Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878», sayfa 8

We did not talk much, but stood together hand in hand, I gazing with ardent delight and curiosity at all these beautiful expressions of life which filled the place.

"Do you like it?" she inquired anxiously from time to time, and when I answered her gravely that I liked it, she would smile a contented little smile. She asked me if I rode, and carefully selected the horse she considered suitable for me, and gave the groom orders about exercising him regularly. The man took her instructions with a respectful air: she was evidently mistress of the place, and the centurion in the Gospel had not his servants better under his command than had she. It was a quaint sight to see the child knitting her brows over some complaint of Robinson's against McGill the gardener: she settled it promptly with but half a dozen words. She had energy enough and to spare for her duties, but she had nothing of that eager bubbling up of light thoughts and bright hopes which other children know and use in endless chatter and playful gambollings, like puppies and kittens and other happy young things. There was always shrewd purpose behind her few words, and she seemed always on her guard, always ready to act promptly and with decision.

"Why don't you send those men to Mr. Raymond?" I burst out finally. "You ought not to be bothered. What do you know about such things?"

"I know all about them," she returned gravely. "I never let anybody trouble poor grandpapa."

"My mother would not let anything trouble me if she could help it, yet I am a boy and almost fifteen years old."

She looked at me wistfully and smiled her peculiar indefinable smile, then put her hand in mine, and we went toward the house together. Just as night fell dinner-time came. I had gone to my room to dress at five o'clock, but finding that all my windows looked out upon the water, I had forgotten everything else in watching the sea, which took hue after hue as the sun sank, growing black and turbid as it settled into a bank of gray cloud, then, when the last beams reddened every rift, lighting up into a brief splendor of crimson and gold, absorbing all the glory of the firmament. I felt rather homesick and dreary. I knew that in the dusky streets of Belfield the boys were walking up and down beneath the russet elms, wondering about me while they talked. I knew that my mother was sitting in the bay-window with the light of the sunset in her face, and that she was longing to have me with her again. When, finally, I roused myself to dress, and went along the dim halls and down the great staircase lined with niches where calm-faced statues stood regarding me with a fixed and solemn air, I was quite dull and dreary, and needed all the cheerful influences of the warmed and lighted rooms to brighten me up.

At dinner Mr. Raymond seemed more what I had expected him to be than I had found him at first sight. He was dressed with scrupulous propriety, and wore a ceremonious and precise air which better accorded with his position as master of the house. He talked well, and asked me many questions about our life in Belfield, made inquiries about George Lenox, and was interested when I told him about Georgina. And about Georgina I found myself presently talking with a freedom which amazed myself, for my habits were reserved, and of all that I felt and thought about Georgy I had never yet said anything except to my mother. But in this beautiful house, which seemed so fitting a place for my lovely princess, and which was of late the object of her dreams, I felt moved to be her ambassador and to plead her cause as well as I might. I spoke not only of her beauty and her cleverness, but of the drawbacks to her success in life. I anticipated criticism, and disarmed it. "Oh, Helen!" I burst out at length, "you would love her so dearly—I am sure you would!"

Helen's eyes were shining, and her color came and went. "Oh, grandpa," said she softly, "why may I not ask her to come here? Floyd will like it, and I—"

She could not finish, she was so glad and excited, and she ran around the table and laid her cheek against Mr. Raymond's shoulder in mute entreaty.

"Oh, do whatever you please," rejoined the old gentleman impatiently: "you know very well that you must have your own way in everything."

The glad little face fell at once, and she went back to her chair slowly and climbed into it. It was a high-backed, crimson velvet chair, with a footstool for the child's feet to rest upon. She looked very slight and young as she sat there, her baby face thrown into clear outline and startling pallor by the ruby-colored cushions. She filled the place well, however, helping to the soup and fish, and even the meats after Mills had carved them at the sideboard. I noticed too, with some surprise, that the decanter of sherry stood at her elbow, and was not passed, but that she herself poured out Mr. Raymond's glass of wine, and once replenished it. He sent it to her to be filled for the third time, but she shook her head.

