A Terrible Secret Part 32

"Have I not told you already--told you over and over again? If you don't despise me, and think me heartless and base, the fault has not been my want of candor. My cynicisms I mean, every word. If you had your father's wealth, the fortune he means to leave you, I would marry you to-morrow, and be," her lips trembled a little, "the happiest girl on earth."

"You don't care for me at all, then?" he calmly asks.

"Care for you! O Charley! can't you see? I am not _all_ selfish. I care for you so much that I would sooner die than marry you. For you a marriage with me means ruin--nothing else."

"My father is fond of me. I am his only son. He would relent."

"He never would," she answered firmly, "and you know it. Charley, the day he spoke to you in Cork, I was behind the window-curtains reading.

I heard every word. My first impulse was to come out and confront him--to throw back his favors and patronage, and demand to be sent home. A horrid bad temper is numbered among the list of my failings.

But I did not. I heard your calm reply--the 'soft answer that turneth away wrath,' and it fell like oil on my troubled spirit.

"'Don't lose your temper,' you said; 'Fred Darrell's daughter and I won't marry, if that's what you mean.'

"I admire your prudence and truth. I took the lesson home, and--stayed behind the curtains. And we will keep to that--you and Fred Darrell's daughter will never marry."

"But, Edith, you know what I meant. Good Heavens! you don't for a second suppose--"

"I don't for a second suppose anything but what is good and generous of you, Charley. I know you would face your father like a--like a 'griffin rampant,' to quote Trix, and brave all consequences, if I would let you. But I won't let you. You can't afford to defy your father. I can't afford to marry a poor man."

"I am young--I am strong--I can work. I have my hands and my head, a tolerable education, and many friends. We would not starve."

"We would not starve--perhaps," Edith says, and laughs again, rather drearily. "We would only grub along, wanting everything that makes life endurable, and be miserable beyond all telling before the first year ended. We don't want to hate each other--we don't want to marry.

You couldn't work, Charley--you were never born for drudgery. And I--I can't forget the training of my life even for you."

"You can't, indeed--you do your training credit," he answered bitterly.

"And so," she goes on, her face drooping, "don't be angry; you'll thank me for this some day. Let it be all over and done with to-night, and never be spoken of more. Oh, Charley, my brother, don't you see we could not be happy together--don't you see it is better we should part?"

"It shall be exactly as you wish. I am but a poor special pleader, and your worldly wisdom is so clear, the dullest intellect might comprehend it. You, throw me over without a pang, and you mean to marry the baronet. Only--as you are not yet his exclusive property, bought with a price--answer me this: You love me?"

Her head drooped lower, her eyes were full of pa.s.sionate tears, her heart full of pa.s.sionate pain. Throw him over without a pang! In her heart of hearts Edith Darrell knew what it cost her to be heartless to-night.

"Answer me!" he said imperiously, his eyes kindling. "Answer me! That much, at least, I claim as my right. Do you love me or do you not?"

And the answer comes very humbly and low.

"Charley! what need to ask? You know only too well--I do."

And then silence falls. He takes up the oars again--their soft dip, and the singing of the girl in the distant boat, the only sounds.

White moonlight and black shadows, islands overrun with arbutus, that "myrtle of Killarney," and frowning mountains on every hand. The words of the girl's gay song come over the water:

"The time I've lost in wooing, In watching and pursuing, The light that lies In woman's eyes Has been my heart's undoing.

"Though wisdom oft has sought me, I scorned the lore she brought me; My only books Were woman's looks, And folly's all they've taught me."

"And folly's all they've taught me!" Charley says at length. "Come what may, it is better that I should have spoken and you should have answered. Come what may--though you marry Sir Victor to-morrow--I would not have the past changed if I could."

"And you will not blame me too much--you will not quite despise me?"

she pleads, her voice broken, her face hidden in her hands. "I can't help it, Charley. I would rather die than be poor."

