Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read this ebook for free! No credit card needed, absolutely nothing to pay.
Words: 41528 in 11 pages
This is an ebook sharing website. You can read the uploaded ebooks for free here. No credit cards needed, nothing to pay. If you want to own a digital copy of the ebook, or want to read offline with your favorite ebook-reader, then you can choose to buy and download the ebook.
an effort to maintain in this apartment the aspect in some sort of a lodge in the wilderness; the splendid antlers over the mantel-piece, beneath which, in a deep stone chimney-place, a fire of logs smouldered; the golden eagle, triumph of taxidermy, poising his wings full-spread above the landing of the somewhat massive staircase; the rack of weapons--rifles, shot-guns, hunting-knives; the game-bags; the decoration of the walls, showing the mask and brush of many a fox, and the iridescent wings of scores of wild-fowl; the rugs scattered about made of the pelts of wolves, catamounts, and bears of the region--all served to contribute to the sylvan effect. But the glister of the hardwood floor, waxed and polished; the luxury of the easy chairs and sofas; the centre-table strewn with magazines and papers, beneath a large lamp of rare and rich ware; the delicate aroma of expensive cigars, were of negative, if not discordant, suggestion, and bespoke the more sophisticated proclivities and training of the owner.
In the interval of awkward silence, Briscoe remained motionless in his easy chair, a rueful reflectiveness on his genial face incongruous with its habitual expression. When a sudden disconcerted intentness developed upon it, Bayne, every instinct on the alert, took instant heed of the change. The obvious accession of dismay betokened the increasing acuteness of the crisis, and Briscoe's attitude, as of helpless paralysis, stricken as it were into stone as he gazed toward the door, heralded an approach.
The r?le of cordial hostess she was wont to play with especial acceptability, but now she had lost its every line, its most trivial patter. She said not one word as Bayne clasped her hand with the conventional greeting, but only looked at him with her hazel eyes at once remonstrant, pleading, compassionate.
The moment of vantage, short as it was, afforded by the precedence of her hostess in the matter of salutation, gave Mrs. Royston the opportunity to catch her breath and find her voice. She had not seen this man since, five years ago, he had left her home her expectant bridegroom. But beyond a fluctuating flush in her fair cheek, a dilation of her blue eyes, a flutter of those eyelids which he had always esteemed a special point of her beauty, being so smooth, so full, so darkly lashed, she conserved an ostensible calm, although she felt the glance of his eye as sensitively as red hot steel. But he--as he dropped the hand of his hostess and advanced toward her guest--in one moment his fictitious composure deserted him. For this was not the widow in weeds whom he had expected to see, not the woman of whom he had trained himself to think, when he must needs think of her at all, as another man's wife. This was his own fair Past, the unfulfilled promise of his future, the girl he had adored, the ideal wife whom he had worshipped in his cherished dreams! Just as always heretofore, she stood now, so fresh, so fair, so candid-seeming, wearing her white serge gown with her usual distinction, a spray of golden-rod fastened in her mass of yellow hair that glowed with a sheen of differing gold. How had time spared her! How had griefs left her scathless! It was an effort to reflect that two years and more had elapsed since he had read the obituary of Archibald Royston, with scornful amusement to mark the grotesque lie to the living in the fulsome tribute to the dead.
In some sort, Bayne was prepared for change, for the new identity that the strange falling out of events betokened. He had never realized her, he had never divined her character, he would have said. She was now, as she had always been, an absolute stranger. But this little hand--ah, he knew it well! How often it had lain in his clasp, and once more every fibre thrilled at its touch. With all his resolution, he could not restrain the flush that mounted to his brow, the responsive quiver in his voice as he murmured her name, the name of Archibald Royston's wife, so repugnant to his lips. He was in a state of revolt against himself, his self-betrayal, to realize that she and the two Briscoes could not fail to mark his confusion, attributing his emotion to whatsoever cause they would. Indeed, in the genial altruism of host, Briscoe had succeeded in breaking from the thrall of embarrassment to shield and save the situation.
