St. Elmo Part 68

"We learned from the newspapers that some fine photographs had been taken in New York, and I sent on and bought two. St. Elmo took one of them to an artist in Charleston, and superintended the painting of that portrait. When he returned, just before I went North, he brought the picture with him, and with his own hands hung it yonder.

I have noticed that since that day he always keeps the curtains down over the arch, and never leaves the house without locking his rooms."

Edna had dropped her crimsoned face in her hands, but Mrs. Murray raised it forcibly and kissed her.

"I want you to know how well he loves you--how necessary you are to his happiness. Now I must leave you, for I see Mrs. Montgomery's carriage at the door. You have a note to answer; there are writing materials on the table yonder."

She went out, closing the door softly, and Edna was alone with surroundings that pleaded piteously for the absent master. Oxalis and heliotrope peeped at her over the top of the lotos vases; one of a pair of gauntlets had fallen on the carpet near the cameo cabinet; two or three newspapers and a meerschaum lay upon a chair; several theological works were scattered on the sofa, and the air was heavy with lingering cigar-smoke.

Just in front of the Taj Mahal was a handsome copy of Edna's novel, and a beautiful morocco-bound volume containing a collection of all her magazine sketches.

She sat down in the crimson-cus.h.i.+oned armchair that was drawn close to the circular table, where pen and paper told that the owner had recently been writing, and near the ink-stand was a handkerchief with German initials, S. E. M.

Upon a ma.s.s of loose papers stood a quaint bronze paper-weight, representing Cartaphilds, the Wandering Jew; and on the base was inscribed Mr. Murray's favorite Arabian maxim: "Ed dunya djifetun ve talibeha kilabi": "THE WORLD IS AN ABOMINATION, AND THOSE WHO TOIL ABOUT IT ARE DOGS."

There, too, was her own little Bible; and as she took it up it opened at the fourteenth chapter of St. John, where she found, as a book-mark, the photograph of herself from which the portrait had been painted. An unwithered geranium sprig lying among the leaves whispered that the pages had been read that morning.

Out on the lawn birds swung in the elm-twigs, singing cheerily, lambs bleated and ran races, and the little silver bell on Huldah's pet fawn, "Edna," tinkled ceaselessly.

"Help me, O my G.o.d! in this the last hour of my trial."

The prayer went up meaningly, and Edna took a pen and turned to write. Her arm struck a portfolio lying on the edge of the table, and in falling loose sheets of paper fluttered out on the carpet.

One caught her eye; she picked it up and found a sketch of the ivied ruins of Phyle. Underneath the drawing, and dated fifteen years before, were traced, in St. Elmo's writing, those lines which Henry Soame is said to have penned on the blank leaf of a copy of the "Pleasures of Memory":

"Memory makes her influence known By sighs, and tears, and grief alone.

I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong The vulture's ravening beak, the raven's funereal song!

She tells of time misspent, of comfort lost, Of fair occasions gone forever by; Of hopes too fondly nursed, too rudely crossed, Of many a cause to wish, yet fear to die; For what, except the instinctive fear Lest she survive, detains me here, When all the 'Life of Life' is fled?"

The lonely woman looked upward, appealingly, and there upon the wall she met--not as formerly, the gleaming, augurous, inexorable eyes of the Cimbrian Prophetess--but the pitying G.o.d's gaze of t.i.tian's Jesus.

When Mrs. Murray returned to the room, Edna sat as still as one of the mummies in the sarcophagus, with her head thrown back, and the long, black eyelashes sweeping her colorless cheeks.

One hand was pressed over her heart, the other held a note directed to St. Elmo Murray; and the cold, fixed features were so like those of an Angel of Death sometimes sculptured on cenotaphs, that Mrs.

Murray uttered a cry of alarm.

As she bent over her, Edna opened her arms and said in a feeble, spent tone:

"Take me back to the parsonage. I ought not to have come here; I might have known I was not strong enough."

"You have had one of those attacks. Why did you not call me? I will bring you some wine."

