Chapter 22

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_ CHAPTER XXII In the beautiful drawing-room at Whitestone Hall sat Pluma Hurlhurst, running her white, jeweled fingers lightly over the keyboard of a grand piano, but the music evidently failed to charm her. She arose listlessly and walked toward the window, which opened out upon the wide, cool, rose-embowered porch. The sunshine glimmered on her amber satin robe, and the white frost-work of lace at her throat, and upon the dark, rich beauty of her southern face. "Miss Pluma," called Mrs. Corliss, the housekeeper, entering the room, "there is a person down-stairs who wishes to see you. I have told her repeatedly it is an utter impossibility--you would not see her; but she declares she will not go away until she does see you." Pluma turns from the window with cold disdain. "You should know better than to deliver a message of this kind to me. How dare the impertinent, presuming beggar insist upon seeing me! Order the servants to put her out of the house at once." "She is not young," said the venerable housekeeper, "and I thought, if you only would--" "Your opinion was not called for, Mrs. Corliss," returned the heiress, pointing toward the door haughtily. "I beg your pardon," the housekeeper made answer, "but the poor creature begged so hard to see you I did feel a little sorry for her." "This does not interest me, Mrs. Corliss," said Pluma, turning toward the window, indicating the conversation was at an end--"not in the least." "The Lord pity you, you stony-hearted creature!" murmured the sympathetic old lady to herself as the door closed between them. "One word wouldn't have cost you much, Heaven knows, it's mightly little comfort poor old master takes with you! You are no more like the bonny race of Hurlhursts than a raven is like a white dove!" And the poor old lady walked slowly back to the dark-robed figure in the hall, so eagerly awaiting her. "There was no use in my going to my young mistress; I knew she would not see you. But I suppose you are more satisfied now." "She utterly refuses to see me, does she," asked the woman, in an agitated voice, "when you told her I wished to see her particularly?" The housekeeper shook her head. "When Miss Pluma once makes up her mind to a thing, no power on earth could change her mind," she said; "and she is determined she won't see you, so you may as well consider that the end of it." Without another word the stranger turned and walked slowly down the path and away from Whitestone Hall. "Fool that I was!" she muttered through her clinched teeth. "I might have foreseen this. But I will haunt the place day and night until I see you, proud heiress of Whitestone Hall. We shall see--time will tell." Meanwhile Mrs. Corliss, the housekeeper, was staring after her with wondering eyes. "I have heard that voice and seen that face somewhere," she ruminated, thoughtfully; "but where--where? There seems to be strange leaks in this brain of mine--I can not remember." A heavy, halting step passed the door, and stopped there. "What did that woman want, Mrs. Corliss?" She started abruptly from her reverie, replying, hesitatingly. "She wanted to see Miss Pluma, sir." "Was Pluma so busily engaged she could not spare that poor creature a moment or so?" he inquired, irritably. "Where is she?" "In the parlor, sir." With slow, feeble steps, more from weakness than age, Basil Hurlhurst walked slowly down the corridor to the parlor. It was seldom he left his own apartments of late, yet Pluma never raised her superb eyes from the book of engravings which lay in her lap as he entered the room. A weary smile broke under his silver-white mustache. "You do not seem in a hurry to bid me welcome, Pluma," he said, grimly, throwing himself down into an easy-chair opposite her. "I congratulate myself upon having such an affectionate daughter." Pluma tossed aside her book with a yawn. "Of course I am glad to see you," she replied, carelessly; "but you can not expect me to go into ecstasies over the event like a child in pinafores might. You ought to take it for granted that I'm glad you are beginning to see what utter folly it is to make such a recluse of yourself." He bit his lip in chagrin. As is usually the case with invalids, he was at times inclined to be decidedly irritable, as was the case just now. "It is you who have driven me to seek the seclusion of my own apartments, to be out of sight and hearing of the household of simpering idiots you insist upon keeping about you," he cried, angrily. "I came back to Whitestone Hall for peace and rest. Do I get it? No." "That is not my fault," she answered, serenely. "You do not mingle with the guests. I had no idea they could annoy you." "Well, don't you suppose I have eyes and ears, even if I do not mingle with the chattering magpies you fill the house up with? Why, I can never take a ramble in the grounds of an evening without stumbling upon a dozen or more pair of simpering lovers at every turn. I like darkness and quiet. Night after night I find the grounds strung up with these Chinese lanterns, and I can not even sleep in my bed for the eternal brass bands at night; and in the daytime not a moment's quiet do I get for these infernal sonatas and screeching trills of the piano. I tell you plainly, I shall not stand this thing a day longer. I am master of Whitestone Hall yet, and while I live I shall have things my own way. After I die you can turn it into a pandemonium, for all I care." Pluma flashed her large dark eyes upon him surprisedly, beginning to lose her temper, spurred on by opposition. "I am sure I do not mean to make a hermit of myself because you are too old to enjoy the brightness of youth," she flashed out, defiantly; "and you ought not to expect it--it is mean and contemptible of you." "Pluma!" echoed Basil Hurlhurst, in astonishment, his noble face growing white and stern with suppressed excitement, "not another word." Pluma tossed her head contemptuously. When once her temper arose it was quite as impossible to check it as it was when she was a willful, revengeful, spoiled child. "Another man as rich as you are would have taken their daughter to Washington for a season, and in the summer to Long Branch or Newport--somewhere, anywhere, away from the detestable waving cotton-fields. When you die I shall have it all set on fire." "Pluma!" he cried, hoarsely, rising to his feet and drawing his stately, commanding figure to its full height, "I will not brook such language from a child who should at least yield me obedience, if not love. You are not the heiress of Whitestone Hall yet, and you never may be. If I thought you really contemplated laying waste these waving fields that have been my pride for long years--and my father's before me--I would will it to an utter stranger, so help me Heaven!" Were his words prophetic? How little she knew the echo of these words were doomed to ring for all time down the corridors of her life! How little we know what is in store for us! "I am your only child," said Pluma, haughtily; "you would not rob me of my birthright. I shall be forced to submit to your pleasure--while you are here--but, thank Heaven, the time is not far distant when I shall be able to do as I please. 