The Storm Centre. Mary Noailles Murfree

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to her young mistress's marriage, "But shucks! de pore chile saw how the other gals wuz runnin' arter Rufus Allerton Gwynn—dat Fisher gal tried hard fur true, an' not married yit—an' dat made Leonora Gwynn—Leonora Roscoe dat wuz—think mo' of his bein' so taken up with her! De hansomes' man in de whole country! He didn't live long!"

      This gallant outward show did not prevent the iron from entering the old nurse's soul especially as she detailed the gossip of Miss Fisher's maid, Leanna, who overheard the conversation of her mistress with two particular girl-cronies beside the midnight fire, pending the duty of brushing the long hair of the Fisher enchantress, which, being of a thrice-gilded red tint, required much care and gave her much trouble. It gave trouble elsewhere. Its flaring glories kept others awake besides poor Leanna, plying the brush nightly one "solid hour by the clock." For the fair Miss Mildred Fisher was a famous belle, and many hearts had been entangled in those glittering meshes.

      This trio had been Leonora Gwynn's intimate coterie, and she knew just how they looked as they sat half undressed in the chilly midnight before the dying fire in a great bedroom, in the home of one of the three, their tresses—Maude Eldon's dark, and Margaret Duncan's brown, and Mildred Fisher's red-gold, with Leanna's interested face leaning above their gilded shimmer—hanging down over dressing-sacques or nightgowns, while they actively gesticulated at each other with handglass or brush, and with spirit disputed whether it was a chair which Rufus Gwynn had broken over Leonora's head, or did he merely drag her around by the hair—"Think of that, my dear—by her hair!"

      It was a poor consolation, but this neither they, nor any other, would ever know. With the reflection Leonora set her even little teeth together as she still dreamily gazed into the fire.

      Other more obvious facts she could not conceal. Her stringent, hopeless poverty would bring a piteous expression to Judge Roscoe's face as occasion required him to seek to gather together some humble remnants of the estate her husband had recklessly flung away, for he had dissipated her fortune as well as desolated her heart. She needed no reminder, and indeed no word passed Judge Roscoe's lips of the settlements that he had drawn when he discovered that, despite all remonstrances, his orphaned niece was bent upon this marriage. Though Rufus Gwynn protested that he would sign them, she had tossed them into the fire like a heroine of romance, grandiloquently declaring that she would not trust herself to a man to whom she could not trust her fortune.

      How pleased her lover had been! How gay, gallant, triumphant! Later he found his account in her folly and a more substantial value than flattered pride, for by reason of her marriage the financial control of her guardian was abrogated, and her thousands slipped through her husband's fingers like sand at the gaming-table, the wine-rooms, the race-track, as with his wild, riotous companions he went his swift way to destruction and death. And even this did not alienate her, for her early admiration and foolish adoration had a continuance that a devotion for a worthier object rarely attains, and she loved him long, despite financial reverses and wicked waste and cruelty and neglect. She could have forgiven him aught, all, but his own unworthiness. Who can gauge the sophistries, the extenuations, the hopes, that delude a woman who clings to an ideal of her own tender fashioning, the dream of a fond heart, and the sacrifice of a loving young life. He left her not one vain imagining that she might still hold dear amidst the wreck of her existence.

      The crisis came at the end of a quarrel—one of his own making—a quarrel about a horse that he wished to sell;—oh, the trifle—the trifle that had wrought such woe!

      As she thought of it anew, sitting before the fire, she laid the work upon her knee and unconsciously wrung her hands. The next moment she felt the eyes of the officer lifted toward her in a cursory glance. She affected to shift the rings on her fingers, then took up the crochet-needle and bent her head to the deft fashioning of shells.

      Now she could think unmolested, think of what she could never forget! Yet why should she canvass the details again and again, save that she must. The event marked an epoch of final significance in her life—the moment that her dream fled and she awakened to the stern fact that she had ceased to love. And at first it was a trifle, a mere trifle, that had inaugurated this amazing change. Her husband wished to sell the horse, her horse, that Judge Roscoe had given her a week before. The gift had come, she knew, as an overture of reconciliation, as there had been much hard feeling between Judge Roscoe and his niece. For after her elopement and marriage he promptly applied to the chancery court seeking to protect her future by securing the settlement on her of certain funds of her estate, urging the fact of her minority and the spendthrift character of her husband. Leonora vehemently opposed the petition, and owing to the efforts of her counsel to gain time and the law's delays, she came of age before any decree could be granted, and then defeated the measure by making a full legal waiver of her rights in favor of her husband. But, at length, when pity overmastered Judge Roscoe's just anger, she welcomed a token of his renewed cordiality. She did not feel at liberty to sell the gift, she had remonstrated. It was not bestowed as a resource—to sell. She feared to wound her kinsman. What was the pressing necessity for money? Why not manage as if the horse had not been given her?

      The contention waxed high as she stood in habit and hat just in the vestibule with the horse outside hitched to the block, for Judge Roscoe was coming to ride with her. She held fast, for a wonder; she seldom could resist; but the horse was not theirs to sell. Rufus Gwynn suddenly turned at last, sprang up the stairs, three steps at a time, and as he came bounding down again she saw the glint of steel in his hand.

      Even now she shuddered.

      "It is growing colder," Captain Baynell said. (How observant that man seemed to be!) "Allow me to mend the fire."

      He stirred the hickory logs, and as the yellow flames shot up the chimney he sank back into his great chair, and she took up the thread of her work and her reminiscences together.

      She honestly thought her husband had intended to kill her. Somehow the veil dropped from her eyes, and she knew him for the fiend he was even before the dastardly act that revealed him unqualified.

      But it was not she on whom his spite was to fall. Such deeds bring retribution. Only the horse—the glossy, graceful, spirited animal, turning his lustrous confiding eyes toward the house as the door opened, whinnying a low joyous welcome, anticipative of the breezy gallop—received the bullet just below the ear.

      It was then and afterward like the distraught agony of a confused dream. She heard her own screams as if they had been uttered by another; she saw the great bulk of the horse lying in the road, struggling frightfully, futilely, whether with conscious pain or merely the last reserves of muscular energy she did not know; she noted the gathering crowd, dismayed, bewildered, angry; she knew that her husband had hastily galloped off, a trifle out of countenance because of certain threats of some brawny Irish railroad hands going home with their dinner-pails who had seen the whole occurrence. Then Judge Roscoe had ridden up at last to accompany her as of old, thinking how pretty and pleased she would be on the new horse—for equestrianism was the vaunt of the girls of that day and she had been a famous horsewoman—and feeling a great pity because of her privations, and her cruel folly, and her unworthy husband. When he saw what had just occurred, he said instantly, "You must come home with me, Leonora; you are not safe." And she had answered, "Take me with you—quick—quick! So that I may never see that coward again." Thus she had left her husband forever.

      "Shall I draw up the blind?" asked Captain Baynell, seeing her fumble for her zephyr.

      "No, thank you; there is still light sufficient, I think. The days are growing longer."

      Again, in the silence of the quiet room, the spell of her reminiscences resumed its sway. She recalled the promises that had not sufficed; no explanations extenuated the facts; no lures could avail; her resolution was taken and held firm. She laughed when, with full confidence in her unshaken love for him, her husband appealed СКАЧАТЬ