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

set the table. How odd, it seems to see Aunt Chatty working. The tea is sending its fragrance through the little rooms, the buttered toast is made, the cake is cut, the pink ham is sliced, everything looks nice and inviting. Suddenly there is the sound of footsteps on the stairs, of girls gay tones and sweet laughter--then the kitchen door flies open, and Trixy's well-remembered voice is animatedly exclaiming:

"Ma! is tea ready? I am famished and so is Nell. What! the table set in the parlor in state. Goodness!"

Edith rises, white as the dainty Marie-Stuart widow's cap she wears--still and beautiful she stands. She sees Trixy's tall figure, a smaller, slighter young lady beside her, and Charley standing behind both. Half a minute later Trix sweeps in, sees the motionless figure, and recoils with a shriek.

"Trix!" Edith advances with the word that is almost a sob. And Trixy's face grows radiant.

"It is! it _is_! it IS!"

She screams, and rushes forward, and catches Edith in a perfect bear's hug, laughing, crying, and kissing, all in a breath.


CHAPTER IX.

SAYING GOOD-BY.

No coldness about the welcome here, no ungracious remembrances of the past, no need ever to doubt Trixy's warm heart, and, generous, forgiving, impulsive nature.

All Edith's shortcomings were long ago forgotten and forgiven--it is in Edith's way to inspire ardent love. Trixy loves her as dearly, as warmly as she had ever done--she hugs, she kisses, she exclaims at sight of her, in a perfect rapture of joy:

"O darling!" she cries, "_how_ good it is to see you again! what a surprise is this! Charley, where are you? look here! Don't you know Edith?"

"Most undoubtedly I know Edith," Charley answers, advancing; "old age may have impaired my faculties, but still I recognize a familiar face when I see it. I told her I thought you would be glad to see her, but I didn't tell her you intended to eat her alive."

"You told her! Where? when?"

"In the store--this afternoon. She came in 'promiscuous' for black Lyon's velvet, wasn't it, Lady Catheron? You didn't get it, by the way. Permit me to inform you, in my professional capacity, that we have a very chaste and elegant assortment of the article always in stock. Trix, where's your manners? Here's Nellie hovering aloof in the background, waiting to be introduced. Allow _me_ to be master of the ceremonies--Lady Catheron, Miss Nellie Seton."

Both young ladies bowed--both looked each other full in the face--genuine admiration in Miss Seton's--keen, jealous scrutiny in Lady Catheron's. She saw a girl of two or three and twenty, under-sized and rather plump, with a face which in point of beauty would not for one instant compare with her own or Trixy's either. But it was such a thoroughly _good_ face. And the blue, beaming eyes, the soft-cut smiling mouth, gentle, and strong, and sweet, were surely made to win all hearts at sight. Not a beauty--something infinitely better, and as a rival, something infinitely more dangerous.

"Lady Catheron's name is familiar to me as a household word," Miss Seton said, with a frank little laugh, that subdued Edith at once. "Trix wakes with your name on her lips, I believe, and goes to sleep murmuring it at night. Lady Catheron doesn't know how madly jealous I have been of her before now."

Edith turns once more to Trix--faithful, friendly, loyal Trix--and stretches forth both hands, with a swift, graceful impulse, tears standing, large and bright, in her eyes.

"My own dear Trix!" is what she says.

"And now I'll run away," Miss Seton exclaims brightly; "auntie will expect me, and I know Trix has ten thousand things to tell and to hear. No, Trixy, not a word. Charley, what are you doing with your hat? put it down instantly--I don't want you. I would very much rather go home alone."

"Yes, it's so likely I'll let you. There's no earthly reason why you shouldn't stay; but if, with your usual obstinacy and strong-mindedness, you insist upon going--"

"I do insist upon going, and without an escort. You know you are rather a nuisance--in the way than otherwise--oh, I mean it I get home twice as fast when I go by myself."

He looks at her--Edith turns sick--sick, as she sees the look. He says something in too low a tone for the rest to hear. Miss Seton laughs, but her color rises and she objects no more. Edith sees it all. A gray-kidded hand is extended to her.

"Good-night, Lady Catheron," Miss Seton's bright, pleasant voice says, and Lady Catheron takes it, feeling in her heart that for once she cannot dislike a rival. This girl who will be Charley's wife--O blissful fate!--is worthy of him. They go out together, laughing as they go.

"Isn't she just the dearest darling!" cries Trix in her gushing way; "and O Edith! whatever would have become of us all without her, I shudder to think. In the dark days of our life, when friends were few and far between, she was our friend--our savior. She nursed mamma from the very jaws of death, she got me my place in the fancy-store, and I believe--she won't own it--but I do believe she saved Charley's life."

"Saved his life?" Edith falters.

