_ CHAPTER IX. A GAME FOR TWO TO PLAY AT
A cold, raw, rainy, dismal morning--the sky black and hopeless of sunshine, the long bleak blasts complaining around the old house, and rattling ghostily the skeleton trees. The rain was more sleet than rain; for it froze as it fell, and clattered noisily against the blurred window-glass. A morning for hot coffee and muffins, and roaring fires and newspapers and easy-chairs, and in which you would not have the heart to turn your enemy's dog from the door.
Doctor Danton stood this wild and wintry February morning at his chamber window, looking out absently at the slanting sleet, not thinking of it--not thinking of the pale blank of wet mist shrouding the distant fields and marshes, and village and river, but of something that made him knit his brows in perplexed, reflection.
"What was it she saw last, night?" he mused. "No spectre of the imagination, and no bona-fide ghost. Old Margery saw something, and now Agnes. I wonder--"
He stopped, there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," he said, and Grace entered.
"I did not know you were up," said Grace. "But it is very fortunate as it happens. I have just been to Miss Darling's room, and she is crying out for you in the wildest Manner."
"Ah!" said her brother, rising, "has she been awake long?"
"Nearly an hour, Babette tells me, and all that time she has been frantically calling for you. Her manner is quite frenzied, and I fear--"
"What do you fear?"
"That last night's fright has disordered her reason."
"Heaven forbid! I will go to her at once."
He left the room as he spoke, and ran upstairs to the chamber of the seamstress. The gray morning twilight stole drearily through the closed shutter, and the lamp burned dim and dismal still. Babette sat by the bedside trying to soothe her charge in very bad English, and evidently but with little success. The bed-clothes had been tossed off, the little thin hands closed and unclosed in them--the great dark eyes were wide and wild--the black hair all tossed and disordered on the pillow.
Babette rose precipitately at the Doctor's entrance.
"Here's the Doctor, Mees Darling. May I go now, Monsieur?"
"Yes, you may go; but remain outside, in case I should, want you."
He shut the door on Babette, and took her place by the sick girl's bedside.
Babette lingered in the passage, staring at the stormy morning, and gaping forlornly.
"I hope he won't be long," she thought. "I want to go to bed."
Dr. Frank, however, was long. Eight struck somewhere in the house; that was half an hour, and there was no sign of his coming. Babette shivered under her shawl, and looked more drearily than ever at the lashing sleet.
Nine--another hour, and no sign from the sick-room, yet. Babette rose up in desperation, but just at that moment Grace came upstairs.
"You here, Babette!" she said, surprised. "Who is with Agnes?"
"The Doctor, Mademoiselle! he told me to wait until he came out, and I have waited, and I am too sleepy to wait any longer. May I go, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes, go," said Grace, "I will take your place."
Babette departed with alacrity, and Grace sat down by the storm-beaten window. She listened for some sound from the sick-room, but none rewarded her. Nothing was to be heard but the storm, without, and now and then the opening and shutting of some door within.
Another half-hour. Then the door of the seamstress's room opened, and her brother came out. How pale he was--paler and graver than his sister ever remembered seeing him before.
"Well," she said, rising, "how is your patient?"
"Better," he briefly answered, "very much better."
"I thought she was worse, you look so pale."
"Pale, do I? This dismal morning, I suppose. Grace," he said, lowering his tone and looking at her fixedly, "whose ghost did old Margery say she saw?"
"Whose ghost! What a question!"
"Answer it!"
"Don't be so imperative, please. Master Harry's ghost, she said."
"And Master Harry is Captain Danton's son?"
"Was--he is dead now."
"Yes, yes! he was killed in New York, I believe."
"So they say. The family never speak of him. He was the black sheep of the flock, you know. But why do you ask? Was it his ghost Agnes saw?"
"Nonsense! Of course not! What should she know of Captain Danton's son? Some one--one of the servants probably--came up the stairs and frightened her out of her nervous wits. I have been trying to talk a little sense into her foolish head these two hours."
"And have you succeeded?"
"Partly. But don't ask her any questions on the subject; and don't let Miss Danton or any one who may visit her ask any questions. It upsets her, and I won't be answerable for the consequences."
"It is very strange," said Grace, looking at her brother intently, "very strange that old Margery and Agnes Darling should both see an apparition in this house. There must be something in it."