"No, no, grandpa," she said with a queer little smile: "you have had two already."

He looked angry, and affirmed that she had given him but one glass, appealing to Mills, who corroborated the words of his young mistress. Helen said no more, but gave the decanter to the butler, who took it away, and I heard him lock the door of the wine-closet and saw him drop the key in his pocket. Then, presently, when coffee came on, Helen and I went into the library, and left Mr. Raymond alone, with his easy-chair turned toward the fire. I knew that something in the house was wrong, and experienced a vague humiliation out of sympathy for Helen, but what my fears were I did not name to myself.

"Promise me," said she, clasping my hand suddenly—"promise me to say nothing to papa. Remember that grandpa is very old, and that he has nothing in the world but me."

I gave the promise eagerly, more to avoid the subject than because I understood as to what I was to be silent and why the subject should be interdicted.

"You see," said she, her clear eyes meeting mine with their peculiarly wistful, melancholy gaze, "this is why I cannot go away. Papa thinks I do not love him: he does not know that it would not be safe for me to leave grandpa all alone. If papa did know—"

"You ought to tell your papa everything," I said gravely.

"I wish I could," she cried in a trembling voice. "But I can't. He would not let me stay here, and I could not go away. You must never tell papa, Floyd—never!"

I said I would not tell with the air of one who never discloses a secret; and she believed in me, and we were soon bright and happy again, and wrote a letter to Georgy Lenox inviting her to The Headlands on a visit.

With all his faults and weaknesses, I soon found there were good and lovable traits in Mr. Raymond. He had been in early life a successful merchant, and the habit of controlling widespread interests had given him a broad and sympathetic insight into men and their ideas. He possessed a graceful and comprehensive culture, and had embodied his conceptions of the fitness of things in the arrangement of his home, making it beautiful in all ways. He was an old man now, yet had not lost the thirst for knowledge, and could talk, when inspiration was upon him, generously and eloquently. He had been a part of the busy great world; he understood society and social ways: all these talents and acquirements made him a pleasant old gentleman when at his best, but it needed only a touch of suspicion or jealousy to put him at his worst. It was easy enough to see that Helen did not exaggerate when she told me he had nothing to care for but herself; and his care for her was so mixed with morbid fears that he was not first in her heart, so embittered by a distrust of her love for her father, that she could gain small comfort from all his overweening devotion and pride.

The child and I were constantly together in those October days. I do not think it would have been so but for the fact that Mr. Floyd wrote daily concise and peremptory orders that Helen was to be out of doors from morning till night, and that Dr. Sharpe, a brisk, keen-eyed old gentleman, came every morning at breakfast-time to feel the little girl's pulse, order her meals and command Mr. Raymond to let her have all the play she could get before the cold weather came.

"You see," Helen would explain to me as we tramped the meadows and the uplands gorgeous with every mellow hue of autumn's glorious time—"you see, Floyd, I was going to die in September when papa came. Oh, I felt so tired I wanted just to go to sleep. But papa came, took me in his arms and held me there. Whenever I woke up, there he was, his strong arms holding me tight. He wouldn't let me go, you know, so I couldn't die. I couldn't have lived for grandpa: I knew that he would die too, and that perhaps it would all be best."

"But now you are getting strong," I said: "your cheeks are quite rosy now."

"Oh yes," she answered. "I like to live now. I love you so dearly, Floyd, and I have such good times."

I loved her dearly too, after a boy's fashion. It was easy for me to talk to her, and I told her many things that lay near my heart and far from my tongue—much about my mother and my worship of her—about our home and its surroundings—about my father and my brother Frank, and my grief when they died. I had never expected to tell any one these memories, but I told them all to Helen.

One day we came in a little later than usual. We had carried our luncheon down to the beach, and had eaten it there: we had never been quite so happy together before, for everything had conspired to make our enjoyment perfect. We had made up stories about the people on board the ships that went up and down in the offing; strange and beautiful things had looked at us from out the sea; a fisherman had offered us some oysters as he coasted about the bar in his boat, and I had bought some and opened them for Helen with my knife, every blade of which I broke in the effort. Altogether, we had had a blissful experience.