He knows she is crying; her tears move him strangely. They are in the shadow of Torc Mountain. He stops rowing for a moment, takes her hand, and lifts it to his lips.

"I will love you all my life," is his answer.

This is how two of the water-party were enjoying themselves. A quarter of a mile farther off, another interesting little scene was going on in another boat.

Trixy had been rattling on volubly. It was one of Trixy's fixed ideas that to entertain and fascinate anybody her tongue must go like a windmill. Sir Victor sat and listened rather absently, replied rather dreamily, and as if his mind were a hundred miles away. Miss Stuart took no notice, but kept on all the harder, endeavoring to be fascinating. But there is a limit even to the power of a woman's tongue. That limit was reached; there came a lull and a pause.

"The time I've lost in wooing," began the English girl in the third boat. The idea was suggestive; Trixy drew a deep breath, and made a fresh spurt--this time on the subject of the late Thomas Moore and his melodies. But the young baronet suddenly interposed.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Stuart," he began hastily, and in a somewhat nervous voice; "but there is a subject very near to my heart on which I should like to speak to you this evening."

Trix sat straight up in the stern of the boat, as if she had been galvanized. Her heart gave one great ecstatic thump. "Oh," thought Miss Stuart, "he's going to pop!" I grieve to relate it, but that was the identical way the young lady thought it. "He's going to pop, as sure as I live!"

There was a pause--unspeakably painful to Miss Stuart. "Yes, Sir Victor," she faltered in her most dulcet and encouraging accents.

"I had made up my mind not to speak of it at all," went on Sir Victor, looking embarra.s.sed and rather at a loss for words, "until we reached England. I don't wish to be premature. I--I dread a refusal so unspeakably, that I almost fear to speak at all."

What was Miss Stuart to say to this? What could any well-trained young lady say?

"Good gracious me!" (this is what she thought,) "why don't he speak out, and not go beating about the bush in this ridiculous manner!

What's he afraid of? Refusal, indeed! Stuff and nonsense!"

"It is only of late," pursued Sir Victor Catheron, "that I have quite realized my own feelings, and then when I saw the attention paid by another, and received with evident pleasure, it was my jealousy first taught me that I loved."

"He means Captain Hammond," thought Trixy; "he's jealous of him, as sure as a gun. How lucky we met him at Macroom."

"And yet," again resumed the baronet, with a faint smile, "I don't quite despair. I am sure, Miss Stuart, I have no real cause."

"No-o-o, I think not," faltered Miss Stuart.

"And when I address myself to your father and mother--as I shall very soon--you think, Miss Stuart, _they_ will also favor my suit?"

"_They_ favor his suit?" thought Trix, "good Heaven above! was ever earthly modesty like this young man's?" But aloud, still in the trembling tones befitting the occasion, "I--think so--I _know_ so, Sir Victor. It will be only too much honor, I'm sure."

"And--oh, Miss Stuart--Beatrix--if you will allow me to call you so--you think that when I speak--when I ask--I will be accepted?"

"He's a fool!" thought Beatrix, with an inward burst. "A bashful, ridiculous fool! Why, in the name of all that's namby-pamby, doesn't he pop the question, like a man, and have done with it? Bashfulness is all very well--n.o.body likes a little of it better than I do; but there is no use running it into the ground."

"You are silent," pursued Sir Victor. "Miss Stuart, it is not possible that I am too late, that there is a previous engagement?"

Miss Stuart straightened herself up, lifted her head, and smiled. She smiled in a way that would have driven a lover straight out of his senses.

"Call me Beatrix, Sir Victor; I like it best from my friends--from--from _you_. No, there is no previous engagement, and" (archly, this) "I am quite sure Sir Victor Catheron need never fear a refusal."

"Thanks." And precisely as another young gentleman was doing in the shadow of the "Torc," Sir Victor did in the shadow of the "Eagle's Nest." He lifted his fair companion's hand to his lips, and kissed it.