Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters Part 66

"And are so still! Do as you please, however; it is no affair of mine."

Doctor Frank rode over to the new building to see how it progressed. It was late when he returned with the Captain, and he found that Kate had departed to spend the evening with Miss Howard. If he wanted further proof of her indifference, surely he had it here.

It was very late, and the family had retired before Miss Danton came home. She was good enough though, to rise, very early next morning to say good-bye. Doctor Frank took his hasty breakfast, and came into the parlour, where he found her alone.

"I thought I was not to have the pleasure of seeing you before I went,"

he said, holding out his hand. "I have but ten minutes left: so good-bye."

His voice shook a little as he said it. In spite of every effort, her fingers closed around his, and her eyes looked up at him with her whole heart in their clear depths.

"Kate!" he exclaimed, the colour rus.h.i.+ng to his face with a sudden thrill of ecstasy, and his hand closing tight over the slender fingers he held. "Kate!"

She turned away, her own cheeks dyed, not daring to meet that eager, questioning look.

"Kate!" he cried, appealingly; "it is because I love you I am going away. I never thought to tell you."

Five minutes later Grace opened the door impetuously.

"Frank, don't you know you will be la--Oh, I beg pardon."

She closed it hastily, and retreated. The Captain, standing in the doorway, looked impatiently at his watch.

"What keeps the fellow? He'll be late to a dead certainty."

Grace laughed.

"There is no hurry, I think. I don't believe Frank will go to Germany this time."

CHAPTER XXIII.

LONG HAVE I BEEN TRUE TO YOU, NOW I'M TRUE NO LONGER.

Far away from the blue skies, and bracing breezes of Lower Canada, the twilight of a dull April day was closing down over the din and tumult of London.

It had been a wretched day--a day of sopping rain and enervating mist.

The newly-lighted street-lamps blinked dismally through the wet fog, and the pedestrians hurried along, poising umbrellas, and b.u.t.toned up to the chin.

At the window of a shabby-genteel London lodging-house a young woman sat, this dreary April evening, looking out at the cheering prospect of dripping roofs and muddy pavement. She sat with her chin resting on her hands, staring vacantly at the pa.s.sers-by, with eyes that took no interest in what she saw. She was quite young, and had been very pretty, for the loose, unkempt hair was of brightest auburn, the dull eyes of hazel brown, and the features pretty and delicate. But the look of intense sulkiness the girl's face wore would have spoiled a far more beautiful countenance, and there were traces of sickness and trouble, all too visible. She was dressed in a soiled silk, arabesqued with stains, and a general air of neglect and disorder characterized her and her surroundings. The carpet was littered and unswept, the chairs were at sixes and sevens, and a baby's crib, wherein a very new and pink infant reposed, stood in the middle of the room.

The young woman sat at the window gazing sullenly out at the dismal night for upwards of an hour, in all that time hardly moving. Presently there was a tap at the door, and an instant after, it opened, and a smart young person entered and began briskly laying the cloth for supper. The young person was the landlady's daughter, and the girl at the window only gave her one glance, and then turned unsocially away.

"Ain't you lonesome here, Mrs. Stanford, all alone by yourself?" asked the young person, as she lit the lamp. "Mother says it must be awful dull for you, with Mr. Stanford away all the time."

"I am pretty well used to it," answered Mrs. Stanford, bitterly. "I ought to be reconciled to it by this time. Is it after seven?"

"Yes, ma'am. Mr. Stanford comes home at seven, don't he? He ought to be here soon, now. Mother says she wishes you would come down to the parlour and sit with us of a day, instead of being moped up here."

Mrs. Stanford made no reply whatever to this good-natured speech, and the sulky expression seemed to deepen on her face. The young person, finished setting the table, and was briskly departing, when Mrs.

Stanford's voice arrested her.

"If Mr. Stanford is not here in half an hour, you can bring up dinner."

As Mrs. Stanford spoke, the pink infant in the crib awoke and set up a dismal wail. The young mother arose, with an impatient sigh, lifted the babe, and sat down in a low nurse-chair, to soothe it to sleep again.

But the baby was fretful, and cried and moaned drearily, and resisted every effort to be soothed to sleep.

"Oh, dear, dear!" Rose cried, impatiently, giving it an irritated shake.

"What a torment you are! What a trouble and wretchedness everything is!"

She swayed to and fro in her rocking-chair, humming drearily some melancholy air, until, by-and-by, baby, worn out, wailingly dropped off asleep again in her arms.

As it did so, the door opened a second time, and the brisk young person entered with the first course. Mrs. Stanford placed her first-born back in the crib, and sat down to her solitary dinner. She ate very little.

