Читать книгу Carried by Storm - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 13

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hree miles away from Sleaford's Farm, and nearly four from Ventnor Villa, there stands the stateliest mansion in all the country round, the pride, the marvel, the show place of Brightbrook. It is down on the coast; the waves of the Atlantic wash up to the low sea wall that divides it from a shelving and sandy beach. A beautiful beach, of late years known to fame, and spoiled for all lovers of the quietly picturesque by being transformed into a popular watering-place. But in these days, fashion and capitalists have not marked it for their own, and Brightbrook Beach is an enchanted spot, on whose fine white sands you may lie the long summer day through, lazy, and happy, and cool, and watch the sea-gulls swirl overhead, and the little, limpid, oily waves wash and whisper up to your very feet.

The thermometer may stand among the hundreds elsewhere, down here it is cool as some merman's grot. There are always breezes, and fishing boats, and far-off yachts, and forever and forever the beautiful, changeful, illimitable sea. Or you may lean over Mr. Abbott's low stone wall in wild weather, the wind blowing great guns, both hands clutching your hat, and watch with awe-stricken eyes the spirit of the storm abroad on the waters. The great beetling green waves leap up like Titans, dashing their frothy spray in your face; the roar is as the crash of Niagara. Fascinated, you may stand for hours watching this war of the gods, and go home, at last, inclined to opine that Brightbrook Beach in a storm is even more bewitching than Brightbrook Beach in summer sweetness and sunshine, and to envy John Abbott, Esquire, his handsome home, his beautiful wife, his pretty little daughter, his colossal bank account, and, most of all, that grand old ocean lying there for his perpetual pleasure, a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

If Mr. Abbott's taste in a site is good, his style of architecture lies open to question. It is a house as much like an old Baronial Hall as a genuine American country-house can ever make up its mind to be. What Mr. Abbott's idea in building a castle is, is known to Mr. Abbott only. A grand Elizabethan manor, with turrets, and peaked gables, and quaint, vine-clad stone porches, and painted windows, with stone mullions.

It is new, and it looks three hundred years old at least, and reflects some of its seeming grandeur and antiquity upon its master, perhaps. And Mr. Abbott needs it. He is painfully new. He would like a moat and a drawbridge, and battlements, and a donjon keep, and a man-at-arms on the outer bastion, and he could have afforded them all. For, though extremely new, he is oppressively rich. He is so rich that his wealth forces itself upon you aggressively. You are disposed to resent it as a direct personal affront; no one man can logically have a right to so many millions in bank shares, and bonds, and stocks, to whole blocks in New York and Philadelphia, to the larger half of all Brightbrook, to such gorgeous furniture, inlaid with precious woods and metals, to pictures worth treble their weight in gold, to sculpture such as no one short of a prince, or grand duke, or Yankee billionaire can possess, to horses shod with the shoes of swiftness, to wines like molten gold and rubies, to diamonds—Koh-i-noors, says Brightbrook, every gem of them. It is true Mrs. Abbott seldom wears these rich and rare ornaments, never, indeed, in Brightbrook, but she has them all the same, and then, in some ways, Mrs. Abbott is a very—well, peculiar lady.

For that matter, Mr. Abbott is a—peculiar—gentleman also. His servants say so, with bated breath, and furtive glances behind them; all Brightbrook says it, as he rides by, monarch of all he surveys, pompous and stout. Colonel Ventnor says it with a shrug, and holds rather aloof from him, although his claret and cigars are, like Cæsar's wife, above reproach, and he is the only man of quite his own standing in the place. The two ladies are much better friends, despite the valetudinarian state of the one, and the—peculiarity of the other.

When Brightbrook points out to the stranger and pilgrim within its gates the wonderful castellated mansion known as Abbott Wood, and expatiates on its manifold beauties, it never fails to add a word of the still greater beauty of Mr. Abbott's wife. She was a widow, Brightbrook will tell you confidentially, when Mr. Abbott married her, a Mrs. Lamar, widow of a young Southern officer, and mother of a six-year-old boy, very poor, very proud, with the bluest of all blue Virginian blood in her veins, and a pedigree——

"Oh! if you come to pedigree," says Brightbrook, with suppressed triumph, "there's a line of ancestry, if you like! Dates back to the days of Charles the Second, and Pocahontas, and nobody knows how long before. But she was poor, quite destitute, they do say, after the war, and—and Mr. Abbott came along, immensely rich, as you may see, and—she married him."

