Love Stories eBook

Mary Roberts Rinehart
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 282 pages of information about Love Stories.

Love Stories eBook

Mary Roberts Rinehart
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 282 pages of information about Love Stories.

I—­love you o—­own—­ly,
I love—­but—­you.

“Listen to that!” he said.  “Stomach’s gone, but still has a heart!”

Higgins came up the stairs heavily and stopped close by the red-haired person, whispering something to him.  There was a second’s pause.  Then the red-haired person gave the eggnog to Higgins and both disappeared.

Jane was puzzled.  She rather thought the furnace man had got out and listened for a scuffle, but none came.  She did, however, hear the singing cease below, and then commence with renewed vigour, and she heard Higgins slowly remounting the stairs.  He came in, with the empty glass and a sheepish expression.  Part of the eggnog was distributed over his person.

“He wants his nurse, ma’am,” said Higgins.  “Wouldn’t let me near him.  Flung a pillow at me.”

“Where is the doctor?” demanded Jane.

“Busy,” replied Higgins.  “One of the women is sick.”

Jane was provoked.  She had put some labour into the eggnog.  But it shows the curious evolution going on in her that she got out the eggs and milk and made another one without protest.  Then with her head up she carried it to the door.

“You might clear things away, Higgins,” she said, and went down the stairs.  Her heart was going rather fast.  Most of the men Jane knew drank more or less, but this was different.  She would have turned back halfway there had it not been for Higgins and for owning herself conquered.  That was Jane’s real weakness—­she never owned herself beaten.

The singing had subsided to a low muttering.  Jane stopped outside the door and took a fresh grip on her courage.  Then she pushed the door open and went in.

The light was shaded, and at first the tossing figure on the bed was only a misty outline of greys and whites.  She walked over, expecting a pillow at any moment and shielding the glass from attack with her hand.

“I have brought you another eggnog,” she began severely, “and if you spill it——­”

Then she looked down and saw the face on the pillow.

To her everlasting credit, Jane did not faint.  But in that moment, while she stood staring down at the flushed young face with its tumbled dark hair and deep-cut lines of dissipation, the man who had sung to her over the piano, looking love into her eyes, died to her, and Jane, cold and steady, sat down on the side of the bed and fed the eggnog, spoonful by spoonful, to his corpse!

When the blank-eyed young man on the bed had swallowed it all passively, looking at her with dull, incurious eyes, she went back to her room and closing the door put the washstand against it.  She did nothing theatrical.  She went over to the window and stood looking out where the trees along the drive were fading in the dusk from green to grey, from grey to black.  And over the transom came again and again monotonously the refrain: 

I—­love you o—­own—­ly,
I love—­but—­you.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Love Stories from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.