A Terrible Secret Part 47

The middle of the day is past before one by one they straggle down.

Breakfast awaits each newcomer, hot and tempting. Trix eats hers with a relish. Trix possesses one of the chief elements of perpetual human happiness--an appet.i.te that never fails, a digestion that, in her own metaphorical American language, "never goes back on her." But Edith looks f.a.gged and spiritless. If people are to be supernaturally brilliant and bright, dashing and fascinating all night long, people must expect to pay the penalty next day, when la.s.situde and reaction set in.

"My poor Edie!" Mr. Charles Stuart remarks, compa.s.sionately, glancing at the wan cheeks and l.u.s.treless eyes, as he lights his after-breakfast cigar, "you do look most awfully used up. What a pity for their peace of mind, some of your frantic adorers of last night can't see you now.

Let me recommend you to go back to bed and try an S. and B."

"An 'S. and B.'?" Edith repeats vaguely.

"Soda and Brandy. It's the thing, depend upon it, for such a case as yours. I've been seedy myself before now, and know what I'm talking about. I'll mix it for you, if you like."

There is a copy of Tennyson, in blue and gold, beside Miss Darrell, and Miss Darrell's reply is to fling it at Mr. Stuart's head. It is a last effort of expiring nature; she sinks back exhausted among her cushions. Charley departs to enjoy his Manila out under the waving trees, and Sir Victor, looking fresh and recuperated, strolls in and bends over her.

"My dear Edith," he says, "how pale you are this morning--how tired you look. If one ball is going to exhaust you like this, how will you stand the wear and tear of London seasons in the blissful time to come?"

She does not blush--she turns a trifle impatiently away from him and looks out. She can see Charley and Hammond smoking sociably together in the sunny distance.

"I will grow used to it, I dare say. 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'"

"Have you had breakfast?"

"I made an effort and failed. I watched Trix eat hers, however, and that refreshed me quite as well. It was invigorating only to look at her."

He smiles and bends lower, drawing one long brown silken tress of hair fondly through his fingers, feeling as though he would like to stoop and kiss the pale, weary face. But Trix is over yonder, pretending to read, and kissing is not to be thought of.

"I am going over to Catheron Royals," he whispered; "suppose you come--the walk will do you good. I am giving orders about the fitting up of the old place. Did I tell you the workmen came yesterday?"

"Yes; you told me."

"Shall I ring for your hat and parasol? Do come, Edith."

"Excuse me, Sir Victor," Edith answers, with an impatient motion, "I feel too tired--too lazy, which ever you like--to stir. Some other day I will go with pleasure--just now I feel like lying here and doing the _dolce far niente_. Don't let me detain you, however."

He turns to leave her with a disappointed face. Edith closes her eyes and takes an easier position among the pillows. The door closes behind him; Trix flings down her book and bursts forth:

"Of all the heartless, cold-blooded animals it has ever been my good fortune to meet, commend me to Edith Darrell!"

The dark eyes unclose and look up at her.

"My dear Trix! what's the matter with you now? What new enormity have I committed?"

"Oh, nothing new--nothing new at all," is Trixy's scornful response; "it is quite in keeping with the rest of your conduct. To be purely and entirely selfish is the normal state of the future Lady Catheron!

Poor Sir Victor! who has won you. Poor Charley! who has lost you. I hardly know which I pity most."

"I don't see that you need waste your precious pity on either,"

answered Edith, perfectly unmoved by Miss Stuart's vituperation; "keep it for me. I shall make Sir Victor a very good wife as wives go, and for Charley--well, Lady Gwendoline is left to console him."

"Yes, of course, there is Lady Gwendoline. O Edith! Edith! what are you made of? Flesh and blood like other people, or waxwork, with a stone for a heart? How can you sell yourself, as you are going to do?

Sir Victor Catheron is no more to you than his hall-porter, and yet you persist in marrying him. You love my brother and yet you hand him over to Lady Gwendoline. Come, Edith, be honest for once; you love Charley, don't you?"

"It is rather late in the day for such tender confessions as that,"

Edith replies, with a reckless sort of laugh; "but yes--if the declaration does you any good, Trix--I love Charley."

"And you give him up! Miss Darrell, I give you up as a conundrum I can't solve. Rank and t.i.tle are all very well--n.o.body thinks more of them than I do; but if _I_ loved a man," cried Trix, with kindling eyes and glowing cheeks, "I'd marry him! Yes; I would, though he were a beggar."

Edith looked up at her kindly, with a smothered sigh.

"I believe you, Trix; but then you are different from me." She half-raised herself, looking dreamily out on the sunlit prospect of lawn, and coppice, and woodland. "Here it is: I love Charley, but I love myself better. O Trix, child, don't let us talk about it; I am tired, and my head aches." She pushed back the heavy, dark hair wearily off her temples with both hands. "I am what you call me, a selfish wretch--a heartless little brute--and I am going to marry Sir Victor Catheron. Pity him, if you like, poor fellow! for he loves me with his whole heart, and he is a brave and loyal gentleman. But don't pity your brother, my dear; believe me, he doesn't need it. He's a good fellow, Charley, and he likes me, but he won't break his heart or commit suicide while he has a cigar left."

