East Lynne. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ she ought to do so, but she does not. Papa wonders what makes her get up so ill and trembling of a morning; and mamma has to make all sorts of evasive excuses; for not a hint, as you are aware, must be breathed to him about the murder.”

      Mr. Carlyle gravely nodded.

      “Mamma does so harp about Bethel. And I know that dream arose from nothing in the world but because she saw him pass the gate yesterday. Not that she thinks that it was he who did it; unfortunately, there is no room for that; but she will persist that he had a hand in it in some way, and he haunts her dreams.”

      Mr. Carlyle walked on in silence; indeed there was no reply that he could make. A cloud had fallen upon the house of Mr. Hare, and it was an unhappy subject. Barbara continued,—

      “But for mamma to have taken it into her head that ‘some evil is going to happen,’ because she had this dream, and to make herself miserable over it, is so absurd, that I have felt quite cross with her all day. Such nonsense, you know, Archibald, to believe that dreams give signs of what is going to happen, so far behind these enlightened days!”

      “Your mamma’s trouble is great, Barbara; and she is not strong.”

      “I think all our troubles have been great since—since that dark evening,” responded Barbara.

      “Have you heard from Anne?” inquired Mr. Carlyle, willing to change the subject.

      “Yes, she is very well. What do you think they are going to name the baby? Anne; after her mamma. So very ugly a name! Anne!”

      “I do not think so,” said Mr. Carlyle. “It is simple and unpretending, I like it much. Look at the long, pretentious names of our family—Archibald! Cornelia! And yours, too—Barbara! What a mouthful they all are!”

      Barbara contracted her eyebrows. It was equivalent to saying that he did not like her name.

      They reached the gate, and Mr. Carlyle was about to pass out of it when Barbara laid her hand on his arm to detain him, and spoke in a timid voice,—

      “Archibald!”

      “What is it?”

      “I have not said a word of thanks to you for this,” she said, touching the chain and locket; “my tongue seemed tied. Do not deem me ungrateful.”

      “You foolish girl! It is not worth them. There! Now I am paid. Good-night, Barbara.”

      He had bent down and kissed her cheek, swung through the gate, laughing, and strode away. “Don’t say I never gave you anything,” he turned his head round to say, “Good-night.”

      All her veins were tingling, all her pulses beating; her heart was throbbing with its sense of bliss. He had never kissed her, that she could remember, since she was a child. And when she returned indoors, her spirits were so extravagantly high that Mrs. Hare wondered.

      “Ring for the lamp, Barbara, and you can get to your work. But don’t have the shutters closed; I like to look out on these light nights.”

      Barbara, however, did not get to her work; she also, perhaps, liked “looking out on a light night,” for she sat down at the window. She was living the last half hour over again. “‘Don’t say I never gave you anything,’” she murmured; “did he allude to the chain or to the—kiss? Oh, Archibald, why don’t you say that you love me?”

      Mr. Carlyle had been all his life upon intimate terms with the Hare family. His father’s first wife—for the late lawyer Carlyle had been twice married—had been a cousin of Justice Hare’s, and this had caused them to be much together. Archibald, the child of the second Mrs. Carlyle, had alternately teased and petted Anne and Barbara Hare, boy fashion. Sometimes he quarreled with the pretty little girls, sometimes he caressed them, as he would have done had they been his sisters; and he made no scruple of declaring publicly to the pair that Anne was his favorite. A gentle, yielding girl she was, like her mother; whereas Barbara displayed her own will, and it sometimes clashed with young Carlyle’s.

      The clock struck ten. Mrs. Hare took her customary sup of brandy and water, a small tumbler three parts full. Without it she believed she could never get to sleep; it deadened unhappy thought, she said. Barbara, after making it, had turned again to the window, but she did not resume her seat. She stood right in front of it, her forehead bent forward against its middle pane. The lamp, casting a bright light, was behind her, so that her figure might be distinctly observable from the lawn, had any one been there to look upon it.

      She stood there in the midst of dreamland, giving way to all its enchanting and most delusive fascinations. She saw herself, in anticipation, the wife of Mr. Carlyle, the envied, thrice envied, of all West Lynne; for, like as he was the dearest on earth to her heart, so was he the greatest match in the neighborhood around. Not a mother but what coveted him for her child, and not a daughter but would have said, “Yes, and thank you,” to an offer from the attractive Archibald Carlyle. “I never was sure, quite sure of it till to-night,” murmured Barbara, caressing the locket, and holding it to her cheek. “I always thought he meant something, or he might mean nothing: but to give me this—to kiss me—oh Archibald!”

      A pause. Barbara’s eyes were fixed upon the moonlight.

      “If he would but say he loved me! If he would but save the suspense of my aching heart! But it must come; I know it will; and if that cantankerous toad of a Corny—”

      Barbara Hare stopped. What was that, at the far end of the lawn, just in advance of the shade of the thick trees? Their leaves were not causing the movement, for it was a still night. It had been there some minutes; it was evidently a human form. What was it? Surely it was making signs to her!

      Or else it looked as though it was. That was certainly its arm moving, and now it advanced a pace nearer, and raised something which it wore on its head—a battered hat with a broad brim, a “wide-awake,” encircled with a wisp of straw.

      Barbara Hare’s heart leaped, as the saying runs, into her mouth, and her face became deadly white in the moonlight. Her first thought was to alarm the servants; her second, to be still; for she remembered the fear and mystery that attached to the house. She went into the hall, shutting her mamma in the parlor, and stood in the shade of the portico, gazing still. But the figure evidently followed her movement with its sight, and the hat was again taken off, and waved violently.

      Barbara Hare turned sick with utter terror. She must fathom it; she must see who, and what it was; for the servants she dared not call, and those movements were imperative, and might not be disregarded. But she possessed more innate courage than falls to the lot of some young ladies.

      “Mamma,” she said, returning to the parlor and catching up her shawl, while striving to speak without emotion. “I shall just walk down the path and see if papa is coming.”

      Mrs. Hare did not reply. She was musing upon other things, in that quiescent happy mood, which a small portion of spirits will impart to one weak in body; and Barbara softly closed the door, and stole out again to the portico. She stood a moment to rally her courage, and again the hat was waved impatiently.

      Barbara Hare commenced her walk towards it in dread unutterable, an undefined sense of evil filling her sinking heart; mingling with which, came, with a rush of terror, a fear of that other undefinable evil—the evil Mrs. Hare had declared was foreboded by her dream.

      CHAPTER IV

      THE MOONLIGHT INTERVIEW

      Cold and СКАЧАТЬ