He stepped from the window upon the veranda; but he had scarcely done this, before his figure was detected by the stranger, who at once crossed the road.When within a few feet of McClosky, he stopped."You persistent old plantigrade!" he said in a low voice, audible only to the person addressed, and a face full of affected anxiety, "why don't you go to bed? Didn't I tell you to go and leave me here alone? In the name of all that's idiotic and imbecile, why do you continue to shuffle about here? Or are you trying to drive me crazy with your presence, as you have with that wretched music-box that I've just dropped under yonder tree? It's an hour and a half yet before the stage passes: do you think, do you imagine for a single moment, that I can tolerate you until then, eh? Why don't you speak? Are you asleep? You don't mean to say that you have the audacity to add somnambulism to your other weaknesses? you're not low enough to repeat yourself under any such weak pretext as that, eh?"A fit of nervous coughing ended this extraordinary exordium; and half sitting, half leaning against the veranda, Mr.McClosky's guest turned his face, and part of a slight elegant figure, toward his host.The lower portion of this upturned face wore an habitual expression of fastidious discontent, with an occasional line of physical suffering.But the brow above was frank and critical; and a pair of dark, mirthful eyes, sat in playful judgment over the super-sensitive mouth and its suggestion.
"I allowed to go to bed, Ridgeway," said Mr.McClosky meekly; "but my girl Jinny's jist got back from a little tear up at Robinson's, and ain't inclined to turn in yet.You know what girls is.So Ithought we three would jist have a social chat together to pass away the time.""You mendacious old hypocrite! She got back an hour ago," said Ridgeway, "as that savage-looking escort of hers, who has been haunting the house ever since, can testify.My belief is, that, like an enterprising idiot as you are, you've dragged that girl out of her bed, that we might mutually bore each other."Mr.McClosky was too much stunned by this evidence of Ridgeway's apparently superhuman penetration to reply.After enjoying his host's confusion for a moment with his eyes, Ridgeway's mouth asked grimly,--"And who is this girl, anyway?"
"Nancy's."
"Your wife's?"
"Yes.But look yar, Ridgeway," said McClosky, laying one hand imploringly on Ridgeway's sleeve, "not a word about her to Jinny.
She thinks her mother's dead--died in Missouri.Eh!"Ridgeway nearly rolled from the veranda in an excess of rage.
"Good God! Do you mean to say that you have been concealing from her a fact that any day, any moment, may come to her ears? That you've been letting her grow up in ignorance of something that by this time she might have outgrown and forgotten? That you have been, like a besotted old ass, all these years slowly forging a thunderbolt that any one may crush her with? That"--but here Ridgeway's cough took possession of his voice, and even put a moisture into his dark eyes, as he looked at McClosky's aimless hand feebly employed upon his beard.
"But," said McClosky, "look how she's done! She's held her head as high as any of 'em.She's to be married in a month to the richest man in the county; and," he added cunningly, "Jack Ashe ain't the kind o' man to sit by and hear any thing said of his wife or her relations, you bet! But hush--that's her foot on the stairs.
She's cummin'."
She came.I don't think the French window ever held a finer view than when she put aside the curtains, and stepped out.She had dressed herself simply and hurriedly, but with a woman's knowledge of her best points; so that you got the long curves of her shapely limbs, the shorter curves of her round waist and shoulders, the long sweep of her yellow braids, the light of her gray eyes, and even the delicate rose of her complexion, without knowing how it was delivered to you.
The introduction by Mr.McClosky was brief.When Ridgeway had got over the fact that it was two o'clock in the morning, and that the cheek of this Tuolumne goddess nearest him was as dewy and fresh as an infant's, that she looked like Marguerite, without, probably, ever having heard of Goethe's heroine, he talked, I dare say, very sensibly.When Miss Jenny--who from her childhood had been brought up among the sons of Anak, and who was accustomed to have the supremacy of our noble sex presented to her as a physical fact--found herself in the presence of a new and strange power in the slight and elegant figure beside her, she was at first frightened and cold.But finding that this power, against which the weapons of her own physical charms were of no avail, was a kindly one, albeit general, she fell to worshipping it, after the fashion of woman, and casting before it the fetishes and other idols of her youth.She even confessed to it.So that, in half an hour, Ridgeway was in possession of all the facts connected with her life, and a great many, I fear, of her fancies--except one.When Mr.McClosky found the young people thus amicably disposed, he calmly went to sleep.
It was a pleasant time to each.To Miss Jenny it had the charm of novelty; and she abandoned herself to it, for that reason, much more freely and innocently than her companion, who knew something more of the inevitable logic of the position.I do not think, however, he had any intention of love-making.I do not think he was at all conscious of being in the attitude.I am quite positive he would have shrunk from the suggestion of disloyalty to the one woman whom he admitted to himself he loved.But, like most poets, he was much more true to an idea than a fact, and having a very lofty conception of womanhood, with a very sanguine nature, he saw in each new face the possibilities of a realization of his ideal.
