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The Gay Rebellion, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 21 |
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_ CHAPTER XXI "LISTEN!" she whispered; "did you hear that?" "What?" he asked, dazed. "On the Bedford road! do you hear the horses? Do you hear them running?" "W-what horses?" "Tarleton's!" she gasped, pressing her white face between her hands. "Can't you hear their iron scabbards rattle? Can't you hear their bugle horn? Where is Jack? _Where_ is Jack?" A flurry of mellow music burst out among the trees, followed by a loud report. "Oh, God!" she whispered, "the British!" Brown stared at her. "Why, that's only an automobile horn--and their tire just blew out," he began, astonished. But she sprang past him, calling, "Jack! Jack! Where are you?" and he heard the door fly open and her childish cry of terror outside in the sunshine. The next second he followed her, running through the hall and out through the door to the porch; and at the same moment a big red touring car came to a standstill before the house; the chauffeur descended to put on a new tire, and a young girl in motor duster and hood sprang lightly from the tonneau to the tangled grass. As she turned to look at the house she caught sight of him. Brown took an uncertain step forward; and she came straight toward him. Neither spoke as they met face to face. He looked at her, passed his hand over his eyes, bewildered, and looked again. She was slim and red-haired and slightly freckled, and her mouth was perhaps a shade large, and it curled slightly at the corners, and her eyes were quite perfectly made except that one was hazel-brown and the other a hazel-grey. She looked at him, and it seemed to him as though, in the fearless gravity of her regard, somewhere, somehow--perhaps in the curled corners of her lips, perhaps in her pretty and unusual eyes--there lurked a little demon of laughter. Yet it could not be so--there were only serenity and a child's direct sweetness in her gaze. "I suppose you have come to look at this old-time place?" she said. "People often come. You are perfectly welcome." And, as he made no answer: "If you care to see the inside of the house I will be very glad to show it to you," she added pleasantly. "Is--is it _yours_?" he managed to say, "or--or your sister's?" She smiled. "You mistake me for somebody else. I have no sister. This is the old Brown place--a very, very old house. It belonged to my great grandmother. If you are interested I will be glad to show you the interior. I brought the key with me." "But people--relatives of yours--are living there now," he stammered. "Oh, no," she said, smiling, "the house is empty. We are thinking of putting it in shape again. If you care to come in I can show you the quaint old fireplaces and wainscoting--if you don't mind dust." She mounted the step lightly and, fitting the key and unlocking the door--which he thought he had left open--entered. "Come in," she called to him in a friendly manner. He crossed the threshold to her side and halted, stunned. An empty house, silent, shadowy, desolate, confronted him. The girl beside him shook out her skirts and glanced at her dusty gloves. "A vacuum cleaner is what this place requires," she said. "But _isn't_ it a quaint old house?" He pressed his shaking hands to his closed eyes, then forced them to open upon the terrible desolation where _she_ had stood a moment since--and saw bare boards under foot, bare walls, cobwebs, dust. The girl was tiptoeing around the four walls examining the condition of the woodwork. "It only needs electric lights and a furnace in the cellar and some kalsomine and pretty wall paper----" She turned to glance back at him, and stood so, regarding him with amused curiosity--for he had dropped on his knees in the dust, groping in an odd blind way for a flower that had just fallen from his coat. "There are millions of them by the roadside," she said as he stumbled to his feet and drew the frail blossom through his buttonhole with unsteady fingers. "Yes," he said, "there are other roses in the world." Then he drew a deep, quiet breath and smiled at her. She smiled, too. "This was her room," she explained, "the room where she first met her husband, the room into which she came a bride, the room where she died, poor thing. Oh, I forgot that you don't know who _she_ was!" "Elizabeth Tennant," he answered calmly. "Why--how did _you_ know?" "God knows," he said; and bent his head, touching the petals of the wild rose with his lips. Then he looked up straight into her eyes--one was hazel-brown, one hazel tinged with grey. _ |
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