The Cup of Trembling, and Other Stories. Foote Mary Hallock

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      "I would have questioned any man that came here with Tip. Tip doesn't take up with toughs and hobos. What was he like?"

      Esmée had retreated under this cross-questioning, and stood at some distance from Jack, pale, and trembling with an ague of the nerves.

      "What was he like?" Jack repeated.

      "He was most awfully beautiful. He had a face like – like a death-angel."

      Jack rejected this phrase with an impatient gesture. "Was he fair, with blue eyes, and a little blond mustache?"

      "I don't know. The light was not good. He stood close to the window, or I could not have seen him. What have I done? Was it wrong not to open the door?"

      "Never mind about that, Esmée. I want you to describe the man."

      "I can't describe him. I don't need to. I know – I know it was your brother."

      "It must have been; and we have been sitting here – how many hours?"

      "I did not know there could be anybody – who – had a right to come in."

      "Such a night as this? Get away, Tip!"

      Jack had risen, and thrown off his coat. Esmée saw him get down his snow-shoe rig. He pulled on a thick woolen jersey, and buttoned his reefer over that. His foot-gear was drying by the fire; he put on a pair of German stockings, and fastened them below the knee, and over these the India-rubber buskins which a snow-shoer wears.

      "Tip had better have something to eat before we start," he suggested. He did not look at Esmée, but his manner to her was very gentle and forbearing; it cut her more than harsh words and unreasonable reproaches would have done.

      "He seems to think that I have done it," she said to herself, with the instinct of self-defense which will always come first with timid natures.

      Tip would not touch the food she brought him. She followed him about the room meekly, with the plate in her hand; but he shrunk away, lifting his lip, and showing the whites of his blood-rimmed eyes.

      Except for this defect, the sequel of distemper or some other of the ills of puppyhood, Tip had been a good-looking dog. But this accident of his appearance had prejudiced Esmée against him at the first sight. Later he had made her dislike and fear him by a habit he had of dogging his master to her door, and waiting there, outside, like Jack's discarded conscience. If chidden, or invited to come in, the unaccountable creature would skulk away, only to return and take up his post of dumb witness as before; so that no one who watched the movements of Jack's dog could fail to know how Jack bestowed his time. In this manner Esmée had come almost to hate the dog, and Tip returned her feeling in his heart, though he was restrained from showing it. But to-night there was a new accusation in his gruesome eye.

      "He will not eat for me," said Esmée, humbly.

      "He must eat," said Jack. "Here, down with it!" The dog clapped his jaws on the meat his master threw to him, and stood ready, without a change of countenance, at the door.

      "Can't you say that you forgive me?" Esmée pleaded.

      "Forgive you? Who am I, to be forgiving people?" Jack answered hoarsely.

      "But say it – say it! It was your brother. If it had been mine, I could forgive you."

      "Esmée, you don't see it as it is."

      "I do see it; but, Jack, you said that I was not to open the door."

      "Well, you didn't open it, did you? So it's all right. But there's a man out in the snow, somewhere, that I have got to find, if Tip can show me where he is. Come, Tip!"

      "Oh, Jack! You will not go without" – Jack turned his back to the door, and held out his arms. Esmée cast herself into them, and he kissed her in bitter silence, and went out.

      These two were seated together again by the fire in the same room. It was four o'clock in the morning, but as dark as midnight. The floor in spots was wet with melted snow. They spoke seldom, in low, tired voices; it was generally Esmée who spoke. They had not been weeping, but their faces were changed and grown old. Jack shivered, and kept feeding the fire. On the bed in the adjoining room, cold as the snow in a deserted nest, lay their first guest, whom no house fire would ever warm.

      "I cannot believe it. I cannot take it in. Are you sure there is nothing more we could do that a doctor would do if we had one?"

      "We have done everything. It was too late when I found him."

      "How is it possible? I have heard of persons lost for days – and this was only such a few hours."

      "A few hours! Good God, Esmée! Come out with me, and stand five minutes in this storm, if you can. And he had been on snow-shoes all day; he had come all the way up-hill from town. He had had no rest, and nothing to eat. And then to turn about, and take it worse than ever!"

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