Rutledge Part 38

"Pray do not give me any credit for getting up this morning," said Victor with a hasty wave of the hand. "I a.s.sure you I detest early rising with my whole French soul, and haven't seen a sun younger than three hours old since I can remember; but, my dear sir, with all homage to the most comfortable of beds, and the pleasantest room I ever occupied in my life, I never pa.s.sed such a night! When at last I slept, my dreams were so frightful that I was thankful to wake, and would have resorted to any means to have kept myself awake, if there had been the slightest danger of my closing my eyes again."

"What room did you occupy?" I asked.

"The corner room at the north end of the hall, it is, I think."

"It is most unfortunate," said Mr. Rutledge, looking a little annoyed.

"Are you subject to wakeful nights?"

"Never remember such an occurrence before," he returned. "I have enjoyed the plebeian luxury of sound sleep all my life, and so am more at a loss to account for my experience of last night."

"Were you disturbed by any noise--conscious of any one moving in the house?"

"No, the house was silent, silent as death! _Ma foi!_ I believe that was the worst of it. If I were superst.i.tious, I should tell you of the only thing that interrupted it; but I know how credulous and absurd it would sound to dispa.s.sionate judges, and how I should ridicule anything of the kind in another person; but this strange nightmare has taken such possession of me, I cannot shake it off."

His face expressed intense feeling as he spoke, and the usual levity of his manner was quite gone.

"What was it?" I said earnestly, and Mr. Rutledge looked indeed so far from ridiculing his emotion, that Victor went on rapidly:

"You will think me a person of imaginative and excitable temperament, but I must a.s.sure you to the contrary, and that I never before yielded to a superst.i.tious fancy, and have always held in great contempt all who were influenced by such follies. Will you believe me then, when I tell you that last night I was startled violently from my sleep, by a voice that sounded, from its hollowness and ghastliness, as if it came from the fleshless jaws of a skeleton, calling again and again, in tones that made my blood curdle, a familiar name, and one that at any time, I cannot hear without emotion. Sleep had nothing to do with it! I was as wide awake as I am now. But pshaw!" he exclaimed, suddenly turning, "I shall forget all about it in an hour, and I beg you'll do the same," and not giving either of us time to answer, he went on in an altered tone: "Mr. Rutledge, what a fine place you have! I have been admiring the view from my window. Have you purchased it recently? I don't remember to have seen a finer estate in America."

"It is a valuable and well located farm," answered Mr. Rutledge, rather indifferently; "but farming is not my specialty, and I never should have enc.u.mbered myself voluntarily with such a care, if it had not devolved upon me by inheritance."

"Ah!" said Victor with a slight accent of irony, that from last night's conversation I was prepared for; "It was then a case of greatness thrust, etc. But sir, it must add a great charm to this already charming home, to think that it has been the birth-place and family altar, as it were, of generations of your ancestors? Surely you are not insensible to such sentiments of pride and affection."

"a.s.sociations of that kind, of course, invest a place with a certain kind of interest; but I cannot lay claim to as much feeling on the subject as perhaps would be becoming. Like you, sir," he said, with a bow, "I have a dread of claiming credit for habits and feelings that I do not possess and entertain."

Victor looked a little annoyed that he had not succeeded in drawing out Mr. Rutledge's aristocratic and overbearing sentiments, and he would not have given up the subject, had not Mr. Rutledge, with a firm and quiet hand, put it aside, and led the way to other topics.

"How is it," he said to me, "that you have not noticed your small friend Tigre? He has been at your feet for the last five minutes, looking most wistfully for a kind word."

I started in confusion and surprise, and stooping down, covered the dog with caresses. The poor little rascal was frantic with delight, springing up to my face, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. his welcome in short barks and low whines, tearing around me, and then running off a little distance and looking back enthusiastically.

"He is evidently inviting you to another steeple-chase," said Mr.

Rutledge.

I blushed violently at the recollection, and wished Tigre anywhere but where he was.

"Have you lost your interest in the turf, since your season in town, or have other interests and tastes developed themselves while it has lain dormant?"

"Other tastes have developed themselves, I believe," I answered.

"Break it gently to Tigre, I beg you then, for I am sure he has been living all winter on the hope of another romp. He does not appreciate the lapse of time, and the changes involved, so readily as his betters, you know."

"He has, at least, the grace to receive them more kindly," I returned, stooping to pat him. "Tigre, if I am too old to run races, I am not debarred as yet from taking walks, I believe, and I would propose that we indulge in one. Mr. Viennet, are you too old to be of the party?"

Mr. Rutledge turned shortly toward the library, Victor and I pa.s.sed out on the piazza, and, with Tigre in close attendance, descended the broad steps to the terrace.

Breakfast was nearly completed when we returned, and the party at the table looked up in amazement as we entered the room.

"I should admire to know," exclaimed Ella Wynkar, who affected Boston manners, and "admired" a good deal, "I should admire to know where you two have been! Mr. Arbuthnot declares that Mr. Viennet has been up since daybreak; and as for _you_," she said, turning to me, "I heard your door shut hours ago."

"Restrain your admiration, Miss Wynkar," said Victor, as he placed a chair for me. "We have been taking a short turn on the terrace for the fresh air. I wonder you did not emulate our example."

"Terrace, indeed!" exclaimed Phil. "I've been on the piazza for half an hour, and I'll take my oath you weren't within gunshot of the terrace all that time."

"Don't perjure yourself, my good fellow," said Victor, coolly, "but a.s.sist us to some breakfast. The terrace has given us an appet.i.te."

