Mrs. Lynde

“ All in a flash her laughing mood was gone and she stood before me like an accusing goddess.
"You told me once the past was like a dream to you; you must have dreamed that part of it, sir. And yet you said a little while ago that I had not failed in any wifely duty!"
"The time and circumstance were their own best excuse. Sure I am far from blaming you, my dear. But let it pass, 'tis enough that I know you love him as he loves you."
Again her mood changed in the twinkling of an eye. She sank down upon the hassock, laughing merrily.
"O wise Monsieur John! how well you read a woman's heart! ”

“ I know I have not your love—shall never have it. Also, I know that I have gained an enemy where once I had a loving friend. Richard Jennifer may kill me if he please—he shall have the chance to do it; but you are mine and shall be whilst I live to claim and hold you."
There was something less than anger in the blue-gray eyes when she let me see them; nay, I could have sworn there was a flash of playful mockery in them when she said: "Dear heart! how masterful rough you have grown, all in a moment, my Lord." And then the beautiful eyes filled and she said, "Poor Dick!" ”

“ Perhaps you would better tell me and let me judge for myself," she suggested; and out of the past came a flick of the memory whip to make him feel again that she was immeasurably his senior.
"I'm expelled," he said bluntly.
"Oh!" For a full minute, as it seemed to him, she looked steadfastly out of the window at the wall of blackness flitting past, and the steady drumming of the wheels grated on his nerves and got into his blood. When it was about to become unbearable she turned and gave him her hand again. "I'm just as sorry as I can be!" she declared, and the slate-blue eyes confirmed it. ”

“ Can't you, dear?"
"I can't marry you," said Lynde desperately. She leaned against a slim white bole of a young birch behind her and looked at him wretchedly. "Won't you please go away and forget me?"
"I can't forget you," Alan said, smiling a little in spite of his suffering. "You are the only woman I can ever love—and I can't give you up unless I have to. Won't you be frank with me, dear? Do you honestly think you can never learn to love me?"
"It is not that," said Lynde in a hard, unnatural voice. "I am married already." ”

“ It was the one fortuitous touch needed to open that inner chamber of her heart, closed, hitherto, even to her own consciousness. And when the door was opened she looked within and saw what no woman sees but once in her life, and having once seen, will die unwed in very truth if any man but one call her wife.
Once more the drumming wheels began the overture; the lighted bay-window of the station slipped backward into the night, and the bloodshot eye of another switch-lamp peered in at the window and was gone; but Gertrude neither saw nor heard. ”

“ Then I would say: "Truly, there is a barrier, Richard; if I promise you that I am going to Charlotte to remove it once for all, will you trust me and go about your affair with General Gates?"
"Trust you, Jack? Who am I that I should do aught else? When I am cool and sane, I'm none so cursed selfish; I could even give her over to you with a free hand, could I but hear her say she loves you as I would have her love me. But when I am mad.... Ah, God only knows the black blood there is in the heart at such times." ”

“ That intellect, as strong and clear as crystal, could never have suffered even a temporary blur. He was beginning to be amazed at the blunder he had committed, when suddenly, one evening, a peculiar note in her voice, accompanied by a certain lifting of the eyelashes—a movement he had noticed for the first time, but which was familiar to him—threw Lynde into great perplexity. ”

“ In the harkening instant there was a faint twang like the thrumming of a distant harp string, and then the grave-like silence was rent smartly by the whistling hiss of an arrow, the shaft passing evenly between us and scattering the handful of fire where it struck.
Jennifer came alive with a start, leaping up with a malediction between his teeth upon our dallying.
"Too late, by God!" he cried. "They've trapped us like a pair of blind moles!" ”

“ Had I been Richard Jennifer, I know not what bitter reproach I should have found to hurl at the man who had thrice owed his life to me. But he said no word of what had gone before.
"You may give me the lie, if you like, John Ireton; I shall not strike you." He said it slowly, but his face was gray with anger. Then he added, hotly: "You know well that word was meant for me!"
At this—God forgive me!—my jealous wrath broke bounds and I cursed him for a beardless coxcomb who must needs think he stood alone in the eye of every woman he should meet. "She needs a man!" ”

