Tales of the Argonauts | Page 6

with parental faith.
He stepped from the window upon the veranda; but he had scarcely
done this, before his figure was detected by the stranger, who at once
crossed the road. When within a few feet of McClosky, he stopped.
"You persistent old plantigrade!" he said in a low voice, audible only to
the person addressed, and a face full of affected anxiety, "why don't
you go to bed? Didn't I tell you to go and leave me here alone? In the
name of all that's idiotic and imbecile, why do you continue to shuffle
about here? Or are you trying to drive me crazy with your presence, as
you have with that wretched music-box that I've just dropped under
yonder tree? It's an hour and a half yet before the stage passes: do you
think, do you imagine for a single moment, that I can tolerate you until
then, eh? Why don't you speak? Are you asleep? You don't mean to say
that you have the audacity to add somnambulism to your other
weaknesses? you're not low enough to repeat yourself under any such
weak pretext as that, eh?"
A fit of nervous coughing ended this extraordinary exordium; and half
sitting, half leaning against the veranda, Mr. McClosky's guest turned
his face, and part of a slight elegant figure, toward his host. The lower
portion of this upturned face wore an habitual expression of fastidious
discontent, with an occasional line of physical suffering. But the brow
above was frank and critical; and a pair of dark, mirthful eyes, sat in
playful judgment over the super-sensitive mouth and its suggestion.
"I allowed to go to bed, Ridgeway," said Mr. McClosky meekly; "but
my girl Jinny's jist got back from a little tear up at Robinson's, and ain't
inclined to turn in yet. You know what girls is. So I thought we three
would jist have a social chat together to pass away the time."

"You mendacious old hypocrite! She got back an hour ago," said
Ridgeway, "as that savage-looking escort of hers, who has been
haunting the house ever since, can testify. My belief is, that, like an
enterprising idiot as you are, you've dragged that girl out of her bed,
that we might mutually bore each other."
Mr. McClosky was too much stunned by this evidence of Ridgeway's
apparently superhuman penetration to reply. After enjoying his host's
confusion for a moment with his eyes, Ridgeway's mouth asked
grimly,--
"And who is this girl, anyway?"
"Nancy's."
"Your wife's?"
"Yes. But look yar, Ridgeway," said McClosky, laying one hand
imploringly on Ridgeway's sleeve, "not a word about her to Jinny. She
thinks her mother's dead--died in Missouri. Eh!"
Ridgeway nearly rolled from the veranda in an excess of rage. "Good
God! Do you mean to say that you have been concealing from her a
fact that any day, any moment, may come to her ears? That you've been
letting her grow up in ignorance of something that by this time she
might have outgrown and forgotten? That you have been, like a
besotted old ass, all these years slowly forging a thunderbolt that any
one may crush her with? That"--but here Ridgeway's cough took
possession of his voice, and even put a moisture into his dark eyes, as
he looked at McClosky's aimless hand feebly employed upon his beard.
"But," said McClosky, "look how she's done! She's held her head as
high as any of 'em. She's to be married in a month to the richest man in
the county; and," he added cunningly, "Jack Ashe ain't the kind o' man
to sit by and hear any thing said of his wife or her relations, you bet!
But hush--that's her foot on the stairs. She's cummin'."
She came. I don't think the French window ever held a finer view than

when she put aside the curtains, and stepped out. She had dressed
herself simply and hurriedly, but with a woman's knowledge of her best
points; so that you got the long curves of her shapely limbs, the shorter
curves of her round waist and shoulders, the long sweep of her yellow
braids, the light of her gray eyes, and even the delicate rose of her
complexion, without knowing how it was delivered to you.
The introduction by Mr. McClosky was brief. When Ridgeway had got
over the fact that it was two o'clock in the morning, and that the cheek
of this Tuolumne goddess nearest him was as dewy and fresh as an
infant's, that she looked like Marguerite, without, probably, ever having
heard of Goethe's heroine, he talked, I dare say, very sensibly. When
Miss Jenny--who from her childhood had been brought up among the
sons of Anak, and who was accustomed to have the supremacy of our
noble sex presented to