Читать книгу Magdalen's Vow - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 13

Table of Contents

June passed—July—August came. The days went like placid dreams; Magdalen "sat in sunshine, calm and sweet," and was happy.

They were very good to her at Golden Willows; Miss Barstone was the most indulgent of old maids and employers. Fanny was the laziest and best-tempered of pupils, and Mr. George Barstone—oh! to his mind there was nothing else under the starry sky half so lovely as Fanny's governess! Golden Willows had always been a pleasant place to the young lawyer, but it had never quite been Paradise before.

He had never felt little thrills of delight shooting through his system—a kind of ecstatic ague when his thoughts wandered homeward from the office before she came. He didn't quite understand his own symptoms—he didn't take the trouble to analyze them—he accepted the facts—that the sun shone brighter and the skies were bluer and the State of Connecticut a great Garden of Eden, and never inquired too closely what had wrought the transformation.

But Miss Wayne had other slaves at her chariot wheels, and bade fair to become the belle of Millford. Young men saw her Sunday afternoons sitting in the high-backed pew between George and Fanny, her starry eyes uplifted to the preacher's face and the August sunshine making an aureole around her golden head, and gazed in speechless admiration.

There was nothing half so handsome in all the place as Miss Wayne, and half a dozen rich mill owners were ready to fall at her feet, at one encouraging word, before the end of the third month. But Miss Wayne never spoke that one word. She was gracious to all, in a queenly sort of way—a way that decidedly silenced the mill owners.

There was one gentleman—not a rich gentleman, either—who seemed rather a favorite with the stately Magdalen, however. He had not wealth—he was a dry-goods clerk, only—but he had what, with woman, is very often better—beauty.

He was gloriously handsome, this Mr. Frank Hamilton; for all the world like Count Lara, or the Corsair, or Childe Harold—Miss Winters said—tall and dark, with pathetic black eyes and raven hair.

He had fallen hopelessly and absurdly in love—this young dry-goods clerk—with the fair-haired governess. He haunted Golden Willows like an uneasy ghost, and gave Mr. George Barstone the first real inkling into the state of his own heart.

"The be-scented, doll-faced, dandified jackanapes!" growled Mr. Barstone, with flashing eyes, "with his six hundred dollars a year and his curly pate! I dare say he thinks he has only to open his lanky arms for Miss Wayne to plump into them! The girls of Millford have spoiled that fellow—always sickeningly conceited about his namby-pamby beauty. As if a man had anything to do with beauty, or as if a sensible girl like Magdalen Wayne would make an idiot of herself for a pair of dark eyes and a straight nose!"

Mr. Barstone, with his hands deep in his pantaloons pockets, tore up and down his sanctum like a caged lion. He had just seen Miss Wayne go by the window, with the handsome dry-goods clerk, talking as animatedly as though the scheme of the universe held but their two selves.

"How lovely she looked, and how happy she seemed!" groaned George, in despair; "and, after all, though she may snub mill owners, with sandy hair and pug noses, who knows what effect this noodle's Grecian profile and melancholy, dreamy eyes—as Fanny calls 'em—may have upon her. Hang his melancholy, dreamy eyes! I wish he was ten fathoms deep in the Connecticut! Girls are as silly as geese, and, though Miss Wayne seems sensible, I've no doubt she's as bad as the worst where Grecian noses and black eyes are concerned. I dare say she'll fling herself away on this dry goods Apollo and take a turn at love in a cottage, like the silliest driveler among them! Love in a cottage! two back rooms in a tenement house, bread without butter and weak tea three times a day, patched clothes and half a dozen dirty-faced children! Bah!"

With which expression of disgust, Mr. Barstone flung himself into his office chair and scowled vindictively at the opposite wall.

"And if she does, what difference does it make to me?" he thought; "what business is it of mine if Miss Wayne chooses to marry the King of the Cannibal Islands? George Barstone, you are a greater fool than your friends take you to be, and you're in love again."

Mr. Barstone emphasized the "again," as he very well might; for being in love had been his normal state ever since he had left off roundabouts.

In New York he fell in love with ballet girls and actresses and all manner of objectionable young women, and in Millford he had succumbed to the charms of at least a dozen, and paid marked attention to Miss Ella Goldham, the greatest heiress and the best-looking girl in town. His suit had been smiled upon—the course of true love ran as smooth as a milldam—so smoothly, indeed, that George Barstone slipped out of love as easily as he had slipped in.

Perhaps Miss Goldham had met him, like Desdemona, more than half way: perhaps the grapes were too ripe, and hung too near. Mr. Barstone hadn't proposed, and had not been in love since. Sense had come to him, he thought, with his seven-and-twentieth year. He had cut his wisdom teeth at last, and lo! here he was going mad because his aunt's governess, whom he had not known over two months, had walked past his windows with a good-looking young dry-goods clerk.

Mr. Barstone spent a miserable and unbusiness-like day, smoking endless cigars and ruminating drearily on Mr. Frank Hamilton's prospects of success.

