The Old Stone House by Constance Fenimore Woolson (sites to read books for free .txt) 📕

About an hour afterwards she heard a step on the gravel walk in front of the house, and the sound of a latch-key in the front-door; in another minute Hugh came up the stairs on the way to his room. “Hugh! Hugh!” called out a voice in the darkness.

“Is that you, Bessie? What are you doing here?” said her cousin, lighting a burner in the chandelier. “Why, you have been crying! Does your head ache? Do you feel faint?”

“My head is better, Hugh; but I am wicked,” murmured Bessie from the heap of cushions.

“Wicked! What do you mean, Brownie?”

“Just what I say. I am always in trouble myself and drawing you in too. You would be a great deal better without me, Hugh. I shall be glad when you go to New York.”

“Glad, Bessie!”

“I mean it will be better for you,” murmured Bessie.

“And how about yourself?”

“Oh, I shall never be good at all; I shall stay at home and be wicked, I suppose,” said Bessie, with the sound of tears in her voice. Hugh did not reply, but he put out his hand and stroked the dark curls gently. After a moment or two Bessie suddenly recovered her spirits. “How was Miss Chase?” she asked gayly.

“Lovely as a lily,” said Hugh, laughing; “I told her so, too.”

“Was Graham Marr there?”

“Yes; I left him with Sibyl.”

“Did he quote poetry?”

“I presume so, in the intervals of the music, Gid was there, too.”

“At the door of the supper-room, I suppose?”

“Yes, he was looking at the salad when I came away.”

“That reminds me; why did you leave so early, Hugh?”

“I believe, after all, I am a little tired; I strained my wrist slightly in the brook.”

“Let me get some arnica for you; do, Hugh.”

“Oh, no! the strain is very slight. It will be all over in a day or two.”

“Was there really any danger, Hugh?”

“Yes; I think it right that you should know it, because you may be tempted to do the same thing again. The water was deep there, and the brook swollen by the last rains; the current was very strong, and there is a fall just below. But your greatest danger was from the sharp jagged rocks; when I plunged after you I cannot express how alarmed I was!”

Bessie covered her face with her hands. “It was all owing to my obstinate wilfulness,” she said in a low tone, “Oh, Hugh! can you forgive me?”

“Do not think of it any more.” said her cousin, “but come down and give me some music.”

“What! In this old wrapper, Hugh?”

“There speaks feminine vanity. As though I knew a wrapper from a dress?”

So Bessie went down to the sitting-room, and, taking the cover off her harp, sat down in her old wrapper to play for Hugh. When she was in the mood she brought very spirited music out of the silver strings, but to-night she played soft airs, and minor chords, weaving in among them Hugh’s favorite plaintive melodies, with her now wild improvisations between. At last she rose and replaced the harp-cover. “It is late; I must go,” she said. “They will be coming home before long, Of course you won’t say anything about our ride, Hugh. It would only frighten Aunt Faith. But I have decided not to go again; what happened to-night seems like a warning.”

“Superstitious, Bessie?”

“No; I am only trying to stop before I drag you into any more danger. Think how much trouble I have given you, too! And, oh, Hugh! you had to pay that farmer,” added Bessie, as the idea came to her for the first time.

“Run upstairs, Brownie; it is late.”

“I shall not run, Hugh. I know very well you had to pay him that ten dollars, and I have robbed you of your last cent,” said Bessie tragically.

“Oh, what a dismal face! Run, before Aunt Faith comes.”

“And the picture you were going to buy,” said Bessie, with tearful eyes.

“Foolish child! as if I cared for the picture; when I am rich I shall buy a whole gallery. Now run; I positively hear their voices at the gate.”

As Bessie went away with a full heart, Aunt Faith, Sibyl, and Graham Marr came up the garden-walk and entered the house. “You came away early, Hugh,” said Aunt Faith; “do you feel well?”

“I am tired, aunt; that is all.”

“It was a pleasant party,” continued Aunt Faith; “did you not think so, Sibyl?”

“I enjoyed it!” said Sibyl quietly.

“It was a rare feast,” said Graham; “one seldom meets such a combination of aesthetic talent in Westerton.”

“Mr. Leslie was not there, however,” said Hugh.

“Ah,—no. But ministers are not generally cultivated musicians,” said Graham, in his slow way. “They have not the time to,—ah,—to muse upon the mystery of harmony.”

“Mr. Leslie is a fine musician,” said Hugh bluntly; “I have seldom heard so fine a baritone,—so rich and manly.”

Now Graham sang tenor,—a very delicate tenor, and naturally he could not sympathize with Hugh’s fancy for a rich baritone. As he rose to take leave, Sibyl said, “I wish you would bring over your music, Mr. Marr, and sing for us. We were all charmed with that little German song you sung this evening; it was so full of pathos.”

“Pathos!” whispered Hugh to Aunt Faith, as Sibyl accompanied the poet into the hall. “How can Sibyl endure that calf!”

“As Pete Trone said, ‘de gustibus‘ and so forth, Hugh,” said Sibyl’s voice from the hall as she closed the door behind Graham.