"But you do not mean to say," cries the tourist, a little scandalized, "that that was why she married him. Because she was quite destitute, and he was immensely rich?"

"And a very good reason," responds Brightbrook, stoutly, "only—they do say, he and she don't quite hit it off as—well, you understand! She's a great lady, and very proud—oh! most uncommonly proud, we must say, and he——"

A shrug is apt to finish the sentence.

"And he is not," supplements the stranger. "No, I should think not, when he marries any man's widow on these terms, and consents to be snubbed forever after. You say she snubs him? flings her genealogical tree in his face; invokes the spirit of Pocahontas and the dead and gone Lamar, and all that sort of thing?"

"Oh, dear no!" cries out Brightbrook, shocked, "nothing of the kind. Much too proud a lady for anything of that sort. Only—only she has a crushing sort of way with her—holds herself like this!" Brightbrook draws itself haughtily up, folds its arms, and flings back its head, "and looks at you out of a pair of scornful eyes. Never says a word, you know, but sweeps out of the room, like an empress going to the block. That sort of thing puts a man down, you know. And then Mr. Abbott, he curses."

"Ah! curses, does he?" says the tourist, laughing. "Well, that shows he is human, at any rate. I think I might curse myself under such provocation. The sweeping, empress sort of style must be deucedly uncomfortable in a wife."

"And when he curses, Mrs. Abbott looks more haughty and scornful than ever. She's a very pious lady, Mrs. Abbott."

"Yes, I should think so; pride and piety make a happy combination—a pleasant curricle for any man to drive. So this magnificent dame condescends to go to the village church on Sundays, and kneel among you rustics, in perfumed silks and laces, and call herself a miserable sinner? Or," seeing Brightbrook vigorously shaking its head, "perhaps she stoops still lower, and patronizes the camp-meetings for which your fine woods are so famous? No again! Then where does she go?"

"Bless you!" cries Brightbrook, exultingly, "she has a chapel of her own! And a chaplain. And an altar. And vestments. And candles—wax. And incense. And a little boy in a purple silk dress, and a white lace overdress. And the Rev. Mr. Lamb comes down every Saturday night, and stays until Monday morning. They say she goes to confession to him. I shouldn't think Mr. Abbott would like that. Bless you, she's high—ever so high—what's that other word now——"

"Ritualistic—Anglican?"

"Thanks, yes. And the chapel, St. Walburga's, is a wonder; you really must go over and see it. The carved wood from Belgium, and the painted windows, with most beautiful saints, and the gold candlesticks, and the floor of inlaid wood, and carved stalls along the sides, and no pews! The pulpit, they say, is a work of art, and cost a little fortune abroad. Artists and that come down from the city and rave about it. Oh! you really must go to St. Walburga's on Sunday."

"I really think I must," says the stranger and pilgrim, and very likely he goes. He finds the park thrown open; it actually is a park of many acres, with green bosky glades where deer disport, sunlit terraces, where peacocks strut, statues gleaming palely amid green gloom, flashing fountains, casting high, cool jets, velvet lawns, all dotted with brilliant beads of flowers, rose gardens, where every rose that grows blooms in fragrant sweetness, and, best of all, with thick woodland of maple and hemlock, beech and elm, willow and chestnut sloping down to the very sea. Rustic seats are everywhere, cool avenues tempt the unwary, with arching boughs meeting overhead, and shutting out the hot summer Sunday afternoon sun, artificial lakes spanned by miniature bridges, and tiny gondolas, fish-ponds, where swans float, and gold and silver beauties sparkle. There is a gate-lodge that is a very bower of sweetbriar and climbing pink roses. All this loveliness is thrown open to Brightbrook every Sunday, and nothing pleases the master of Abbott Wood better than to see his grounds filled with wondering, admiring, well-dressed people. He comes out among these faithful retainers, nearly all his tenants, and patronizes them blandly and oppressively.