He had been so happy during the past two months, sliding unconsciously into the abyss; and the bright face and golden hair and glorious eyes of Magdalen Wayne had so lighted up the world that the darkness was ten-fold blacker now. His love was no child's play this time. If Miss Wayne became Mrs. Frank Hamilton, or Mrs. Anybody else, George Barstone gloomily made up his mind that life held no other alternative for him than a double dose of laudanum, or a jump off the bank into Willow Lake, where it was deepest.

The young lawyer walked moodily home that evening, through the amber mist of the sunset, with the darkest shadow on his face that cheery face ever wore. What if Frank Hamilton had proposed that very day and been accepted?

"He hasn't known her half as long as I have," reflected George, "and I daren't do it; but Hamilton is bold enough for anything! If she has said yes, let her go! The woman who could marry that well-dressed idiot isn't worth regretting. I don't want a wife, anyhow. A wife! humbug! A wife's a nuisance! I shouldn't know what to do with one if I had one."

Mr. Barstone, reaching home, saw the garden gate swing open, and Fanny, with several yards of rose-colored ribbon streaming behind her, flew down the path.

"I've such news for you, George!" cried the young lady, all flushed and palpitating: "we're going to have the party! Yes, a party on my birthday, and that's the very next Thursday that ever is—and there's to be music, dancing and a supper, and I'm to ask whoever I please. And, oh, George! I've been dying for you to come home to write the invitations. I'm to have a new dress, and Aunt Lydia's set of pearls; and, oh, George! won't it be lovely?"

Miss Winters paused, her face as radiant as the sunset sky. Mr. Barstone listened, stoically.

"Is supper ready?" he asked.

"Yes, ready this half hour—and Magdalen's in there embroidering me a handkerchief. I wanted her to help me write the invitations, but she said you were the most suitable person. Oh!" cried Fanny, clasping her hands around his arm, and looking up at him with big, shining eyes. "I don't know what to do with myself, I'm so happy!"

Mr. Barstone remained rigidly grim. He went to supper and found Magdalen seated at one of the windows, bending over her work. She looked up with that brilliant smile the young lawyer thought the most beautiful thing on earth.

"I've been telling George all about the party, Magdalen," exclaimed Fanny, as they sat down to supper, "and he's going to write out the invitations directly after tea. Isn't it too bad, George, Phil can't come down? What will you wear, Magdalen? Black?"

"Black, of course—I have nothing else."

"And you know it becomes you, you sly Magdalen. Blondes always look their best in black, don't you think so, George?"

"I think," replied George Barstone, with grave sincerity, "Miss Wayne looks her best in anything."

"Delightful!" cried Fanny, while Magdalen blushed vividly. "I didn't think it was in you, George. I should like pink silk myself; but I'm afraid pink is too pronounced for my complexion and hair. It's red—I know it is—and I hate red hair! All the heroines of novels have golden hair, like Magdalen, or tar black, like Ella Goldman; and the fair ones used to be good, and the dark ones all bad; but they've reversed that rule since 'Lady Audley.'"

Mr. Barstone, still under a cloud, consented to make himself useful after tea and write out Fanny's invitations. After all, poor, imbecile Frank Hamilton was more to be pitied than blamed, for falling madly in love with this starry-eyed divinity who glorified Golden Willows by her presence. It was not in human nature to do otherwise, and he tried to think of him with pitying disdain, and write down the list of names Funny dictated. It was a lengthy list, and wound up with the obnoxious Apollo himself.

"And Frank Hamilton, Magdalen—handsome Frank—we must have him, of course."

"I object to young Hamilton!" exclaimed Mr. Barstone, suddenly turning crusty. "I don't like the fellow! A conceited, empty-headed noodle—and you have masculine noodles enough without him! Go on!"

"Not until you put down Frank," said Fanny, resolutely; "you may just as well, George, for I shall have him here if I have to go to the store and invite him myself! And as to his being a conceited noodle, that's all your hateful jealousy, George Barstone, because he's a great deal better looking than you! Write down Frank!"

"I'll do nothing of the sort!" returned Mr. Barstone, violently red; "and if he comes here, I shall not! I tell you, I don't like him, and I repeat it, he is a noodle! good for nothing but measuring out yards of tape and admiring his pretty face in the glass! Write your invitations yourself, Miss Winters, if you insist upon having people I despise!"

With which unprecedented burst of ill temper, Mr. Barstone stalked majestically out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Magdalen stared in boundless astonishment, and Fanny's eyes were like two midnight moons.

"Good gracious me!" ejaculated Miss Winters, with a dash; "who'd ever thought it! It's the first time I ever saw George turn grumpy in my life. But I know how it is," with a shower of mysterious nods; "I know all about it."

"All about what?" inquired Magdalen, very much mystified. "I thought Mr. Barstone and Mr. Hamilton were very good friends."

"And so they always have been, and so they always would be, only for you, you sly, mischief-making Magdalen!"

"Only for me!" cried Magdalen, aghast.

"Good gracious, yes!" exclaimed Fanny, testily; "of course, it's you—any one can see it with half an eye. Frank's in love with you—and George is jealous as a Turk!"

