A Terrible Secret - May Agnes Fleming (best ebook reader txt) 📗

fellow! for he loves me with his whole heart, and he is a brave and loyal gentleman. But don't pity your brother, my dear; believe me, he doesn't need it. He's a good fellow, Charley, and he likes me, but he won't break his heart or commit suicide while he has a cigar left."

"Here he comes!" exclaimed Trix, "and I believe he has heard us."

"Let him come," Edith returns, lying listlessly back among her cushions once more. "It doesn't matter if he has. It will be no news to _him_."

"It is a pity you should miss each other, though," Trix says sarcastically, as she turns to go; "such thorough philosophers both; I believe you were made for each other, and, as far as easy-going selfishness is concerned, there is little to choose between you. It's a thousand pities Sir Victor can't hear all this."

"He might if he liked," is Edith's answer. "I shouldn't care. Charley!" as Charley comes in and Trix goes out, "have you been eavesdropping? Don't deny it, sir, if you have!"

Charley takes a position in an easy-chair some yards distant, and looks at her lying there, languid and lovely.

"I have been eavesdropping--I never deny my small vices. Hammond left me to go to the stables, and, strolling under the window, I overheard you and Trix. Open confession is beneficial, no doubt; but, my dear cousin, you really shouldn't make it in so audible a tone. It might have been Sir Victor instead of me."

She says nothing. The sombre look he has learned to know is in her dusk eyes, on her dark, colorless face.

"Poor Sir Victor!" he goes on; "he loves you--not a doubt of that, Dithy--to the depths of idiocy, where you know so well how to cast your victims; but hard hit as he is, I wonder _what_ he would say if he heard all this!"

"You might tell him, Charley," Edith says. "I shouldn't mind much, and he _might_ jilt me--who can tell? I think it would do us both good. You could say, 'Look here: don't marry Edith Darrell, Sir Victor; she isn't worthy of you or any good man. She is full of pride, vanity, ambition, selfishness, ill-temper, cynicism, and all uncharitableness. She is _blase_ at nineteen--think what she will be at nine-and-twenty. She doesn't love you--I know her well enough to be sure she never will, partly because a heart was left out in her hard anatomy, partly because--because all the liking she ever had to give, went long ago to somebody else.' Charley, I think he would give me up, and I'd respect him for it, if he knew that. Tell him, if you have the courage, and when he casts me off, come to me and make me marry you. You can do it, you know; and when the honeymoon is over--when poverty stalks in at the door and love flies out of the window--when we hate each other as only ill-assorted wives and husbands ever hate--let the thought that we have done the 'All for love, and the world well lost' business, to the bitter end, console us."

She laughs recklessly; she feels reckless enough to say anything, do anything, this morning. Love, ambition, rank, wealth--what empty baubles they all look, seen through tired eyes the day after a ball!

He sits silent, watching her thoughtfully.

"I don't understand you, Edith," he says. "I feel like asking you the same question Trix did. _Why_ do you marry Sir Victor?"

"Why do I marry him?" she repeated. "Well--a little because of his handsome face and stately bearing, and the triumph of carrying off a prize, for which your Lady Gwendoline and half a score more have battled. A little because he pleads so eloquently, and loves me as no other mortal man did, or ever will; and oh! Charley, a great deal because he is Sir Victor Catheron of Catheron Royals, with a rent-roll of twenty thousand a year, and more, and a name that is older than Magna Charta. If there be any virtue in truth, there--you have it, plain, unvarnished. I like him--who could help it; but love him--no!" She clasped her hands above her head, and gazed dreamily out at the sparkling sunlit scene. "I shall be very fond of him, very proud of him, when I am his wife--that I know. He will enter Parliament, and make speeches, and write political pamphlets, and redress the wrongs of the people. He's the sort of man politicians are made of--the sort of man a wife can be proud of. And on my wedding day, or perhaps a day or two before, you and I shall shake hands, sir, and see each other no more."

"No more?" he repeats.

"Well, for a year or two at least, until all the folly of the past can be remembered only as a thing to be laughed at. Or until there is a tall, handsome Mrs. Stuart, or, more likely, a Lady Gwendoline Stuart. And Charley," speaking hurriedly now, and not meeting the deep gray eyes she knows are fixed upon her, "the locket with my picture and the letters--you won't want them _then_--suppose you let me have them back."

"I won't want them then, certainly," Charley responds, "if by 'then' you mean when I am the husband of the tall, fascinating Mrs. Stuart or Lady Gwendoline. But as I have not that happiness yet, suppose you allow me to retain them until I have. Sir Victor will never know, and he would not mind much if he did. We are cousins, are we not? and what more natural than that cousins once removed should keep each other's pictures? By the bye, I see you still wear that little trumpery pearl and turquoise brooch I gave you, with my photo at the back. Give it to me, Edie; turquoise does not become your brown skin, my dear, and I'll give you a ruby pin with Sir Victor's instead. Perhaps, as turquoise does become her, Lady Gwendoline will accept this as love's first timid offering. The rubies will do twice as well for you."

