A Terrible Secret, May Agnes Fleming [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

go and ask her to marry you!' And you will look at him with a helpless sigh, and go. Your father will select your wife, sir, and you'll take her, like a good boy, when you're told. I shouldn't wonder now, but that it is to select a wife for you, and a husband for Trixy, he is taking this projected trip to Europe."

"Shouldn't you? Neither should I. Never wonder. Against my principles," Charley murmurs.

"There are plenty of titled aristocracy abroad--so I am told--ready to silver-gild their coronets by a union with plutocracy. Plenty Lady Janes and Lady Marys ready to sell themselves to the highest bidder."

"As Edith Darrell is?"

"As Edith Darrell is. It's all very fine talking of love and devotion, and the emptiness of life without. Believe me, if one has plenty of money one can dispense with love. I've read a good many novels, but they haven't turned my head on _that_ subject. From all I've read, indeed, I should think it must be a very uncomfortable sort of intermittent fever, indeed. Don't love anybody except yourself, and it is out of the power of any human being to make you _very_ wretched."

"A sentiment whose truth is only equaled by its--selfishness."

"Yes, it is selfish; and it is your thoroughly selfish people, who get the best of everything in this world. I am selfish and worldly--ambitious and heartless, and all that is abominable. I may as well own it. You'll find it out for yourself soon."

"A most unnecessary acknowledgment, my dear child--it is patent to the dullest observer. But, now, Edith--look here--this is serious, mind!" He raises himself again on his elbow, and looks, with a curious smile into her darkly-earnest, cynical young face. "Suppose I am madly in love with you--'madly in love' is the correct phrase, isn't it?--suppose I am at your feet, going through all the phases of the potential mood, 'commanding, exhorting, entreating' you to marry me--you wouldn't say no, would you, Edie? You like me--don't deny it. You know you do--like me well enough to marry me to-morrow. Would you refuse me in spite of my dependence on my father, and my empty purse?"

He took her hand, and held it tightly, despite her struggles.

"Would you, Edie?" he says, putting his arm around her waist. "I'm not a sentimental fellow, but I believe in love. Come! you wouldn't--you couldn't bid me go."

Her color had risen--that lovely rose-pink color, that lit her brunette face into such beauty--but she resolutely freed herself, and met his half-tender, half-merry glance, full.

"I would," she said, "if I--liked you so, that you filled my whole heart. Let me go, sir, and no more of this nonsense. I know what I am talking about, and what comes of marrying for love. There was my own mother, she left a rich and luxurious home, wealthy suitors, all the comforts and elegances of life, without which life isn't worth living, and ran away with papa. Then followed long years of poverty, discomfort, illness, and miserable grubbing. She never complained--perhaps she wasn't even very unhappy; her's wasn't the sort of love that flies out of the window when poverty comes in at the door--she just faded away and died. For myself I have been dissatisfied with _my_ lot ever since I can remember--pining for the glory and grandeur of this wicked world. There is but one way in which they can ever be mine--by marriage. If marriage will not bring them, then I will go to my grave Edith Darrell."

"Which I don't think you will," Mr. Stuart responded. "Young ladies like you, who set out on the search-matrimonial with lots of common-sense, worldliness, selfishness, and mercenary motives, generally reach the goal. It's a fair enough exchange--so much youth and good looks for so many thousand dollars. I wish you all success, Miss Darrell, in your laudable undertaking. It is well we should understand each other, at once and forever, or even I some day might be tempted to make a fool of myself. Your excellent counsels, my dearest cousin, will be invaluable to me, should my lagging footsteps falter by the way. Edith! where have you learned to be so hard, so worldly, so--if you will pardon me--so unwomanly?"

"Is it unwomanly?" she repeated dreamily. "Well, perhaps it is. I am honest at least--give me credit for that. My own hard life has taught me, books have taught me, looking at my mother and listening to my step-mother have taught me. I feel old at eighteen--old and tired. I am just one of those girls, I think, who turn out very good or very bad women, as fate deals with them. It's not too late yet to draw back, Charley. Your mother can easily get another young lady to do the French and German business. You can tell her I don't suit, and leave me at home."

"Not too late to draw back," he said, with his indolent smile. "Is there ever such a thing as drawing back at all? What is done is done. I couldn't go without you now, if I tried. O, don't look alarmed, I don't mean anything. You amuse and interest me, that is all. You're something of a study--entirely different from the genus young lady I'm accustomed to. Only--keep your frankness for Cousin Charley, he's harmless; don't display it to the rest of the world. It might spoil your chances. Even senile millionnaires don't care to walk into the trap, unless the springs are hidden in roses. Come, throw down that endless sewing, and let's have a walk on the beach. Who knows when we may see the sun go down, together again, over the classic waters of Sandypoint Bay."