Strains of music float from the painted windows of St. Walburga's, and you are expected to assist at "vespers," as a delicate attention to my lady. If you are a city stranger, you will most probably be singled out by the watchful eye of Mr. Abbott, and taken through the house. You will see armor and stags' heads in the hall—a hall wide enough to drive the proverbial "coach-and-four" through, a great carved chimney-piece with a coat-of-arms. It is the heraldic device of Mrs. Abbott's family, and it is everywhere, emblazoned in the panes, in the wood-work, on the covers of the books. The rooms are all lofty, frescoed or satin-draped, filled with objects of "bigotry and virtue,"—the furniture—but the pen of an upholsterer, or a Jenkins, would be required to describe that. There are rooms in blue satin, rooms in ruby velvet, rooms in amber reps, rooms in white and gold, a library all rose-red and dark oak, a picture-gallery with portraits of the present house of Abbott, master and mistress, Mr. Geoffrey, and Miss Leonora. There are flowers, and birds, and beauty, and brilliance everywhere.

You go into the chapel, and its dim religious light soothes your dazzled eyes and excited senses. The organ is playing—my lady herself is organist—some soft Mozartian melody. Up in the pulpit, that costly antique work of art and oak, kneels the Reverend Ignatius Lamb, in surplice and stole, his eyes closed, his hands clasped, in an ecstasy! He is suspected of a leaning Rome-ward, but it certainly does not extend to his nose, which is snub. A pretty, curly-haired boy in the purple silk and snowy laces of acolyte, stands slowly swinging his censer, vice Master Geoffrey Lamar, retired. Geoffrey Lamar is there, though, a strong-looking young fellow of sixteen or so, with close-cropped dark hair, a sallow complexion, and a rather haughty-looking face. He has not inherited his mother's beauty—he is by no means a handsome boy. By his side, very simply dressed, in dotted muslin, sits his half-sister, Miss Leonora Abbott, a tiny fairy of eight, with a dark, piquant face, dark loose hair, the little young lady of the house, sole child of John Abbott, millionaire. Sole child, but not one whit more to him than his wife's son, the scion of the dead and blue-blooded Lamar. It is well known that Abbott Wood and half his fortune are to be his, that he looks to this lad to perpetuate the family greatness—to merge his own obscurity in the blaze of the Lamar brilliance, and become the ancestor of a long line of highly-fed, highly-bred, highly-wed descendants. Every man has his hobby, this is John Abbott's. He is self-made, he takes a boisterous, Bounderby sort of pride in proclaiming it. He is an uneducated man, that speaks for itself, it is unnecessary to proclaim it. He is a vulgar man, a loud-talking, deep-drinking, aggressive, pompous, purse-proud man. His wife's guests were wont to shrug their shoulders, suppress significant smiles, or protrude delicate under lips as they listened. And seeing this, Mrs. Abbott has given up society, that super-refined pride of hers has been excoriated a hundred times a day by the rich clod she calls husband. She has renounced society, buried herself in the solitude of Abbott Wood, with only her books, her music, her easel, her children, for company. She sees as little of Mr. Abbott as possible; she is always perfectly polite to him, she defers to his wishes, and is a supremely miserable woman. Even her piety fails to comfort her, and she is very much in earnest, poor lady, with her pretty, picturesque, lady-like religion. She works altar-cloths and copes, with gorgeous silks, and bullion, and gold fringe; she reads her high-church novels; she plays Mozart in the twilight, and sings in Gregorian chant in the chapel, but all in vain—that settled unrest and misery leaves her not. "Dona nobis pacem" sounds from her lips like the very cry of a soul in pain, but peace is not given. She despises her husband, his loud vulgarity and blatant purse-pride, while her own heart is eaten to the core with that other pride which the world tolerates and honors, pride of birth and long lineage, and which, perhaps, in the eyes of Him before whom kings are dust, is quite as odious as the other. Perhaps that peace she seeks so despairingly might be found, if she hearkened a little to the text from which the Reverend Ignatius is fond of preaching, "Learn of Me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls."