He stretched out his hand to unfasten it. She sprang back, her cheeks flushing at his touch.

"You shall not have it! Neither Lady Gwendoline nor any one else shall wear it, and, married or single, _I_ shall keep it to my dying day if I choose. Charley--what do you mean, sir! How dare you? Let me go!"

For he had risen suddenly and caught her in his arms, looking steadily down into her dark eyes, with a gaze she would not meet. Whilst he held her, whilst he looked at her, he was her master, and he knew it.

"Charley, let me go!" she pleaded. "If any one came in; the servants, or--or--Sir Victor."

He laughed contemptuously, and held her still.

"Yes, Edith; suppose Sir Victor came in and saw his bride-elect with a sacrilegious arm about her waist? Suppose I told him the truth--that you are mine, not his: mine by the love that alone makes marriage holy; his for his title and his rent-roll--bought and sold. By Heaven! I half wish he would!"

Was this Charley--Charley Stuart?

She caught her breath--her pride and her insolence dropping from her--only a girl in the grasp of the man she loves. In that moment, if he had willed it, he could have made her forego her plight, and pledge herself to be his wholly, and he knew it.

"Edith," he said, "as I stand and look at you, in your beauty and your selfishness, I hardly know whether I love or despise you most. I could make you marry me--_make_ you, mind--but you are not worth it. Go!" He opened his arms contemptuously and released her. "You'll not be a bad wife for Sir Victor, I dare say, as fashionable wives go. You'll be that ornament of society, a married flirt, but you'll never run away with his dearest friend, and make a case for the D. C. 'All for love and the world well lost,' is no motto of yours, my handsome cousin. A week ago I envied Sir Victor with all my heart--to-day I pity him with all my soul!"

He turned to go, for once in his life, thoroughly aroused, passionate love; passionate rage at war within him. She had sunk back upon the sofa, her face hidden in her hands, humbled, as in all her proud life she had never been humbled before. Her silence, her humility touched him. He heard a stifled sob, and all his hot anger died out in pained remorse.

"Oh, forgive me, Edith!" he said, "forgive me. It may be cruel, but I had to speak. It is the first, it will be the last time. I am selfish, too, or I would never have pained you--better never hear the truth than that the hearing should make you miserable. Don't cry, Edith; I can't bear it. Forgive me, my cousin--they are the last tears I will ever make you shed."

The words he meant to soothe her, hurt more deeply than the words he meant to wound. "They are the last tears I will ever make you shed!" An eternal farewell was in the words. She heard the door open, heard it close, and knew that her love and her life had parted in that instant forever.


CHAPTER XVII.

"FOREVER AND EVER."

Two weeks later, as June's golden days were drawing to a close, five of Lady Helena's guests departed from Powyss Place. One remained behind. The Stuart family, with the devoted Captain Hammond in Trixy's train, went up to London; Miss Edith Darrell stayed behind.

Since the memorable day following the ball, the bride-elect of Sir Victor Catheron had dwelt in a sort of earthly purgatory, had lived stretched on a sort of daily rack. "How blessings brighten as they take their flight." She had given up Charley--had cast him off, had bartered herself in cold blood--for a title and an income. And now that he held her at her true value, that his love had died a natural death in contempt and scorn, her whole heart, her whole soul craved him with a sick longing that was like death. It was her daily torture and penance to see him, to speak to him, and note the cold scorn of his gray, tranquil eyes. Jealousy had been added to her other torments; he was ever by Lady Gwendoline's side of late--ever at Drexel Court. His father had set his heart upon the match; she was graceful and high-bred; it would end in a marriage, no doubt. There were times when she woke from her jealous anger to rage at herself.

"What a dog in the manger I grow," she said, with a bitter laugh. "I won't have him myself, and I cannot bear that any one else should have him. If he would only go away--if he only would--I cannot endure this much longer."

Truly she could not. She was losing flesh and color, waxing wan as a shadow. Sir Victor was full of concern, full of wonder and alarm. Lady Helena said little, but (being a woman) her sharp old eyes saw all.

"The sooner my guests go, the better," she thought; "the sooner she sees the last of this young man, the sooner health and strength will return."

Perhaps Charley saw too--the gray, tranquil eyes were very penetrating. It was he, at all events, who urged the exodus to London.

"Let us see a little London life in the season, governor," he said. "Lady Portia Hampton, and _that_ lot, are going. They'll introduce us to some nice people--so