“ Pendegrast had been so severe a shock to Lynde that he could not straightway recover his mental balance. The appalling shadow which the doctor's presence had for the moment thrown across him had left Lynde benumbed and chilled despite the reassuring sunshine of the doctor's words. By degrees, however, Lynde warmed to life again; his gloom slipped off and was lost in the restless tides of life which surged about him. It was the hour when Paris sits at small green tables in front of the cafes and sips its absinthe or cassis; when the boulevards are thronged, and the rich equipages come and go. ”

“ She was hiding her misery under a smooth face, as women will. A sudden reflection sent a chill over Lynde; what if she had recognized him that first day at dinner in Geneva and had been playing a part all the while! Then she was the most subtile actress that ever lived, and the leading lady of the Theatre Francais might indeed go and take lessons of her, as Flemming had said. The thought gave Lynde a shock. He would not like to have the woman he loved such an actress as that. Had Ruth revealed everything to the aunt, and was she too playing a part? ”

“ Now the thing for Patricia's lover to do was obvious. With pity thus trembling on the very crumbling brink of love, the opportunity which months of patient wooing had not evoked lay ready to his hand. It was a fair measure of the mastery an obsession may obtain—the lover's ability to thrust the gentler emotion into the background, to feign restless irritation under the passion-stirring touch, and to say: "No; I don't want Dillon or anybody; I want to be left alone. Please latch the door when you go out, and tell father and his—and Mrs. Blount that I don't want to be disturbed." ”

“ Did he come to see your cousin—the major?"
"No," she said, matching his low tone; "he came to see me."
"You?"
"Yes. Finding himself in a pitfall which he has digged with his own hands, he is like other men of his kind; he would be very glad to climb out upon the shoulders of a woman."
I guess the boss saw red for a minute, but the question he asked had to come.
"By what right did he come to you, Sheila?"
"By what he doubtless thinks is the best right in the world. He is my husband." ”

“ She rose, and I could see her eyes ashine for all the half-gloom of the candle-light.
"You are a loyal friend!" she said, and there was that within the words to make me glad, whatever fate the dawn should have in store for me. "You always think of others first; you think of others now, when—when death—Oh, Monsieur John! what can I do for you? Say quick! The man is coming to the door!"
"Now I have told you this, there is but one other thing, Margery dear; one little thing that will not let me die in peace. ”

“ When he returned he went around to her side of the fire to say:
"I'm mighty glad we have found out that we are cousins, Lucetta; twice glad, for your sake. It makes things a bit easier for you, doesn't it?"
She did not look up.
"Why should it?" she asked quietly.
"Oh, I don't know; we have both been throwing tin cans and brickbats at the conventions; but I haven't any idea that we have killed them off permanently. And they die harder in a woman than in a man. ”

“ Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the hazard we took—a hazard involving her as well as Richard and myself—steadied me with a sudden shock.
"Control yourself," I whispered. "What is done, is done; and the misery is not all yours to suffer. Tell me how I may find the priest, and I will do my errand and begone."
"You can not stay to find him now—you must not," she insisted, coming out of the fit of despair with a rebound. "He is in the town—indeed, I know not where he is just now. Can you not endure it a little longer, Captain Ireton?" ”

“ I am decently in love with my work—a work that not a few wise men have agreed could best be done alone. I don't think there will be any other woman. You see, there is only one Virginia. Shall we go in now?”
She nodded, but when they reached the Rosemary the returning engine was rattling down upon the open siding. Virginia drew back.
“I don't want to meet Uncle Somerville just now,” she confessed. “Can't we climb up to the observation platform at the other end of the car?” ”

“ I rejoined. "I have no wish to disappoint your principal, or his master, the devil. Let it be to-morrow morning at sunrise in the oak grove which was once my father's wood field, each man with his own blade. And I give you fair warning, Master Jennifer; I shall kill your bullyragging captain of light-horse as I would a vermin of any other breed."
At this Jennifer flung himself from his saddle with a great laugh. ”

