The Gold Brick Part 68

He smiled almost pleasantly, leaned forward, and opening the book which had been closed from her inspection, pointed out a page with his finger.

"What--the Bible!" she exclaimed, astonished at the nature of his studies.

"Yes," he said, quietly. "I was reading the history of Sampson."

She looked at him a moment, and the blood mounted slowly to her forehead. He saw the flush, and turned away his eyes.

Not another word was spoken. She arose from her half kneeling posture, and he stood up.

"You will not trust me now," was her gentle leave-taking, "because you think I do not love you, but time will show how mistaken you are."

She reached up her mouth to be kissed, but he touched her forehead with his lips, and she went away as she came, rustling her silks luxuriously along the mosaic floor.

He followed her with his eyes till she disappeared, then sat down, supporting his forehead with one hand.

"Ah, what a creature she is," he murmured. "If one could only buy her in selling himself to perdition, what man would shrink from the price? But who can say that he possesses her? My secret! No, Ellen Mason! that is your chain!--the shackle that keeps you here! I will never break it--never!"

A noise at the door caused him to look up. She had come back, and stood smiling upon him.

"You defy me--you liken me to that woman in the Bible, and keep secrets from me--this is a good reason for amusing myself elsewhere. I will not do that any more. Keep your secret, and h.o.a.rd your treasures. I will not trouble you concerning them. Only let us be friends. There will be no happiness for either of us without that."

The woman offered her kisses again, and this time he did not avoid her lips--still she could not feel that her victory was complete.

After she had gone, Nelson cast his eyes on the floor, and started with an exclamation of dismay. When his wife fell into her pa.s.sion she had stood directly over the centre ornament in the ma.s.sive floor, a secret spring had yielded to the stamp of her foot, the stone had whirled from its place, leaving an opening of some inches, circling half around the centre ornament like a crescent.

"Had the woman seen this?"

The thought made him wild; great drops started to his forehead, while he fell upon his knees, and strove to replace the stone. It shot back to its groove, completing the Mosaic pattern. When all was secure, he sat down and fell into thought. A feeling of insecurity seized upon him; would this woman wrest his secrets from him after all--not by her fascinations, but through craft and watchfulness?

No; he would make sure against that. The ornament might give way again, but it should tell no secrets.

CHAPTER LXIII.

GATHERING APPLES.

Little Paul was standing under the apple tree, with Rose Mason close by.

The thick gra.s.s under their feet was littered with golden apples, streaked with rosy red, which Jube had shaken from the boughs.

"Here, little missus," cried the negro, looking down through the thick leaves, and balancing a n.o.ble apple in his hand. "Hold up your ap.r.o.n, little missus, and down it will come so pretty into the white nest, so."

Rose lifted her little ap.r.o.n of ruffled dimity, and held it up, laughing and shaking her golden curls in the sunbeams, the happiest little creature alive.

"Be careful," cried Paul, looking fondly on the beautiful creature.

"Don't you drop it on her head, Jube; it would almost kill her."

Jube laughed, and dropped the apple, which fell plump into the ap.r.o.n, but with a force that tore it from the grasp of those tiny hands; so, after all, the apple rolled away into the gra.s.s.

Both Paul and Rose made a plunge. The boy seized upon the apple first, and held it over his head, tempting Rose, with his bright eyes laughing pleasantly. She leaped after it, and danced up and down like a fairy, for her little feet scarcely trampled the gra.s.s.

Paul was taller, by a whole foot, than the little girl, so he held the fruit out of reach, smiling with his lips, and laughing with his eyes, at her graceful efforts. Jube got astride a huge limb of the apple tree, and looked down upon the fun, showing his teeth through the leaves. The minister stood at his study window, benignly regarding them, drawn from his ma.n.u.script sermon by their riotous shouts of laughter; while his wife, who was sewing on the back porch, sat with her needle half suspended, smiling brightly on the scene.

It was a pleasant sight, and the whole family enjoyed it with all the zest of innocent hearts. The good housewife loved those two children almost as if they had been her own, and as for Jube, the heart must have been hard indeed which did not turn kindly to the good negro, who brought his huge bodily strength to the aid of every thing that required it, and who was good-natured as a Newfoundland dog.

The housewife was so occupied with the pretty strife under the apple tree that she did not hear a knock at the front door, and was quite taken by surprise when the help flung open that leading to the porch, and revealed two strange men standing in the hall behind her.

When the door was opened, shouts of laughter swept through it from the orchard, and one of the men, without heeding the lady, pa.s.sed by her, saying:

"Excuse me! It is my child--my little daughter!" and with quick strides he advanced toward the apple tree, leaving his companion behind.

"Don't be skeered nor nothing, marm," said Rice, looking eagerly toward the apple tree. "It's his little darter, and he's just found out where she is, arter a tough siege among the n.i.g.g.e.rs in St. Domingo, where we thought he was left dead. I seed him fall down like an ox with the blow of an axe, among a hull swarm of 'em in the cellar of one of them St.

Domingo houses, and arterward I saw 'em carry him off to be buried.

They took him up into the mountains, marm, and his goodness saved his life arter all; for one of the n.i.g.g.e.rs that he'd saved from a flogging once knew him, and when the rest wanted to kill him over agin, this 'ere chap jest begged him off and took him away to his own hut and kinder nussed him up, you see; but it was a good while afore he got well, and he had a tough time getting away--had to take a vessel going 'round the Horn."

The minister had been disturbed by the knock which his wife had failed to hear, and now stood in the back door listening to this rapid narrative with a look of wonder in his face, while his wife sat with her breath suspended, and the color dying gradually from her cheek, appalled by the first glimpse of a crime in which she felt almost like a partic.i.p.ant.

Meanwhile, Captain Mason reached the apple tree, and paused a few feet from Rose, with his arms extended, striving to call out, "My daughter, my daughter," but the words died on his lips, and broke up in tears; thus he stood before the child trembling like a criminal, and with his n.o.ble features all in a tumult of tender agitation.

Rose had just succeeded in coaxing the apple from Paul, and tossing it into the air, was intent on catching it with her hands, but her eyes fell upon the stranger, and the sight seemed to harden her into stone.

The apple fell through her half-lifted hands, the laughter froze on her lips, and her blue eyes opened wide and wild.

"Rose, my own little Rose, have you forgotten me so soon?"

The child uttered a faint wail; her hands fell down; she stood before him like a flower withering at the stalk.

"Father! oh, father!"

The words came forth in a cry of pain, yet joy shone in her face.

He knelt down on the gra.s.s and folded her close to his heart, raining kisses on her forehead, her hair, and her pretty hands. "My child, my child," he murmured, with eager tenderness. "She is frightened. She believed me dead. She has not had time to be glad. Oh, Rose, it is your father; kiss me, kiss me, little Rose."

The child trembled in his arms, but reached up her lips and kissed him over and over again.

"Now," said Mason, putting her away from his bosom, and examining her with tears of proud fondness in his eye, "now, my little Rose, go with me to your mother; is she in the house?"

Again that s.h.i.+ver came over the child; she bent her eyes to the earth, and seemed to wither under his look.

"Oh, father, father, don't."

"What is the matter, Rose--why are you afraid? Come, come, go with me to your mother."

"Mother isn't here," faltered the child.

A look of keen disappointment swept Mason's face. "Not here! Not with her child! Then, where is she?"

"I don't know, father, indeed I don't; she would marry Captain Thrasher, and go away. I begged and begged her not to; but she would do it."