St. Elmo Part 5

"Child, will you trust your future and your education to me? I do not mean that I will teach you--oh! no--but I will have you thoroughly educated, so that when you are grown you can support yourself by teaching. I have no daughter--I lost mine when she was a babe; but I could not have seen her enter a factory, and as you remind me of my own child, I will not allow you to go there. I will take care of and educate you--will see that you have everything you require, if you are willing to be directed and advised by me Understand me, I do not adopt you; nor shall I consider you exactly as one of my family; but I shall prove a good friend and protector till you are eighteen, and capable of providing for yourself. You will live in my house and look upon it as your home, at least for the present. What do you say to this plan? Is it not much better and more pleasant than a wild-goose chase after an education through the dust and din of a factory?"

"Oh, Mrs. Murray! You are very generous and good, but I have no claim on you--no right to impose such expense and trouble upon you.

I am--"

"Hush, child! you have that claim which poverty always has on wealth. As for the expense, that is a mere trifle, and I do not expect you to give me any trouble; perhaps you may even make yourself useful to me."

"Thank you! oh! thank you, ma'am! I am very grateful! I can not tell you how much I thank you; but I shall try to prove it, if you will let me stay here--on one condition."

"What is that?"

"That when I am able to pay you, you will receive the money that my education and clothes will cost you."

Mrs. Murray laughed, and stroked the silky black hair.

"Where did you get such proud notions? Pay me, indeed! You poor little beggar! Ha! ha! ha! Well, yes, you may do as you please, when you are able; that time is rather too distant to be considered now.

Meanwhile, quit grieving over the past, and think only of improving yourself. I do not like doleful faces, and shall expect you to be a cheerful, contented, and obedient girl. Hagar is making you an entire set of new clothes, and I hope to see you always neat. I shall give you a smaller room than this--the one across the hall; you will keep your books there, and remain there during study hours.

At other times you can come to my room, or amuse yourself as you like; and when there is company here, remember, I shall always expect you to sit quietly, and listen to the conversation, as it is very improving to young girls to be in really good society. You will have a music teacher, and practice on the upright piano in the library, instead of the large one in the parlor. One thing more, if you want anything, come to me, and ask for it, and I shall be very much displeased if you talk to the servants, or encourage them to talk to you. Now, everything is understood, and I hope you will be happy, and properly improve the advantages I shall give you."

Edna drew one of the white hands down to her lips and murmured:

"Thank you--thank you! You shall never have cause to regret your goodness; and your wishes shall always guide me."

"Well, well; I shall remember this promise, and trust I may never find it necessary to remind you of it. I dare say we shall get on very happily together. Don't thank me any more, and hereafter we need not speak of the matter."

Mrs. Murray stooped, and for the first time kissed the child's white forehead; and Edna longed to throw her arms about the stately form, but the polished hauteur awed and repelled her.

Before she could reply, and just as Mrs. Murray was moving toward the door, it was thrown open, and a gentleman strode into the room.

At sight of Edna he stopped suddenly, and dropping a bag of game on the floor, exclaimed harshly:

"What the d--l does this mean?"

"My son! I am so glad you are at home again. I was getting quite uneasy at your long absence. This is one of the victims of that terrible railroad disaster; the neighborhood is full of the sufferers. Come to my room. When did you arrive?"

She linked her arm in his, picked up the game-bag, and led him to the adjoining room, the door of which she closed and locked.

A painful thrill shot along Edna's nerves, and an indescribable sensation of dread, a presentiment of coming ill, overshadowed her heart. This was the son of her friend, and the first glimpse of him filled her with instantaneous repugnance; there was an innate and powerful repulsion which she could not a.n.a.lyze. He was a tall, athletic man, not exactly young, yet certainly not elderly; one of anomalous appearance, prematurely old, and, though not one white thread silvered his thick, waving, brown hair, the heavy and habitual scowl on his high, full brow had plowed deep furrows such as age claims for its monogram. His features were bold but very regular; the piercing, steel-gray eyes were unusually large, and beautifully shaded with long heavy, black lashes, but repelled by their cynical glare; and the finely formed mouth, which might have imparted a wonderful charm to the countenance, wore a chronic, savage sneer, as if it only opened to utter jeers and curses.

