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

his brown mustache, and unfolds the morning paper, smelling damp and nasty of printer's ink, and immerses himself, fathoms deep, in mercantile news and the doings of the Stock Exchange.

He reaches St Louis in safety, and resumes the labor of his life. He has no time to think--no time to be sentimental, if he wished to be, which he doesn't.

"Love is of man's life a thing apart," sings a poet, who knew what he was talking about. His heart is not in the least broken, nor likely to be; there is no time in his busy, mercantile life, for that sort of thing, I repeat. He goes to work with a will, and astonishes even himself by his energy and brisk business capacity. If he thinks of Edith at all, amid his dry-as-dust ledgers and blotters, his buying and selling, it is that she is probably on the ocean by this time--having bidden her native land, like _Childe Harold_, "One long, one last, good-night." And then, in the midst of it all, Trixy's first letter arrives.

It is all Edith, from beginning to end. Edith has not gone, she is still in New York, but her passage is taken, and she will leave next week. "And Charley," says Trix, "don't be angry now, but do you know, though Edith Darrell always liked you, I fancy Lady Catheron likes you even better. Not that she ever says anything; bless you! she is as proud as ever; but we women can tell. And last night she told ma and me the story of her past, of her married life--or rather her _un_-married life--of her separation from Sir Victor on their wedding-day--think of it, Charley! _on their wedding-day_. If ever anyone in this world was to be pitied, it was he--poor fellow! And she was not to blame--neither could have acted other than they did, that I can see. Poor Edith! poor Sir Victor! I will tell you all when we meet. She leaves next Tuesday, and it half breaks my heart to see her go. Oh, Charley! Charley! _why_ need she go at all?"

He reads this letter as he smokes his cigar--very gravely, very thoughtfully, wondering a great deal, but not in the least moved from his steadfast purpose. Parted on their wedding-day! he has heard that before, but hardly credited it. It is true then--odd that; and neither to be blamed--odder still. She has only been Sir Victor's wife in name, then, after all. But it makes no difference to him--nothing does--all that is past and done--she flung him off once--he will never go back now. Their paths lie apart--hers over the hills of life, his in the dingy valleys--they have said good-by, and it means forever.

He goes back to his ledgers and his counting-room, and four more days pass. On the evening of the fourth day, as he leaves the store for the night, a small boy from the telegraph office waylays him, and hands him one of the well-known buff envelopes. He breaks it open where he stands, and read this:

"NEW YORK, Oct. 28, '70. "Charley: Edith is lying dangerously ill--dying. Come back at once. BEATRIX."

He reads, and the truth does not come to him--he reads it again. _Edith is dying_. And then a grayish pallor comes over his face, from brow to chin, and he stands for a moment, staring vacantly at the paper he holds, seeing nothing--hearing nothing but these words: "Edith is dying." In that moment he knows that all his imaginary hardness and indifference have been hollow and false--a wall of pride that crumbles at a touch, and the old love, stronger than life, stronger than death, fills his heart still. He has left her, and--Edith is dying! He looks at his watch. There is an Eastward-bound train in half an hour--there will be barely time to catch it. He does not return to his boarding house--he calls a passing Mack, and is driven to the depot just in time. He makes no pause from that hour--he travels night and day. What is business; what the prospects of all his future life; what is the whole world now? Edith is dying.

He reaches New York at last. It seems like a century since that telegram came, and haggard and worn, in the twilight of the autumn day, he stands at last in his mother's home.

Trix is there--they expect him to-night, and she has waited to receive him. She looks in his face once, then turns away and covers her own, and bursts into a woman's tempest of tears.

"I--I am too late," he says in a hoarse sort of whisper.

"No," Trix answers, looking up; "not too late. She is alive still--I can say no more."

"What is it?" he asks.

"It is almost impossible to say. Typhoid fever, one doctor says, and _cerebro spinal meningitis_ says the other. It doesn't much matter what it is, since both agree in this--that she is dying."

Her sobs breaks forth again. He sits and gazes at her like a stone.

"There is no hope?"

"While there is life there is hope." But it is in a very dreary voice that Trix repeats this aphorism: "and--the worst of it is, she doesn't seem to care. Charley, I believe she wants to die, is glad to die. She seems to have nothing to care for--nothing to live for. 'My life has been all a mistake,' she said to me the other day. 'I have gone wrong from first to last, led astray by my vanity, and selfishness, and ambition. It is much better that I should die, and make an end of it all.' She has made her will, Charley--she made it in the first days of her illness, and--she has left almost everything to you."

