St. Elmo Part 28

That your childish conscience was frightened by tales of horror, and your imagination harrowed up, your heart lacerated by the cunning devices of that arch maudlin old hypocrite! The seeds of clerical hate fell in good ground, and I see a bountiful harvest nodding for my sickle! Oh! you are more pliable than I had fancied! You have been thoroughly trained down yonder at the parsonage. But I will be- -"

There was a trembling pant in his voice like that of some wild creature driven from its jungle, hopeless of escape, holding its hunters temporarily at bay, waiting for death.

The girl's hand ached in his unyielding grasp and after two ineffectual efforts to free them, a sigh of pain pa.s.sed her lips and she said proudly:

"No, sir; my detestation of that form of legalized murder, politely called 'duelling,' was not taught me at the parsonage. I learned it in my early childhood, before I ever saw Mr. Hammond; and though I doubt not he agrees with me in my abhorrence of the custom, I have never heard him mention the subject."

"Hypocrite! hypocrite! Meek little wolf in lamb's wool! Do you dream that you can deceive me? Do you think me an idiot, to be cajoled by your low-spoken denials of a fact which I know? A fact, to the truth of which I will swear till every star falls!"

"Mr. Murray, I never deceived you, and I know that however incensed you may be, however harsh and unjust, I know that in your heart you do not doubt my truthfulness. Why you invariably denounce Mr.

Hammond when you happen to be displeased with me, I can not conjecture; but I tell you solemnly that he has never even indirectly alluded to the question of 'duelling' since I have known him. Mr. Murray, I know you do entirely believe me when I utter these words."

A tinge of red leaped into his cheek, something that would have been called hope in any other man's eyes looked out shyly under his heavy black lashes, and a tremor shook off the sneering curl of his bloodless lips.

Drawing her so close to him that his hair touched her forehead, he whispered:

"If I believe in you, my--it is in defiance of judgment, will, and experience, and some day you will make me pay a most humiliating penalty for my momentary weakness. To-night I trust you as implicitly as Samson did the smooth-lipped Delilah; to-morrow I shall realize that, like him, I richly deserve to be shorn for my silly credulity."

He threw her hands rudely from him, turned hastily and left the library.

Enda sat down and covered her face with her bruised and benumbed fingers, but she could not shut out the sight of something that astonished and frightened her--of something that made her shudder from head to foot, and crouch down in her chair cowed and humiliated. Hitherto she had fancied that she thoroughly understood and sternly governed her heart--that conscience and reason ruled it; but within the past hour it had suddenly risen in dangerous rebellion, thrown off its allegiance to all things else, and insolently proclaimed St. Elmo Murray its king. She could not a.n.a.lyze her new feelings, they would not obey the summons to the tribunal of her outraged self-respect; and with bitter shame and reproach and abject contrition, she realized that she had begun to love the sinful, blasphemous man who had insulted her revered grandfather, and who barely tolerated her presence in his house.

This danger had never once occurred to her, for she had always believed that love could only exist where high esteem and unbounded reverence prepared the soil; and she was well aware that this man's character had from the first hour of their acquaintance excited her aversion and dread. Ten days before she had positively disliked and feared him; now, to her amazement, she found him throned in her heart, defying ejection. The sudden revulsion bewildered and mortified her, and she resolved to crush out the feeling at once, cost what it might. When Mr. Murray had asked if she loved any one else better than Mr. Leigh, she thought, nay she knew, she answered truly in the negative. But now, when she attempted to compare the two men, such a strange, yearning tenderness pleaded for St. Elmo, and palliated his grave faults, that the girl's self-accusing severity wrung a groan from the very depths of her soul.

When the sad discovery was first made, conscience lifted its hands in horror, because of the man's reckless wickedness; but after a little while a still louder clamor was raised by womanly pride, which bled at the thought of tolerating a love unsought, unvalued; and with this fierce rush of reinforcements to aid conscience, the insurgent heart seemed destined to summary subjugation. Until this hour, although conscious of many faults, she had not supposed that there was anything especially contemptible in her character; but now the feeling of self-abas.e.m.e.nt was unutterably galling. She despised herself most cordially, and the consistent dignity of life which she had striven to attain appeared hopelessly shattered.

While the battle of reason versus love was at its height, Mrs.

Murray put her head in the room and asked: "Edna! Where are you, Edna?"

"Here I am."

"Why are you sitting in the dark? I have searched the house for you." She groped her way across the room, lighted the gas, and came to the window.

"What is the matter, child? Are you sick?"

"I think something must be the matter, for I do not feel at all like myself," stammered the orphan, as she hid her face on the window- sill.

"Does your head ache?"

"No, ma'am."

She might have said very truly that her heart did.

"Give me your hand, let me feel your pulse. It is very quick, but shows nervous excitement rather than fever. Child, let me see your tongue, I hear there are some typhoid cases in the neighborhood.

Why, how hot your cheeks are!"

