Part 60 (1/2)
This portly dame, on being questioned, tells them, ”Mr. Bransc.u.m has just bin given his draft, and now he is snoozin' away as peaceable as a hinfant, bless 'im.”
”Is he--in bed?” asks Sir James, diffidently, this large person having the power to reduce him to utter subjection.
”Lawks! no, sir. He wouldn't stay there he's that contrairy. Beggin'
yore parding, sir, he's yore brother?”
Sir James nods. She may prove difficult, this stout old lady, if he declares himself no relative.
”To be sh.o.r.e!” says she. ”I might 'a' knowed by the speakin' likeness between you. You're the born himage of 'im. After his draft we laid 'im on the sofy, and there he is now, sleepin' the sleep of the just.
Just step up and see him; do, now. He is in a state of comus, and not expect.i.t to get out of it for two hours.”
”The young--lady--will go up,” says Sir James, feeling, somehow, as if he has insulted Clarissa by calling her ”a young lady.” ”She would like” (in a confidential tone that wins on the stout landlady) ”to see him alone, just at first.”
”Just so,” says Mrs. Goodbody, with a broad wink; and Clarissa is forthwith shown up-stairs, and told to open the first door she comes to.
”And you,” says Mrs. Goodbody to Sir James, ”will please just to step in 'ere and wait for her, while I see about the chicking broth!”
”What a charming room!” says Sir James, hypocritically; whereupon the good woman, being intensely flattered, makes her exit with as much grace as circ.u.mstances and her size will permit.
Clarissa opening the door with a beating heart, finds herself in a pretty, carefully-shaded room, at the farther end of which, on a sofa, Horace lies calmly sleeping. He is more altered than even her worst fears had imagined, and as she bends over him she marks, with quick grief, how thin and worn and haggard he has grown.
The blue veins stand out upon his nerveless hands. Tenderly, with the very softest touch, she closes her own fingers over his. Gently she brushes back the disordered hair from his flushed forehead, and then, with a quick accession of coloring, stoops to lay a kiss upon the cheek of the man who is to be her husband in one short month.
A hand laid upon her shoulder startles and deters her from her purpose. It is a light, gentle touch, but firm and decided and evidently meant to prevent her from giving the caress. Quickly raising herself, Clarissa draws back, and, turning her head, sees----
Who is it? Has time rolled backwards? A small, light, gray-clad figure stands before her, a figure only too well remembered! The brown hair brushed back from the white temples with the old Quakerish neatness, the dove-like eyes, the sensitive lips, cannot be mistaken. Clarissa raises her hands to her eyes to shut out the sight.
Oh! not that! Anything but that! Not Ruth Annersley!
A faint sick feeling overcomes her; involuntarily she lays a hand upon the back of a chair near her, to steady herself; while Ruth stands opposite to her, with fingers convulsively clinched, and dilated nostrils, and eyes dark with horror.
”What brings you here?” asks Ruth, at length, in a voice hard and unmusical.
”To see the man whose wife I was to have been next month,” says Clarissa, feeling compelled to answer. ”And”--in a terrible tone--”who are you?”
”The woman who ought to be his wife,” says Ruth, in the same hard tone, still with her hands tightly clasped.
Clarissa draws her breath hard, but returns no answer; and then there falls upon them a long, long silence, that presently becomes unbearable. The two women stand facing each other, scarcely breathing.
The unnatural stillness is undisturbed save by the quick irregular gasps of the sick man.
Once he sighs heavily, and throws one hand and arm across his face.
Then Ruth stirs, and, going swiftly and noiselessly to his side, with infinite tenderness draws away the arm and replaces it in its former position. She moves his pillows quietly, and pa.s.ses her cool hand across his fevered brow.
”Ruth?” he moans, uneasily, and she answers, ”I am here, darling,” in the faintest, sweetest whisper.
Something within Clarissa's heart seems to give way. At this moment, for the first time, she realizes the true position in which he has placed her. A sensation of faintness almost overcomes her, but by a supreme effort she conquers her weakness, and crushes back, too, the rising horror and anger that have sprung into life. A curious calm falls upon her,--a state that often follows upon keen mental anguish.
She is still completing the victory she has gained over herself, when Ruth speaks again.
”This is no place for you!” she says, coldly, yet with her hand up to her cheek, as though to s.h.i.+eld her face from the other's gaze.