For Mr. Abbott—well, he is sharper-sighted than his wife gives him credit for, in spite of chill deference and proud politeness, he knows that she scorns and disdains—that she has scorned and disdained him from the first. And he resents it, silently, passionately. He loves his wife. She would open those dark, lustrous eyes of hers in wondering contempt, if she knew how well. But she does not know it—the scorn in her eyes would drive him to murder her almost, and he knows that scorn would be there. Coarse braggart and rich upstart he may be, but he would lay down that strong life of his for her sake. And that she is colder than marble, less responsive than ice, is at the bottom of more than half these fierce outbursts of anger that so disgust and repel her. Abbott Wood is a roomy mansion, and more than one skeleton abides therein.

It has been said that something of mystery hangs over, and makes interesting, the master of the house. Colonel Ventnor, riding with him one day, has seen a little corner of that dark curtain which shrouds his past, lifted. It was at the time Ventnor Villa was being built. Mr. Abbott, glad of such a neighbor, had interested himself a good deal in the proceedings, and saved the colonel a number of trips down from the city. Colonel Ventnor, a refined man in all his instincts, did not much like the rough-and-ready lord of Abbott Wood, but he was obliged by his good-nature, and accepted it. It had happened some four years before this memorable evening on which little Olga loses herself in the woods.

It is a dark and overcast autumn evening, threatening rain. Leaving the villa and the workmen, they ride slowly along the high-road, Mr. Abbott detailing, with the gusto customary with him when talking of himself, some of his adventures as a San Francisco broker and speculator in '49. Suddenly his horse shies as a man springs forward from under a tree, and stands directly before him.

"Blast you!" roars Mr. Abbott, "what the —— are you about? You nearly threw me, you beggar! What d'ye mean by jumping before a gentleman's horse like this?"

"Beg pardon, sir," says the man, with a grin and a most insolent manner, "didn't go for to do it, Mr. Abbott. Don't use your horsewhip, sir," for Mr. Abbott has raised it; "you might be sorry to strike an old friend."

He removes his ragged hat as he speaks, and the fading light falls full upon him. John Abbott reels in his saddle, the whip drops from his hand, his florid face turns livid.

"It is Sleaford!" he gasps, "by G——!"

Colonel Ventnor looks at him. He is a gentleman in the best sense of the much-abused word—he swears not at all. Then he looks at the tramp. He is a swarth-skinned, black-looking vagabond, as perfect a type of the loafer and blackguard, he thinks, as he has ever seen.

"I will ride on, Mr. Abbott," he says, quietly; "much obliged for your good-nature about those men. Good-night."

"Stay! hold on!" cries Mr. Abbott. The color comes back with a purple rush to his face, his eyes look wild and dilated. "I—I do—I have known this fellow in California. He's a poor devil that used to work for me. I haven't anything to say to him in private. You needn't hurry on his account, you know."

"Oh, certainly not," responds Colonel Ventnor. "Still, as there is a storm brewing, I think it will be well to get to the hotel at once, and so avoid a drenching. I will see you again before I return to town."

He lifts his hat and rides away, but not before he has heard the hoarse laugh of the tramp, as he lays his hand with the same impudent familiarity on Mr. Abbott's bridle.

Next day, when he returns to the villa, he finds that gentleman waiting for him, and issuing sonorous orders to the masons. He is almost offensive in his officious friendliness and voluble explanations.

"A poor beggar, sir, that I knew out in 'Frisco. Knew all sorts out there—hundreds of the great unwashed, miners, gamblers, blacklegs, all sorts. Had to, you know, in my business. Sometimes made some of them useful—a man has to handle dirty tools in most trades, you know. This fellow was one of them. Sleaford his name is—Giles Sleaford, a harmless beggar, but lazy as the deuce. Think I must do something for him for old acquaintance sake. Got a large family, too—lots of boys and girls—quite a 'numerous father,' as they say. Where's the good of being as rich as Rothschild if a man's not to do good with it? D—— it all! let us help one another, I say, and when we see an unfortunate chap down, let us set him on his legs again. I think I'll let Sleaford have the Red Farm; there's nobody there, and it's a capital bit of land. He wasn't half a bad sort; there were a devilish deal worse fellows than Black Giles out in San Francisco."

