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

once. I forgot all about it, but nobody has the faintest idea of the pangs of hunger I am enduring."

Charley sauntered in, looking fresh and handsome, from the night air.

It was quite dark now. Trix lit the lamp and bustled about helping to get supper. "You told Nellie?" she asked her brother in a low tone, but Edith caught the words.

"Yes," Charley answered gravely, "I told her."

"What did she say?"

"Everything that was like Nellie--everything that was bright, and brave, and good. She will be here in the morning to say good-by. Now, Mrs. Stuart, if you have any compassion on a famished only son, hurry up, and let's have supper."

They sat down around the little table where the lamp shone brightly--Edith feeling cold and strange and out of place. Trixy and Aunt Chatty might, and did, forgive the past but she herself could not, and between her and Charley lay a gulf, to be spanned over on earth no more. And yet--how beautiful and stately she looked in her little white widow's cap, her sombre dress, and the frill of sheer white crape at her throat.

"Edith!" Trix said involuntarily, "how handsome you have grown! You were always pretty, but now--I don't mean to flatter--but you are splendid! It can't be that black becomes you, and yet--Charley, don't you see it? hasn't Edith grown lovely?"

"Trix!" Edith cried, and over her pale cheeks there rose a flush, and into her dark, brilliant eyes there came a light, that made her for the moment all Trixy said.

Charley looked at her across the table--the cool, clear, gray eyes, perfectly undazzled.

"I used to think it impossible for Edith to improve; I find out my mistake to-day, as I find out many others. As it is not permitted one to say what one thinks on these subjects, one had better say nothing at all."

The flush that has risen to Edith's cheeks remains there, and deepens. After tea, at Trixy's urgent request, she sits down at the little hired piano, and sings some of the old songs.

"Your very voice has improved," Trix says admiringly. "Edith, sing _Charley he's my darling_, for Charley. It used to be a favorite of his."

She gives him a malicious sidelong glance. Charley, lying back in his mother's comfortable, cushioned rocking-chair, takes it calmly.

"It used to be, but it has ceased to be," he answers coolly. "Trix, go out like a good child, and get me the evening paper. Among my other staid, middle-aged habits, Lady Catheron, is that of reading the _Post_ every evening religiously, after tea."

Never Edith any more--always Lady Catheron--never the girl he loved three years ago--whom he had said he would love all his life, but the richly dowered widow of Sir Victor Catheron. He will not generously forget, even for an instant, that he is an impecunious dry goods clerk, she a lady of rank and riches.

She rises to go--it is growing almost more than she can bear. Trix presses her to stay longer, but in vain; _he_ never utters a word.

"Shall Charley call a carriage, or will you prefer to walk?" Trix asks doubtfully.

"She will walk," says Charley, suddenly looking up and interfering; "the night is fine, and I will see her home."

For one instant, at the tone of his voice, at the look of his eyes, her heart bounds.

Her bonnet and mantle are brought--she kisses Trix and Aunt Chatty good-night--they have promised to dine with her to-morrow--and goes forth into the soft October night with Charley.

He draws her hand within his arm--the night is star-lit, lovely. The old time comes back, the old feeling of rest and content, the old comfortable feeling that it is Charley's arm upon which she leans, and that she asks no more of fate. To-morrow he may be Nellie Seton's--just now, he belongs to her.

"Oh!" she exclaims, with a long-drawn breath, "how familiar it all is! these gas-lit New York streets, the home-like look of the men and women, and--you. It seems as though I had left Sandypoint only yesterday, and you were showing me again the wonders of New York for the first time."

He looks down at the dusk, warm, lovely face, so near his own.

"Sandypoint," he repeats; "Edith, do you recall what I said to you there? Have you ever wished once, in those three years that are gone, that I had never come to Sandypoint to take you away?"

"I have never wished it," she answers truly; "never once. I have never blamed you, never blamed anyone but myself--how could I? The evil of my life I wrought with my own hand, and--if it were all to come over again--I would still go! I have suffered, but at least--I have lived."

"I am glad to hear that," he says after a little pause; "it has troubled me again and again. You see, Hammond wrote us all he ever knew of you, and though it was rather incomprehensible in part, it was clear enough your life was not entirely a bed of roses. All that, I hope, is over and done with--there can be no reason why all the rest of your life should not be entirely happy. This is partly why I wished to walk home with you to-night, that I might know from your own lips whether you held me blameless or not. And partly, also--" a second brief pause;--"to bid you good-by."

"Good-by!" In the starlight she turns deathly white.

