Arthur had been tempted before--sorely, terribly tempted--but never like this, and recoiling a pace or two, he stood with the dead Nina between himself and she weeping heavily, while the wild thought swept over him, "Is it right that I should fiend her away?
" but over her an instant, and stretching his hand across the grave, he laid it on the head of the kneeling girl, giving her the blessing she so much craved, and then bidding her leave him.
"They are calling to you," he added, as he heard Victor"s voice in the distance, and struggling to her feet, Edith started to go, but forgetting all sense of propriety in that dreadful parting, she turned to him again and said,
"I am going, Arthur, but I must ask one question. It will make my future brighter if I know you love me still, be it ever so little.
Do you, Arthur, and when you know I am Richard"s wife will you think of me sometimes, and pity me, too? I shall need it so much!"
Arthur had not expected this, and he reeled as if smitten with a heavy blow. Leaning for support against Petrea"s monument, whence Miggie"s name had been effaced, he gasped:
"G.o.d help me, Edith! You should have spared me this. Do I love you? Oh Edith, alas, alas! Here with Nina, whom, Heaven is my witness, I did love truly at the last--here with her, I say, lying dead between us, I swear to you that never was maiden loved as I this moment love you; but I cannot make you mine. I dare not prove thus treacherous to Richard, who trusted you with me, and, Edith, you can be happy with him, and you will. You must forget that I ever crossed your path, thinking of me only as one who was your sister"s husband. And G.o.d will give you strength to do this if you ask it of him aright I shall not forgot you, Edith. That cannot be. Across the sea, wherever I may be, I shall remember you, enshrining your memory in my heart, together with Nina, whom I so much wish I had loved earlier, and so have saved us both from pain. And now go--go back to Collingwood, and keep your vow to Richard. He is one of G.o.d"s n.o.blest works, an almost perfect man.
You will learn to love him. You will be happy. Do not write to me till it is over, then send your cards, and I shall know "tis done.
Farewell, my sister--farewell forever."
Without a word of reply Edith moved away, nor cast a backward glance at the faint, sick man, who leaned his burning forehead against the gleaming marble; while drop after drop of perspiration fell upon the ground, but brought him no relief. He heard the carriage wheels as they rolled from the door, and the sound seemed grinding his life to atoms, for by that token he knew that Edith was gone--that to him there was nothing left save the little mound at his feet and the memory of his broken lily who slept beneath it. How he wanted her now--wanted his childish Nina--his fair girl-wife, to comfort him. But it could not be, Nina was dead--her sweet, bird-like voice was hushed; it would never meet his listening ear again, and for him there was nothing left, save the wailing wind to whisper sadly to him as she was wont to do, "Poor Arthur boy, poor Arthur boy."
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
HOME.
Oh, what a change it was from sunny Florida to England, just how both Edith and Victor shivered, arrived at the last stage of their journey, they looked out upon the snow-clad hills and leafless trees which fitted out by bare and brown against the winter sky.
West Shannondale! the brakeman shouted, and Edith drew her furs around her, for in a few moments more their own station would be reached.
"The river is frozen; it must be very cold," said Victor, pointing to the blue-black stream; skimmered over with a thin coat of ice.
"Yes, very, very cold," and Edith felt the meaning of the word in more senses than one.
Why wasn"t she glad to be home again? Why did her thoughts cling so to distant Sunnybank, or her heart die within her as waymark after waymark told her Collingwood was near? Alas! she was not a loving, eager bride elect, returning to the arms of her beloved, but a shrinking, hopeless, desolate woman, going back to meet the destiny she dared not avoid. The change was all in herself, for the day was no colder, the clouds no greyer, the setting sun no paler than New England wintry days and clouds and suns are wont to be. Collingwood was just the same, and its ma.s.sive walls rose as proudly amid the dark evergreens around it as they had done in times gone by, when to the little orphan it seemed a second Paradise. Away to the right lay Gra.s.sy Spring, the twilight shadows gathering around it, piles of snow resting on its roof, and a thin wreath of smoke curling from a single chimney in the rear.
