Darkness and Daylight, Mary J. Holmes [classic book list .txt] 📗

They could not return to Collingwood that night, and the evening was spent in the private parlor which Arthur engaged for himself and his blind friend. It was strange how fast they grew to liking each other, and it was a pleasant sight to look at them as they sat there in the warm firelight which the lateness of the season made necessary to their comfort—the one softened and toned down by affliction and the daily cross he was compelled to bear, the other in the first flush of youth when the world lay all bright before him and he had naught to do but enter the Elysian fields and pluck the fairest flowers.

It was late when they separated, but at a comparatively early hour the next morning they assembled again, this time to bid good-by, for their paths hereafter lay in different directions.

“You must write to me, little metaphysics,” said Arthur, as with hat and shawl in hand he stood in the depot on the east side of the Hudson.

“Yes,” rejoined Richard, “she is to be my private amanuensis, and shall let you know of our welfare, and now, I suppose, we must go.”

It was a very pleasant ride to Edith, pleasanter than when she came with Arthur, but a slight headache made her drowsy, and leaning on Richard’s arm she fell asleep, nor woke until West Shannondale was reached. The carriage was in waiting for them, and Victor sat inside. He had come ostensibly to meet his master, but really to see the kind of specimen he was bringing to the aristocratic halls of Collingwood.

Long and earnest had been the discussion there concerning the little lady; Mrs. Matson, the housekeeper, sneering rather contemptuously at one who heretofore had been a servant at Brier Hill. Victor, on the contrary, stood ready to espouse her cause, thinking within himself how he would teach her many points of etiquette of which he knew she must necessarily be ignorant; but firstly he would, to use his own expression, “see what kind of metal she was made of.”

Accordingly his first act at the depot was to tread upon her toes, pretending he did not see her, but Edith knew he did it purposely, and while her black eyes blazed with anger, she exclaimed,

“You wretch, how dare you be so rude?”

Assisting Richard into the carriage, Victor was about to turn away, leaving Edith to take care of herself, when with all the air of a queen, she said to him,

“Help me in, sir. Don’t you know your business!”

“Pardonnez, moi,” returned Victor, speaking in his mother tongue, and bowing low to the indignant child, whom he helped to a seat by Richard.

An hour’s drive brought them to the gate of Collingwood, and Edith was certainly pardonable if she did cast a glance of exultation in the direction of Brier Hill, as they wound up the gravelled road and through the handsome grounds of what henceforth was to be her home.

“I guess Mrs. Atherton will be sorry she acted so,” she thought, and she was even revolving the expediency of putting on airs and not speaking to her former mistress, when the carriage stopped and Victor appeared at the window all attention, and asking if he should “assist Miss Hastings to alight.”

In the door Mrs. Matson was waiting to receive them, rubbing her gold-bowed spectacles and stroking her heavy silk with an air which would have awed a child less self-assured than Edith. Nothing grand or elegant seemed strange or new to her. On the contrary she took to it naturally as if it were her native clement, and now as she stepped upon the marble floor of the lofty hall she involuntarily cut a pirouette, exclaiming, “Oh, but isn’t this jolly! Seems as if I’d got back to Heaven. What a splendid room to sing in,” and she began to warble a wild, impassioned air which made Richard pause and listen, wondering whence came the feeling which so affected him carrying him back to the hills of Germany.

Mrs. Matson looked shocked, Victor amused, while the sensible driver muttered to himself as he gathered up his reins, “That gal is just what Collingwood needs to keep it from being a dungeon.”

Mrs. Matson had seen Edith at Brier Hill, but this did not prevent her from a close scrutiny as she conducted her to the large, handsome chamber, which Richard in his hasty directions of the previous morning had said was to be hers, and which, with its light, tasteful furniture, crimson curtains, and cheerful blazing fire seemed to the delighted child a second paradise. Clapping her hands she danced about the apartment, screaming, “It’s the jolliest place I ever was in.”

“What do you mean by that word JOLLY?” asked Mrs. Matson, with a great deal of dignity; but ere Edith could reply, Victor, who came up with the foreign chest, chimed in, “She means PRETTY, Madame Matson, and understands French, no doubt. Parley vous Francais?” and he turned to Edith, who, while recognizing something familiar in the sound, felt sure he was making fun of her and answered back, “Parley voo fool! I’ll tell Mr. Harrington how you tease me.”

Laughing aloud at her reply, Victor put the chest in its place, made some remark concerning its quaint appearance, and bowed himself from the room, saying to her as he shut the door,

“Bon soir, Mademoiselle.”

“I’ve heard that kind of talk before,” thought Edith, as she began to brush her hair, preparatory to going down to supper, which Mrs. Matson said was waiting.

At the table she met with the old man, who had seen her alight from the carriage, and had asked the mischievous Victor, “Who was the small biped Richard had brought home?”

