The Reclaimers. McCarter Margaret Hill

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ other hand closed gently about the little hand that lay on one of his. How firm and white and shapely it was, and how determined and fearless the grip it could put on the steering-wheel when the big Darby car skidded dangerously! And how flat and flabby and yellow and characterless was the hand that held it close!

      "Come on, folks, we are going to the house to have some music," Aunt Jerry called, as she and Eugene Wellington came across the lawn from the lily-pond.

      Mrs. Darby, sure of the fruition of her plans now, was really becoming pettishly jealous to-night. A little longer she wanted to hold these two young people under her absolute dominion. Of course she would always control them, but when they were promised to each other there would arise a kingdom within a kingdom which she could never enter. The angry voice of a warped, misused, and withered youth was in her soul, and the jealousy of loveless old age was no little fox among her vines to-night. Let them wait on her a little while. One evening more wouldn't matter.

      As the two approached the rose-arbor Jerry's hand touched Uncle Cornie's cheek in a loving caress – the first she had ever given him.

      "I won't forget what you have said, Uncle Cornie," she murmured, softly, as she rose to join her aunt and Eugene.

      The moonlight flooding the lawn touched Jerry's golden hair, and the bloom of love and youth beautified her cheeks, as she walked away beside the handsome young artist into the beauty of the June night.

      "Come on, Cornelius." Mrs. Darby's voice put the one harsh note into the harmony of the moment.

      "As soon as I put away my discus. That last throw was an awkward one, and a lot out of line for me," he answered, in his dry, flat voice, stooping to pick up the implement of his daily pastime.

      Up in the big parlor, Eugene and Jerry played the old duets they had learned together in their childhood, and sang the old songs that Jerusha Darby had heard when she was a girl, before the lust for wealth had hardened her arteries and dimmed her eyes to visions that come only to bless. But the two young people forgot her presence and seemed to live the hours of the beautiful June night only for each other.

      It was nearly midnight when a peal of thunder boomed up the Winnowoc Valley and the end of a perfect day was brilliant in the grandeur of a June shower, with skies of midnight blackness cloven through with long shafts of lightning or swept across by billows of flame, while the storm wind's strong arms beat the earth with flails of crystal rain.

      "Where is Uncle Cornie? I hadn't missed him before," Jerry asked as the three in the parlor watched the storm pouring out all its wrath upon the Winnowoc Valley.

      "Oh, he went to put up his old discus, and then he went off to bed I suppose," Aunt Jerry replied, indifferently.

      Nothing was ever farther from his wife's thought than the presence of Cornelius Darby. The two had never lived for each other; they had lived for the accumulation of property that together they might gather in.

      It was long after midnight before the family retired. The moon came out of hiding as the storm-cloud swept eastward. The night breezes were cool and sweet, scattering the flower petals, that the shower had beaten off, in little perfumy cloudlets about the rose-arbor and upon its stone door-step.

      It was long after Jerry Swaim had gone to her room before she slept. Over and over the events of the day passed in review before her mind: the city shopping; the dainty lunch in the Delft room at La Señorita; the art exhibit and that one level gray landscape with the flaming, gorgeous sunset so unlike the green-and-gold sunset landscape of "Eden"; the homeward ride with all its dangerous thrills; the talk with Aunt Jerry; Eugene, Eugene, Eugene; Uncle Cornie with his discus, at the door of the rose-arbor, and all that he had said to her; the old, old songs, and the thunder-storm's tremendous beauty, and Uncle Cornie again – and dreams at last, and Jim Swaim, big, strong, shrewd; and Lesa, sweet-faced, visionary; and then sound slumber bringing complete oblivion.

      Last to sleep and first to waken in the early morning was Jerry. Happy Jerry! Nobody as happy as she was could sleep – and yet – Uncle Cornie's last discus-throw had brought new thoughts that would not slip away as the storm had slipped up the Winnowoc into nowhere. A rift in the lute, a cloud speck in a blue June sky, was the memory of what Uncle Cornie had told her when he let his discus roll up to her very feet by the door of the rose-arbor. Jerry Swaim must not be troubled with lute rifts and cloud specks. The call of the early morning was in the air, the dewy, misty, rose-hued dawning of a beautiful day in a beautiful "Eden" where only beautiful things belong. And loveliest among them all was Jerry Swaim in her pink morning dress, her glorious crown of hair agleam in the sun's early rays, her blue eye full of light.

      The sweetest spot to her in all "Eden" on this morning was the rose-arbor. It belonged to her now by right of Eugene and – Uncle Cornie. The snatches of an old love-ballad, one of the songs she had sung with Eugene the night before, were on her lips as she left the veranda and passed with light step down the lilac walk toward the arbor. The very grass blades seemed to sing with her, and all the rain-washed world glowed with green and gold and creamy white, pink and heliotrope and rose.

      At the turn of the walk toward the arbor Jerry paused to drink in the richness of all this colorful scene. And then, for no reason at all, she remembered what Uncle Cornie had said about his colorless life. Strange that she had never, in her own frivolous existence, thought of him in that way before. But with the alchemy of love in her veins she began to see things in a new light. His had been a dull existence. If Aunt Jerry ever really loved him she must have forgotten it long ago. And he made so little noise in the world, anyhow, it was easy to forget that he was in it. She had forgotten him last night even after all that he had said. He had had no part in their music, nor the beauty of the storm.

      But here he was up early and sitting at the doorway of the rose-arbor just as she had left him last night. He was leaning back in the angle of the slightly splintered trellis, his colorless face gray, save where a blue line ran down his cheek from a blue-black burn on his temple, his colorless eyes looking straight before him; the discus he had stooped to pick up in the twilight last night clasped in his colorless hands; his colorless life race run. His clothing, soaked by the midnight storm, clung wet and sagging about his shrunken form. But the rain-beaten rose-vines had showered his gray head with a halo of pink petals, and about his feet were drifts of fallen blossoms flowing out upon the rich green sod. Nature in loving pity had gently decked him with her daintiest hues, as if a world of lavish color would wipe away in a sweep of June-time beauty the memory of the lost drab years.

      III

      HITCHING THE WAGON TO A STAR

      Behind the most expensive mourner's crape to be had in Philadelphia Jerusha Darby hid the least mournful of faces. Not that she had not been shocked that one bolt out of all that summer storm-cloud, barely splintering the rose-arbor, should strike the head leaning against it with a blow so faint and yet so fatal; nor that she would not miss Cornelius and find it very inconvenient to fill his place in her business management. Every business needs some one to fetch and carry and play the watch-dog. And in these days of expensive labor watch-dogs come high and are not always well trained. But everybody must go sometime. That is, everybody else. To Mrs. Darby's cast of mind the scheme of death and final reckoning as belonging to a general experience was never intended for her individually. After all, things work out all right under Providential guidance. Eugene Wellington was a fortunate provision of an all-wise Providence. Eugene had some of his late cousin's ability. He would come in time to fill the vacant chair by the roll-top desk in the city banking and business house. Moreover, to the eyes of age he was a thousandfold more interesting and resourceful than the colorless quiet one whose loss would be felt of course, of course.

      The reddest roses of "Eden" bloomed the next June on Cornelius Darby's grave, the brightest leaves of autumn covered him warmly from the winter's snows, and the places СКАЧАТЬ