Evidently the face had once been singularly handsome, in the dawn of his earthly career, when his mother's good-night kiss rested like a blessing on his smooth, boyish forehead, and the prayer learned in the nursery still crept across his pure lips; but now the fair, chiseled lineaments were blotted by dissipation, and blackened and distorted by the baleful fires of a fierce, pa.s.sionate nature, and a restless, powerful, and unhallowed intellect. Symmetrical and grand as that temple of Juno, in shrouded Pompeii, whose polished shafts gleamed centuries ago in the morning suns.h.i.+ne of a day of woe, whose untimely night has endured for nineteen hundred years, so, in the glorious flush of his youth, this man had stood facing a n.o.ble and possibly a sanctified future; but the ungovernable flames of sin had reduced him, like that darkened and desecrated fane, to a melancholy ma.s.s of ashy arches and blackened columns, where ministering priests, all holy aspirations, slumbered in the dust. His dress was costly but negligent, and the red stain on his jacket told that his hunt had not been fruitless. He wore a straw hat, belted with broad black ribbon, and his spurred boots were damp and muddy.

What was there about this surly son of her hostess which recalled to Edna's mind her grandfather's words, "He is a rude, wicked, blasphemous man." She had not distinctly seen the face of the visitor at the shop; but something in the impatient, querulous tone, in the hasty, haughty step, and the proud lifting of the regal head, reminded her painfully of him whose overbearing insolence had so unwontedly stirred the ire of Aaron Hunt's genial and generally equable nature. While she pondered this inexplicable coincidence, voices startled her from the next room, whence the sound floated through the window.

"If you were not my mother, I should say you were a candidate for a straight-jacket and a lunatic asylum; but as those amiable proclivities are considered hereditary, I do not favor that comparison. 'Sorry for her,' indeed! I'll bet my right arm it will not be six weeks before she makes you infinitely sorrier for your deluded self; and you will treat me to a new version of 'je me regrette!' With your knowledge of this precious world and its holy crew, I confess it seems farcical in the extreme that open-eyed you can venture another experiment on human nature. Some fine morning you will rub your eyes and find your acolyte non est; ditto, your silver forks, diamonds, and gold spoons."

Edna felt the indignant blood burning in her cheeks, and as she could not walk without a.s.sistance, and shrank from listening to a conversation which was not intended for her ears, she coughed several times to arrest the attention of the speakers, but apparently without effect, for the son's voice again rose above the low tones of the mother.

"Oh, carnival of shams! She is 'pious' you say? Then, I'll swear my watch is not safe in my pocket, and I shall sleep with the key of my cameo cabinet tied around my neck. A Paris police would not insure your valuables or mine. The facts forbid that your pen-feathered saint should decamp with some of my costly travel-sc.r.a.pings! 'Pious'

indeed! 'Edna,' forsooth! No doubt her origin and morals are quite as apocryphal as her name. Don't talk to me about 'her being providentially thrown into your hands,' unless you desire to hear me say things which you have frequently taken occasion to inform me 'deeply grieved' you. I dare say the little vagrant whines in what she considers orthodox phraseology, that 'G.o.d tempers the wind to the shorn lamb!' and, like some other pious people whom I have heard canting, will saddle some Jewish prophet or fisherman with the dictum, thinking that it sounds like the Bible, whereas Sterne said it. Shorn lamb, forsooth! We, or rather you, madame, ma mere, will be shorn--thoroughly fleeced! Pious! Ha! ha! ha!"