“Well, Sibyl; I did not intend you to hear the epithet, but I cannot with sincerity take it back,” said Hugh.

“I like calves,” said Sibyl, “they have beautiful eyes! Good-night!”

“I never can make Sibyl out!” said Hugh, as his sister disappeared. “She never loses her temper, and truth always comes out with the temper, you know. Well, Aunt Faith, I have been a very bad boy all day. Will you pardon all my misdeeds?”

“If you are penitent,” said Aunt Faith, smiling. Then, more seriously, “You will not forget what I said to you this morning, Hugh?”

“No, aunt; I shall not forget. Your words sank deeper than you knew,” said Hugh gravely.

CHAPTER V.

FOURTH OF JULY.

The first of July came, and with it the summer heat. Hugh hung up a hammock in the second story hall, between the north and south windows, so as to catch every wandering zephyr; and, armed with a book, he betook himself to this airy retreat for the purpose of study. At least that was his announcement at the breakfast-table. “For the purpose of sleep?” suggested Sibyl. “Day-dreaming!” said Bessie. “Lazying!” said Tom, coining a word for the occasion with true American versatility.

“Very well, fellow-citizens, laugh on,” said Hugh; “these are the last strawberries of the season, and I have no inclination to discuss anything at present but their sweetness. But I will venture to assert that at six o’clock this evening I shall have imbibed more knowledge in that very hammock then any of you in your prosy chairs.”

“I shall go and see Miss Skede about my white dresses,” said Sibyl, rising.

“Not this warm morning,” exclaimed Bessie.

“The very time. I could not have chosen a better day. Miss Skede has no imagination; she can never lift herself beyond the present. If I had gone to her in June, she would have made my dresses heavy, in spite of all my orders and descriptions. Even yesterday, for instance, she would have been unable to conceive anything more than half-way effects; but to-day it is so warm that the heat may inspire her, and I hope to get out of her something as flowing and delicate as a summer cloud.”

“I see now, Sibyl, where all your poetry goes,” said Hugh, laughing; “the puffs and ruffles get it all!”

“Fortunately Graham has enough for two,” said Bessie, looking up with a malicious smile.

But Sibyl’s temper was never ruffled: “I like Graham, as you know, Bessie. You, also, have your likes and dislikes, but I do not tease you about them.”

“That is true, Sibyl,” said Bessie, warmly; “you certainly have the best disposition in the family. I wish I had half your amiability.”

Soon after breakfast, Tom and Gem went out into the garden, and sat down under the shade of the great elm-tree. The three dogs were not long in discovering their place of retreat, and invited themselves to join the party with their usual assurance,—Turk stretching himself on the ground alongside, Grip under a currant-bush, and Pete Trone occupying himself in tilling the soil.

“What are you going to do to-day, Tom?” said Gem, as she adorned Turk’s shaggy back with flowers.

“Well, I don’t exactly know,” replied Tom; “the B. B.‘s are coming, and we’ve thought a little of building a house up a tree.”

“What for?” said Gem rather languidly,—for when the thermometer stands in the eighties, the idea of building becomes oppressive.

“What for!” repeated Tom indignantly; “that’s just like a girl! For fun, of course. What else, do you suppose? But you needn’t have anything to do with it. You can go right into the house this very minute, if you like.”

“I don’t want to go into the house; you know that very well, Tom Morris. I always like to see the B. B.‘s, and I think a house in a tree will be splendid!” said Gem quickly.

“Won’t it, though! We’re going to take the big cask over there, and hoist up all the boards, and nails, and things. There’s a place in the main branches where we can build a real room, big enough for all of us, if we squeeze tight. We’re going to have a floor, and roof, and sides, and a hole in the bottom to climb in,—a sort of sally-port, you know. It will be a regular fort, and I rather guess those south-end fellows will wink out of the wrong sides of their eyes when they see it.”

“Won’t it be rather warm up there?” suggested Gem.

“I never saw such a baby!” exclaimed Tom. “Warm? of course it will be, and what then? The monitors were warm, I reckon, but you never caught our soldiers whining about it. The B. B.‘s will stand up to their work like men, and they’ll stay in that house when it’s built, even if they melt down to their very backbones!”

“I wonder what Pete is doing?” said Gem, after a pause, wisely making a diversion in the conversation.

“Oh! burying bones, I suppose,” said Tom; “He’s always at it. I believe he’d dig a hole in an iron floor if he was chained up on it. Hallo, Pete! stop that! You’re making too much dust. Do you hear me, sir? Very well! you’d—a—bet—” When Tom got as far as “bet,” pronounced in an awful voice, Pete knew that a stick was forthcoming. He accordingly paused in his digging, his little black nose covered with yellow earth, and his eyes fixed mournfully on the half-finished hole. “Let us go and dig up some of his bones and show them to him,” said Tom; “it always makes him feel so ashamed! I know where they are; he has his favorite places, and I’ve often seen him toiling up and down from one to the other, as important as the man that goes round with the panorama and jaws at the people.”

“What an expression!” said Gem, with an air of superiority; “you boys are so common!”