"No; only let me go away as soon as possible. Oh! I am ashamed of my weakness."

She rose, and her pale lips writhed as her sad eyes wandered in a farewell glance around the room.

She put the unsealed note in Mrs. Murray's hand, and turned toward the door.

"Edna! My daughter! you have not refused St. Elmo's request?"

"My mother! Pity me! I could not grant it."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

"They have come. I hear Gertrude's birdish voice."

The words had scarcely pa.s.sed Mr. Hammond's lips ere his niece bounded into the room, followed by her husband.

Edna was sitting on the chintz-covered lounge, mending a basketful of the old man's clothes that needed numerous st.i.tches and b.u.t.tons, and, throwing aside her sewing materials, she rose to meet the travellers.

At sight of her Gordon Leigh stopped suddenly and his face grew instantly as bloodless as her own.

"Edna! Oh! how changed! What a wreck!"

He grasped her outstretched hand, folded it in his, which trembled violently, and a look of anguish mastered his features, as his eyes searched her calm countenance.

"I did not think it would come so soon. Pa.s.sing away in the early morning of your life! Oh, my pure, broken lily!"

He did not seem to heed his wife's presence, until she threw her arms around Edna, exclaiming:

"Get away, Gordon! I want her all to myself. Why, you pale darling!

What a starved ghost you are! Not half as substantial as my shadow, is she, Gordon? Oh, Edna! how I have longed to see you, to tell you how I enjoyed your dear, delightful, grand, n.o.ble book! To tell you what a great woman I think you are; and how proud of you I am. A gentleman who came over in the steamer with us, asked me how much you paid me per annum to puff you. He was a miserable old cynic of a bachelor, ridiculed all women unmercifully, and at last I told him I would bet both my ears that the reason he was so bearish and hateful, was because some pretty girl had flirted with him outrageously. He turned up his ugly nose especially at 'blue stockings'; said all literary women were 'hopeless pedants and slatterns,' and quoted that abominable Horace Walpole's account of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's 'dirt and vivacity.' I really thought Gordon would throw him overboard. I wonder what he would say if he could see you darning Uncle Allan's socks. Oh, Edna, dearie! I am sorry to find you looking so pale."

All this was uttered interjectionally between vigorous hugs and warm, tender kisses, and as Gertrude threw her bonnet and wrappings on the lounge, she continued:

"I wished for you just exactly ten thousand times while I was abroad, there were so many things that you could have described so beautifully. Gordon, don't Edna's eyes remind you very much of that divine picture of the Madonna at Dresden?"

She looked round for an answer, but her husband had left the room, and, recollecting a parcel that had been stowed away in the pocket of the carriage, she ran out to get it.

Presently she reappeared at the door, with a goblet in her hand.

"Uncle Allan, who carries the keys now?"

"Edna. What will you have, my dear?"

"I want some brandy. Gordon looks very pale, and complains of not feeling well, so I intend to make him a mint-julep. Ah, Edna! These husbands are such troublesome creatures."

She left the room jingling the bunch of keys, and a few moments after they heard her humming an air from "Rigoletto," as she bent over the mint-bed, under the study window.

Mr. Hammond, who had observed all that pa.s.sed, and saw the earnest distress clouding the orphan's brow, said gravely:

"She has not changed an iota; she never will be anything more than a beautiful, merry child, and is a mere pretty pet, not a companion in the true sense of the word. She is not quick-witted, or she would discern a melancholy truth that might overshadow all her life.

Unless Gordon learns more self-control, he will ere long betray himself. I expostulated with him before his marriage, but for once he threw my warning to the winds. I am an old man, and have seen many phases of human nature, and watched the development of many characters; and I have found that these pique marriages are always mournful--always disastrous. In such instances I would with more pleasure officiate at the grave than at the altar. Once Estelle and Agnes persuaded me that St. Elmo was about to wreck himself on this rock of ruin, and even his mother's manner led me to believe that he would marry his cousin; but, thank G.o.d! he was wiser than I feared."

"Mr. Hammond, are you sure that Gertrude loves Mr. Leigh?"