Darkness and Daylight Part 31

Then, with a half feeling of relief, she ran back to her room, bathing her eyes afresh, and succeeding in removing the redness to such an extent, that by lamplight no one would suspect she had been crying. Her headache was gone, and with spirits somewhat elated, she started again for the parlor where she succeeded in entertaining Richard's guests entirely to his satisfaction.

It was growing late, and the clock was striking eleven when at last Richard summoned Victor, bidding him show the gentleman to their rooms. As they were leaving the parlor Edith came to Richard's side and in a whisper so low that no one heard her, save himself, said to him,

"Tell Victor he needn't come back."

He understood her meaning, and said to his valet,

"I shall not need your services to-night. You may retire as soon as you choose."

Something in his manner awakened Victor's suspicions, and his keen eyes flashed upon Edith, who, with a haughty toss of the head, turned away to avoid meeting it again.

The door was dosed at last; Victor was gone; their guests were gone, and she was alone with Richard, who seemed waiting for her to speak; but Edith could not. The breath she fancied would come so freely with Victor's presence removed, would scarcely come at all, and she felt the tears gathering like a flood every time she looked at the sightless man before her, and thought of what was to come. By a thousand little devices she strove to put it off, and remembering that the piano was open, she walked with a faltering step across the parlor, closed the instrument, smoothed the heavy cover, arranged the sheets of music, whirled the music stool as high as she could, turned it back as low as she could, sat down upon it, crushed with her fingers two great tears, which, with all her winking she could not keep in subjection, counted the flowers on the paper border and wondered how long she should probably live. Then, with a mighty effort she arose, and with a step which this time did not falter, went and stood before Richard, who was beginning to look troubled at her protracted silence. He knew she was near him now, he could hear her low breathing, and he waited anxiously for her to speak.

Edith's face was a study then. Almost every possible emotion was written upon it. Fear, anguish, disappointed hopes, cruel longings for the past, terrible shrinkings from the present, and still more terrible dread of the future. Then these pa.s.sed away, and were succeeded by pity, sympathy, grat.i.tude, and a strong desire to do right. The latter feelings conquered, and sitting down by Richard, she took his warm hand between her two cold ones, and said to him,

"'Tis the twelfth of May to-night, did you know it?"

Did he know it? He had thought of nothing else the livelong day, and when, early in the morning, he heard that she was sick, a sad foreboding had swept over him, lest what he coveted so much should yet be withheld. But she was there beside him. She had sought the opportunity and asked if he knew it was the twelfth, and, drawing her closer to him, he answered back: "Yes, darling; 'tis the day on which you were to bring me your decision. You have kept your word, birdie. You have brought it to me whether good or bad. Now tell me, is it the old blind man's wife, the future mistress of Collingwood, that I encircle with my arm?"

He bent down to listen for the reply, feeling her breath stir his hair, and hearing each heart-beat as it counted off the seconds.

Then like a strain of music, sweet and rich, but oh, so touchingly sad, the words came floating in a whisper to his ear, "Yes, Richard, your future wife; but please, don't call yourself the old blind man. It makes you seem a hundred times my father. You are not old, Richard--no older than I feel!" and the newly betrothed laid her head on Richard's shoulder, sobbing pa.s.sionately.

Did all girls behave like this? Richard wished he knew. Did sweet Lucy Collingwood, when she gave her young spring life to his father's brown October? Lucy had loved her husband, he knew, and there was quite as much difference between them as between himself and Edith. Possibly 'twas a maidenly weakness to cry, as Edith was doing. He would think so at all events. It were death to think otherwise, and caressing her with unwonted tenderness, he kissed her tears away, telling her how happy she had made him by promising to be his--how the darkness, the dreariness all was gone, and the world was so bright and fair. Then, as she continued weeping and he remembered what had heretofore pa.s.sed between them, he said to her earnestly: "Edith, there is one thing I would know.

Is it a divided love you bring me, or is it no love at all. I have a right to ask you this, my darling. Is it grat.i.tude alone which prompted your decision? If it is, Edith, I would die rather than accept it. Don't deceive me, darling, I cannot see your face-- cannot read what's written there. Alas! alas! that I am blind to- night; but I'll trust you, birdie; I'll believe what you may tell me. Has an affection, different from a sister's, been born within the last four weeks? Speak! do you love me more than you did? Look into my eyes, dearest; you will not deal falsely with me then."