Here followed an earnest expostulation from Mrs. Murray, only a few words of which were audible, and once more the deep, strong, bitter tones rejoined:

"Interfere! Pardon me, I am only too happy to stand aloof and watch the little wretch play out her game. Most certainly it is your own affair, but you will permit me to be amused, will you not? And with your accustomed suavity forgive me, if I chance inadvertently to whisper above my breath, 'Le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle?' What the deuce do you suppose I care about her 'faith?' She may run through the whole catalogue from the mustard-seed size up, as far as I am concerned, and you may make yourself easy on the score of my 'contaminating' the sanctified vagrant!"

"St. Elmo! my son! promise me that you will not scoff and sneer at her religion; at least in her presence," pleaded the mother.

A ringing, mirthless laugh was the only reply that reached the girl, as she put her fingers in her ears and hid her face on the window- sill.

It was no longer possible to doubt the ident.i.ty of the stranger; the initials on the fly-leaf meant St. Elmo Murray; and she knew that in the son of her friend and protectress, she had found the owner of her Dante and the man who had cursed her grandfather for his tardiness. If she had only known this one hour earlier, she would have declined the offer, which once accepted, she knew not how to reject, without acquainting Mrs. Murray with the fact that she had overheard the conversation; and yet she could not endure the prospect of living under the same roof with a man whom she loathed and feared. The memory of the blacksmith's aversion of this stranger intensified her own; and as she pondered in shame and indignation the scornful and opprobrious epithets which he had bestowed on herself, she muttered through her set teeth:

"Yes, Grandy! he is cruel and wicked; and I never can bear to look at or speak to him! How dared he curse my dear, dear, good grandpa!

How can I ever be respectful to him, when he is not even respectful to his own mother! Oh! I wish I had never come here! I shall always hate him!" At this juncture, Hagar entered, and lifted her back to her couch; and, remarking the agitation of her manner, the nurse said gravely, as she put her fingers on the girl's pulse:

"What has flushed you so? Your face is hot; you have tired yourself sitting up too long. Did a gentleman come into the room a while ago?"

"Yes, Mrs. Murray's son."

"Did Miss Ellen--that is, my mistress--tell you that you were to live here, and get your education?"

"Yes, she offered to take care of me for a few years."

"Well, I am glad it is fixed, so--you can stay; for you can be a great comfort to Miss Ellen, if you try to please her."

She paused, and busied herself about the room, and remembering Mrs.

Murray's injunction that she should discourage conversation on the part of the servants, Edna turned her face to the wall and shut her eyes. But for once Hagar's habitual silence and non-committalism were laid aside; and, stooping over the couch, she said hurriedly:

"Listen to me, child, for I like your patient ways, and want to give you a friendly warning; you are a stranger in this house, and might stumble into trouble. Whatever else you do, be sure not to cross Ma.s.s' Elmo's path! Keep out of his way, and he will keep out of yours; for he is shy enough of strangers, and would walk a mile to keep from meeting anybody; but if he finds you in his way, he will walk roughshod right over you--trample you. Nothing ever stops him one minute when he makes up his mind. He does not even wait to listen to his mother, and she is about the only person who dares to talk to him. He hates everybody and everything; but he doesn't tread on folks' toes unless they are where they don't belong. He is like a rattlesnake that crawls in his own track, and bites everything that meddles or crosses his trail. Above everything, child, for the love of peace and heaven, don't argue with him! If he says black is white, don't contradict him; and if he swears water runs up stream, let him swear, and don't know it runs down. Keep out of his sight, and you will do well enough, but once make him mad and you had better fight Satan hand to hand with red-hot pitchforks! Everybody is afraid of him, and gives way to him, and you must do like the balance that have to deal with him. I nursed him; but I would rather put my head in a wolf's jaws than stir him up; and G.o.d knows I wish he had died when he was a baby, instead of living to grow up the sinful, swearing, raging devil he is! Now mind what I say. I am not given to talking, but this time it is for your good. Mind what I tell you, child; and if you want to have peace, keep out of his way."