"Yes," he responded cheerily; "good-by; and as our lives lie so widely apart in all probability, this time forever. I shall certainly return here at Christmas, but you may have gone before that. To-morrow morning I start for St. Louis, where a branch of our house is established, and where I am permanently to remain. It is an excellent opening for me--my salary has been largely advanced, and I am happy to say the firm think me competent and trustworthy. I return, as I said, at Christmas; after that it becomes my permanent home. You know, of course," he says with a laugh, "why I return--Trix has told you?"

So completely has she forgotten Trix, so wholly have her thoughts been of him, that she absolutely does not remember to what he alludes.

"Trix has told me nothing," she manages to answer, and she wonders at herself to find how steady is her own voice.

"No?" Charley says, elevating his eyebrows; "and they say the age of wonders is over! Trix in the new roll of keeping her own secrets! Well, I very naturally return for _the_ wedding--_our_ wedding. It's extraordinary that Trix hasn't told you, but she will. Then--my Western home will be ready by that time, and we go back immediately. My mother goes with me, I need hardly say."

Still so absolutely wrapped up in her thoughts of _him_, so utterly forgetful of Trix, that she does not understand. _Our_ wedding--he means his own and Nellie Seton's of course. His Western home, the home where she will reign as his wife. In the days that have gone, Edith thinks she has suffered--she feels to-night that she has never suffered until now! She deserves it, but if he had only spared her,--only left it for some one else to tell. It is a minute before she can reply--then, despite every effort, her voice is husky:

"I wish you joy, Charley--with all my heart"

She cannot say one word more. Something in the words, in her manner of saying them, makes him look at her in surprise.

"Well, yes," he answers coolly; "a wedding in a family is, I believe, a general subject of congratulation. And I must say she has shown herself a trump--the bravest, best girl alive. And you"--they are drawing near a hotel--"may I venture to ask your plans, Lady Catheron? how long do you think of remaining in New York?"

"I shall leave at once--at once," she replied in the same husky tone. To stay and meet Nellie Seton after to-night is more than she is able to do. They are close to the hotel now. Involuntarily--unconsciously, she clings to his arm, as the drowning may cling to a straw. She feels in a dull, agonized sort of way that in five minutes the waters will have closed over her head, and the story of her life have come to an end.

"Here we are," his frank, cheery voice says--his voice, that has yet a deeper, more earnest tone than of old. "You don't know, Edith, how glad I am of this meeting--how glad to hear you never in any way blamed _me_."

"I blame you! oh, Charley!" she says with a passionate little cry.

"I rejoice to hear, that with all its drawbacks, you don't regret the past. I rejoice in the knowledge that you are rich and happy, and that a long, bright life lies before you. Edith," he takes both her hands in his strong, cordial clasp, "if we never meet again, God bless you, and good-by."

She lifts her eyes to his, full of dumb, speechless agony. In that instant he knows the truth--knows that Edith loves him--that the heart he would once have laid down his life almost to win, is his wholly at last!

The revelation comes upon him like a flash--like a blow. He stands holding her hands, looking at her, at the mute, infinite misery in her eyes. Someone jostles them in passing, and turns and stares. It dawns upon him that they are in the public street, and making a scene.

"Good-by," he says hastily once more, and drops the hands, and turns and goes.

She stands like a statue where he has left her--he turns a corner, the last sound of his footsteps dies away, and Edith feels that he has gone out of her life--out of the whole world.


CHAPTER X.

THE SECOND BRIDAL.

Miss Nellie Seton came early next morning to see her friend, Mr. Charley Stuart, off. He is looking rather pale as he bids them good-by--the vision of Edith's eyes upturned to his, full of mute, impassionate appeal, have haunted him all night long. They haunt him now, long after the last good-by had been said, and the train is sweeping away Westward. Edith loves him at last. At last? there has never been a time when he doubted it, but now he knows he has but to say the word, and she will lay her hand in his, and toil, and parting, and separation will end between them forever. But he will never, say that word--what Edith Darrell in her ambition once refused, all Lady Catheron's wealth and beauty cannot win. He feels he could as easily leap from the car window and end it all, as ask Sir Victor Catheron's richly dowered widow to be his wife. She made her choice three years ago--she must abide by that choice her life long.

"And then," he thinks rather doggedly, "this fancy of mine may be only fancy. The leopard cannot change his spots, and an ambitious, mercenary woman cannot change her nature. And, as a rule, ladies of wealth and title _don't_ throw themselves away on impecunious dry goods clerks. No! I made an egregious ass of myself once, and once is quite enough. We have turned over a new leaf, and are not going back at this late day to the old ones. With her youth, her fortune, and her beauty, Edith can return to England and make a brilliant second marriage."

And then Mr. Stuart sets his lips behind