, in a patronizing, elder-sister sort of tone; "only too fair—I don't admire very fair men. Mamma, is dinner ready? I'm famishing; and please, mamma, tell Katy to have something particularly nice, for life has been supported on thin bread and butter and weak tea for the past three years."

She ran off to her own room to remove her hat, and mamma trotted dutifully away to see after the commissariat. Papa gazed after her with eyes of fond delight.

"My little one," he thought, "my pretty little one, sweet and innocent, and heart whole. No mawkish blushing or sentimentality there. Bertie was always nice-looking, but too fair. Ha! ha! I hope she will take your conceit down a peg or two, Master Bert."

The dining-room of Owenson Place was like all the rooms, nearly perfect in its way, hung with deep crimson and gold paper, carpeted with Axminster of deep crimson and wood tints, curtained with red satin brocatelle and lace. Handsome chromos of flowers and fruit, of startled deer, and forest streams covered the walls. A huge sideboard of old Spanish mahogany, covered with dessert, occupied the space between two tall windows. A little wood fire snapped in the wide steel grate; under the big glittering chandelier in the centre of the dinner-table was set a huge epergne of autumn flowers, gorgeous in the centre. And, best of all, there were raised pies, and cold ham, and broiled partridge, and chicken fricassee, and ruby and golden jellies, and fruits, and sweets. Sydney's eyes sparkled as she looked. It sounds unromantic, but at the age of seventeen it is a matter of history that Miss Owenson's heart was very easily reached through her palate.

"We don't have regular dinners—roasts, and entrées and that, since Bertie's been away," said Mrs. Owenson. "I ordered all the things you used to like best. Papa never comes down to dinner when we are alone."

"Oh, how nice," cried Sydney; "how good it seems to be home. What a delicious pie. Nobody makes game pies like our Katy, bless her! I must go down to the kitchen directly and give her a hug. Won't you have something, mamma? Oh, how I wish Cyrilla were here."

"Who's Cyrilla, my love?" asked Mrs. Owenson, helping herself to partridge.

Mrs. Owenson has dined, but Mrs. Owenson is one of those happy exceptional mortals who can eat with ease and comfort at all times and seasons.

"My chum at school, Cyrilla Hendrick. Don't you remember telling me in your letter that papa said I might invite her here, as bridemaid. I have, and papa must write to her aunt immediately—to-night or to-morrow. I wish Bertie were here," runs on Miss Owenson, going vigorously into the raised pie.

"I'm dying to see him. Is he really handsome, mamma, and elegant, and all that?"

"Really handsome, my dear," responded mamma, "and most elegant. His clothes fit him beautifully, and he's so particular about his finger-nails, and his teeth, and his studs, and his sleeve-buttons, and his neckties, and his perfumes. And he bows magnificently. And he parts his hair down the middle. And he is raising a small moustache. It is so light yet you can barely see it, but I daresay it will come out quite plain after you are married. And he is going to ask Lord Dearborn down for the wedding, which will give everything an aristocratic air, you know. And, oh, Sydney, my love! all your things have come, and you must go and see them as soon as you have dined. The bridal-dress, veil, wreath, and pearls are expected from Paris in the steamer next week. They have cost a little fortune, and will be really splendid. And papa has fitted up three rooms for you and Bertie, after you return from your wedding-trip, and they are splendid also. Your papa may be fractious, Sydney, but I must say he has spared no expense in this. There never was a wedding like it in Wychcliffe, and I don't believe ever will be again. The papers will be full of it, you may depend."

"Dear, generous papa!" Sydney exclaimed. "Mamma, you don't think him worse, do you—not really worse? His heart beats frightfully, but——"

"That was the excitement, my dear. He will excite himself over trifles, do as you may," answers placid mamma.

"But he is not worse? The doctors don't say he is worse, do they?"

"By no means. He only fancies he is. They tell him to avoid excitement, to go on with the drops as before, to take gentle carriage exercise, light diet and wines, and he may linger ever so long. Now, have you finished, my dear? because I do want to show you the things."

Sydney had finished, and putting her arm around mamma's waist familiarly, went with her up-stairs. The bridal apartments were first shown—sitting-room, bedroom, dressing-room, all in different colors, all of different degrees of sumptuousness. Pretty pictures, gilded books, stands of music, a new piano and work-table, knick-knacks, pretty trifles, costing hundreds of dollars, and making an elegant whole. Everything was the best and rarest money could buy.

