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

Even in death it is bitterer than death to give him up.

He lifts his head, and looks at her.

"When she is my wife? when _who_ is my wife?" he asks.

"Nellie--you know," she whispers; "she is worthy of you, Charley--indeed she is, and I never was. And she loves you, and will make you hap--"

"Stop!" he says suddenly; "you are making some strange mistake, Edith. Nellie cares for me, as Trix does, and Trix is not more a sister to me than Nellie. For the rest--do you remember what I said to you that night at Killarney?"

Her lips tremble--her eyes watch him, her weak fingers close tightly over his. Remember! does she _not_?

"I said--'I will love you all my life!' I have kept my word, and mean to keep it. If I may not call you wife, I will never call, by that name, any other woman. No one in this world can ever be to me again, what you were and are."

There is another pause, but the dark, uplifted eyes are radiant now.

"At last! at last!" she breathes; "when it is too late. Oh, Charley! If the past might only come over again, how different it all would be. I think"--she says this with a weak little laugh, that reminds him of the Edith of old--"I think I could sleep more happily even in my grave--if 'Edith Stuart' were carved on my tombstone!"

His eyes never leave her face--they light up in their dreary sadness now at these words.

"Do you mean that, Edith?" he says bending over her; "living or dying, would it make you any happier to be my wife?"

Her eyes, her face, answer him. "But it is too late," the pale lips sigh.

"It is never too late," he says quietly; "we will be married to-night."

"_Charley_?"

"You are not to talk," he tells her, kissing her softly and for the first time; "I will arrange it all. I will go for a clergyman I know, and explain everything. Oh, darling! you should have been my wife long ago--you shall be my wife at last, in spite of death itself."

Then he leaves her, and goes out. And Edith closes her eyes, and lies still, and knows that never in all the years that are gone has such perfect bliss been hers before. In death, at least, if not life, she will be Charley's wife.

He tells them very quietly, very resolutely--her father who is there from Sandypoint, his mother, sister, Nellie, the doctor.

They listen in wordless wonder; but what can they say?

"The excitement will finish her--mark my words," is the doctor's verdict; "I will never countenance any such melodramatic proceeding."

But his countenance does not matter it seems. The laws of the Medes were not more fixed than this marriage. The clergyman comes, a very old friend of the family, and Charley explains all to him. He listens with quiet gravity--in his experience a death-bed marriage is not at all an unprecedented occurrence. The hour fixed is ten, and Trixy and Nellie go in to make the few possible preparations.

The sick girl lifts two wistful eyes to the gentle face of Nellie Seton. It is very pale, but she stoops and kisses her with her own sweet smile.

"You will live now for _his_ sake," she whispers in that kiss.

They decorate the room and the bed with flowers, they brush away the dark soft hair, they array her in a dainty embroidered night-robe, and prop her up with pillows. There is the fever fire on her wan cheeks, the fever fire in her shining eyes. But she is unutterably happy--you have but to look into her face to see that. Death is forgotten in her new bliss.

The bridegroom comes in, pale and unsmiling--worn and haggard beyond the power of words to tell. Trix, weeping incessantly, stands near, her mother and Mr. Darrell are at one side of the bed. Nellie is bridesmaid. What a strange, sad, solemn wedding it is! The clergyman takes out his book and begins--bride and bridegroom clasp hands, her radiant eyes never leave his face. Her faint replies flutter on her lips--there is an indescribable sadness in his. The ring is on her finger--at last she is what she should have been from the first--Charley's wife.

He bends forward and takes her in his arms. With all her dying strength she lifts herself to his embrace. It is a last expiring effort--her weak clasp relaxes, there is one faint gasp. Her head falls heavily upon his breast--there is a despairing cry from the women, cold and lifeless, Charley Stuart lays his bride of a moment back among the pillows--whether dead or in a dead swoon no one there can tell.


CHAPTER XI.

THE NIGHT.

At first they thought her dead--but it was not death. She awoke from that long, death-like swoon as morning broke--so near unto death that it seemed the turning of a hair might weigh down the scale. And so for days after it was--for weary miserable days and nights. The great reaction after the great excitement had come, all consciousness left her, she lay white and still, scarcely moving, scarcely breathing. The one beloved voice fell as powerless on her dulled ears now as all others, the dim, almost lifeless eyes, that opened at rare intervals, were blank to the whole world. She lay in a species of stupor, or coma, from which it was something more than doubtful if she ever would awake. The few spoonfuls of beef-tea and brandy and water she took they forced between her clenched teeth, and in that darkened room of the great hotel, strangely, solemnly quiet, Life and Death fought their sharp battle over her unconscious head.

