Читать книгу Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily - Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller - Страница 9

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Every lady knows that fifteen minutes is a totally inadequate time in which to make a ball toilet. It was at least half an hour before Irene, with the assistance of the old housekeeper, had adorned herself with all the finery at her command. Then she came flying down the steps in joyous haste, and burst into the parlor with the refrain of a happy song upon her girlish lips.

Old Faith followed more leisurely with a little white nubia and shawl thrown over her arm.

"Ah! dearie me, dearie me," she sighed, as she waddled uncomfortably down the wide stairs, "the child's too pretty and too willful, and Mr. Brooke spoils her too much! Harm will come of it, I fear me. Poor Miss Ellie, poor Irene!"

She laid the wrappings of her young mistress across the hat-rack in the hall ready for her, and went back to her own domain and her own duties. Meanwhile Irene had danced blithely into the parlor.

"Papa," she said, to the dark, masculine figure that stood at the window with its back to her, "I'm ready now. Don't I look nice?"

The figure turned around from its contemplation of the moonlighted bay, and looked at her. It was not Mr. Brooke at all. It was a younger, handsomer man, whose brown eyes danced with irresistible mirth at her pardonable vanity.

"Nice enough to eat," he answered coolly, and Irene gave a little, startled shriek.

"Oh, dear, it isn't papa at all. Are you a bear, sir, that you talk of eating me?" she inquired, demurely.

The stranger came forward into the light, and stood before her.

"Do I look like one?" he inquired, with a smile that lit up his face indescribably.

Then, for a moment, they stared straight at each other, taking a mental inventory of each other's appearance.

Ladies first—so we will try to give you some faint idea of how Irene Brooke appeared in Guy Kenmore's eyes, though it is no easy task, for beauty like hers, varying from light to shadow with

"Sudden glances, sweet and strange,

Delicious spites and darling angers,

And airy forms of flitting change,"

defies all formal attempts at description.

She was a sixteen-year-old girl, with the graceful slenderness of that exquisite age, and the warm, blonde beauty of the south. Her eyes were deeply, darkly, beautifully blue, and appeared almost black beneath the long, thick fringes of the beautiful, golden-brown lashes, and the slender, arched brows of a darker hue. These arched brows, and the faint, very faint, retrousse inclination of the pretty little nose, gave an air of piquancy and spirit to the young face that was hightened by the proud curve of the short upper lip. The round, dimpled chin, and soft cheeks were tinted with the soft pink of the sea shell. The waving, rippling mass of glorious curls was of that warm, rich, golden hue the old masters loved to paint. Put on such a fair young girl a dress of soft white muslin and lace—just short enough to show the tiny, high-arched feet in white kid slippers—girdle the slim waist with a broad, blue ribbon, and fancy to yourself, reader mine, how sweet a vision she appeared in the eyes of the stranger.

For him, he was tall, large, and graceful, with a certain air of indolence and gracious ease, not to say laziness. He was decidedly handsome, with a well-shaped head of closely-clipped brown hair, good features, laughing brown eyes, and a drooping brown mustache. His summer suit of soft, light-gray cloth was infinitely becoming.

But in much less time than it took for these cursory descriptions, Irene has spoken:

"No, you do not look like a bear," she says, with charming frankness. "You look like—see how good I am at guessing—like Bertha's city beau! You are—aren't you?"

Something in this childish frankness touches him with faint annoyance. He chews the end of his long mustache after an old habit, and answers, rather stiffly:

"My name is——"

"'Norval, from the Grampian hills,'" she quotes, with audacious laughter.

"No—it is plain Guy Kenmore," he answers, stifling his rising vexation, and laughing with her.

"There, didn't I say so? Pray sit down, Mr. Kenmore," sweeping him a mocking, ridiculous little courtesy. "I hope you will make yourself quite at home at Bay View. I have a great liking for you, Mr. Kenmore."

He takes a chair with readiness, while she paces, a little restlessly, up and down the floor.

"Thank you," he says, languidly. "May I inquire to what circumstances I owe the honor of your regard?"

"You may," shooting him a swift, arch glance. "You're going to take Bert off our hands, and I consider you in the light of my greatest benefactor."

He laughs and colors at the cool speech of this strange girl.

"Indeed?" he says, with a peculiar accent on the word. "Why?"

"Oh, because," she pauses in her restless walk, and looks gravely at him a moment with those dark blue eyes, "because Bert is so wretchedly selfish she won't let me go anywhere until she is married off. Now to-night there was a ball. Papa had said I might go, but when he was called unexpectedly away to the city what did Bert and mamma do but forbid my going! After my dress and gloves and slippers were all bought, too. Wasn't that too bad? And if you were me shouldn't you just love the man that would take Bertha away?"

"A spoiled child, who hasn't the least business out of the school-room yet," mentally decides the visitor. Aloud he says, curiously:

"Do you know you have the advantage of me? I haven't the least idea who you are."

The blue eyes grow very large and round indeed. "Haven't you, really? Did Bertha never tell you about me—her little sister, Irene?"

"Never. She must have forgotten your existence," he answered, with an amused twinkle in his eyes.

"It is like her selfishness!" flashed Irene. "Never mind, I'll pay her out for her crossness this evening. Only think, Mr. Kenmore, papa came home just after they had gone, and said he would take me to the ball. I wonder if he is ready yet. It's quite time we were starting," she adds, looking anxiously at the door.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Brooke. Your dazzling entree put everything out of my mind for a moment. Your father was in here about fifteen minutes ago. He left a message for you."