But as, upon returning, we neared the house, Mills met us on the terrace with a grave face. "You'd better go to your grandfather, Miss Floyd," said he—"you had, indeed, or it will be all over with him. You must not blame me, miss—it was none of my fault—but some gentlemen came here for lunch, and he's been a-drinking and a-drinking ever since they went away, and will not let either decanter go out of his hand."

Helen's little face had been warm with color, but it froze into pallor while I looked at her. We entered the door, and she took off her things slowly and gave them to Mills, smoothing her hair mechanically with her little trembling hands.

"What shall I do?" I whispered, quaking as much as she. "Let me help you somehow, Helen."

"You can't," she returned quietly: "nobody can help me."

She bade Mills go about his work: then went into the dining-room and shut the door.

The man had tears in his eyes as he turned to me as soon as we were alone. "I declare, Mr. Randolph," said he, "it's enough to break anybody's heart to see that child a-bowed down at her age with the care of an old man who can't be kept from drunkenness unless her eye is on him every minute."

"Is he violent when he's—" I tried to ask the question, but could not form the horrible word upon my tongue.

Mills did not flinch from facts. "When he's drunk?" he said. "He is ready to break my head, but he's never anything but tender with her. She's naught but a baby, but I have seen him, in a regular fury, just fall a-whimpering when she came in and said, 'Oh, grandpa! oh, grandpa! I'm so sorry!' Oh, it is a burning shame! And to think that that splendid gentleman, her father, does not know it!"

"He ought to know it," I cried.

"And if he did, sir," said Mills solemnly, "he would take Miss Floyd away, and the old gentleman would drink himself to death, and that would kill the little girl too. It's hard to see the right of it, Mr. Randolph. But," he added with a complete change of manner, "she would be vexed to see me stand gossiping here."

He went up stairs with the cloak and hat, smoothing them with his big hand as if to comfort somebody in need of comfort. I stole across the hall and stood at the dining-room door, wishing to go in, yet fearing to vex Helen by my intrusiveness. She opened the door presently, as if she knew I was there, and beckoned me, and I entered. The old man sat at the table in his usual place, looking half defiant and half ashamed. She had removed both decanters and glasses to the sideboard, and stood by him with her arm about his neck, urging him to go into the library, kissing him now and then softly on the forehead.

"What do you think, Floyd," he said to me in a thick, unnatural voice—"what do you think of the way my only grandchild treats me? She despises me."

"No, no, grandpa! I love you dearly."

He went on with vehemence: "A few years ago I was living among the finest ladies and gentlemen in the world: I was admired and sought. I have been called the most accomplished of hosts, the most perfect of gentlemen. Look about this house. Where in this entire country will you find a more liberal patron of the arts than I? Yet this little girl treats me like a servant. For a year she has not permitted me to have even a few friends to dine with me. Because to-day I extended hospitality to half a dozen gentlemen who drove over from the Point, she fumes at me: she treats me as if I had committed a deadly sin.—By and by, Miss Floyd, you can have it all your own way here: I shall be dead."

She never flinched, nor did her face change as he glared at her, but she went on smoothing his hair and softly putting her lips to his temples. "Dear grandpa," said she, "come into the library now. It is getting late, and Mills wants to set the table for dinner."

"Very well," he exclaimed with a sort of petulant dignity, and, pushing back his chair, half rose. Helen gave me a swift glance, and with our united strength we barely kept him from falling on his face. He staggered to his feet, looking at us angrily, and not releasing our hold we steadied him into the library and seated him in the great chair before the fire. He sank down with some inaudible exclamation not unlike a groan, and in five minutes he had fallen asleep with loud breathings. Helen rang the bell and told Mills to send for Dr. Sharpe, then came back and drew two low seats opposite the sleeper, and we sat down together hand in hand. She was as pale as death, and her great eyes dilated as she gazed steadily at her grandfather. From time to time she felt his pulse and looked with painful scrutiny at the temples and forehead, which grew every moment more and more crimson. The half hour before the doctor came appeared to me endless. Inside it was almost dark but for the firelight, and outside the twilight glooms slowly gathered: a storm was coming on, and the waves bellowed against the rocks. Mills lit the candles and drew the curtains, but could not shut out the roar of the angry sea. I could see that Helen was miserably anxious, but she said nothing, only sighed and set her lips tight against each other, and seemed to listen. Presently we could hear the gravel crunched under a horse's hoofs outside, then the sound of wheels, and in another moment Dr. Sharpe came in.