All this Edith saw as in the village omnibus she was driven toward home, Richard was not expecting them until the morrow, and thus no new fires were kindled, no welcoming lights hung out, and the house was unusually gloomy and dark. During Edith"s absence Richard had staid mostly in the library, and there he was sitting now, with his hands folded together in that peculiarly helpless way which characterized all his motions. He heard the sound of wheels, the banging of trunks, and then his ear caught a footstep it knew full well, a slow, shuffling tread, but Edith"s still, and out into the silent hall he groped his way, watching there until she came.
How he hugged her to his bosom--never heeding that she gave him back but one answering kiss, a cold, a frozen thing, which would not thaw even after it touched his lips, so full of life and warmth. Poor, deluded man! he fancied that the tears he felt upon his face were tears of joy at being home again; but alas! alas!
they were tears wrung out by a feeling of dreary home-sickness--a longing to be somewhere else--to have some other one than Richard chafing her cold hands and calling her pet names. He looked older, too, than he used to do, and Edith thought of what he once had said about her seeing the work of decay go on in him while she yet was young and vigorous. Still her voice was natural as she answered his many questions and greeted Mrs. Matson who came in to see her as soon as she heard of her arrival.
"In mourning!" the latter exclaimed as with womanly curiosity she inspected Edith"s dress.
Richard started, and putting his hand to Edith"s neck, felt that her collar was of c.r.a.pe, and a shadow pa.s.sed over his face. He liked to think of her as a bright plumaged bird, not as sombre- hued and wearing the habiliments which come only from some grave.
"Was it necessary that my darling should carry her love for a stranger quite so far as this?" he asked. "Need you have dressed in black?"
Without meaning it, his tone implied reproach, and it cut Edith cruelly, making her wish that she had told him all, when she wrote that she was coming home.
"Oh, Richard," she cried, "don"t chide me for these outward tokens of sorrow. Nina, dear, darling Nina, was my sister--my fathers child. Temple was only a name he a.s.sumed to avoid arrest, so it all got wrong. Everything is wrong," and Edith sobbed impetuously, while Richard essayed to comfort her.
The dress of black was not displeasing to him now, and he pa.s.sed his hands caressingly over its heavy folds as if to ask forgiveness for having said aught against it.
Gradually Edith grew calm, and after she had met the servants, and the supper she could not taste was over, she repeated to Richard the story she had heard from Marie, who had stopped for a time in New York to visit her sister.
A long time they sat together that night, while Richard told her how lonely he had been without her, and asked her many questions of Nina"s last days.
"Did she send no message to me?" he said. "She used to like me, I fancied."
Edith did not know how terrible a message Nina had sent to him, and she replied, "She talked of you a great deal, but I do not remember any particular word. I told her I was to be your wife."
and Edith"s voice trembled, for this was but a prelude to what she meant to say ere she bade him good night. She should breathe so much more freely if she knew her bridal was not so near, and her sister"s death was surely a sufficient reason for deferring it.
Summoning all her courage, she arose, and sitting on Richard"s knee, b.u.t.toned and unb.u.t.toned his coat in a kind of abstracted manner, while she asked if it might be so. "I know I promised for New Year"s night," she said, "but little Nina died so recently and I loved her so much, May it be put off, Richard--put over until June?"
Edith had not thought of this in Florida, but here at home, it came to her like succor to the drowning, and she anxiously awaited Richard"s answer.
A frown for an instant darkened his fine features, for he did not like this second deferring the day, but he was too unselfish to oppose it, and he answered,
"Yes, darling, if you will have it so. It may be better to wait at least six months, shall it be in June, the fifteenth say?"
Edith was satisfied with this, and when they parted her heart was lighted of a heavy load, for six months seemed to her a great, great while.
The next day when Grace came up to call on Edith, and was told of the change, she shrugged her shoulders, for she knew that by this delay Richard stood far less chance of ever calling Edith his wife. But she merely said it was well, congratulating Edith upon her good fortune in being an heiress, and asking many questions about Arthur and Nina, both, and at last taking her leave without a hint as to her suspicions of the future. To Edith the idea had never occurred. She should marry Richard of course, and nothing could happen to defer the day a third time. So she said at least to Victor, when she told him of the arrangement, and with a very expressive whistle, Victor, too, shrugged his shoulders, thinking, that possibly he need not read Nina"s letter after all. He would rather not if it could be avoided, for he knew how keen the pang it would indict upon his n.o.ble master, and he would not add one unnecessary drop to the cup of sorrow he saw preparing for poor Richard.