Sydney went into raptures—school-girl raptures; but her color came and went, for the first time. For the first time, she was beginning to realize that she was really going to be married. The trousseau was displayed next. Dresses of silk, black, brown, blue, pink, white, all the colors that blonde girls can wear; dresses of lace, black and white; dresses of materials thick and thin—all beautifully made and trimmed. Then heaps of linen, ruffled, laced, embroidered, marked with the letters "S. V. O." twisted in a monogram—Sydney Vaughan Owenson.

Gradually, as she examined and admired, silence fell upon her. She was beginning to feel overpowered; her life of the past and present seemed closing forever, and another, of which she knew nothing, about to begin.

A sensation, akin to dread of meeting Bertie Vaughan, was inexplicably stealing over her. She shook it off indignantly. What nonsense! Afraid to meet Bertie! Bertie with whom she had quarrelled and made up, whose ears she had boxed scores of times, whom she had laughed at and made fun of for his incipient young-mannish airs years ago—afraid of him! It was all very fine, and must have cost oceans of money, still she was glad when the sight-seeing was over and she could nestle up to her father's side and kiss him a little, silent, grateful kiss of thanks.

"How do you like it all, Mrs. Vaughan Owenson?" he asked, patting the cheek, from which the eager flush had faded.

"It is all lovely—lovely. Papa, how good you are to Bertie and me!"

"You are all I have to be good to, child," he answered, sadly. "Let me make you happy—I ask no more. You think you will be happy with our boy, don't you, pettie?"

"I like Bertie very much, papa."

"In a sisterly way—eh, my dear? Well, that is a very good way—much the better way, in a little girl of seventeen. This time next year he will be something more than a brother to you. He will be very good to you, that I know."

"It is not in Bertie to be bad to any one, papa. He always had a gentle heart."

"Yes, my dear, I think he had. There may be nobler qualities than gentleness and softness, but we don't make ourselves, and, as young fellows go, Bertie is a harmless lad, a very harmless lad. Be a good wife, Sydney, and don't be too exacting—men are mortal, my dear—the best of 'em very mortal. Be happy yourself, and make your husband happy—it is all I ask on earth."

"I'll try, papa," Sydney sighs, in a weary way, leaning against his chair, "but——"

"But I wish I need not be married at all. I wish I might just live on as I used, with you and mamma, and have Bertie for my brother. It is very tiresome and stupid being married, whether one will or no, at seventeen."

That is what she would have liked to say, but an instinctive conviction that it would displease her father held her silent.

"But what, little one?" he asks.

"Nothing, papa."

There is silence for awhile. The gray, cold evening is falling over wood and ocean; a star or two glitters in the sky. Both sit and look at the tremulous beauty of these frosty stars. Suddenly Sydney springs to her feet.

"Papa, I would like to go and see Hetty. May I?"

Hetty was once Sydney's nurse, very much tyrannized over, and very dearly loved. Hetty was married now and living in the suburbs of the town.

Papa glances at the clock. It is close upon seven, drawing near the time when Master Bertie may be looked for, and it will do him no harm to find Miss Owenson has not thought it worth her while to wait for him. So he gives a cheerful and immediate assent.

"Certainly, my dear. Hetty is a good creature, a very good creature, and strongly attached to us all. Take Ellen or Katy, or drive over if you like, or Perkins, the coachman, will attend you, or——"

"Oh, dear, no, papa!" laughs Sydney. "I don't want any of them. As if one needed an escort running over to the town! Besides, I've been watched and looked after so long that a scamper for once on my own account will be delightful. May I?"

"It will be dark in ten minutes, Syd.'"

"I will be at Hetty's in ten minutes, and she will come back with me if I want her. P—please, papa, may I?"

"Why do you say 'may I,' you witch? You know you can do as you like with me. Run away. Wrap up, the evenings are chilly; and don't stay more than an hour."

"Not a second. Good-by, papa; au revoir."

She ran up to her room, tied her dainty travelling hat over her sunny curls, threw a new and brilliant scarlet mantle over her shoulders, and in the steel-white, steel-cold set off for her walk.