Edith laughed, but she rose to obey.

"And I thought you were not sentimental. One would think it the Bay of Naples. However, as we start to-morrow, I don't mind going down and bidding the old rocks and sands good-by."

She put on her hat, and the two went wandering away together, to watch the sun set over the sea. In the rosy light of the spring sunset, the fishing boats drifted on the shining waters, and the fisherman's chant came borne to their ears.

"It reminds me of that other April evening two years ago, Dithy, when we came down here to say good-by. You cried then at parting--do you remember? But you were only sixteen, poor child, and knew no better. You wouldn't cry now, would you, for any man in the universe?"

"Not for Charley Stuart certainly--he needn't think it."

"He doesn't think it, my pet; he never looks for impossibilities. I wonder if that night in the snow were to come again if you'd risk your life now, as you did then?"

"Risk my life! What bosh! There was no risk; and bad as I am, and heartless as I've grown, I don't think--I _don't_ think I'd walk away, and leave any poor wretch to die. Yes, Charley, if the night in the snow came over again, I'd do now as I did then."

"I don't believe it was a kindness after all," Charley responds. "I have a presentiment that a day will come, Dithy, when I'll hate you. I shouldn't have suffered much if you had let me freeze to death. And I've a strong prescience (is that the word) that I'll fall in love with you some day, and be jilted, and undergo untold torture, and hate you with a perfect frenzy. It will be a very fatiguing experience, but I feel in my bones that it is to be."

"Indeed! A Saul among the prophets. I shall not be surprised, however; it is my usual fate to be hated. And now, as we seem to have drifted into disagreeable and personal sort of talk, suppose we change the subject? There is a dory yonder; if your indolent sultanship can bear the labor of steering, I'll give you a last row across the bay."

They take the dory and glide away. Charley lies back, his hat pulled over his eyes, smoking a cigar and steering. She has the oars, the red sunlight is on her face. Edith defies tan and sunburn. She looks at lazy Charley, and sings as she pulls, a saucy smile of defiance on her lips:

"It was on a Monday morning, Right early in the year, That Charley came to our town, The young Chevalier. And Charley he's my darling, My darling, my darling; And Charley he's my darling, The young Chevalier!"

What Charley answers is not on record. Perhaps the aged millionnaire, who is to be the future happy possessor of Miss Darrell's charms, would not care to hear it. They drift on--they are together--they ask no more. The rosy after-glow of the sunset fades out, the night comes white with stars, the faint spring wind sighs over the bay, and both are silent. "And," says Charley's inner consciousness, "if this be not falling in love, I wonder what is?"

They linger yet longer. It is the last night, and romantically enough, for so worldly and cynical a pair, they watch the faint little April moon rise. Edith looks over her left shoulder at it, and says something under her breath.

"What invocation are you murmuring there?" Charley asks, half asleep.

"I was wishing. I always wish when I see the new moon."

"For a rich husband of course, Edie!" He sits up suddenly. "There's the baronet! Suppose you go for _him_."

"'Go for him!' What a horribly vulgar way you have of speaking. No. I'll leave him for Trixy. Have you had enough of starlight and moonlight, Mr. Stuart, on Sandypoint Bay, because I'm going to turn and row home. I've had no supper, and I shall eat you if we stay here fasting much longer."

She rows back, and arm in arm they ascend the rocky path, and linger one last moment at the garden gate.

"So ends the old life," Edith says, softly. "It is my last night at home. I ought to feel sad, I suppose, but I don't. I never felt so happy in my life."

He is holding her hand. For two who are not lovers, and never mean to be, they understand each other wonderfully well.

"And remember your promise," he answers. "Let the life that is coming bring what it may, you are never to blame me."

Then Mrs. Darrell's tall, spare figure appears in the moonlight, summoning them sharply to tea, and hands are unclasped, and in silence they follow her.

The first train from Sandypoint to Boston bears away Edith Darrell and Charley Stuart. Not alone together, however--forbid it Mrs. Grundy! Mrs. Rogers, the Sandypoint milliner, is going to New York for the summer fashions, and the young lady travels under her protection. They reach Boston in time for the train that connects with the Fall River boats. It has been a day of brightest sunshine; it is a lovely spring night. They dine on board. Mrs. Rogers is sleepy and tired and goes to bed (she and Edith share the same state-room), with a last charge to Mr. Stuart not to keep Miss Darrell too long on deck in the night air.

They float grandly up the bright river. Two wandering harpists and a violinist play very sweetly near them, and they walk up and down, talking and feeling uncommonly happy and free, until Charley's watch points to eleven, and the music comes to a stop. They say good-night. She goes to