"How is your headache, my dear?" said my aunt, from across the table.

"My headache, ma'am? Oh, I forgot--I beg your pardon; it's better, thank you."

"How serious it must have been!" said Josephine. "Oh! by the way, Mr.

Rutledge, it isn't worth while to ask them to join us in _our_ party this morning, is it? They didn't ask us to go with them."

Mr. Rutledge shrugged his shoulders. "I think, Miss Josephine, we are safe in asking them; they wouldn't accept, of course, and we should save our credit, you know."

"I would not trust them, sir. It's my advice that they're not asked."

"Then," returned Mr. Rutledge, with a low bow and his finest smile, "as with me to hear is to obey, I resign all thought of remonstrance, and acquiesce in the decree."

Josephine accepted the homage very graciously, and the jest was kept up around the table till I, for one, was heartily sick of it. No one supposed, however, that I would be fool enough to take it in earnest; but I was just such a fool; and when, an hour or two later, the horses were brought to the door, and the scattered party summoned from library, parlor, billiard-room, and garden, to prepare for the drive, I was struggling with a fit of ill-temper in my own room, which resulted in my "begging to be excused," when Thomas came to the door to announce the carriage.

My refusal didn't seem to damp the spirits of the party much. I looked through the half closed blinds to see them start. Victor at the last minute pleaded a headache, and "begged to be excused," on which occasion the captain made one of the jokes for which he was justly famous, and led off the laugh after it.

"The pretty darling's in the sulks, I suppose," I heard Grace say; but no one was at the pains to resent or applaud the remark, and I listened to the departing carriage-wheels and the lessening sound of merry voices with anything but a merry heart.

One never feels very complacent after spiting oneself; the inelegant describe the state of feeling by the adjective "small;" and I was not rendered any more comfortable by finding that I had made a prisoner of myself for the morning. If Victor had only gone, as I had antic.i.p.ated, I should have consoled myself for the loss of the drive by a nice ramble around the grounds, and down to the stables; but as it was, I would not, for any consideration, have run the risk of encountering him. I heartily repented my walk before breakfast, and the relative position it seemed to place us in, made worse by our both remaining at home. Everybody and everything seemed to conspire to place us together, and my pride and my honesty both rebelled against such an arrangement. So, after listening to the sound of his steps pacing the terrace, the hall, and the piazza for a full hour, I began to find my captivity intolerable, and determined to make a visit to the housekeeper's room, and pay my devoirs to that functionary. Looking stealthily over the bal.u.s.ters, I ascertained that Victor was still smoking in the hall, so I ran across to the door of Mrs. Roberts' room, which was standing partly open, and asked if I might come in. Receiving permission, I entered, and did my best to appear amiable in Mrs. Roberts' eyes. She was, of course, as stiff as anything human could well be, but she was too busy to be very ungracious. This sudden influx of visitors had startled her out of the slow and steady routine of the last twenty years, and though, on the whole, she acquitted herself well, it was a very trying and bewildering position for the old woman. I longed for something to do to appease the self-reproach I felt for my bad temper, and it struck me that I couldn't do a more praiseworthy and disagreeable thing than to help Mrs. Roberts in some of the duties that seemed to press so heavily upon her. So, sitting down by her, I said:

"Mrs. Roberts, you'd better let me help you with those raisins; I haven't a thing to do this morning."

"That's a pity," said Mrs. Roberts, briefly. "In my day, young ladies always thought it most becoming to have some occupation."

"That's just my view of the case, Mrs. Roberts, and if you'll allow me, I'll have an occupation immediately."

Sylvie set the huge bowl of raisins on the table, and I drew them toward me, saying she must allow me to help her with them. Mrs. Roberts thought not; it would spoil my dress.

"Then I'll put an ap.r.o.n on."

She was afraid I did not know how.

"You can teach me, Mrs. Roberts;" and I began without further permission. To say that Mrs. Roberts melted before all this amiability would be to say that Mrs. Roberts had ceased to be Mrs. Roberts. She was a degree or two less gruff, I believe, at the end of the long hour I spent in her service, in the seeding of those wretched raisins; but that was all, and fortunately I had not expected more. I undertook it as a penance, and it did not lose that character from any excess of kindness on her part.

After the raisins were dispatched, Mrs. Roberts applied herself to the copying of a recipe from an old cookery-book, for which she seemed in something of a hurry. Dorothy was waiting for it, Sylvie said. "You'd better let me do it for you, Mrs. Roberts," I said, leaning over her shoulder. Mrs. Roberts declined, with dignity, for some time, but at last thoughtfully slid the spectacles off her nose, and seemed to deliberate about granting my request. She was not a very ready scribe, and she had a dozen other things to do, all of which weighed with my urgency, and in two minutes I was at the desk, copying out of a venerable cookery-book, the receipt that Mrs. Roberts indicated. I was in pretty engrossing business, I found one duty succeeded another very regularly; Mrs. Roberts, I saw, had determined to get as much out of me now as she could.

A dread of draughts was one of her peculiarities, so the door and the front windows were closed against the pleasant breeze, and to this I attribute it that we were unconscious of the return of the riding party till the door opened suddenly and Mr. Rutledge entered.

"Mrs. Roberts," he said, "you are wanted below. Miss Churchill has hurt her ankle in getting out of the carriage, and I have come to you for some arnica."

Mrs. Roberts bustled over to the medicine chest, and, taking the bottle of arnica and a roll of linen in her hand, hurried out of the room; while Mr. Rutledge, crossing over to the table where I sat, stood looking down at me without speaking, while I nervously went on with my writing without raising my eyes.