Part 22 (2/2)
”There it is--the plausible tongue always. 'When have I done this, or that, or the other?' It is not one thing that has been done, madam, but ten thousand left undone! What did I need--having lands, money, position--to make me the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead?
Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans, gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins gracefully enough--as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and chills my friends to the marrow when they are ill-advised enough to visit me. She looks at the wine I lift to my lips, and it sours in the gla.s.s.
She looks into my kennels, and it is as if turpentine had been rubbed on the hounds' snouts. This great house of mine, which ought of right to be the gallant centre of Valley life and gayety, stands up here, by G.o.d! Like a deserted churchyard. Men avoid it as if a regicide had died here. I might have been Sir Philip before this, and had his Majesty's commission in my pocket, but for this petticoated skeleton which warns off pleasure and promotion. And then she whines, 'What have I done?'”
”You are clever enough, Philip, to have been anything you wanted to be, if only you had started with more heart and less appet.i.te for pleasure. It is not your wife, but your wine, that you should blame.”
”Ay, there it comes! And even if it were true--as it is not, for I am as temperate as another--it would be you who had driven me to it.”
”What folly!”
”Folly, madam? By Heaven, I will not--”
”Nay, listen to me, Philip, for the once. We may not speak thus frankly again; it would have been better had we freed our minds in this plain fas.h.i.+on long ago. It is not poor me, but something else, that in two years has changed you utterly. To-day you could no more get your mind into the same honest course of thoughts you used to hold than you could your body into your wedding waistcoat. You talk now of ambitions; for the moment you really think you had ambitions, and because they are only memories, you accuse me. Tell me truly, what were your ambitions? To do nothing but please yourself--to ride, hunt, gamble, scatter money, drink till you could drink no more. n.o.ble aspirations these for which to win the sympathy of a wife!”
Philip had turned himself around in his chair, and was looking steadily at her. She found the courage to stand resolute under the gaze and return it.
”There is one point on which I agree with you,” he said, slowly: ”I am not like ever again to hear talk of this kind under my roof. But while we are thus amiably laying our hearts bare to each other, there is another thing to be said. Everywhere it is unpleasantly remarked that I am not master in my own house--that here there are two kinds of politics--that I am loyal and my wife is a rebel.”
”Oh, that is unfair! Truly, Philip, I have given no cause for such speech.
Not a word have I spoken, ever, to warrant this. It would be not only wrong but presuming to do so, since I am but a woman, and have no more than a woman's partial knowledge of these things. If you had ever asked me I would have told you frankly, that, as against the Johnsons and Butlers and Whites, my feelings were with the people of my own flesh and blood; but as to my having ever spoken--”
”Yes, I know what you would say,” he broke in, with cold, measured words.
”I can put it for you in a breath--I am an English gentleman; you are a Dutch foundling!”
She looked at him, speechless and mentally staggered. In all her life it had never occurred to her that this thing could be thought or said. That it should be flung thus brutally into her face now by her husband--and he the very man who as a boy had saved her life--seemed to her astonished sense so incredible that she could only stare, and say nothing.
While she still stood thus, the young aristocrat rose, jerked the bell-cord fiercely, and strode again to the escritoire, pulling forth papers from its recesses with angry haste.
”Send Rab to me on the instant!” he called out to the slave who appeared.
The under-sized, evil-faced creature who presently answered this summons was the son of a Scotch dependent of the Johnsons, half tinker, half trapper, and all ruffian, by an Indian wife. Rab, a young-old man, had the cleverness and vices of both strains of blood, and was Philip's most trusted servant, as he was Daisy's especial horror. He came in now, his black eyes sparkling close together like a snake's, and his miscolored hair in uncombed tangle hanging to his brows. He did not so much as glance at his mistress, but went to Philip, with a cool--
”What is it?”
”There is much to be done to-night, Rab,” said the master, a.s.sorting papers still as he spoke. ”I am leaving Cairncross on a journey. It may be a long one; it may not.”
”It will at least be as long as Thompson's is distant,” said the familiar.
”Oh, you know, then,” said Philip. ”So much the better, when one deals with close tongues. Very well. I ride to-night. Do you gather the things I need--clothes, money, trinkets, and what not--to be taken with me. Have the plate, the china, the curtains, pictures, peltries, and such like, properly packed, to be sent over to the Hall with the horses and dogs in the early morning. I shall ride all night, and all to-morrow if needs be.
When you have seen the goods safely at the Hall, deliver certain letters which I shall presently write, and return here. I leave you in charge of the estate; you will be master--supreme--and will account only to me, when the king's men come back. I shall take Caesar and Sam with me. Have them saddle the roan for me, and they may take the chestnut pair and lead Firefly. Look to the saddle-bags and packs yourself. Let everything be ready for my start at eleven; the moon will be up by then.”
The creature waited for a moment after Philip had turned to his papers.
”Will you take my lady's jewels?” he asked.
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