CHAPTER VI.
ARTHUR AND EDITH.
If anything could have reconciled Edith to her fate, it would have been the fact that she was travelling with Arthur St. Claire, who, after entering the cars, cared for her as tenderly as if she had been a lady of his own rank, instead of a little disgraced waiting maid, whom he was taking back, to the Asylum. It was preposterous, he thought, for Grace to call one as young as Edith a waiting maid, but it was like her, he knew. It had a lofty sound, and would impress some people with a sense of her greatness; so he could excuse it much more readily than the injustice done to the child by charging her with a crime of which he knew she was innocent. This it was, perhaps, which made him so kind to her, seeking to divert her mind from her grief by asking her many questions concerning herself and her family. But Edith did not care to talk. All the way to Albany she continued crying; and when, at last, they stood within the noisy depot, Arthur saw that the tears were still rolling down her cheeks like rain.
"Poor little girl. How I pity her!" he thought, as she placed her hand confidingly in his, and when he saw how hopelessly she looked into his face, as she asked, with quivering lip, if "it wasn"t ever so far to New York yet?" the resolution he had been trying all the day to make was fully decided upon, and when alone with Edith in the room appropriated to her at, the Delavan House, he asked her why she supposed Richard Harrington would be willing to take her to Collingwood.
Very briefly Edith related to him the particulars of her interviews with the blind man, saying, when she had finished,
"Don"t you believe he likes me?"
"I dare say he does," returned Arthur, at the same time asking if she would be afraid to stay alone one night in that great hotel, knowing he was gone?"
"Oh, Mr. Arthur, you won"t leave me here?" and in her terror Edith"s arms wound themselves around the young man"s neck as if she would thus keep him there by force.
Unclasping her hand"s, and holding them in his own, Arthur said,
"Listen to me, Edith. I will take the Boston train which leaves here very soon, and return to Shannondale, reaching there some time to-night. I will go to Collingwood, will tell Mr. Harrington what has happened, and ask him to take you, bringing him back here with me, if he will---"
"And if he won"t?" interrupted Edith, joy beaming in every feature. "If he won"t have me, Mr. Arthur, will you? Say, will you have me if he won"t?"
"Yes, yes, I"ll have you," returned Arthur, laughing to himself, as he thought of the construction which might be put upon this mode of speech.
But a child nine and a half years old could not, he knew, have any designs upon either himself or Richard Harrington, even had she been their equal, which he fancied she was not. She was a poor, neglected orphan, and as such he would care for her, though the caring compelled him to do what scarcely anything else could have done, to wit, to seek an interview with the man who held his cherished secret.
"Are you willing to stay here alone now?" he said again. "I"ll order your meals sent to your room, and to-morrow night I shall return."
"If I only knew you meant for sure," said Edith, trembling at the thought of being deserted in a strange city.
Suddenly she started, and looking him earnestly in the face, said to him,
"Do you love that pretty lady in the gla.s.s--the one Mrs. Atherton thinks I stole?"
Arthur turned white but answered her at once.
"Yes, I love her very, very much."
"Is she your sister, Mr. Arthur?" and the searching black eyes seemed compelling him to tell the truth.
"No, not my sister, but a dear friend."
"Where is she, Mr. Arthur? In New York?"
"No, not in New York."
"In Albany then?"
"No, not in Albany. She"s in Europe with her father," and a shade of sadness crept over Arthur"s face, "She was hardly a young lady when this picture was taken, and he drew the locket from its hiding place. She was only thirteen. She"s not quite sixteen now."
Edith by this time had the picture in her hand, and holding it to the light exclaimed, "Oh, but she"s so jolly, Mr. Arthur. May I kiss her, please?"
"Certainly," he answered, and Edith"s warm red lips pressed the senseless gla.s.s, which seemed to smile upon her.
"Pretty--pretty--pretty N-n-n-Nina!" she whispered, and in an instant Arthur clutched her so tightly that she cried out with pain.