'The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine,'" she quoted, saucily. "Thank Heaven the time is not far distant when I shall be able to do as I please." He repeated the words slowly after her, each one sinking into his heart like a poisoned arrow. "So you would thank Heaven for my death, would you?" he cried, with passion rising to a white heat. "Well, this is no better than I could expect from the daughter--of such a mother." He had never intended speaking those words; but she goaded him on to it with her taunting, scornful smile, reminding him so bitterly of the one great error of his past life. He was little like the kind, courteous master of Whitestone Hall, whom none named but to praise, as he stood there watching the immovable face of his daughter. All the bitterness of his nature was by passion rocked. No look of pain or anguish touched the dark beauty of that southern face at the mention of her mother's name. "You have spoken well," she said. "I am her child. You speak of love," she cried, contemptuously. "Have you not told me, a thousand times, you never cared for my mother? How, then, could I expect you to care for me? Have you not cried out unceasingly for the golden-haired young wife and the babe you lost, and that you wished Heaven had taken you too? Did I ever hear my mother's name upon your lips except with a sneer? Do you expect these things made that mother's child more fond of you, were you twenty times my father?" She stood up before him, proudly defiant, like a beautiful tragedy queen, the sunlight slanting on the golden vines of her amber satin robe, on the long, dark, silken curls fastened with a ruby star, and on the deep crimson-hearted passion-roses that quivered on her heaving breast. There was not one feature of that gloriously dark face that resembled the proud, cold man sitting opposite her. He knew all she had said was quite true. He had tried so hard to love this beautiful queenly girl from her infancy up. He was tender of heart, honest and true; but an insurmountable barrier seemed ever between them; each year found them further apart. Basil Hurlhurst lived over again in those few moments the terrible folly that had cursed his youth, as he watched the passion-rocked face before him. "Youth is blind and will not see," had been too bitterly true with him. It was in his college days, when the world seemed all gayety, youth and sunshine to him, he first met the beautiful face that was to darken all of his after life. He was young and impulsive; he thought it was love that filled his heart for the beautiful stranger who appeared alone and friendless in that little college town. He never once asked who or what she was, or from whence she came, this beautiful creature with the large, dark, dreamy eyes that thrilled his heart into love. She carried the town by storm; every young man at the college was deeply, desperately in love. But Basil, the handsomest and wealthiest of them all, thought what a lark it would be to steal a march on them all by marrying the dark-eyed beauty then and there. He not only thought it, but executed it, but it was not the lark that he thought it was going to be. For one short happy week he lived in a fool's paradise, then a change came over the spirit of his dreams. In that one week she had spent his year's income and all the money he could borrow, then petulantly left him in anger. For two long years he never looked upon her face again. One stormy night she returned quite unexpectedly at Whitestone Hall, bringing with her their little child Pluma, and, placing her in her father's arms, bitter recriminations followed. Bitterly Basil Hurlhurst repented that terrible mistake of his youth, that hasty marriage. When the morning light dawned he took his wife and child from Whitestone Hall--took them abroad. What did it matter to him where they went? Life was the same to him in one part of the world as another. For a year they led a weary life of it. Heaven only knew how weary he was of the woman the law called his wife! One night, in a desperate fit of anger, she threw herself into the sea; her body was never recovered. Then the master of Whitestone Hall returned with his child, a sadder and wiser man. But the bitterest drop in his cup had been added last. The golden-haired young wife, the one sweet love whom he had married last, was taken from him; even her little child, tiny image of that fair young mother, had not been spared him. How strange it was such a passionate yearning always came over him when he thought of his child! When he saw a fair, golden-haired young girl, with eyes of blue, the pain in his heart almost stifled him. Some strange unaccountable fate urged him to ever seek for that one face even in the midst of crowds. It was a mad, foolish fancy, yet it was the one consolation of Basil Hurlhurst's weary, tempest tossed life. No wonder he set his teeth hard together as he listened to the cold words of the proud, peerless beauty before him, who bore every lineament of her mother's dark, fatal beauty--this daughter who scornfully spoke of the hour when he should die as of some happy, long-looked-for event. Those waving cotton-fields that stretched out on all sides as far as the eye could reach, like a waving field of snow, laid waste beneath the fire fiend's scorching breath! Never--never! Then and there the proud, self-conscious young heiress lost all chances of reigning a regal queen, by fair means, of Whitestone Hall. _

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