A Terrible Secret by May Agnes Fleming (world of reading txt) 📖

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Miss Darrell's brown eyes opened to their widest extent.

"'This last evening! Who knows when we shall have another!' Charley, if you're meditating flight or suicide, say so at once--anything is better than suspense. I once saw a picture of 'The Knight of the Woful Countenance'--the K. of the W. C. looked exactly as you look now! If you're thinking of strychnine, say so--no one shall oppose you. My only regret is, that I shall have to wear black, and hideous is a mild word to describe Edith Darrell in black."

"Hideous!" Charley repeated, "you! I wonder if you could possibly look ugly in anything? I wonder if you know how pretty you are to-night in that charming hat and that scarlet drapery?"

"Certainly I know, and charming I undoubtedly must look to wring a word of praise from you. It's the first time in all your life, sir, you ever paid me a compliment. Hitherto you have done nothing but find fault with my looks and everything else."

"There is a time for everything," he answers, a little sadly--sadly! and Charley Stuart! "The time for all that is past. Here is our boat. You will steer, Edith? Yes--then I'll row."

The baronet and Trix were already several yards off, out upon the shining water. Another party--a large boat containing half-a-dozen, Captain Hammond among them, was farther off still. In this boat sat a girl with a guitar; her sweet voice as she sang came romantically over the lake, and the mountain echoes, taking it up, sang the refrain enchantingly over and over again. Edith lifted up her face to the starry sky, the moonlight bathing it in a glory.

"Oh, what a night!" she sighed. "What a bright, beautiful world it is, and how perfectly happy one could be, if--"

"One had thirty thousand a year!" Charley suggested.

"Yes, exactly. Why can't life be all like this--moonlight, capital dinners, lots of friends and new dresses, a nice boat, and--yes--I will say it--somebody one likes very much for one's companion."

"Somebody one likes very much, Edith? I wonder sometimes if you like me at all--if it is in you to like any one but yourself."

"Thanks! I like myself, certainly, and first best I will admit. After that--"

"After that?" he repeats.

"I like _you_. No--keep quiet, Charley, please, you'll upset the boat. Of course I like you--aren't you my cousin--haven't you been awfully kind--don't I owe all this to you? Charley, I bless that night in the snow--it has been the luckiest in my life."

"And the unluckiest of mine."

"Sir!"

"O Edith, let us speak for once--let us understand one another, and then part forever, if we must. Only why need we part at all?"

She turns pale--she averts her face from him, and looks out over the radiant water. Sooner or later she has known this must come--it has come to-night.

"Why need we part at all?" He is leaning on his oars, and they are floating rightly with the stream. "I don't need to tell you how I love you; you know it well enough; and I think--I hope--you care for me. Be true to yourself, Edith--you belong to me--come to me; be my wife."

There is passion in his tone, in his eyes, but his voice is quiet, and he sits with the oars in his hands. Even in this supreme moment of his life Mr. Stuart is true to his "principles," and will make no scene.

"You know I love you," he repeats, "as the man in the Cork theatre said the other night: 'I'll go down on my knees if you like, but I can love you just as well standing up.' Edith, speak to me. How can you ever marry any one but me--but me, whose life you saved. My darling, forget your cynicism--it is but lip-deep--you don't really mean it--and say you will be my wife."

"Your wife!" She laughs, but her heart thrills as she says it. "Your wife! It would be pleasant, Charley; but, like most of the pleasant things of life, it can never be."

"Edith!"

"Charley, all this is nonsense, and you know it. We are cousins--we are good friends and stanch comrades, and always will be, I hope; but lovers--no, no, no!"

"And why?" he asks.

"Have I not told you already--told you over and over again? If you don't despise me, and think me heartless and base, the fault has not been my want of candor. My cynicisms I mean, every word. If you had your father's wealth, the fortune he means to leave you, I would marry you to-morrow, and be," her lips trembled a little, "the happiest girl on earth."

"You don't care for me at all, then?" he calmly asks.

"Care for you! O Charley! can't you see? I am not _all_ selfish. I care for you so much that I would sooner die than marry you. For you a marriage with me means ruin--nothing else."

"My father is fond of me. I am his only son. He would relent."

"He never would," she answered firmly, "and you know it. Charley, the day he spoke to you in Cork, I was behind the window-curtains reading. I heard every word. My first impulse was to come out and confront him--to throw back his favors and patronage, and demand to be sent home. A horrid bad temper is numbered among the list of my failings. But I did not. I heard your calm reply--the 'soft answer that turneth away wrath,' and it fell like oil on my troubled spirit.