Colonel Ventnor assents politely, and keeps his own opinion of Mr. Abbott's dark friend to himself. Mr. Abbott has been looking him in the eye, in a very marked manner, during this little speech. It is a glance that says plainly enough, "This is my version of the affair—I expect you to believe it, or take the consequences." But Colonel Ventnor's quiet high-breeding is too much for poor Mr. Abbott always. It puts him in a silent rage, much as his wife's calm, uplifted repose of manner does.

"Curse them all!" he thinks; "these aristocrats are all alike. Look down on a man as the dirt under their feet, if he ain't brought up to parley voo fransey and jabber German and that. And they can do it with a look too, without a word of bluster or noise. I defy any man alive to stand up before the missis when she's in one of her white, speechless rages, and look her in the eye. I wish I knew how they do it."

He sighs, takes off his hat, scratches his head perplexedly with his big, brown, brawny hand, and slaps it on again a little more defiantly cocked than before. "And now here's Black Giles," he thinks, gloomily, "as if I hadn't enough on my mind without him. I wonder how much he knows—I wonder——"

He mounts his horse and rides off, pondering gloomily, in the direction of the Red Farm. It was a different-looking place in those days to what it became later. Mr. Abbott was a very thorough landlord, no tenant might wreck and ruin any farm of his. This Red Farm, so called from the color of the house, and the great maples burning scarlet about it, was one of the choicest bits of land in the State, and in high cultivation. And here the Sleaford family came, two boys, three girls, the youngest a mere child then, but a weird-looking, cowed starveling—and squatted. It could not be called anything else; Giles Sleaford laughed from the first at the notion of his farming, or even making the pretext. The boys were like wild Indians—they fished, shot, snared birds and rabbits, stole melons, robbed orchards, were a nuisance generally, and let the farm look after itself. The girls were of the same ne'er-do-well stamp, boisterous young hoidens, handsome "prize animal" sort of damsels, with flashing black eyes, and impudent retorts for all who accost them. The neighbors wonder—why does Mr. Abbott, that most particular gentleman, let this wild lot ruin the Red Farm, and bear it like the meekest of men? Why does Giles Sleaford always have well-filled pockets, good horses and clothes, whether he works or idles? They ask the question more than once, and he laughs loud and long.

"Why does he?" he cries. "Lord love you, that's little of what he would do for me. He loves me like a brother. He's an uncommon fine gentleman, ain't he? and got a lovely place, and a handsome wife—so I hear. I haven't been there to leave my card yet. Why does he? Bless your souls, he would turn out of his big house and give it to me, if I coaxed him hard enough."

Brightbrook does not know what to make of it. It whispers a good deal, and looks furtively at the rich man riding by. What secret has he in his life, that Giles Sleaford is paid to keep? He looks like a man who might have a dark record behind him. And what would Mrs. Abbott say if she knew? But Mrs. Abbott does not know, gossip does not reach her; she lives in a rarefied atmosphere of her own, with her dainty work, her ornaments, her children, and the plebeian name of Sleaford penetrates it not.

And so years go on. The Red Farm goes to ruin. Colonel Ventnor and family come with the primroses, and depart with the swallows. Abbott Wood grows more beautiful with every passing year, and the skeletons in its closets grin silently there still, when it falls out that this summer evening Olga Ventnor goes astray in the woods, and before ten at night all Brightbrook is up and in quest.

"She may be at Abbott Wood," Frank Livingston suggests—Frank Livingston, calm and unhurried in the midst of general dismay. It is a theory of this young man's that things are sure to come right in the end, and that nothing is worth bothering about; so, though a trifle anxious, he is calm. "She spoke to me," he adds, with a twinge of remorse, "this afternoon about taking her there. Promised to go over and play croquet with Leo and Geoff."

Colonel Ventnor waits for no more. He dashes spurs into his red roan steed, and gallops like a madman to Abbott Wood. On the steps of the great portico entrance he sees the master of the mansion, smoking a cigar, and looking flushed and angry. A domestic white squall has just blown over—not with the "missis;" there are never squalls, white or black, in that quarter—with one of the kitchen-maids, who had done, or undone, something to offend him. He has flown into a tremendous passion with the frightened woman, cursing up hill and down dale with a heartiness and fluency that would have done credit to that past-master of the art of blasphemy, Sleaford himself. The fact is, his wife had put him out at dinner, as she has a way of doing, and his slumbering wrath has had to find vent somewhere. Now the fuming volcano is calming itself down in the peaceful night air, with the help of a soothing cigar. He stares to see the colonel ride up, all white and breathless.