Like an erring, but penitent child, Edith crept into his lap, but did not look into the sightless eyes. She dared not, lest the gaze should wring from her quivering lips the wild words trembling there, "Forgive me, Richard, but I loved Arthur first." So she hid her face in his bosom, and said to him,

"I do not love you, Richard, as you do me. It came too sudden, and I had not thought about it. But I love you dearly, very dearly, and I want so much to be your wife. I shall rest so quietly when I have you to lean upon, you to care for. I am young for you, I know, but many such matches have proved happy, and ours a.s.suredly will. You are so good, so n.o.ble, so unselfish, that I shall be happy with you. I shall be a naughty, wayward wife, I fear, but you can control me, and you must. We'll go to Europe sometime, Richard, and visit Bingen on the Rhine, where the little baby girl fell in the river, and the brave boy Richard jumped after her.

Don't you wish you'd let me die? There would then have been no bad black-haired Edith lying in your lap, and torturing you with fears that she does not love you as she ought."

Edith's was an April temperament, and already the sun was shining through the cloud; the load at her heart was not so heavy, nor the future half so dark. Her decision was made, her destiny accepted, and henceforth she would abide by it nor venture to look back.

"Are you satisfied to take me on my terms?" she asked, as Richard did not immediately answer.

He would rather she had loved him more, but it was sudden, he knew, and she was young. He was terribly afraid, it is true, that grat.i.tude alone had influenced her actions, but the germ of love was there, he believed; and by and by it would bear the rich, ripe fruit. He could wait for that; and he loved her so much, wanted her so much, needed her so much, that he would take her on any terms.

"Yes" he said at last, resting his chin upon her bowed head, "I am satisfied, and never since my rememberance, has there come to Richard Harrington a moment so fraught with bliss as this in which I hold you in my arms and know I hold my wife, my darling wife, sweetest name ever breathed by human tongue--and Edith, if you must sicken of me, do it now--to-night. Don't put it off, for every fleeting moment binds me to you with an added tie, which makes it harder to lose you."

"Richard," and, lifting up her head, Edith looked into the eyes she could not meet before, "I swear to you, solemnly, that never, by word or deed, will I seek to be released from our engagement, and if I am released, it will be because you give me up of your own free will. You will be the one to break it, not I."

"Then it will not be broken," came in a quick response from Richard, as he held closer to him one whom he now felt to be his forever.

The lamps upon the table, and the candles on the mantel flashed and smoked, and almost died away--the fire on the marble hearth gave one or two expiring gasps and then went out--the hands of the clock moved onward, pointing to long after midnight, and still Richard, loth to let his treasure go, kept her with him, talking to her of his great happiness, and asking if early June would be too soon for her to be his bride.

"Yes, yes, much too soon," cried Edith. "Give me the whole summer in which to be free. I've never been any where you know. I want to see the world. Let's go to Saratoga, and to all those places I've heard so much about. Then, in the autumn, we'll have a famous wedding at Collingwood, and I will settle down into the most demure, obedient of wives."

Were it not that the same roof sheltered them both, Richard would have acceded to this delay, but when he reflected that he should not be parted from Edith any more than if they were really married, he consented, stipulating that the wedding should take place on the anniversary of the day when she first came to him with flowers, and called him "poor blind man."

"You did not think you'd ever be the poor blind man's wife," he said, asking her, playfully, if she were not sorry even now.

"No," she answered. Nor was she. In fact, she scarcely felt at all. Her heart was palsied, and lay in her bosom like a block of stone--heavy, numb, and sluggish in its beat.

Of one thing, only, was she conscious, and that a sense of weariness--a strong desire to be alone, up stairs, where she was not obliged to answer questions, or listen to loving words, of which she was so unworthy. She was deceiving Richard, who, when his quick ear caught her smothered yawn, as the little clock struck one, bade her leave him, chiding himself for keeping her so long from the rest he knew she needed.

"For me, I shall never know fatigue or pain again," he said, as he led her to the door, "but my singing-bird is different--she must sleep. G.o.d bless you, darling. You have made the blind man very happy."