She left the room abruptly, and the orphan lay in the gathering gloom of twilight, perplexed, distressed, and wondering how she could avoid all the angularities of this amiable character, under whose roof fate seemed to have deposited her.

CHAPTER V.

At length, by the aid of crutches, Edna was able to leave the room where she had been so long confined, and explore the house in which every day discovered some new charm. The parlors and sitting-room opened on a long, arched veranda, which extended around two sides of the building, and was paved with variegated tiles; while the stained-gla.s.s doors of the dining-room, with its lofty frescoed ceiling and deep bow-windows, led by two white marble steps out on the terrace, whence two more steps showed the beginning of a serpentine gravel walk winding down to an octagonal hot-house, surmounted by a richly carved paG.o.da-roof. Two sentinel statues--a Bacchus and Bacchante--placed on the terrace, guarded the entrance to the dining-room; and in front of the house, where a sculptured Triton threw jets of water into a gleaming circular basin, a pair of crouching monsters glared from the steps. When Edna first found herself before these grim doorkeepers, she started back in unfeigned terror, and could scarcely repress a cry of alarm, for the howling rage and despair of the distorted hideous heads seemed fearfully real, and years elapsed before she comprehended their significance, or the sombre mood which impelled their creation. They were imitations of that monumental lion's head, raised on the battle- field of Chaeroneia, to commemorate the Boeotians slain. In the rear of and adjoining the library, a narrow, vaulted pa.s.sage with high Gothic windows of stained-gla.s.s, opened into a beautifully proportioned rotunda, and beyond this circular apartment with its ruby-tinted skylight and Moresque frescoes, extended two other rooms, of whose shape or contents Edna knew nothing, save the tall arched windows that looked down on the terrace. The door of the rotunda was generally closed, but accidentally it stood open one morning, and she caught a glimpse of the circular form and the springing dome. Evidently this portion of the mansion had been recently built, while the remainder of the house had been constructed many years earlier; but all desire to explore it was extinguished when Mrs. Murray remarked one day:

"That pa.s.sage leads to my son's apartments, and he dislikes noise or intrusion."

Thenceforth Edna avoided it as if the plagues of Pharaoh were pent therein. To her dazzled eyes this luxurious home was a fairy palace, an enchanted region, and, with eager curiosity and boundless admiration, she gazed upon beautiful articles whose use she could not even conjecture. The furniture throughout the mansion was elegant and costly; pictures, statues, bronzes, marble, silver, rosewood, ebony, mosaics, satin, velvet--naught that the most fastidious and cultivated taste or dilettanteism could suggest, or lavish expenditure supply, was wanting; while the elaborate and beautiful arrangement of the extensive grounds showed with how prodigal a hand the owner squandered a princely fortune. The flower garden and lawn comprised fifteen acres, and the subdivisions were formed entirely by hedges, save that portion of the park surrounded by a tall iron railing, where congregated a motley menagerie of deer, bison, a Lapland reindeer, a Peruvian llama, some Cashmere goats, a chamois, wounded and caught on the Jungfrau, and a large white cow from Ava. This part of the inclosure was thickly studded with large oaks, groups of beech and elm, and a few enormous cedars which would not have shamed their sacred prototypes sighing in Syrian breezes along the rocky gorges of Lebanon. The branches were low and spreading, and even at mid-day the suns.h.i.+ne barely freckled the cool, mossy knolls where the animals sought refuge from the summer heat of the open and smoothly-shaven lawn. Here and there, on the soft, green sward, was presented that vegetable ant.i.thesis, a circlet of martinet poplars standing vis-a-vis to a clump of willows whose long hair threw quivering, fringy shadows when the slanting rays of dying sunlight burnished the white and purple petals nestling among the clover tufts. Rustic seats of bark, cane and metal were scattered through the grounds, and where the well-trimmed numerous hedges divided the parterre, china, marble and iron vases of varied mould, held rare creepers and lovely exotics; and rich ma.s.ses of roses swung their fragrant chalices of crimson and gold, rivaling the glory of Paestum and of Bendemer. The elevation upon which the house was placed commanded an extensive view of the surrounding country. Far away to the northeast purplish gray waves along the sky showed a range of lofty hills, and in an easterly direction, scarcely two miles distant, glittering spires told where the village clung to the railroad, and to a deep rus.h.i.+ng creek, whose sinuous course was distinctly marked by the dense growth that clothed its steep banks. Now and then luxuriant fields of corn covered the level lands with an emerald mantle, while sheep and cattle roamed through the adjacent champaign; and in the calm, cool morning air, a black smoke-serpent crawled above the tree-tops, mapping out the track over which the long train of cars darted and thundered. Mr. Paul Murray, the first proprietor of the estate, and father of the present owner, had early in life spent much time in France, where, espousing the royalist cause, his sympathies were fully enlisted by the desperate daring of Charette, Stofflet, and Cathelineau. On his return to his native land, his admiration of the heroism of those who dwelt upon the Loire, found expression in one of their sobriquets, "Le Bocage," which he gave to his country residence; and certainly the venerable groves that surrounded it justified the application. While his own fortune was handsome and abundant, he married the orphan of a rich banker, who survived her father only a short time and died leaving Mr. Murray childless.