After a few days of listless languor and pining home-sickness, Edith settled into her olden routine of reading, talking and singing to Richard, who thought himself happy even though she did not caress him as often as she used to do, and was sometimes impatient and even ill-natured towards him.
"She mourns so much for Nina," was the excuse which Richard wrote down in his heart for all her sins, either of omission or commission; and in a measure he was right.
Edith did mourn for sweet little Nina, but mourned not half so much for her as for the hopes forever fled--for Arthur, at whose silence she greatly marvelled, thinking that she would write to him as to her brother, and then shrinking from the task because she knew not what to say.
Spite of her feelings the six months she had thought so long were pa.s.sing far too rapidly to suit her. Time lingers for no one, and January glided into February, February into March, whose melting snows and wailing winds gave place at last to April, and then again the people of Shannondale begun to talk of "that wedding,"
fixed for the 15th of June. Marie had become domesticated at Collingwood, but the negroes, who now called Edith mistress, still remained at Gra.s.sy Spring, waiting until Arthur should come, or some message be received from him. It was four months now since Edith left Sunnybank, and in all that time no tiding had come to her from Arthur. Grace"s letters were unanswered, and Grace herself was beginning to feel alarmed, when one afternoon, Victor called Edith to an upper balcony and pointing in the direction of Gra.s.sy Spring, bade her look where the graceful columns of smoke were rising from all its chimneys, while its windows were opened wide, and the servants hurried in and out, seemingly big with some important event.
"Saddle Bedouin," said Edith, more excited than she had deemed it possible for her to be. "Mr. St. Claire must be expected, I am going down to see."
Victor obeyed, and without a word to Richard, Edith was soon galloping off toward Gra.s.sy Spring, where she found Grace hurriedly giving orders to the delighted blacks, who tumbled over each other in their zeal to have everything in readiness for "Marster Arthur." He was coming that night, so Grace had told them, she having received a telegram that morning from New York, together with a letter.
"He started North the first of Feb." she said to Edith, "taking Richmond on the way, and has been detained there ever since by sickness. He is very feeble yet, but is anxious to see us all. He has received no letters from me, it seems, and thinks you are married."
Edith turned very white for a moment, and then there burned upon her cheek a round, red spot, induced by the feeling that the believing she was married had been the immediate cause of Arthur"s illness. Edith was no longer the pale, listless woman who moved so like a breathing statue around Collingwood, but a flushed, excited creature, flitting from room to room, and entering heart and soul into Grace"s plans for having everything about the house as cheerful and homelike as possible for the invalid. She should stay to welcome him, too, she said, bidding one of the negroes put Bedouin in the stable and then go up to Collingwood to tell Richard where she was.
Arthur was indeed coming to Gra.s.sy Spring, brought thither by the knowing that something must be done with the place ere he went to Europe as he intended doing, and by the feverish desire to see Edith once more even though she were the wife of Richard, as he supposed her to be. Grace"s first letter had been lost, and as he had been some weeks on the way he knew nothing of matters at Collingwood, though occasionally there crept into his heart a throb of hope that possibly for Nina"s sake the marriage had been deferred and Edith might be Edith Hastings still. It was very sad coming back to the spot so fraught with memories of Nina, and this it was in part which made him look so pale and haggard when at last he stood within the hall and was met by Grace, who uttered an exclamation of surprise at seeing him so changed.
"I am very tired," he said, with the tone and air of an invalid, "Let me rest in the library awhile, before I see the negroes.
Their noise will disturb me," and he walked into the very room where Edith stood waiting for him.
She had intended to meet him as a brother, the husband of her sister, but the sight of his white, suffering face swept her calmness all away, and with a burst of tears she cried, "Oh, Arthur, Arthur, I did not think you had been so sick. Why did you not let us know; I would have come to you," and she brought herself the arm-chair which he took, smiling faintly upon her and saying,
"It was bad business being sick at a hotel, and I did sometimes wish you were there, but of course I could not expect you to leave your husband. How is he?"
Edith could hear the beating of her heart and feel the blood tingling her cheeks as she replied, "You mean Richard, but he is not my husband. He--"