He kissed her forehead, her lips, her hands, and then released her, standing in the door and listening to her footsteps as they went up the winding stairs and out into the hall beyond--the dark, gloomy hall, where no light was, save a single ray, shining through the keyhole of Victor's door.

CHAPTER XXVI.

EDITH AND THE WORLD.

"Victor is faithful," Edith said, as she saw the light, and fancied that the Frenchman was still up, waiting to a.s.sist his master.

But not for Richard did Victor keep the watch that night. He would know how long that interview lasted below, and when it was ended he would know its result. What Victor designed he was pretty sure to accomplish, and when, by the voices in the lower hall, he knew that Edith was coming, he stole on tip-toe to the bal.u.s.trade, and, leaning over, saw the parting at the parlor door, feeling intuitively that Edith's relations to Richard had changed since he last looked upon her. Never was servant more attached to his master than was Victor Dupres to his, and yet he was strongly unwilling that Edith's glorious beauty should be wasted thus.

"If she loved him," he said to himself, as, gliding back to his room, he cautiously shut the door, ere Edith reached the first landing. "If she loved him, I would not care. More unsuitable matches than this have ended happily--but she don't. Her whole life is bound with that of another, and she shrinks from Mr.

Harrington as she was not wont to do. I saw it in her face, as she turned away from him. There'll be another grave in the Collingwood grounds--another name on the tall monument, 'Edith, wife of Richard Harrington, aged 20.'"

Victor wrote the words upon a slip of paper, reading them over until tears dimmed his vision, for, in fancy, the imaginative Frenchman a.s.sisted at Edith's obsequies, and even heard the grinding of the hea.r.s.e wheels, once foretold by Nina. Several times he peered out into the silent hall, seeing the lamplight shining from the ventilator over Edith's door, and knowing by that token that she had not retired. What was she doing there so long?

Victor fain would know, and as half-hour after half-hour went by, until it was almost four, he stepped boldly to the door and knocked. Long a.s.sociation with Victor had led Edith to treat him more as an equal than a servant; consequently he took liberties both with her and Richard, which no other of the household would dare to do, and now, as there came no response, he cautiously turned the k.n.o.b and walked into the room where, in her crimson dressing-gown, her hair unbound and falling over her shoulders, Edith sat, her arms crossed upon the table, and her face upon her arms. She was not sleeping, for as the door creaked on its hinges, she looked up, half-pleased to meet only the good-humored face of Victor where she had feared to see that of Richard.

"Miss Edith, this is madness--this is folly," and Victor sat down before her. "I was a fool to think it was Mrs. Atherton."

"Victor Dupres, what do you mean? What do you know? Why are you here?" and Edith's eyes flashed with insulted pride; but Victor did not quail before them. Gazing steadily at her, he replied, "You are engaged to your guardian, and you do not love him."

"Victor Dupres, _I_ DO!" and Edith struck her hand upon the table with a force which made the gla.s.s lamp rattle.

"Granted you do," returned Victor, "but how do you love him? As a brother, as a friend, as a father, if you will, but not as you should love your husband; not as you could love Arthur St. Claire, were he not bound by other ties,"

Across the table the blanched, frightened face of Edith looked, and the eyes which never before had been so black, scanned Victor keenly.

"What do you know of Arthur St. Claire's ties?" she asked at last, every word a labored breath.

Victor made no answer, but hurrying from the room, returned with the crumpled, soiled sheet of foolscap, which he placed before her, asking if she ever saw it before.

Edith's mind had been sadly confused when Nina read to her the SCRATCHING OUT, and she had forgotten it entirely, but it came back to her now, and catching up the papers, she recognized Richard's unmistakable hand-writing. He knew, then, of her love for Arthur--of the obstacle to that love--of the agony it cost her to give him up. He had deceived her--had won her under false pretenses, a.s.suming that she loved no one. She did not think this of Richard, and in her eyes, usually so soft and mild, there was a black, hard, terrible expression, as she whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "How came this in your possession?"

He told her how--thus exonerating Richard from blame, and the hard, angry look was drowned in tears as Edith wept aloud.

"Then he don't know it," she said at length, "Richard don't. I should hate him if he did and still wished me to be his wife."

"I can tell him," was Victor's dry response, and in an instant Edith was over where he sat.