“That,” said Victor. “Why, that is Charlie turned into a girl.” And preposterous as the idea seemed, the old man seized upon it at once, smoothing Edith’s hair when he saw her, tapping her rosy cheeks, calling her Charlie, and muttering to himself of the wonderful process which had transformed his fair-haired boy into a black-haired girl.

Sometimes the utter impossibility of the thing seemed to penetrate even his darkened mind, and then he would whisper, “I’ll make believe it’s Charlie, any way,” so Charlie he persisted in calling her, and Richard encouraged him in this whim, when he found how much satisfaction it afforded the old man to “make believe.”

The day following Edith’s arrival at Collingwood there was a long consultation between Richard and Victor concerning the little girl, about whose personal appearance the former would now know something definite.

“How does Edith Hastings look?” he asked, and after a moment of grave deliberation, Victor replied,

“She has a fat round face, with regular features, except that the nose turns up somewhat after the spitfire order, and her mouth is a trifle too wide. Her forehead is not very high—it would not become her style if it were. Her hair is splendid—thick, black and glossy as satin, and her eyes,—there are not words enough either in the French or English language with which to describe her eyes—they are so bright and deep that nobody can look into them long without wincing. I should say, sir, if put on oath, there was a good deal of the deuce in her eyes.”

“When she is excited, you mean,” interrupted Richard. “How are they in repose?”

“They are never there,” returned Victor. “They roll and turn and flash and sparkle, and light upon one so uncomfortably, that he begins to think of all the badness he ever did, and to wonder if those coals of fire can’t ferret out the whole thing.”

“I like her eyes,” said Richard, “but go on. Tell me of her complexion.”

“Black, of course,” continued Victor, “but smooth as glass, with just enough of red in it to make rouge unnecessary. On the whole I shouldn’t wonder if in seven or eight years’ time she’d be as handsome as the young lady of Collingwood ought to be.”

“How should she be dressed?” asked Richard, who knew that Victor’s taste upon such matters was infallible, his mother and sister both having been Paris mantua-makers.

“She should have scarlet and crimson and dark blue trimmed with black,” said Victor, adding that he presumed Mrs. Atherton would willingly attend to those matters.

Richard was not so sure, but he thought it worth the while to try, and he that night dispatched Victor to Brier Hill with a request that she would, if convenient, call upon him at once.

“Don’t tell her what I want,” he said, “I wish to surprise her with a sight of Edith.”

Victor promised obedience and set off for Brier Hill, where he found no one but Rachel, sitting before this kitchen fire, and watching the big red apples roasting upon the hearth.

“Miss Grace had started that morning for New York,” she said, “and the Lord only knew when she’d come home.”

“And as he probably won’t tell, I may as well go back,” returned Victor, and bidding Rachel send her mistress to Collingwood as soon as she should return, he bowed himself from the room.

As Rachel said, Grace had gone to New York, and the object of her going was to repair the wrong done to Edith Hastings, by taking her a second time from the Asylum, and bringing her back to Brier Hill. Day and night the child’s parting words, “You’ll be sorry sometime,” rang in her ears, until she could endure it no longer, and she astonished the delighted Rachel by announcing her intention of going after the little girl. With her to will was to do, and while Victor was reporting her absence to his master, she, half-distracted, was repeating the words of the matron,

“Has not been here at all, and have not heard from her either! What can it mean?”

The matron could not tell, and for several days Grace lingered in the city, hoping Arthur would appear, but as he failed to do this, she at last wrote to him at Geneva, and then, in a sad, perplexed state of mind, returned to Shannondale, wondering at and even chiding old Rachel for evincing so little feeling at her disappointment.

But old Rachel by this time had her secret which she meant to keep, and when at last Grace asked if any one had called during her absence, she mentioned the names of every one save Victor, and then tried very hard to think “who that ‘tother one was. She knowed there WAS somebody else, but for the life of her she couldn’t”—Rachel did not quite dare to tell so gross a falsehood, and so at this point she concluded to THINK, and added suddenly,

“Oh, yes, I remember now. ‘Twas that tall, long-haired, scented-up, big-feelin’ man they call Squire Herrin’ton’s VALLY.”

“Victor Dupres been here!” and Grace’s face lighted perceptibly.

“Yes, he said MOUSE-EER, or somethin’ like that—meanin’ the squire, in course—wanted you to come up thar as soon as you got home, and my ‘pinion is that you go to oncet. ‘Twont be dark this good while.”

Nothing could be more in accordance with Grace’s feelings than to follow Rachel’s advice, and, half an hour later, Victor reported to his master that the carriage from Brier Hill had stopped before their door. It would be impossible to describe Mr. Atherton’s astonishment when, on entering the parlor, the first object that met her view was her former waiting-maid, attired in the crimson merino which Mrs. Matson, Lulu, the chambermaid, and Victor had gotten up between them; and which, though not the best fit in the world, was, in color, exceedingly becoming to the dark-eyed child, who, perched upon the music-stool, was imitating her own operatic songs to the infinite delight of the old man, nodding his