"How is this?" said he without any salutation. "Somebody to lunch, eh? – luncheons! Where were you, Miss Chicken?"

"I am so sorry!" she faltered painfully. "But I was playing down on the beach, and I did not know. You told me to play about out of doors, doctor—you know you did," she added deprecatingly.

"Of course I told you to play about out of doors. You need it bad enough, God knows! Now run away, both of you."

"Is there any danger?" she whispered.

"Not a bit," said Dr. Sharpe, adding, under his breath, "A good thing for her if there were.—Run away, I say," he said, hustling us both out of the door, "and send Mills and Frederick here."

We were shut away from the dim luxurious library with its blazing fire, and the old man asleep before it, but we did not feel free to move, and stood awed and speechless outside, listening and waiting. Helen, who had been so brave, gave way now: her face was piteously convulsed and the tears streamed down her cheeks. I made clumsy attempts to soothe her, and finally took her in my arms and carried her into the great lighted drawing-room and laid her on the sofa. She uttered nothing of her impotent childish despair, but I could read well enough her humiliation and her shame. Mills came in presently and whispered to me that dinner was ready. She heard him and sprang up with the air of a baby princess. "I will come to dinner in five minutes, Mills," said she imperiously: then, when she met the honest sympathy of his glance, she ran up to him and thrust her little slim hand into his. "I trust you, Mills," she murmured, her lips quivering again, "but you must never let papa know and never let the servants suspect." And presently, with the outward indifference of a woman of the world, the child took her place at table and entertained me through dinner with an account of what we should do for Georgy Lenox.

CHAPTER V

For Georgy was coming next day, and in spite of my unhappiness on Helen's account I woke up the following morning with my pulses all astir with joy. It would be something for me to have her here, away from her mother, who always frowned upon me—away from Jack, whose claim upon her time and attention made mine appear presumptuous and intrusive—away from Harry Dart, with his teasing jokes, his wholesale contempt for any weakness or romantic feeling. I had never declared to myself that I was in love with Georgina, nor had I formed my wishes to my own heart in distinct thoughts. Still, young although I was, I should hardly dare to write down here how far above every other idea and object on earth Georgina appeared to me. I never thought of her then, I never looked upon her, without the blood thickening around my heart as if I stood face to face with Fate: my every impulse toward the future was blended with my desire to be something to her. I had not dared to dream then that she could be anything to me.

Before I was out of bed that morning, Frederick, Mr. Raymond's valet, came to me with the request that I should go to his master's room before I went down stairs. It was in the wing, and the third chamber of a handsome suite comprising study, dressing-room and bedroom. It was hung and curtained with red; a wood-fire was burning on the hearth; the chairs were covered with red; even the silken coverlet of the bed was red, and the only place where living, brilliant color was not seemed to be the pale shrunken face on the pillow, a little paler and more delicate than usual: the hands, too, clutching each other on the red blanket, had a look of languor and waste.

"Good-morning, Floyd," Mr. Raymond said, and then dismissed Frederick.

"But you ought not to talk, sir," expostulated the valet, "until you have had your breakfast."

The sick man made a gesture for him to leave the room, watched him go out, and then fastened his piercing black eyes on me and looked at me long and fixedly. "You saw me yesterday?" said he at last, breaking the silence.

I nodded, finding it a difficult task to speak.

"Are you a babbling child?" said he with considerable force and earnestness, "or have you enough of a man's knowledge to have learned to respect the infirmities of other men?"

"I tell no one's secrets, sir: they are not mine to tell."

