The House Behind the Cedars

Bücher

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt: ... and penned a letter which, after reading it over, he tore into small pieces and threw into the waste basket. A second shared the same fate. Giving up the task, he left the hotel and walked down to Dr. Green's office. "Is the doctor in?" he asked of the colored attendant. "No, suh, " replied the man, "he's gone ter see de young cullud gal w'at fainted w'en de doctah was wid you yistiddy." Tryon sat down at the doctor's desk and hastily scrawled a note, stating that business compelled his immediate departure. He thanked the doctor for courtesies extended, and left his regards for the ladies. Returning to the hotel, he paid his bill and took a hack for the wharf, from which a boat was due to leave at nine o'clock. As the hack drove down Front Street, Tryon noted idly the houses that lined the street. When he reached the sordid district in the lower part of the town, there was nothing to attract his attention until the carriage came abreast of a row of cedar-trees, beyond which could be seen the upper part of a large house with dormer windows. Before the gate stood a horse and buggy, which Tryon thought he recognized as Dr. Green's. He leaned forward and addressed the driver. "Can you tell me who lives there?" Tryon asked, pointing to the house. "A callud 'oman, suh, " the man replied, touching his hat. "Mis' Molly Walden an' her daughter Rena." The vivid impression he received of this house, and the spectre that rose before him of a pale, broken-hearted girl within its gray walls, weeping for a lost lover and a vanished dream of happiness, did not argue well for Tryon's future peace of mind. Rena's image was not to be easily expelled from his heart, for the laws of nature are higher and more potent than merely human institutions, and upon anything like a fair field are likely to win in the long ran. XVII TWO LETTERS Warwick awaited events with some calmness and some philosophy, -he could hardly have had the one without the other, and it required...