"Here he comes!" exclaimed Trix, "and I believe he has heard us."

"Let him come," Edith returns, lying listlessly back among her cushions once more. "It doesn't matter if he has. It will be no news to _him_."

"It is a pity you should miss each other, though," Trix says sarcastically, as she turns to go; "such thorough philosophers both; I believe you were made for each other, and, as far as easy-going selfishness is concerned, there is little to choose between you. It's a thousand pities Sir Victor can't hear all this."

"He might if he liked," is Edith's answer. "I shouldn't care. Charley!"

as Charley comes in and Trix goes out, "have you been eavesdropping?

Don't deny it, sir, if you have!"

Charley takes a position in an easy-chair some yards distant, and looks at her lying there, languid and lovely.

"I have been eavesdropping--I never deny my small vices. Hammond left me to go to the stables, and, strolling under the window, I overheard you and Trix. Open confession is beneficial, no doubt; but, my dear cousin, you really shouldn't make it in so audible a tone. It might have been Sir Victor instead of me."

She says nothing. The sombre look he has learned to know is in her dusk eyes, on her dark, colorless face.

"Poor Sir Victor!" he goes on; "he loves you--not a doubt of that, Dithy--to the depths of idiocy, where you know so well how to cast your victims; but hard hit as he is, I wonder _what_ he would say if he heard all this!"

"You might tell him, Charley," Edith says. "I shouldn't mind much, and he _might_ jilt me--who can tell? I think it would do us both good.

You could say, 'Look here: don't marry Edith Darrell, Sir Victor; she isn't worthy of you or any good man. She is full of pride, vanity, ambition, selfishness, ill-temper, cynicism, and all uncharitableness.

She is _blase_ at nineteen--think what she will be at nine-and-twenty.

She doesn't love you--I know her well enough to be sure she never will, partly because a heart was left out in her hard anatomy, partly because--because all the liking she ever had to give, went long ago to somebody else.' Charley, I think he would give me up, and I'd respect him for it, if he knew that. Tell him, if you have the courage, and when he casts me off, come to me and make me marry you.

You can do it, you know; and when the honeymoon is over--when poverty stalks in at the door and love flies out of the window--when we hate each other as only ill-a.s.sorted wives and husbands ever hate--let the thought that we have done the 'All for love, and the world well lost'

business, to the bitter end, console us."

She laughs recklessly; she feels reckless enough to say anything, do anything, this morning. Love, ambition, rank, wealth--what empty baubles they all look, seen through tired eyes the day after a ball!

He sits silent, watching her thoughtfully.

"I don't understand you, Edith," he says. "I feel like asking you the same question Trix did. _Why_ do you marry Sir Victor?"

"Why do I marry him?" she repeated. "Well--a little because of his handsome face and stately bearing, and the triumph of carrying off a prize, for which your Lady Gwendoline and half a score more have battled. A little because he pleads so eloquently, and loves me as no other mortal man did, or ever will; and oh! Charley, a great deal because he is Sir Victor Catheron of Catheron Royals, with a rent-roll of twenty thousand a year, and more, and a name that is older than Magna Charta. If there be any virtue in truth, there--you have it, plain, unvarnished. I like him--who could help it; but love him--no!" She clasped her hands above her head, and gazed dreamily out at the sparkling sunlit scene. "I shall be very fond of him, very proud of him, when I am his wife--that I know. He will enter Parliament, and make speeches, and write political pamphlets, and redress the wrongs of the people. He's the sort of man politicians are made of--the sort of man a wife can be proud of. And on my wedding day, or perhaps a day or two before, you and I shall shake hands, sir, and see each other no more."

"No more?" he repeats.

"Well, for a year or two at least, until all the folly of the past can be remembered only as a thing to be laughed at. Or until there is a tall, handsome Mrs. Stuart, or, more likely, a Lady Gwendoline Stuart.

And Charley," speaking hurriedly now, and not meeting the deep gray eyes she knows are fixed upon her, "the locket with my picture and the letters--you won't want them _then_--suppose you let me have them back."

"I won't want them then, certainly," Charley responds, "if by 'then'

you mean when I am the husband of the tall, fascinating Mrs. Stuart or Lady Gwendoline. But as I have not that happiness yet, suppose you allow me to retain them until I have. Sir Victor will never know, and he would not mind much if he did. We are cousins, are we not? and what more natural than that cousins once removed should keep each other's pictures? By the bye, I see you still wear that little trumpery pearl and turquoise brooch I gave you, with my photo at the back. Give it to me, Edie; turquoise does not become your brown skin, my dear, and I'll give you a ruby pin with Sir Victor's instead. Perhaps, as turquoise does become her, Lady Gwendoline will accept this as love's first timid offering. The rubies will do twice as well for you."