"Of course there is--didn't I tell you so--an overheated imagination. I have known more extraordinary optical illusions than that in my time. How is Margery--better again?"
"No, indeed. She will never get over her scare in this world. She keeps a light in her room all night, and makes one of the maids sleep with her, and won't be alone a moment, night or day."
"Ah!" said Doctor Frank, with professional phlegm. "Of course! She is an old woman, and we could hardly expect anything else. Does she talk much of the ghost?"
"No. The slightest allusion to the subject agitates her for the whole day. No one dare mention ghosts in Margery's presence."
"I hope you will all be equally discreet with Miss Darling. Time will wear away the hallucination, if you women only hold your tongues. I must caution Rose, who has an unfortunate habit of letting out whatever comes uppermost. Ah! here she is!"
"Were you talking of me?" inquired Miss Rose, tripping upstairs, fresh and pretty, in a blue merino morning dress, with soft white trimmings.
"Do I ever talk of any one else?" said Dr. Frank.
"Pooh! How is Agnes Darling?"
"As well as can be expected, after seeing a ghost!"
"Did she see a ghost, though?" asked Rose, opening her hazel eyes.
"Of course she did; and my advice to you, Miss Rose, is to go to bed every night at dark, and to sleep immediately, with your head covered up in the bed-clothes, or you may happen to see one too."
"Thank you for your advice, which I don't want and won't take. Whose ghost did she see?"
"The ghost of Hamlet's father, perhaps--she doesn't know; before she could take a second look it vanished in a cloud of blue flame, and she swooned away!"
"Doctor Danton," said Rose, sharply, "I wish you would talk sense. I'll go and ask Agnes herself about it. I want to get at the bottom of this affair."
"A very laudable desire, which I regret being obliged to frustrate," said Doctor Danton, placing himself between her and the door.
"You!" cried Rose, drawing herself up. "What do you mean, sir?"
"As Miss Agnes Darling's medical attendant, my dear Miss Rose,--deeply as it wounds me to refuse your slightest request--I really must forbid any step of the kind. The consequences might be serious."
"And I am not to see her if I choose?" demanded Rose, her eyes quite flashing.
"Certainly you are to see her, and to fetch her jelly, and chicken, and toast, and tea, if you will; but you are not to speak of the ghost. That blood-curdling subject is absolutely tabooed in the sick-room, unless--"
"Unless what?" inquired Rose, angrily.
"Unless you want to make a maniac of her. I am serious in this; you must not allude in the remotest way to the cause of her illness when you visit her, or you may regret your indiscretion while you live."
He spoke with a gravity that showed that he was in earnest. Rose shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and walked to Agnes' door. Grace followed at a sign from her brother, who ran down stairs.
The sick girl was not asleep--she lay with her eyes wide open, staring vacantly at the white wall. She looked at them, when they entered, with a half-frightened, half-inquiring gaze.
"Are you better, Agnes?" asked Rose, looking down at the colourless face.
"Oh, yes!"
She answered nervously, her fingers twisting in and out of her bed-clothes--her eyes wandering uneasily from one to the other.
"Wouldn't you like something to eat?" inquired Rose, not knowing what else to say.
"Oh, no!"
"You had better have some tea," said Grace decisively. "It will do you good. I will fetch you up some presently. Rose, there is the breakfast bell."
Rose, with a parting nod to Agnes, went off, very much disappointed, and in high dudgeon with Doctor Frank for not letting her cross-examine the seamstress on the subject of the ghost.
"The ghost she saw must have been Mr. Richards returning from his midnight stroll," thought Rose, shrewdly. "My opinion is, he is the only ghost in Danton Hall."
There was very little allusion made to the affair of last night, at the breakfast-table. It seemed to be tacitly understood that the subject was disagreeable; and beyond an inquiry of the Doctor, "How is your patient this morning?" nothing was said. But all felt vaguely there was some mystery. Doctor Frank's theory of optical illusion satisfied no one--there was something at the bottom that they did not understand.