And for those who loved her, her father, her friends, and one other, nearer and dearer than father or friend, how went those darkest days for _them_? They could hardly have told--all their after life they looked back, with a sick shudder, to that week.

For Charley Stuart he never wanted to look back--never to the last day of his life will he be able to recall, to realize the agony of those six days--days that changed his whole nature--his whole life.

They watched with her unceasingly--death might come at any moment. There were times when they bent above her, holding their own breath, sure that the faint thread had already snapped--times when they held a mirror to her lips to be sure she breathed at all. For her new-made husband, he never left her except when nature succumbed to the exhaustion of ceaseless vigil, and they forced him away. He forgot to eat or sleep, he sat tearless and still as stone by the bedside, almost as bloodless, almost as wan and hollow-eyed as the dying bride herself. The doctors stood gloomily silent, their skill falling powerless here.

"She needed only the excitement of this most preposterous marriage to finish her," one of them growled; "I said so at the time--I say so now. She had one chance for life--perfect quiet--and that destroyed it."

On the fourth day, a letter from England, in a woman's hand, and deeply bordered with black, arrived. Edith, in the first days of her illness, had told Trix to open all her letters. She would have passed the power over to her brother now, but he waved it away impatiently. What did it matter whom it was from--what it contained--what did anything matter now?

His haggard eyes went silently back to the marble face lying among its pillows, so awfully still.

Trixy opened and read it. It was from Inez Catheron, and announced the death of her aunt, the Lady Helena Powyss.

* * * * *

"Her end was perfect peace," said the letter; "and in her will, she has left her large fortune divided equally between you and me. If possible it would be well for you to return to England as speedily as may be. If wealth can make you happy--and I hope at least it will aid--my dearest Edith, you will have it. For me, I join a charitable Sisterhood here in London, and will try to devote the remainder of my life to the relief of my suffering and poor fellow-creatures. As to the rest, if you care at all to know, my brother reigns at Catheron Royals now! He is, in all respects, a changed man, and will not, I think, be an unworthy successor of him who is gone. His wife and children are all that can be desired.

"Farewell, my dear cousin. When you return to London come to the enclosed address, and see me. No one will welcome you more gladly than,

"INEZ CATHERON."

* * * * *

So another large fortune had been left Edith--she was rich now beyond her wildest dreams. Rich! And yonder she lay, and all the gold of earth, powerless to add a second to her life. What a satire it seemed. Youth, beauty, and boundless wealth were hers and all were vain--vain!

The seventh night brought the crisis.

"This can hold out no longer," the physician said; "before morning we will know the end, whether it is to be life or death."

"Then--there is hope yet?" Trix breathed, with clasped hands.

He looked at her gloomily and turned away, the meaningless formula on his lips:

"While there is life there is hope."

"It will be little less than a miracle if she lives, though," the other added; "and the days of miracles are over. Hope if you like--but--"

"You had better not let _him_ sit up to-night," said the first physician, looking compassionately at Charley; "he won't be able to stand it. He is worn out now, poor fellow, and looks fit for a sick-bed himself."

"He knows it is the crisis," Trixy answered; "he won't go."

"He has watched the last two nights," Miss Seton, interposed: "he _must_ go, doctor; leave me an opiate--I will administer it. If--if the worst comes, it will be but a moment's work to arouse him."

The doctor obeyed.

"I will return at day dawn," he said, "if she be still alive. If not--send me word."

The twilight was falling. Solemn and shadowy it crept into the sombre, silent room. They went back to the bedside, pale and tearless; they had wept, it seemed, until they could weep no more. This last night the two girls were to watch alone.

She lay before them. Dead and in her shroud she would never look more awfully death-like than now. He sat beside her--ah, poor Charley! in a sort of dull stupor of misery, utterly worn out. The sharp pain seemed over--the long, dark watches, when his passionate prayers had ascended for that dear life, wild and rebellious it may be, when he had wrestled with an agony more bitter than death, had left their impress on his life forever. He could not let her go--he could not! "O God!" was the ceaseless cry of his soul, "have mercy--spare!"

Nellie Seton's cool, soft hands fell lightly on his head--Nellie's soft, gentle voice spoke:

"Charley, you are to leave us for a little, and