“ His laugh was bitter; so bitter that I scarce knew it for Richard Jennifer's.
"Mistress Margery Stair is well, and well content, as I told you once before. She has no wish for you or me, unless it be to see us well hanged."
"Nay, Richard; you judge her over-harshly. I fear you do not love her as her lover should."
"Say you so? Listen: to-night I got as far as the manor house, being fool enough to risk my neck for another sight of her. God help me, Jack! ”

“ Besides, I would not let you go on such an errand. And yet—God help me, Margery! there is many an innocent life hanging on this; the lives of helpless women and little children. Have you ever a messenger to send, a man who will risk his life and can be trusted fully?"
"Yes, yes!" she cried. "Write it down for me and Dick shall have it. Quick; for Our Lady's sake, be quick about it! O Sancta Maria, mater. Dei—"
The low impassioned chant of the Roman litany was ringing in my ears as I sat down to the table to write my message to Richard Jennifer. ”

“ If his object were to prolong the conversation about Lynde, he was disappointed, for the old woman had turned abruptly to her work again and, though Alan lingered for a few moments longer, she took no further notice of him. But when he had gone she peered stealthily after him from the door until he was lost to sight among the pines.
"A well-looking man," she muttered. "I wish Lynde had been home. I didn't dare ask him to the house for I knew Anthony was in one of his moods. But it's time something was done. She's woman grown and this is no life for her. ”

“ With her sassafras and her sweet-brier she is in her best mood, as a woman in a fresh and becoming costume is apt to be, and almost any one might mistake her laugh for the music of falling water, and the agreeable rustle of her garments for the wind blowing through the pine forests.
As Edward Lynde rode out of Rivermouth one morning, an hour or two before anybody worth mention was moving, he was very well contented with this world, though he had his grievances, too, if he had chosen to think of them. ”

“ But they could never know, and the uncertainty would forever stand between him and Lynde like a spectre. But he thought more of Lynde's pain than his own. He would have elected to bear any suffering if by so doing he could have freed her from the nightmare dread of Harmon's returning to claim her. That dread had always hung over her and now it must be intensified to agony by her love for another man. ”

“ I gasped; "'twas you, then? I do believe you poisoned me in that dish of tea you sent me last night!"
She laughed, a bitter little laugh that I hated to think on afterward.
"You have a most chivalrous soul, Captain Ireton. I do not wonder you are so fierce to shake it free of the poor body of clay."
"But you do not deny it!" I cried.
"Of what use would it be? I have said that I would not have you die shamefully on the gallows; so I may as well confess to the poppy-juice in the tea. Tell me, Monsieur John; was it nasty bitter?"
"Good Lord!" I groaned; "are you a woman, or a fiend?" ”

“ Lynde Pyne came to her assistance, and tenderly drew her back into the room, while he closed the door. She raised herself in his arms after a moment of inactivity, like a fiend.
"Let me go there!" she cried, madly. "Let me tell them what he is! He has betrayed me, and publicly in the courtroom I will tell the world what he is. I will pay him for this if it takes my life."
"Calm yourself, dear!" exclaimed Lynde, gently. "There is nothing that you can do against him. Come! You will be summoned to the courtroom in a few minutes for preliminary examination. ”

“ Blount lay for a long time watching her as she passed the needle in and out through the bit of snowy linen stretched upon the tiny embroidery-ring. She had fine eyes, he admitted; eyes with the little downward curve in brow and lid at the outer corners—the curve of allurement, he had heard it called. Also, her hands were shapely and pretty. He recalled the saying that a woman may keep her age out of her face, but her hands will betray her. Mrs. Honoria's hands were still young; they looked almost as young as Patricia's, he decided. ”

“ I raged, thinking of that midnight scene in the great forest when my sweet lady had gone on her knees to this fiend in human guise. "And so should you," I added, "if you care aught for the honor of the woman who loves you."
But now it was this hot-headed Richard I have drawn for you who saw farthest and clearest.
"All in good time," he said, coolly. "At this present we have Dan Morgan's fish to fry, and sitting here saucing this devil's mess of a supper with thoughts of private revenge will never fry it. Set your wits at work; Falconnet's ghost has put mine hopelessly out of gear. Ye gods! ”