75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

‘And,’ continued Seth, seeing that the objection was not pressed, ‘he’s one of them desprit men! A reg’lar fighter! Killed two or three men in dools!’

Mrs. Rivers stared. ‘What could Dr. Duchesne have been thinking of? Why, we wouldn’t be safe in the house with him!’

Again Seth’s sense of equity triumphed. ‘I never heard of his fightin’ anybody but his own kind, and when he was bullyragged. And ez to women he’s quite t’other way in fact, and that’s why I think ye oughter know it afore you let him come. He don’t go round with decent women. In fact’ – But here Mr. Rivers, in the sanctity of conjugal confidences and the fullness of Bible reading, used a few strong scriptural substantives happily unnecessary to repeat here.

‘Seth!’ said Mrs. Rivers suddenly, ‘you seem to know this man.’

The unexpectedness and irrelevancy of this for a moment startled Seth. But that chaste and God-fearing man had no secrets. ‘Only by hearsay, Jane,’ he returned quietly; ‘but if ye say the word I’ll stop his comin’ now.’

‘It’s too late,’ said Mrs. Rivers decidedly.

‘I reckon not,’ returned her husband, ‘and that’s why I came straight here. I’ve only got to meet them at the depot and say this thing can’t be done – and that’s the end of it. They’ll go off quiet to the hotel.’

‘I don’t like to disappoint the doctor, Seth,’ said Mrs. Rivers. ‘We might,’ she added, with a troubled look of inquiry at her husband, ‘we might take that Mr. Hamlin on trial. Like as not he won’t stay, anyway, when he sees what we’re like, Seth. What do you think? It would be only our Christian duty, too.’

‘I was thinkin’ o’ that as a professin’ Christian, Jane,’ said her husband. ‘But supposin’ that other Christians don’t look at it in that light. Thar’s Deacon Stubbs and his wife and the parson. Ye remember what he said about “no covenant with sin”?’

‘The Stubbses have no right to dictate who I’ll have in my house,’ said Mrs. Rivers quickly, with a faint flush in her rather sallow cheeks.

‘It’s your say and nobody else’s,’ assented her husband with grim submissiveness. ‘You do what you like.’

Mrs. Rivers mused. ‘There’s only myself and Melinda here,’ she said with sublime naivete; ‘and the children ain’t old enough to be corrupted. I am satisfied if you are, Seth,’ and she again looked at him inquiringly.

‘Go ahead, then, and get ready for ’em,’ said Seth, hurrying away with unaffected relief. ‘If you have everything fixed by nine o’clock, that’ll do.’

Mrs. Rivers had everything ‘fixed’ by that hour, including herself presumably, for she had put on a gray dress which she usually wore when shopping in the county town, adding a prim collar and cuffs. A pearl-encircled brooch, the wedding gift of Seth, and a solitaire ring next to her wedding ring, with a locket containing her children’s hair, accented her position as a proper wife and mother. At a quarter to nine she had finished tidying the parlor, opening the harmonium so that the light might play upon its polished keyboard, and bringing from the forgotten seclusion of her closet two beautifully bound volumes of Tupper’s ‘Poems’ and Pollok’s ‘Course of Time,’ to impart a literary grace to the centre table. She then drew a chair to the table and sat down before it with a religious magazine in her lap. The wind roared over the deep-throated chimney, the clock ticked monotonously, and then there came the sound of wheels and voices.

But Mrs. Rivers was not destined to see her guest that night. Dr. Duchesne, under the safe lee of the door, explained that Mr. Hamlin had been exhausted by the journey, and, assisted by a mild opiate, was asleep in the carriage; that if Mrs. Rivers did not object, they would carry him at once to his room. In the flaring and guttering of candles, the flashing of lanterns, the flapping of coats and shawls, and the bewildering rush of wind, Mrs. Rivers was only vaguely conscious of a slight figure muffled tightly in a cloak carried past her in the arms of a grizzled negro up the staircase, followed by Dr. Duchesne. With the closing of the front door on the tumultuous world without, a silence fell again on the little parlor.

When the doctor made his reappearance it was to say that his patient was being undressed and put to bed by his negro servant, who, however, would return with the doctor to-night, but that the patient would be left with everything that was necessary, and that he would require no attention from the family until the next day. Indeed, it was better that he should remain undisturbed. As the doctor confined his confidences and instructions entirely to the physical condition of their guest, Mrs. Rivers found it awkward to press other inquiries.

‘Of course,’ she said at last hesitatingly, but with a certain primness of expression, ‘Mr. Hamlin must expect to find everything here very different from what he is accustomed to – at least from what my husband says are his habits.’