For at the moment a fine blond boy of three years burst in at the rear door of the apartment and came running to meet Mrs. Royston, just apprised, doubtless, of her return from her afternoon stroll. He looked very fresh in his white linen dress, his red leather belt, and twinkling red shoes. With the independent nonchalance of childhood, he took no note of the outstretched arms and blandishing smile of Mr. Briscoe, who sought to intercept him, but made directly toward his mother. His gleaming reflection sped along in the polished, mirroring floor, but all at once both semblance and substance paused. With a sudden thought the child put his dimpled hands over his smiling pink face, while his blue eyes danced merrily between the tips of his fingers. Then he advanced again, lunging slowly along, uttering the while a menacing "Mew! Mew! Mew!"
His mother had no heart for his fun. She could scarcely summon the strength and attention requisite for this fantastic infantile foolery when all her capacities were enlisted to support her dignity in the presence of this man, necessarily inimical, censorious, critical, who had once meant so much in her life. But she could not rebuff the baby! She would not humble his spirit! She must enter into his jest, whatever the effort cost her.
"Mew! Mew! Mew!" he repeated in joy.
He straightway began to teach the little fellow a very noisy and truculent vocalization of the ursine type, which Archie, who was a great favorite with his host, eagerly imitated, Briscoe appearing throughout the duet at the pitiable disadvantage of the adult imbecile disporting himself in infantile wise.
The tumult of the child's entrance had the effect of relaxing for Briscoe the tension of the situation, but when Archie's nurse appeared at the door and he ran away at her summons, the host looked apprehensively about the circle as the party ranged themselves around the fire, its glow beginning to be welcome in the increasing chill of the evening. Ordinarily, this was a household of hilarious temperament. Life had been good to the Briscoes, and they loved it. They were fond of rich viands, old wines, genial talk, good stories, practical jests, music, and sport; the wife herself being more than a fair shot, a capital whip, and a famous horsewoman. Even when there was no stranger within the gates, the fires would flare merrily till midnight, the old songs echo, and the hours speed away on winged sandals. But this evening neither host nor hostess could originate a sentence in the presence of what seemed to their sentimental persuasions the awful tragedy of two hearts. Indeed, conversation on ordinary lines would have been impossible, but that Bayne with an infinite self-confidence, as it seemed to Mrs. Briscoe, took the centre of the stage and held it. All Bayne's spirit was up! The poise and reserve of his nature, his habit of sedulous self-control, were reasserted. He could scarcely forgive himself their momentary lapse. He felt it insupportable that he should not have held his voice to normal steadiness, his pulses to their wonted calm, in meeting again this woman who had wrought him such signal injury, who had put upon him such insufferable indignity. Surely he could feel naught for her but the rancor she had earned! From the beginning, she had been all siren, all deceit. She was but the semblance, the figment, of his foolish dream, and why should the dream move him still, shattered as it was by the torturing realities of the truth? Why must he needs bring tribute to her powers, flatter her ascendency in his life, by faltering before her casual presence? He rallied all his forces. He silently swore a mighty oath that he at least would take note of his own dignity, that he would deport himself with a due sense of his meed of self-respect. Though with a glittering eye and a strong flush on his cheek, he conserved a deliberate incidental manner, and maintained a pose of extreme interest in his own prelection as, seated in an arm-chair before the fire he began to talk with a very definite intention of a quiet self-assertion, of absorbing and controlling the conversation. He described at great length the incidents of his trip hither, and descanted on the industrial and political conditions of east Tennessee. This brought him by an easy transition to an analysis of the peculiar traits of its mountain population, which included presently their remarkable idiosyncrasies of speech. When he was fairly launched on this theme, which was of genuine interest to him, for he had long fostered a linguistic fad, all danger of awkward silence or significant pauses was eliminated. He found that Briscoe could furnish him with some fresh points in comparative philology, to his surprise and gratification, for he never expected aught bookish of his host. But like men of his type, Briscoe was a close observer and learned of the passing phase of life. He took issue again and again with the deductions of the traveller.
"And pray consider our own classical 'we-all,'" Mrs. Briscoe gayly interposed, surprised that she could pluck up the spirit for this interruption.
"More interesting to me is the survival in this sequestered region of old English words and significations, altogether obsolete elsewhere," continued Bayne. "Now, when I asked the driver yesterday the name of a very symmetrical eminence in the midst of the ranges he said it had no name, that it was no mountain--it was just the 'moniment' of a little ridge, meaning the image, the simulacrum. This is Spenser's usage."
Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg
(0)More posts by @FreeBooks
