24. CHAPTER XXIV.
MRS. LUTTRELL.
The Luttrells were settled at Cragness after several delays on account of
weather and the health of the invalid; and Neria, with Francia, drove over to
call upon them.
Shown into the library by Nancy Brume, they found Mrs. Luttrell lying upon
a couch near the window, alone. She half rose to meet them, but sank back
with a murmured apology for her weakness, and looked indeed so fragile that
no apology was needed. While Francia, always fluent and at ease, made talk
upon the weather and the debilitating influence of the first hot days, Neria
looked at the invalid with a painful and perplexed interest.
It had so chanced that they had never met in the city, and Neria found it
impossible to account for the impulse of tenderness and sympathy now possessing
her. She could not even decide whether the face of the invalid was more
prepossessing or painful in its wan loveliness.
Tall and slender in figure and handsome in feature, Mrs. Luttrell had, at the
time of her marriage, been considered a beauty; but now, her abundant fair hair
seemed to have lost its light and gloss; her complexion, from delicate, had become
transparently pallid; her white teeth shone ghastly between lips almost
as white, while her large blue eyes had acquired a singular expression of
anxiety and terror, a dreamy watchfulness, a weary foreboding, never lost, as she
listened or as she talked. Her slender hands, too, Neria noticed had assumed
an unnatural pearly whiteness and a stiff and laborious motion, while beneath
the nails appeared a violet tinge instead of the rose-red hue of health.
Her manner, too, was changed. Naturally serene and undemonstrative, it
now was marked by uncertain flutter, a rapid alternation from animation to abstraction,
with frequent lapses into reverie. In a pause of the chat, which even
Francia found it hard to sustain, Neria kindly inquired if Mrs. Luttrell found
benefit from the sea air.
“The sea air?” repeated the invalid, vaguely. “Oh, it makes no difference
about that.” She stopped with a frightened start, and presently continued, in a
tone of forced gayety:
“O, I am doing very well—quite as well as I could expect. The doctor says
it is only that I am nervous.”
“How long have you been so ill?” asked Francia.
“I don't know when it began—I can't think,” replied Mrs. Luttrell, in a low
voice; and from the last word she seemed to drop into an abyss of reverie, so
profound that neither of her guests liked to interrupt it.
Through the half-open door glided the figure of Dr. Luttrell, and, although
noiselessly, his wife, who had lain with her back to him, raised her head and
moved, so that she could see him; nor from that moment to the end of the call
did her eyes ever wander from his face for more than a moment. This fixed
and anxious gaze did not, however, seem to embarrass its object, who never, by
any chance, returned it, although he occasionally addressed his wife. The ladies
of Bonniemeer he professed himself delighted to welcome, and hoped they
would often take compassion upon Mrs. Luttrell, who was too much of an invalid
to move about much.
The conversation no longer lagged. Inquiring if Neria had seen the sunset
of the preceding night, Luttrell launched into some new theories of atmospheric
effects, solar rays, and the aurora; had some new discoveries in the moon to
narrate; and, with a turning toward Francia, closed with a droll story of a farmer
who must cut his salt hay in apogee, and, because his work pressed, sent
to Cambridge to request that apogee might be put off a week or two, offering to
pay “anything in reason” for the accommodation. Then be spoke of Vaughn's
devotion to his country's cause, and, with a half glance toward his wife, said
that “had he not a paramount duty at home, nothing should deter him from following
so fine an example.”
A sudden impulse drew Neria's eyes to Mrs. Luttrell's face as these words
were spoken, in time to see the doubt, the terror, the torturing uncertainty,
deepening and deepening in the great blue eyes, while they dwelt as earnestly
upon the speaker's face as might those of a child on the page where is written
a fascinating tale in an unknown tongue.
Luttrell felt the gaze—felt its expression, too, as the sudden knitting of the
brows and compression of the lips sufficiently proved; but still he never looked
toward his wife, never paused in his conversation, but presently, as if unconsciously,
took a fire-screen from the table, and, playing with it while he talked,
held it between his wife and himself.
The face of the invalid grew clouded. She moved uneasily upon her couch,
closed her eyes for a moment, and lay quite still, as if gathering strength for a
struggle, and then opening them wide, while all the power of her body seemed
gathered in their luminous rays, she fixed upon Luttrell a gaze which pierced
through every defence, every subterfuge—a gaze which, though it might drain
the vital energy of that delicate organization, could not fail of its object. Luttrell
paused suddenly in what he was saying, threw down the fire-screen, and
walked to the window. His wife moved slightly, that she might still keep her
eyes upon him.
Neria found herself oppressed and agitated with the mystery floating around
her, and blending with the old mystery of the place, which had of late begun to
haunt her with a sense of duty unfulfilled. She glanced at Francia and rose to
go. Mrs. Luttrell half rose, made an adieu as brief as courtesy would admit,
and sank back. Her husband, visibly anxious to escape the room, seized his
hat and escorted the ladies to their carriage. As they drove down the hill they
saw him turn toward the beach and stroll away with the air of a man who has
several hours to dispose of, and is in no hurry.
“He won't go home very soon, by his looks,” said Francia, laughing, as she
touched her ponies with the whip.
“No.”
“How do you like Mrs. Luttrell?”
“She is very interesting—I pity her.
“Well, I don't know. She didn't seem interesting to me; I thought her
too much taken up with herself, and dull, like all sick people. I like Doctor
Luttrell ever so much,” returned Francia, positively; and Neria said, pointing
to the headland before them,
“See the Lion's Head against the evening sky. Isn't it grand?”