The lodging-house soups and roasts had never been so distasteful before.

She pushed the things away, with a feeling of loathing, and went back to her low chair, and fell into a train of dismal misery. Her thoughts went back to Canada to her happy home at Danton Hall.

Only one little year ago she had given the world for love, and thought it well lost--and now! Love's young dream, splendid in theory, is not always quite so splendid in practice. Love's young dream had wound up after eleven months, in poverty, privation, sickness and trouble, a neglectful husband, and a crying baby! How happy she had been in that bright girlhood, gone forever! Life had been one long summer holiday, and she dressed in silks and jewels, one of the queen-bees in the great human hive. The silks and the jewels had gone to the p.a.w.nbroker long ago, and here she sat, alone, in a miserable lodging-house, subsisting on unpalatable food, sleeping on a hard mattress, sick and wretched, with that whimpering infant's wails in her ears all day and all night.

Oh! how long ago it seemed since she had been bright, and beautiful, and happy, and free--hundreds of years ago at the very least! She sighed in bitter sorrow, as she thought of the past--the irredeemable past.

"Oh, what a fool I was!" she thought, bursting into hysterical tears.

"If I had only married Jules La Touche, how happy I might have been! He loved me, poor fellow, and would have been true always, and I would have been rich, and happy, and honoured. Now I am poor, and sick, and neglected, and despised, and I wish I were dead, and all the trouble over!"

Mrs. Stanford sat in her low chair, brooding over such dismal thoughts as these, while the slow hours dragged on. The baby slept, for a wonder.

A neighbouring church clock struck the hours solemnly one after another--ten, eleven, twelve! No Mr. Stanford yet, but that was nothing new. As midnight, struck, Rose got up, secured the door, and going into an inner room, flung herself, dressed as she was, on the bed, and fell into the heavy, dreamless sleep of exhaustion.

She slept so soundly that she never heard a key turn in the lock, about three in the morning, or a man's unsteady step crossing the floor. The lamp still burning on the table, enabled Mr. Reginald Stanford to see what he was about, otherwise, serious consequences might have ensued.

For Mr. Stanford was not quite steady on his legs, and lurched as he walked, as if his wife's sitting-room had been the deck of a storm-tossed vessel.

"I s'pose she's gone to bed," muttered Mr. Stanford, hiccoughing. "Don't want to wake her--makes a devil of a row! I ain't drunk, but I don't want to wake her."

Mr. Stanford lurched unsteadily across the parlour, and reconnoitred the bedroom. He nodded sagaciously, seeing his wife there asleep, and after making one or two futile efforts to remove his boots, stretched himself, boots and all, on a lounge in the sitting-room, and in two minutes was as sound as one of the Seven Sleepers.

It was late next morning before either of the happy pair awoke. A vague idea that there was a noise in the air aroused the gentleman about nine o'clock. The dense fog in his brain, that a too liberal allowance of rosy wine is too apt to engender, took some time to clear away; but when it did, he became conscious that the noise was not part of his dreams, but some one knocking loudly at the door.

Mr. Stanford staggered sleepily across the apartment, unlocked the door, and admitted the brisk young woman who brought them their meals.

Mr. Stanford, yawning very much, proceeded to make his toilet. Twelve months of matrimony had changed the handsome ex-lieutenant, and not for the better. He looked thinner and paler; his eyes were sunken, and encircled by dark halos, telling of night revels and morning headaches.

But that wonderful beauty that had magnetized Rose Danton was there still; the features as perfect as ever; the black eyes as l.u.s.trous; all the old graceful ease and nonchalance of manner characterized him yet.

But the beauty that had blinded and dazzled her had lost its power to charm. She had been married to him a year--quite long enough to be disenchanted. That handsome face might fascinate other foolish moths; it had lost its power to dazzle her long, long ago. Perhaps the disenchantment was mutual; for the pretty, rose-cheeked, starry-eyed girl who had captivated his idle fancy had become a dream of the past, and his wife was a pale, sickly, peevish invalid, with frowsy hair and slipshod feet.

The clattering of the cups and saucers awoke the baby, who began squalling dismally; and the baby's cries awoke the baby's mamma. Rose got up, feeling cramped and unrefreshed, and came out into the parlour with the infant in her arms. Her husband turned from a dreary contemplation of the sun trying to force its way through a dull, yellow fog, and dropped the curtain.

"Good-morning, my dear," said Mr. Stanford, pouring out a cup of tea.

"How are you to-day? Can't you make that disagreeable youngster hold his confounded tongue?"