After a few years, when the frosts of age fell upon his head, he married a handsome and very wealthy widow; but, unfortunately, having lost their first child, a daughter, he lived only long enough to hear the infantile prattle of his son, St. Elmo, to whom he bequeathed an immense fortune, which many succeeding years of reckless expenditure had failed to materially impair. Such was "Le Bocage," naturally a beautiful situation, improved and embellished with everything which refined taste and world-wide travel could suggest to the fastidious owner. Notwithstanding the countless charms of the home so benevolently offered to her, the blacksmith's granddaughter was conscious of a great need, scarcely to be explained, yet fully felt--the dreary lack of that which she had yet to learn could not be purchased by the treasures of Oude--the priceless peace and genial glow which only the contented, happy hearts of its inmates can diffuse over even a palatial homestead.

She also realized, without a.n.a.lyzing the fact, that the majestic repose and boundless spontaneity of nature yielded a sense of companions.h.i.+p almost of tender, dumb sympathy, which all the polished artificialities and recherche arrangements of man utterly failed to supply. While dazzled by the glitter and splendor of "Le Bocage," she s.h.i.+vered in its silent dreariness, its cold, aristocratic formalism, and she yearned for the soft, musical babble of the spring-branch, where, standing ankle-deep in water under the friendly shadow of Lookout, she had spent long, blissful July days in striving to build a wall of rounded pebbles down which the crystal ripples would fall, a miniature Talulah or Tuccoa. The chrism of nature had anointed her early life and consecrated her heart, but fate brought her to the vestibule of the temple of Mammon, and its defiling incense floated about her. How long would the consecration last? As she slowly limped about the house and grounds, acquainting herself with the details, she was impressed with the belief that happiness had once held her court here, had been dethroned, exiled and now waited beyond the confines of the park, anxious but unable to renew her reign and expel usurping gloom. For some weeks after her arrival she took her meals in her own room, and having learned to recognize the hasty, heavy tread of the dreaded master of the house, she invariably fled from the sound of his steps as she would have shunned an ogre; consequently her knowledge of him was limited to the brief inspection and uncomplimentary conversation which introduced him to her acquaintance on the day of his return. Her habitual avoidance and desire of continued concealment was, however, summarily thwarted when Mrs. Murray came into her room late one night, and asked:

"Did not I see you walking this afternoon without your crutches?"

"Yes, ma'am, I was trying to see if I could not do without them entirely."

"Did the experiment cause you any pain?"

"No pain exactly, but I find my ankle still weak."