The stormy day grew stormier as it wore on. Rose sat down at the drawing-room piano after breakfast, and tried to while away the forlorn morning with music. Kate was there, trying to work off a bad headache with a complicated piece of embroidery and a conversation with Mr. Reginald Stanford. That gentleman sat on an ottoman at her feet, sorting silks, and beads, and Berlin wool, and Rose was above casting even a glance at them. Captain Danton, Sir Ronald, and the Doctor were playing billiards at the other end of the rambling old house. And upstairs poor Agnes Darling tossed feverishly on her hot pillow, and moaned, and slept fitfully, and murmured a name in her troubled sleep, and Grace watching her, and listening, heard the name "Harry."
Some of the gloom of the wretched day seemed to play on Rose's spirits. She sang all the melancholy songs she knew, in a mournful, minor key, until the conversation of the other two ceased, and they felt as dismal as herself.
"Rose, don't!" Kate cried out in desperation at length. "Your songs are enough to give one the horrors. Here is Reginald with a face as gloomy as the day."
Rose got up in displeased silence, closed the piano, and walked to the door.
"Pray don't!" said Stanford; "don't leave us. Kate and I have nothing more to say to one another, and I have a thousand things to say to you."
"You must defer them, I fear," replied Rose. "Kate will raise your spirits with more enlivening music when I am gone."
"A good idea," said Kate's lover, when the door closed; "come, my dear girl, give us something a little less depressing than that we have just been favoured with."
"How odd," said Kate languidly, "that Rose will not like you. I cannot understand it."
"Neither can I," replied Mr. Stanford; "but since the gods have willed it so, why, there is nothing for it but resignation. Here is 'Through the woods, through the woods, follow and find me.' Sing that."
Kate essayed, but failed. Her headache was worse, and singing an impossibility.
"I am afraid I must lie down," she said. "I am half blind with the pain. You must seek refuge in the billiard-room, Reginald, while I go upstairs."
Mr. Stanford expressed his regrets, kissed her hand--he was very calm and decorous with his stately lady-love--and let her go.
"I wish Rose had stayed," he thought; "poor little girl! how miserable she does look sometimes. I am afraid I have not acted quite right; and I don't know that I am not going to make a scoundrel of myself; but how is a fellow to help it? Kate's too beautiful and too perfect for mortal man; and I am very mortal, indeed, and should feel uncomfortable married to perfection."
He walked to the curtained recess of the drawing-room, where Rose had one morning battled with her despair, and threw himself down among the pillows of the lounge. Those very pillows whereon his handsome head rested had been soaked in Rose's tears, shed for his sweet sake--but how was he to know that? It was such a cozy little nook, so still and dusky, and shut in, that Mr. Stanford, whose troubles did not prey on him very profoundly, closed his dark eyes, and went asleep in five minutes.
And sleeping, Rose found him. Going to her room to read, she remembered she had left her book on the sofa in the recess, and ran down stairs again to get it. Entering the little room from the hall, she beheld Mr. Stanford asleep, his head on his arm, his handsome face as perfect as something carved in marble, in its deep repose.
Rose stood still--any one might have stood and looked, and admired that picture, but not as she admired. Rose was in love with him--hopelessly, you know, therefore the more deeply. All the love that pride had tried, and tried in vain, to crush, rose in desperation stronger than ever within her. If he had not been her sister's betrothed, who could say what might not have been? If that sister was one degree less beautiful and accomplished, who could say what still might be? She had been such a spoiled child all her life, getting whatever she wanted for the asking, that it was very hard she should be refused now the highest boon she had ever craved--Mr. Reginald Stanford.
Did some mesmeric rapport tell him in his sleep she was there? Perhaps so, for without noise, or cause, his eyes opened and fixed on Rose's flushed and troubled face. She started away with a confused exclamation, but Stanford, stretching out his arm, caught and held her fast.
"Don't run away, Rose," he said, "How long have you been here? How long have I been asleep?"
"I don't know," said Rose, confusedly: "I came here for a book a moment ago only. Let me go, Mr. Stanford."
"Let you go? Surely not. Come, sit down here beside me, Rose. I have fifty things to say to you."
"You have nothing to say to me--nothing I wish to hear. Please let me go."
"On your dignity again, Rose?" he said, smiling, and mesmerizing her with his dark eyes; "when will you have done wearing your mask?"
"My mask!" Rose echoed, flushing; "what do you mean, Mr. Stanford?"
"Treating me like this! You don't want to leave me now, do you? You don't hate me as much as you pretend. You act very well, my pretty little Rose; but you don't mean it--you know you don't!"