"Who told you her name was Nina?" he asked in tones so stern and startling that Edith"s senses all forsook her, and trembling with fright she stammered,
"I don"t know, sir--unless you did. Of course you did, how else should I know. I never saw the lady."
Yes, how else should she know, and though he would almost have sworn that name had never pa.s.sed his lips save in solitude, he concluded be most have dropped it inadvertently in Edith"s hearing, and still holding her by the arm, he said, "Edith, if I supposed yon would repeat the word Nina, either at Collingwood or elsewhere, I certainly should be tempted to leave you here alone."
"I won"t, I won"t, oh, Mr. Arthur, I surely won"t!" and Edith clung to him in terror. "I"ll never say it--not even to Mr.
Harrington. Ill forget it, I can, I know."
"Not to Mr. Harrington of all others," thought Arthur, but he would not put himself more in Edith"s power than he already was, and feeling that he must trust her to a certain extent, he continued, "If you stay at Collingwood, I may sometime bring this Nina to see you, but until I do you must never breathe her name to any living being, or say a word of the picture."
"But Mr. Harrington," interrupted the far-seeing Edith, "He"ll have to know why Mrs. Atherton sent me away.
"I"ll attend to that," returned Arthur. "I shall tell him it was a daguerreotype of a lady friend. There"s nothing wrong in that, is there?" he asked, as he noticed the perplexed look of the honest- hearted Edith.
"No," she answered hesitatingly. "It is a lady friend, but--but-- seems as if there was something wrong somewhere. Oh, Mr. Arthur-- "and she grasped his hand as firmly as he had held her shoulder.
"You ain"t going to hurt pretty Nina, are you? You never will do her any harm?"
"Heaven forbid," answered Arthur, involuntarily turning away from the truthful eyes of the dark-haired maiden pleading with him not to harm the Nina--who, over the sea, never dreamed of the scene enacted in that room between the elegant Arthur St. Claire and the humble Edith Hastings. "Heaven forbid that I should harm her---"
He said it twice, and then asked the child to swear solemnly never to repeat that name where any one could hear.
"I won"t swear," she said, "but I"ll promise as true as I live and breathe, and draw the breath of life, and that"s as good as a swear."
Arthur felt that it was, and with the compact thus sealed between them, he arose to go, reaching out his hand for the picture.
"No," said Edith, "I want her for company. I shan"t be lonesome looking in her eyes, and I know you will come back if I keep her."
Arthur understood her meaning, and answered laughingly, "Well, keep her then, as a token that I will surely return," and pressing a kiss upon the beautiful picture he left the room, while Edith listened with a beating heart, until the sound of his footsteps had died away. Then a sense of dreariness stole over her; the tears gathered in her eyes, and she sought by a one-sided conversation with her picture to drive the loneliness away.
"Pretty Nina! Sweet Nina! Jolly Nina!" she kept repeating, "I guess I used to see you in Heaven, before I came down to the nasty old Asylum. And mother was there, too, with a great long veil of hair, which came below her waist. Where was it?" she asked herself as Nina, her mother and Marie were all mingled confusedly together in her mind; and while seeking to solve the mystery, the darkness deepened in the room, the gas lamps were lighted in the street, and with a fresh shudder of loneliness Edith crept into the bed, and nestling down among her pillows, fell asleep with Nina, pressed lovingly to her bosom.
At a comparatively early hour next morning, the door of her room, which had been left unfastened, was opened, and a chambermaid walked in, starting with surprise at sight of Edith, sitting up in bed, her thick black hair falling over her shoulders, and her large eyes fixed inquiringly upon her.
"An, sure," she began, "is it a child like you staying here alone the blessed night? Where"s yer folks?"
"I hain"t no folks," answered Edith, holding fast to the locket, and chewing industriously the bit of gum which Rachel, who knew her taste, had slipped into her pocket at parting.
"Hain"t no folks! How come you here then?" and the girl Lois advanced nearer to the bedside.