"It was such an awful time," Trix says in sombre tones, "we were starving, Edith, literally starving. All our old friends had forsaken us; work we could not get, 'to beg we were ashamed.' If you had seen Charley in those days, gaunt, hollow-eyed, haggard, wretched. He looks and feels all right now," goes on Trix, brightening up a bit, "but _then_! it used to break my heart to look at him. He tried for work, from morning until night, and day after day he came home, footsore, weary, despairing. He could not leave mother and me, and go elsewhere--she was sick, father was dead--poor pa!--and I was just crazy, or near it. And one dark, dreadful night he went out, and down to the river, and--Nellie followed, and found him there. Ah Edith, he wasn't so much to blame; I suppose he was mad that night. She came up to him, and put her arms around him, as he stood in the darkness and the rain, and--I don't know what she said or did--but she brought him back to us. And Providence sent him work next day--the situation in the store he has now. I don't know about his merits as a salesman," says Trix, laughing, with her eyes full of tears "but he is immensely popular with the ladies. Nellie says it isn't his eloquence--where the other clerks expatiate fluently on the merits of ribbons, and gloves, and laces, shades and textures, Charley stands silent and lets them talk, and smiles and looks handsome. I suppose it answers, for they seem to like him. So now you see we get on splendidly, and I've almost forgotten that we were ever rich, and wore purple and fine linen, and feasted sumptuously every day."

"You are happy?" Edith asks, with wonder and envy in her eyes.

"Perfectly happy," Trix replies cheerily; "I haven't a wish unsatisfied--oh well! now that you've come. I did want you, Dithy; it seems such ages and ages since we met, and I was troubled about you. I heard of _him_, you know, poor fellow."

She touches timidly Edith's widow's weeds. There is no answer--Edith's tears are falling. She is contrasting her own cowardice with Trixy's courage; her own hardness with Trixy's generosity.

"How do you know?" she asks at length.

"Captain Hammond. You remember Angus Hammond, I suppose?" Trix says, blushing and hesitating; "he wrote us about it, and"--a pause.

"Go on; what else did he write?"

"That there was trouble of some sort, a separation, I think--that you had parted on your very wedding-day. Of course we couldn't believe that"

"It is quite true," was the low reply.

Trixy's eyes opened.

"True! O Dithy! On your wedding-day!"

"On our wedding-day," Edith answered steadily; "to meet no more until we met at his death-bed. Some day, Trix, dear, I will tell you how it was--not now. Two years have passed, but even yet I don't care to think of it. Only this--_he_ was not to blame--he was the bravest, the noblest, the best of men, ten thousand times too good for me. I was a mercenary, ambitious wretch, and I received my just reward. We parted at the last friends, thank God! but I can never forgive myself--never!"

There was a pause--an uncomfortable one for Trix.

"How long since you came to New York?" she asked at length.

Edith told her--told her how she had been wandering over the world since her husband's death--how she had come to America to see her father--how she had tried to find them here in New York--how signally she had failed--and how to-day, by purest accident, she had come upon Charley in the Broadway store.

"How astonished he must have been," his sister said; "I think I see him, lifting his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead. Did he take you for a ghost?"

"By no means, and he was not in the least surprised. He knew I was here, from the first."

"Edith!"

"He told me so. He saw my arrival in the paper when I first landed."

"And he never told _me_, and he never went to see you! The wretch!" cried Trix.

"I don't know that he is to blame," Edith responded quietly. "I deserved no better; and ah! Trixy, not many in this world are as generous as _you_. So you are perfectly happy, darling? I wonder if Captain Hammond, now, has anything to do with it?"

"Well, yes," Tax admits blushingly again; "I may as well tell you. We are to be married at Christmas."

"Trix! Married!"

"Married at last. We were engaged before I left England, three years ago. He wanted to marry me then, foolish fellow!" says Trix with shining eyes, "but of course, we none of us would listen to so preposterous a thing. He had only his pay and his debts, and his expectations from a fairy godmother or grandmother, who _wouldn't_ die. But she died last mail--I mean last mail brought a black bordered letter, saying she was gone to glory, and had left Angus everything. He is going to sell out of the army, and will be here by Christmas, and--and the wedding is to take place the very week he arrives. And, oh! Edith, he's just the dearest fellow, the best fellow, and I'm the happiest girl in all New York!"

Edith says nothing. She takes Trix, who is crying, suddenly, in her arms, and kisses her. Angus Hammond has been faithful in the hour when she deserted them--that is her thought. Her self-reproach never ceases--never for one hour.

"We go to Scotland of course," said Trix, wiping her eyes; "and ma--also, of course, stays with Charley. Nellie will be here to fill my place--don't you think she will make a charming sister?"

She laughs as she asks the question--it is the one little revenge she takes. Before Edith can reply she runs on: "Nellie's rich--rich, I mean, as compared with us, and she has made it all herself. She's awfully clever, and writes for magazines, and papers, and things, and earns oceans of money. _Oceans_," says Trix, opening her eyes to the size of saucers; "and I don't know really which of us ma likes best, Nellie or me. That's my one comfort in going. Here comes Charley now--let's have tea at