"Yes, I shall go up and bathe them, and perhaps I may feel better."

"I wish you would come into the parlor as soon as you can, for Estelle says Clinton thought you were very rude to him; and though I apologized on the score of indisposition, I prefer that you should make your appearance this evening. Stop, you have dropped your handkerchief."

Edna stooped to pick it up, saw Mr. Murray's name printed in one corner, and her first impulse was to thrust it into her pocket; but instantly she held it towards his mother.

"It is not mine, but your son's. He was here about an hour ago and must have dropped it."

"I thought he had gone out over the grounds with Clinton. What brought him here?"

"He came to scold me for not shaking hands with his cousin."

"Indeed! you must have been singularly rude if he noticed any want of courtesy. Change your dress and come down."

It was in vain that Edna bathed her hot face and pressed her cold hands to her cheeks. She felt as if all curious eyes read her troubled heart. She was ashamed to meet the family--above all things to see Mr. Murray. Heretofore she had shunned him from dislike; now she wished to avoid him because she began to feel that she loved him, and because she dreaded that his inquisitorial eyes would discover the contemptible, and, in her estimation, unwomanly weakness.

Taking the basket which contained her sewing utensils and a piece of light needlework, she went into the parlor and seated herself near the centre-table, over which hung the chandelier.

Mr. Murray and his mother were sitting on a sofa, the former engaged in cutting the leaves of a new book, and Estelle Harding was describing in glowing terms a scene in "Phedre," which owed its charm to Rachel's marvelous acting. As she repeated the soliloquy beginning:

"O toi, qui vois la honte ou je suis descendue, Implacable Venus, suis--je a.s.sez confondue!" Edna felt as if her own great weakness were known to the world, and she bent her face close to her basket and tumbled the contents into inextricable confusion.

To-night Estelle seemed in unusually fine spirits, and talked on rapidly, till St. Elmo suddenly appeared to become aware of the import of her words, and in a few trenchant sentences he refuted the criticism on Phedre, advising his cousin to confine her comments to dramas with which she was better acquainted.

His tone and manner surprised Mr. Allston, who remarked:

"Were I Czar, I would issue a ukase, chaining you to the steepest rock on the crest of the Ural, till you learned the courtesy due to lady disputants. Upon my word, St. Elmo, you a.s.sault Miss Estelle with as much elan as if you were carrying a redoubt. One would suppose that you had been in good society long enough to discover that the fort.i.ter in re style is not allowable in discussions with ladies."

"When women put on boxing-gloves and show their faces in the ring, they challenge rough handling, and are rarely disappointed. I am sick of sciolism, especially that phase where it crops out in shallow criticism, and every day something recalls the reprimand of Apelles to the shoemaker. If a worthy and able literary tribunal and critical code could be established, it would be well to revive an ancient Locrian custom, which required that the originators of new laws or propositions should be brought before the a.s.sembled wisdom, with halters around their necks, ready for speedy execution if the innovation proved, on examination, to be utterly unsound or puerile.

Ah! what a wholesale hanging of socialists would gladden my eyes!"

Mr. Murray bowed to his cousin as he spoke, and rising, took his favorite position on the rug.

"Really, Aunt Ellen, I would advise you to have him re-christened, under the name of Timon," said Mr. Allston.

"No, no. I decidedly object to any such gratification of his would- be cla.s.sic freaks; and, as he is evidently aping Timon, though, unfortunately, nature denied him the Attic salt requisite to flavor the character, I would suggest, as a more suitable sobriquet, that bestowed on Louis X., 'Le Hutin'--freely translated, The Quarrelsome!' What say you, St. Elmo?"

Estelle walked up to her cousin and stood at his side.

"That is very bad policy to borrow one's boxing-gloves; and I happened to overhear Edna Earl when she made that same suggestion to Gordon Leigh, with reference to my amiable temperament. However, there is a maxim which will cover your retreat, and which you can conscientiously utter with much emphasis, if your memory is only good in repeating all the things you may have heard: Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! Shall I translate?"

She laughed lightly and answered:

"So much for eavesdropping! Of all the gentlemen of my acquaintance, I should fancy you were the very last who could afford to indulge in that amus.e.m.e.nt."

"Miss Estelle, is this your first, second or third Punic war? You and St. Elmo, or rather, my cousin, 'The Quarrelsome,' seem to wage it in genuine Carthaginian style."

"I never signed a treaty, sir, and, consequently, keep no records."

"Clinton, there is a chronic casus belli between us, the original spring of which antedates my memory. But at present, Estelle is directing all her genius and energy to effect, for my individual benefit, a practical reenactment of the old Papia Poppoea, which Augustus hurled at the heads of all peaceful, happy bachelordom!"

For the first time during the conversation Edna glanced up at Estelle, for, much as she disliked her, she regretted this thrust; but her pity was utterly wasted, and she was surprised to find her countenance calm and smiling.