"Fanny, Fanny! What are you saying?"

"The truth, Miss Wayne. Don't you suppose I have eyes in my head; and that's why poor Frank is a conceited noodle, and can't come to the party. He can't, I suppose, if George keeps grumpy—and it's a thousand pities, for he's the nicest fellow I know—except Phil—and so handsome that it's a pleasure to look at him."

Miss Wayne bent suddenly over her work, and her cheeks were the color of Fanny's streamers, and her heart all in a flutter of tremulous bliss. Why, she best knew.

"So we must leave poor, dear Frank out," pursued Fanny, regretfully, "and disappoint heaps of girls. And then there's the old folks—how are we to amuse them?"

"Cards," suggested Magdalen.

"Cards?" repeated Fanny. "It would be as much as my life's worth to mention the word to Aunt Lydia—to George, either, for that matter. And thereby hangs a tale. It's all George's doing—a burned child dreads the fire."

Magdalen dropped her work and looked at her.

"You won't speak of it again, I know," pursued Fanny, delighted to have a secret to tell, "because Aunt Lydia wouldn't like it; but George wasn't always the model he is now. When he was in New York, two or three years ago, he got into dreadful trouble of some kind. I don't know what it was; but gambling had something to do with it, and Aunt Lydia was in terrible distress, and had ever so much money to pay. George came home, awfully ashamed of himself, and penitent, and ever since cards have been utterly abolished."

Magdalen listened to this little narrative with an interest Fanny never dreamed of. Three years ago George Barstone had been in New York, and he had been addicted to gambling. What if he had known Maurice Langley! What if he were Maurice Langley himself!

Her face flushed hotly at the thought; she had brooded on the possibility of finding this man in strange places, and by strange ways, so long that no idea, however preposterous, could seem preposterous to her. "Tall and handsome." George Barstone was both. But the next instant she discarded the wild idea. His frank, handsome face arose before her—genial and honest—the face of a man who might, thoughtlessly, fall into error, never the face of a deliberate villain. She could see him from the window, walking up and down in the silvery summer gloaming, smoking his cigar under the trees and looking up at the red, rising moon.

"No, no, no!" thought Magdalen. "George Barstone never could be a cold-blooded traitor and betrayer. I am a wretch to harbor such a thought for a moment, but he may have known Maurice Langley. If I only dared ask him!"

Fanny's tongue was running on all the while, and Magdalen had to dismiss the subject, and attend to her.

"I'm not going to invite poor Frank, you cantankerous old George," Fanny said, to her cousin, when he came in presently, "so you needn't wear that sulky face any longer. I'm sure you and he used to be good enough friends, but you're quite an altered person lately. He's a great deal more entertaining than you are, and I don't half expect to enjoy myself without him, and no more does Magdalen; but for all that he's not coming, so please stop scowling, Mr. Barstone, and try and make yourself agreeable if you can."

Mr. Barstone's reply to this breathless reproach was a scowl of even deeper malignity, to the infinite amusement of wicked Fanny.

"I've been asking Magdalen," pursued that young lady, bent on tormenting him, "how we are going to amuse the elders, and she suggested cards. Would you mind fetching a pack home from Millford to-morrow, George?"

Magdalen looked up quickly and earnestly, and saw a remarkable change pass over the young man's face at the simple words, and his blue eyes darkened and grew stern as they fixed themselves on Fanny's face.

"I should mind it, Miss Winters," he said, "and you know that perfectly well. Please be a little more careful in your requests, or there will be neither card playing nor party that night."

With which short, sharp and decisive speech, Mr. Barstone strode from the room, and appeared no more that evening.

The eventful day came, and Fanny, in a fever of excitement, robed herself in spotless white, like the heroine of a novel, with Aunt Lydia's pearls gleaming in milky luster on her neck, and her pink complexion deeper pink than ever. Calm and queenly beside her, in black silk and lace, and jet ornaments, Miss Wayne stood, plain and simple in dress, and uplifted and beautiful as a young queen.

Mr. Frank Hamilton, the handsome, was not there, and George Barstone should have been at peace; but, alas! he was not—for if the best-looking man in Millford had been excluded from that festive throng on Miss Wayne's account, the richest man in Millford was there, and obnoxiously attentive.

Mr. Sam Goldham, short of stature, plain of face, dull of brain, but with a hundred thousand dollars at his command, was her most devoted. He hung over the piano when she played and sang; he was her partner when she danced; he persistently sat beside her when she rested. George Barstone, hovering aloof, like your madly jealous lovers, set his teeth in a paroxysm of fury, and longed to take Mr. Sam Goldham by the scruff of the neck and kick him incontinently out of doors. One or two attempts he made to join the golden-haired divinity; but, monopolized by the wealthy manufacturer, the attempts were futile. The millionaire had her, and meant to keep her. Desperate cases require desperate remedies. Mr. Barstone took a desperate and sudden resolve, there and then.

"I'll propose to her to-morrow," thought the young lawyer, grinding his teeth and glaring at the rich man, "if that inconceivable ass, Sam Goldham, doesn't do it to-night!"