He makes no reply. He sits motionless in the twilit window, looking down at the noisy, bustling street.

"She has remembered me most generously," Trix goes softly on; "poor, darling Edith! but she has left almost all to you. 'It would have been an insult to offer anything in my lifetime,' she said to me; 'but the wishes of the dead are sacred,--he will not be able to refuse it _then_. And tell him not to grieve for me, Trixy--I never made him anything but trouble, and disappointment, and wretchedness. I am sorry--sorry now, and my last wish and prayer will be for the happiness of his life.' When she is delirious, and she mostly is as night draws on, she calls for you incessantly--asking you to come back--begging, you to forgive her. That is why I sent."

"Does she know you sent?" he asks.

"No--it was her desire you should not be told until--until all was over," Trix answered with another burst of tears; "but I _couldn't_ do that. She says we are to bury her at Sandypoint, beside her mother--not send her body to England. She told me, when she was dead, to tell you the story of her separation from Sir Victor. Shall I tell it to you now, Charley?"

He makes a motion of assent; and Trix begins, in a broken voice, and tells him the sad, strange story of the two Sir Victors, father and son, and of Edith's life from her wedding-day. The twilight deepens into darkness, the room is wrapped in shadow long before she has finished. He never stirs, he never speaks, he sits and listens to the end. Then there is a pause, and out of the gloom he speaks at last:

"May I see her, and when?"

"As soon as you come, the doctors say; they refuse her nothing now, and they think your presence may do her good,--if anything can do it. Mother is with her and Nellie; Nellie has been her best friend and nurse; Nellie has never left her, and Charley," hesitatingly, for something in his manner awes Trix, "I believe she thinks you and Nellie are engaged."

"Stop!" he says imperiously, and Trixy rises with a sigh and puts on her hat and shawl. Five minutes later they are in the street, on their way to Lady Catheron's hotel.

One of the medical men is in the sick-room when Miss Stuart enters it, and she tells him in a whisper that her brother has come, and is waiting without.

His patient lies very low to-night--delirious at times, and sinking, it seems to him, fast. She is in a restless, fevered sleep at present, and he stands looking at her with a very sombre look on his professional face. In spite of his skill, and he is very skilful, this case baffles him. The patient's own utter indifference, as to whether she lives or dies, being one of the hardest things he has to combat. If she only longed for life, and strove to recruit--if, like Mrs. Dombey, she would, "only make an effort." But she will not, and the flame flickers, and flickers, and very soon will go out altogether.

"Let him come in," the doctor says. "He can do no harm--he may possibly do some good."

"Will she know him when she awakes?" Trix whispers.

He nods and turns away to where Miss Seton stands in the distance, and Trix goes and fetches her brother in. He advances slowly, almost reluctantly it would seem, and looks down at the wan, drawn, thin face that rests there, whiter than the pillows. Great Heaven! and this--_this_ is Edith! He sinks into a chair by the bedside, and takes her wan, transparent hand in both his own, with a sort of groan. The light touch awakes her, the faint eyelids quiver, the large, dark eyes open and fix on his face. The lips flutter breathlessly apart. "_Charley_!" they whisper in glad surprise; and over the death-like face there flashes for a second an electric light of great amaze and joy.

"Humph!" says the doctor, with a surprised grunt; "I thought it would do her no harm. If we leave them alone for a few minutes, my dear young ladies, it will do _us_ no harm either. Mind, my young gentleman," he taps Charley on the shoulder, "my patient is not to excite herself talking."

They softly go out. It would appear the doctor need not have warned him; they don't seem inclined to talk. She lies and looks at him, delight in her eyes, and draws a long, long breath of great content. For him, he holds her wasted hand a little tighter, and lays his face down on the pillow, and does not speak a word.

So the minutes pass.

"Charley," she says at last, in a faint, little whisper, "what a surprise this is. They did not tell me you were coming. Who sent for you? When did you come?"

"You're not to talk, Edith," he answers, lifting his haggard face for a moment--poor Charley! "Trix sent for me." Then he lays it down again.

"Foolish boy!" Edith says with shining eyes; "I do believe you are crying. You don't hate me, then, after all, Charley?"

"Hate you!" he can but just repeat.

"You once said you did, you know; and I deserved it. But I have not been happy, Charley--I have been punished as I merited. Now it is all over, and it is better so--I never was of any use in the world, and never would be. You will let me atone a little for the past in the only way I can. Trix will tell you. And, by and by, when you are quite happy, and she is your wife--"

The faint voice breaks, and she turns her face away.