"'Don't lose your temper,' you said; 'Fred Darrell's daughter and I won't marry, if that's what you mean.'

"I admire your prudence and truth. I took the lesson home, and--stayed behind the curtains. And we will keep to that--you and Fred Darrell's daughter will never marry."

"But, Edith, you know what I meant. Good Heavens! you don't for a second suppose--" "I don't for a second suppose anything but what is good and generous of you, Charley. I know you would face your father like a--like a 'griffin rampant,' to quote Trix, and brave all consequences, if I would let you. But I won't let you. You can't afford to defy your father. I can't afford to marry a poor man."

"I am young--I am strong--I can work. I have my hands and my head, a tolerable education, and many friends. We would not starve."

"We would not starve--perhaps," Edith says, and laughs again, rather drearily. "We would only grub along, wanting everything that makes life endurable, and be miserable beyond all telling before the first year ended. We don't want to hate each other--we don't want to marry. You couldn't work, Charley--you were never born for drudgery. And I--I can't forget the training of my life even for you."

"You can't, indeed--you do your training credit," he answered bitterly.

"And so," she goes on, her face drooping, "don't be angry; you'll thank me for this some day. Let it be all over and done with to-night, and never be spoken of more. Oh, Charley, my brother, don't you see we could not be happy together--don't you see it is better we should part?"

"It shall be exactly as you wish. I am but a poor special pleader, and your worldly wisdom is so clear, the dullest intellect might comprehend it. You, throw me over without a pang, and you mean to marry the baronet. Only--as you are not yet his exclusive property, bought with a price--answer me this: You love me?"

Her head drooped lower, her eyes were full of passionate tears, her heart full of passionate pain. Throw him over without a pang! In her heart of hearts Edith Darrell knew what it cost her to be heartless to-night.

"Answer me!" he said imperiously, his eyes kindling. "Answer me! That much, at least, I claim as my right. Do you love me or do you not?"

And the answer comes very humbly and low.

"Charley! what need to ask? You know only too well--I do."

And then silence falls. He takes up the oars again--their soft dip, and the singing of the girl in the distant boat, the only sounds. White moonlight and black shadows, islands overrun with arbutus, that "myrtle of Killarney," and frowning mountains on every hand. The words of the girl's gay song come over the water:

"The time I've lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing,
The light that lies
In woman's eyes
Has been my heart's undoing.

"Though wisdom oft has sought me,
I scorned the lore she brought me;
My only books
Were woman's looks,
And folly's all they've taught me."

"And folly's all they've taught me!" Charley says at length. "Come what may, it is better that I should have spoken and you should have answered. Come what may--though you marry Sir Victor to-morrow--I would not have the past changed if I could."

"And you will not blame me too much--you will not quite despise me?" she pleads, her voice broken, her face hidden in her hands. "I can't help it, Charley. I would rather die than be poor."

He knows she is crying; her tears move him strangely. They are in the shadow of Torc Mountain. He stops rowing for a moment, takes her hand, and lifts it to his lips.

"I will love you all my life," is his answer.

* * * * *

This is how two of the water-party were enjoying themselves. A quarter of a mile farther off, another interesting little scene was going on in another boat.

Trixy had been rattling on volubly. It was one of Trixy's fixed ideas that to entertain and fascinate anybody her tongue must go like a windmill. Sir Victor sat and listened rather absently, replied rather dreamily, and as if his mind were a hundred miles away. Miss Stuart took no notice, but kept on all the harder, endeavoring to be fascinating. But there is a limit even to the power of a woman's tongue. That limit was reached; there came a lull and a pause.

"The time I've lost in wooing," began the English girl in the third boat. The idea was suggestive; Trixy drew a deep breath, and made a fresh spurt--this time on the subject of the late Thomas Moore and his melodies. But the young baronet suddenly interposed.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Stuart," he began hastily, and in a somewhat nervous voice; "but there is a subject very near to my heart on which I should like to speak to you this evening."

Trix sat straight up in the stern of the boat, as if she had been galvanized. Her heart gave one great ecstatic thump. "Oh," thought Miss Stuart, "he's going to pop!" I grieve to relate it, but that was the identical way the young lady thought it. "He's going to pop, as sure as I live!"

There was a pause--unspeakably painful to Miss Stuart. "Yes, Sir Victor," she faltered in her most dulcet and encouraging accents.

"I had made up my mind not to speak