He quite broke down, and lay there before me strangling with sobs and cries. "Should Mr. Floyd know," he murmured, "should Mr. Floyd even guess, that I am the wretched wreck of a man that I am, he would not let Helen stay with me another moment. He would extenuate, he would pity, nothing: he does not know what it is for a man like me, once proud, witty, gay, to bear seclusion and depression and decay. I long at times for some of the inspiration of my youth: it comes with a terrible penalty."

I could believe it, for his face expressed such abasement and despair as I had never dreamed of.

"I know," he continued, his voice broken and husky, "that I shadow Helen's life. I know that if I had died last night she would be a luckier girl to-day than she is now. But I sha'n't last long, Floyd. Put your finger on my pulse."

I did so, and was obliged to grope for the uncertain, slow beating at his wrist. It seemed as if so little life was there it might easily flicker and go out at any moment.

"I may die at any time," said he, putting my unspoken thought into words. "Dr. Sharpe tells me not to count on the morrow. What cruelty it would be, then, to deprive me of my grandchild! What could I do without her? What would become of me, living alone, with no company but the gibbering shapes mocking at me out of the corners?" He cowered all in a heap and looked up at me with clasped hands. "Let her stay," he went on imploringly. "It is only for a little while, and then everything will be hers—this house and these grounds, my house in New York and blocks of stores, all my pictures, my statues, my books. Why, I tell you, Floyd, I am worth more than a million of dollars in invested property that brings me in a return of ten per cent. It is all for her. I save half my income every year to buy new mortgages and stocks, that she may be the richer. I think," he exclaimed with a sudden burst of feeling, "that such wealth as I shall give her might atone for a great deal. Remember, Floyd, it is only a little while that I shall burden her: let her stay."

He was pleading with me as if I were the arbiter of his fate. He had grasped my arm, and his glittering eyes were fastened on me with the intensity of despair in their expression.

"Why, Mr. Raymond," said I gently, "I have nothing to do with Helen's going or staying. If you fear that I shall inform Mr. Floyd about what—what happened yesterday, you do me injustice. I shall tell him nothing. I have no right to say a word about anything that takes place in your house."

"You are a good boy," said Mr. Raymond, with an expression of relief relaxing his convulsed features. "I do not wonder that James loves you as his own son—that it is the wish of his heart that you should grow up with Helen, learn to love her, and marry her at last."

I listened doubtfully: it did not occur to me that his words had any foundation in fact; yet, all the same, the newly-suggested idea burdened me. "I think you are mistaken," said I gently. "Nothing of that kind could ever possibly happen."

"Not for years—not until I am dead," returned Mr. Raymond peevishly. "It was nothing—nothing at all. All that occurred I will tell you, since I was foolish enough to speak of it in the first instance. James said he wanted Helen to be much with you. 'You know how those childish intimacies end,' I replied to him—'in deep attachment and desire for marriage.'—'I ask nothing better for Helen,' James exclaimed. 'She will grow up like other girls, and love, and finally become a wife; and if she became Floyd's wife I should have no fears for her.'" Mr. Raymond's eyes met mine. "You will never tell Mr. Floyd I spoke of this to you," he said under his breath. "I am not quite myself this morning, or I should not have suggested a thought of it to you."

I was very sure that I should never mention it, for I found the idea of my marrying Helen so painfully irksome that it went with me all the day, casting a shadow across our intercourse. I told myself over and over that the idea was absurd—that such a thing could never, never come to pass. She was so mere a child. I studied her face with its baby contours, where nothing showed the dawn of womanhood yet except the great melancholy eyes; I took her hand in mine, where it lay like a snowflake on my brown palm; and I laughed aloud at the grotesqueness of the fancy that I should ever put a ring on that childish finger.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked me wonderingly.

"To think," I rejoined, "how funny it is to remember one day you will be grown up and have rings upon your fingers."

"Is that funny?" she asked. "Of course, if I live I shall grow up and be a woman. My mamma was married when she was only seventeen, and in seven years I shall be seventeen." I dropped her hand as if it had stung me. "I have all mamma's rings," she went on: "I have a drawerful of trinkets that mamma used to wear. When Georgy Lenox comes I shall give her a locket and a chain that are so very, very pretty they will be just right for her. Tell me more about her, Floyd."