"Why didn't you tell me, ah, why didn't you?" she demands, stamping her little foot in impatient wrath.

"You talked so fast I quite forgot," he answers coolly.

"Well, are you going to tell me now?" she inquires, flashing her large eyes at him superbly.

"Yes, if you will keep still long enough," he answers, provokingly, and openly amused at the impatient anger, so like that of a sadly spoiled child.

Irene folds her bare white arms over her heaving breast, and shuts her red lips tightly over her busy little tongue; but her eyes look through him with a glance that says plainer than words:

"Go on, now, I'm waiting."

With a stifled laugh, he obeys:

"Mr. Brooke said that he had been most unexpectedly called away on a little matter of business, but that he would certainly return inside an hour and take you to the ball."

He expected some expression of disappointment, but he was scarcely prepared for the dire effect of his communication.

Irene ran precipitately to the darkest corner of the room, flung herself down on a sofa, and dissolved into tears.

Feminine tears are an abomination to most men. Our hero is no exception to the rule. He fidgets uneasily in his chair a moment, then rises and goes over to the window, and listening to the low, sad murmur of the sea tries to lose the sound of that disconsolate sobbing over there in the dark corner.

"I never saw such a great, spoiled baby in my life," he says, vexedly, to himself. "How childish, how silly! She's as pretty as a doll, and that's all there is to her!"

But he cannot shut out easily the sound of her childish weeping. It haunts and vexes him.

"Oh, I say, Miss Brooke," he says, going over to her at last, "I wouldn't cry if I were in your place. Your father will be back directly."

Irene, lifting her head, looks at him with tearful blue eyes shining under the tangle of golden love-locks that half obscures her round, white forehead.

"No, he will not," she answers, stifling her sobs. "When men go out on business they never come back for hours and hours—and hours!" dolefully. "It was too bad of papa to treat me so!"

"But he was called away—don't you understand that? He wouldn't have gone of himself," says Mr. Kenmore, doing valiant battle for his fellow-man.

"I don't care. He shouldn't have gone after he'd promised me, and I was all ready," Irene answers, obstinately and with a fresh sob.

"Little goosie!" the young man mutters between his teeth, and feeling a strong desire to shake the unreasonable child.

But suddenly she springs up, dashing the tears from her eyes.

"I won't wait for papa, so there!" she flashes out, determinedly. "All the best dances will be over if we go so late. You shall take me."

"I'm not invited, you know," he says, blankly.

"No matter. They'll make you welcome, for Bert's sake. Any friend of Miss Bertha's, you know, etc.," she says, with a little, malicious laugh. "Yes, you shall go with me. It is a splendid idea. I wonder you didn't suggest it yourself."

He smiles grimly.

"Indeed, Miss Brooke, I'm not at all in ball costume," he objects, glancing down at his neat, light suit.

"All the better. I despise their ugly black coats," she replies, warmly. "Do you know," with startling candor, "you are handsomer and nicer-looking than any of the black-coated dandies that dawdle around Ellie and Bert? Come, you will go, just to please me, won't you?" she implores, pathetically.

"No gentleman ever refuses a lady's request," he replies, with rather a sulky air.

Irene scarcely notices his sulky tone. Her heart is set on this daring escapade. Smarting under the sense of the injuries sustained at Bertha's hands, she longs to avenge herself, and show her selfish sister that she will go her way despite her objections. It is a child's spite, a child's willfulness, and all the more obstinate for that reason.

"Oh, thank you," she says, brightly. "We shall have a charming time, sha'n't we?"

"You may. I am not rapturous over the prospect," he replies, laconically.

The willful girl regards him with sincere amazement. "Why, you must be very stupid indeed, not to care for a ball," she observes, with all the candor and freshness of an enfant terrible.

"You are very candid," he replies, feeling a strong desire to seize his hat and leave the house.

"Now you are vexed with me. What have I done?" she inquires, fixing on him the innocent gaze of her large, soft eyes. "I hope you haven't a bad temper," she goes on, earnestly, almost confidingly, "for Bert isn't an angel, I can assure you; and if you're both cross, won't you have a lovely time when you marry."

Vexation at this aggravating little beauty almost gets the better of the young man's politeness.

"Miss Brooke, if you weren't such a pretty child, I should like to shake you soundly, and send you off to your little bed!" he exclaims.

She flushes crimson, flashes him an angry glance from her lovely eyes, and curls her red lips into a decided and deliberate moue at him. Then, holding her pretty head high, she walks from the room.

"Has she taken me at my word?" he asks himself, rather blankly.

But no; Irene has only gone to the housekeeper's room, to leave a message for her father that she has gone to the ball with Mr. Kenmore. It does not enter her girlish mind that she is doing an improper thing, or that her father would object to it.

Old Faith, wiser in this world's lore than her willful little mistress, raises vehement objections.

"You mustn't do no such thing, Miss Irene, darling," she says. "Miss Bertha will be downright outrageous about you coming there along of her beau."

The pansy-blue eyes flash, the red lips pout mutinously.

"All the better," she answers, wickedly. "I want to make her mad! That's why I'm going! I'm going to the ball with her beau; and I mean to keep him all to myself, and to flirt with him outrageously, just to see how Bert's black eyes will snap!"