"Little Olga? No, she wasn't there—hadn't been—was perfectly sure of it. Lost!—the colonel did not say so! How was it?"

In a few rapid sentences Colonel Ventnor tells him. Mr. Abbott listens with open mouth.

"By jingo! poor little lass! He will join the hunt immediately. That French woman ought to have her neck wrung. He would be after the colonel in a twinkling."

And he is—mounted on his powerful black horse. And all night long the woods are searched, and morning comes, and finds the missing one still missing. The sun rises, and its first beams fall upon John Abbott, tired and jaded, coming upon Sleaford's. It is a place he avoids; he looks at it now with a scowl, and for a moment forgets what he is in search of. No one has thought of looking here; neither does he. He is about to turn away, when the house door opens, and Giles Sleaford, unwashed and unshorn, comes forth.

"Hullo!" he says, roughly; "you! What may you want this time o' day?"

"We are looking for the colonel's little girl. You haven't seen her, I suppose?" says Mr. Abbott, quite civilly.

"Haven't I?" growls Black Giles; "that's all you know about it. I have seen her. She's here, and I wish she was anywhere else, keeping honest people from their sleep. She's in there fast enough if you want her. Why doesn't her own dad come after her? I should think you had enough to do to mind your own young 'uns, and your wife, from all I hear."

He laughs a hoarse, impudent laugh, that brings the choleric blood into John Abbott's face, and a demon into either eye. But, wonderful to relate, he restrains himself.

Other members of the hunt ride up now, and it is discovered that little Miss Olga is very ill, and nearly out of her senses—why, nobody knows. She woke up in the night, Lora supposes, and finding herself alone, took fright, and ran screaming out into the passage, and there fell, striking her head against the bottom stair, and hurting herself badly. Whether from the hurt or the fright, she is at present in a very bad way, and there is not a moment to be lost in removing her. Frank is of the party. He takes his insensible little cousin in his arms and kisses her, with tears of genuine remorse in his boyish eyes. If he had gone with her as she wished, this would never have happened. Now she may never ask him for anything in this world again. As he carries her out, a small figure, looking like a walking scarecrow, with wild hair, pale face, torn skirts, bare legs and feet, comes slowly and sullenly forward, and watches him and his burden with lowering, scowling glance.

"Here you, Joanna!" calls out one of the Sleaford girls, sharply. "Come into the house, and help redd up. Come in, this minute!" with a stamp of her foot, "if you don't want a little more of what you got last night."

The girl makes no reply. She slowly obeys, but her eyes linger to the last on Frank Livingston and his cousin. All the long light curls fall over his shoulder, the poor little fever-flushed face is hidden on his breast.

"One of yours, Sleaford?" says Mr. Abbott, graciously, looking after Joanna. "I didn't know you had one so young."

There is nothing in this speech apparently to provoke laughter, nor is it a time for mirth, but such is its effect on Mr. Sleaford. He opens his huge mouth, and emits such a roar that the whole group turn and look at him indignantly. The joke is so exquisite that he heeds not, but laughs until the tears start from his bleary eyes.

"Glad you find me so funny," says Mr. Abbott, huffily. "You ain't always in such good humor this time of morning, are you?" And then, as Mr. Sleaford's only response is to take out his pipe, and indulge in another fit of hilarity, he turns and rides indignantly away in the rear of his party.

Mr. Giles Sleaford, left alone in his retreat, smokes between his expiring gasps of laughter, and soliloquizes:

"'Is she one of yours, Sleaford?' And 'I didn't know you had one so young!' O Lord! I haven't laughed so much in a month of Sundays. Old Jack Abbott don't often make jokes, maybe, but when he does they're rum 'uns. 'Didn't know I had one so young!' It's the best thing I've heerd this many a day—I'm dashed if it ain't."