It was easy enough for me to grow eloquent in talking of Georgina, and Helen was as anxious to hear as I to tell. The little girl had had few friends of her own sex and age: every summer had brought the New York and Boston Raymonds to The Headlands, and when the neighboring watering-place was in its season numerous flounced and gloved little misses had been introduced to the shy, quaint child, who felt strange and dreary among them all. In fact, the little heiress's position, so unique in every respect, had isolated her from the joys of commonplace childhood, and she found more companionship in her dumb pets, in the sumptuous silence of the blossoming gardens, in the voices of the shore, than among girls of her own age with their chatter about their teachers or governesses, their dancing-steps and their games. Nevertheless, she was both ardent and affectionate, and ready to love all the world; and no sooner had Georgy appeared than she lavished upon her all the passion of girlish fondness for her own sex which had hitherto lain dormant within her. Georgy had always been used to adulation and to lead others by her capricious will and her radiant smile, and within a day after her coming had established almost a dangerous supremacy over the child. It was at once fascinating and disappointing to be under the same roof with Georgy: every morning when I awoke it seemed a miracle of happiness that I had but to dress and go out of my room to have a chance of meeting her, of perpetually recurring smiles and conversation such as I had never enjoyed before at Belfield. But the reality never bore out the promise of my vague but delicious reveries. Mr. Raymond at once took an active, almost virulent, dislike to his young guest, and pointed out her faults to me with clear and concise words, each one of which pierced me like a rapier; and the certainty of his condemnation gave me a keen, and at times almost inspired, vision for her weaknesses.

Nothing could exceed her rapture at being in the beautiful house which she had so long wished to see, and which she loudly asserted a thousand times surpassed all her expectations. And she fitted admirably into her costly surroundings: the sheen of her golden hair made the dark velvet cushionings and hangings a more beautiful background than before; she gave expression to the stately, silent rooms; and what had at first been almost, despite its luxury, a desert to me, became a fairy land. Little Helen was so burdened with possessions that it was a pleasure for her to give them away. Still, I wished that Georgy had not been so willing to accept all that the lavish generosity of the child prompted her to offer. But Georgy was no Spartan: she wanted everything that could minister to her comfort. She was a natural gourmand, hungry for sweets and fruits all day long: she coveted ornaments, and found Helen's drawer of trinkets almost too small for her; she liked velvets and furs, silks and plushes, and wore the child's clothes until Mr. Raymond sent his housekeeper to Boston to purchase her a complete outfit of her own. But all these faults I could have pardoned in Georgy, and ascribed them to her faulty education and false influences at home, had she been grateful to little Helen.

"She hates Helen for being luckier than herself," Mr. Raymond affirmed: "she would do her a mischief if she could."

I could not believe that, yet I could see that she loved to torture the child, whose acute sensibilities made her suffer from the slightest coldness or suspicion.

"If you really loved me, Helen," Georgy would say, "you would do this for me;" and sometimes the task would be to slight or openly disobey Mr. Raymond, to outrage me or to make one of the dumb, loving pets which filled the place suffer. And if at sight of the child's tears I remonstrated, I was punished as it was easy enough for Georgy Lenox to punish me.

She would melt Helen too by drawing a picture of her own poverty and state of dreary unhappiness beside the good fortune of the heiress, until the little girl would search through the house to find another present for her, which she besought her beautiful goddess almost on her knees to accept. All these traits, which showed that Georgina was far from perfect, caused me a misery proportionate to my longing to have her all that was lovely and excellent. It is indeed unfair to write of faults which are so easy to portray, and to say nothing of the beauty of feature and charm of manner, which might have been enough to persuade any one who looked into her face that she was one of God's own angels. What does beauty mean if it be not the blossoming of inner perfection into outward loveliness? And Georgina Lenox was beautiful to every eye. Let every one who reads my story know and feel that she had the beauty which can stir the coldest blood—the eyes whose look of entreaty could melt the most implacable resolution—the smile which could lure, the voice which could make every man follow.