"Will you let me go, Mr. Stanford?" haughtily.
"No, my dear; certainly not. I don't get the chance of
tête-à-tête with you so often that I should resign the priceless privilege at a word. We used to be good friends, Rose; why can't we be good friends again?"
"Used to be!" Rose echoed; and then her voice failed her. All her love and her wounded pride rose in her throat and choked her.
Reginald Stanford drew her closer to him, and tried to see the averted face.
"Won't you forgive me, Rose? I didn't behave well, I know; but I liked you so much. Won't you forgive me?"
A passionate outburst of tears, that would no longer be restrained, answered him.
"Oh! how could you do it? How could you do it? How could you deceive me so?" sobbed Rose.
Stanford drew her closer still.
"Deceive you, my darling! How did I deceive you? Tell me, Rose, and don't cry!"
"You said--you said your name was Reinecourt, and it wasn't; and I didn't know you were Kate's lover, or I never would have--would have--oh! how could you do it?"
"My dear little girl, I told you the truth. My name is Reinecourt."
Rose looked up indignantly.
"Reginald Reinecourt Stanford is my name; and the reason I only gave you a third of it was, as I said before, because I liked you so much. You know, my dear little Rose, if I had told you that day on the ice my name was Reginald Stanford, you would have gone straight to the Hall, told the news, and had me brought here at once. By that proceeding I should have seen very little of you, of course. Don't you see?"
"Ye-e-e-s," very falteringly.
"I looked up that day from the ice," continued Stanford, "and saw such a dear little curly-headed, bright-eyed, rose-cheeked fairy, that--no, I can't tell you how I felt at the sight. I gave you my middle name, and you acted the Good Samaritan to the wounded stranger--came to see me every day, and made that sprained ankle the greatest boon of my life!"
"Mr. Stanford--"
"Call me Reginald."
"I cannot. Let me go! What would Kate say?"
"She will like it. She doesn't understand why you dislike me so much."
He laughed as he said it. The laugh implied so much, that Rose started up, colouring vividly.
"This is wrong! I must go. Don't hold me, Mr. Stanford."
"Reginald, if you please!"
"I have no right to say Reginald."
"Yes, you have a sister's right!"
"Let me go!" said Rose, imperiously. "I ought not to be here."
"I don't see why. It is very pleasant to have you here. You haven't told me yet that you forgive me."
"Of course I forgive you. It's of no consequence. Will you let me go, Mr. Stanford?"
"Don't be in such a hurry. I told you I had fifty things to--"
He stopped short. The drawing-room door had opened, and Captain Danton's voice could be heard talking to his two companions at billiards.
"All deserted," said the Captain; "I thought we should find the girls here. Come in. I dare-say somebody will be along presently."
"Oh, let me go!" cried Rose, in dire alarm. "Papa may come in here. Oh, pray--pray let me go!"
"If I do, will you promise to be good friends with me in the future?"
"Yes, yes! Let me go!"
"And you forget and forgive the past?"
"Yes--yes--yes! Anything, anything."
Stanford, who had no more desire than Rose herself to be caught just then by papa-in-law, released his captive, and Rose flew out into the hall and upstairs faster than she had ever done before.
How the four gentlemen got on alone in the drawing-room she never knew. She kept her room all day, and took uncommon pains with her dinner-toilet. She wore the blue glacé, in which she looked so charming, and twisted some jeweled stars in her bright auburn hair. She looked at herself in the glass, her eyes dancing, her cheeks flushed, her rosy lips apart.
"I am pretty," thought Rose. "I like my own looks better than I do Kate's, and every one calls her beautiful. I suppose her eyes are larger, and her nose more perfect, and her forehead higher; but it is too pale and cold. Oh, if Reginald would only love me better than Kate!"
She ran down-stairs as the last bell rang, eager and expectant, but only to be disappointed. Grace was there; Eeny and Kate were there, and Sir Ronald Keith; but where were the rest?
"Where's papa?" said Rose, taking her seat.
"Dining out," replied Kate, who looked pale and ill. "And Reginald and Doctor Danton are with him. It is at Mr. Howard's. They drove off over an hour ago."
Rose's eyes fell and her colour faded. Until the meal was over, she hardly opened her lips; and when it was concluded, she went back immediately to her room. Where was the use of waiting when he would not be there? _