Читать книгу Leonie, the Typewriter - Wenona Gilman - Страница 4

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A gentle breeze, like the soft current wafted from a fan in the hands of Heaven, played through the room in which Leonie lay sweetly sleeping.

Silently the door of her room opened, and with noiseless step the old man entered. He looked cautiously around, then thrust forward a candle that he had held outside the door until he found that she was soundly sleeping. With cat-like tread, he advanced and stood beside her, looking down with a countenance that was convulsed with anguish.

"Oh, my darling! what have I done?" he gasped. "If I had not been so blind I might have spared you all this. You love Lynde Pyne! Great God! what a hideous thing life is after all. I might have known that she would meet them all sooner or later. It is the law of the living. But what was I to do? My poor little one! where is the justice or the mercy in the curse that rests upon your life? To know the truth, with your sensitive nature, would kill you; yet how am I to keep you from finding out? Oh, God! the peace that time had brought is ended, and the bitter agony of her life has begun! If I could but bear it for her!"

He left her side after one more long look, and taking a key that he had brought with him he unlocked an old desk that the room contained. Inside the drawer that opened he pressed a spring, and took from the inner drawer a small portrait.

He looked at the pictured face, then bowed his head upon it, and the bitterest tears of his life fell from his eyes.

"Oh, Lena, Lena!" he sobbed. "Can you look down upon us now and see what your sin is to cost her? I don't want to blame you, my girl, now that you are dead, but what am I to say to her? I wonder if you can see what terrible danger threatens her, and I wonder if you know that it would kill her to know the sin that you committed, and that forever ruins and blasts her life? God forgive me! You are dead now, and perhaps in heaven, but—Lena, Lena, Lena!"

He sat for some time so, then was aroused by feeling a hand laid upon his shoulder. He glanced up, and to his dismay, saw Leonie standing there, her face white as death.

"Who is that woman?" she asked in a voice utterly unlike her own.

Godfrey Cuyler hesitated, his hands shaking until it was almost impossible for him to hold the portrait. He thrust it into the drawer, and locked it before she knew what he was about.

"It is no one that you know!" he cried, brokenly. "If you love me, you will not ask."

She laid her hands upon his shoulders, and held him firmly.

"Dad," she said, slowly, "you are keeping something from me that you have no right to keep. What is it? What has Miss Chandler to do with me? And who is that woman whose picture you have, who looks so much like the portrait in Lynde Pyne's drawer?"

The old man fell into a chair, his limbs refusing to support him.

She fell upon her knees beside him, clasping his hands with both her own.

"Dad," she whispered hoarsely, "there is some secret that connects my life with that of Miss Chandler and Lynde Pyne. Tell me what it is. If you do not, I shall find out for myself, and it would be so much better for me to hear it from you than from a stranger, if it is the dreadful thing that your manner leads me to fear. Dad, tell me."

"I cannot," he gasped. "You must believe me when I tell you that there is nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Oh, Leonie, Leonie, my darling, put this nonsense out of your head. If you must know the story, that is an aunt of Miss Chandler's whom I once loved."

He was pointing toward the drawer where the picture was concealed, but the girl knew as well that he was lying to her as though the full knowledge of the humiliating story had been laid bare to her.

"Dad," she exclaimed, "oh, dad, it must be worse even than I thought, when you will descend to a lie! Think again, dad. What is this hidden misery that the mere mention of Miss Chandler's name causes you such bitter suffering?"

"It is not Miss Chandler. You must not think it!" he cried, his voice indistinct from the chattering of his teeth. "I once swore an oath that concerned her—that is all. I cannot tell you, because my word is pledged. Little one, little one, you must believe me. You must trust dad always—always!"

He was trembling as though with a terrible chill, and feeling as though her heart had suddenly turned to ice, Leonie arose from her knees.

"You are exciting yourself, dad," she said gently, "and will be ill to-morrow. Go to bed, will you not?"

"Not until you have promised me that you will not go again to Lynde Pyne's office! I could never rest until you had promised that. Tell me that you will not!"

"I can't do that!" she cried, her voice sounding hollow in the stillness of the night.

"We can't starve, and there is no other prospect—none!"

"Is that the only reason?"

She turned away wearily to avoid his penetrating gaze.

"No," she answered huskily, "perhaps it is not, but even if it were, I should still say the same. Oh, dad, what is it? There can be nothing so bad as this torturing suspense! Surely you can trust me?"

"Leonie," he said, in a choking voice, "the secret I know concerns Evelyn Chandler, not yourself. You must believe me, for I speak the truth!"

"Will you pledge me your honor to that, dad?"

He had never told a deliberate lie in his life before, and the effort cost him a greater struggle than almost any one would believe, but he controlled his countenance, and answered slowly:

"I do!"

She allowed her hand to fall from his shoulder, where it had rested, and sighed wearily. He had not deceived her!

"Will you promise now?" he asked, almost unable to control his eagerness.

"No," she replied, with a dejected shake of the head. "If the secret does not concern me, it would be a foolish thing for me to resign a position that I so sorely need. Don't ask it, dad, for there is nothing that you can say that would induce me to do it!"

"Leonie——"

"You are keeping me up, dad, and I need rest. Won't you say good-night?"

The voice was quiet, but the expression on the lovely face belied it.

He saw what he had done, but was powerless to alter it.

"Oh, child——" he began, but she interrupted him again.

"To-morrow, dad! I am tired now and—— Go, dear, won't you? And, dad, don't worry your dear old head about me! If there is trouble to be borne, we can bear it together, as we always have, but we will leave it until it comes. You know how foolish it is to endeavor to cross a bridge before you come to it! Dad, dear old dad! good-night and God bless you. Whatever may come in the future, you have been the most faithful— There you are making a baby of me."

She placed her arms about his neck, and hid her face upon his shoulder in a vain endeavor to conceal her tears. She kissed him again, then gently pushed him into his own room, and closed the door.

For hours after he had gone she sat there by the window trying to solve the mystery that surrounded her. Her brows were knit, her fingers tightly laced, her face pale as marble.

She arose suddenly, her hands clasped above her heart, her eyes wildly bright.

"I have it!" she cried hoarsely. "My mother lives! She has committed some sin that dad fears to tell me, for which he will never see her again, and this Evelyn Chandler knows! Oh, mother, is it true? Is that why he never speaks your name? If it is true, dear, I know that you are innocent, and perhaps I can prove it! I will try, oh, I will try!"

There was no possibility of sleep that night, and when morning broke it found her still sitting there, forming her plans to accomplish a thing the full knowledge of which was to cause her the bitterest sorrow she had ever known.

And in the next room, separated only by a thin partition, Godfrey Cuyler was planning how he could save her.