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

looking compassionately at her brother's pale, tired face, "as you look used up after your day and night's travelling, suppose you go to bed; I'll wake you in time for breakfast, and you needn't worry about anything. Captain Hammond has been here," says Trix, blushing in the wan, morning light, "and he will attend to everything."

Charley nodded and turned to go, but his sister detained him.

"You--you saw her, I suppose?" she said hesitatingly.

"Edith do you mean?" Charley looks at her full. "Yes, I saw her. As I went down for the purpose, I was hardly likely to fail."

"And what has she to say for herself?" Trix asks bitterly.

"Very little; we were not together ten minutes in all. She was dressed for a party of some kind, and I did not detain her."

"A party?" Trix repeats; "and we like this! Did she send no message at all?"

"She sent you her dearest love."

"She may keep it--let her give it to Sir Victor Catheron. I don't want her love, or anything else belonging to her!" Trix cries, explosively. "Of all the heartless, ungrateful girls--"

Her brother stops her with a look. Those handsome gray eyes of Charley's can be very stern eyes when he likes.

"As I said before, that will do, Trix. Edith is one of the wise virgins we read of--she has chosen by long odds the better part. What could we do with her now? take her back and return her to her father and step-mother, and the dull life she hated? As for gratitude, I confess I don't see where the gratitude is to come in. We engaged her at a fixed salary: so much cleverness, French, German, and general usefulness on her part; on ours, so many hundred dollars per annum. Let me say this, Trix, once and for good: as you don't seem able to say anything pleasant of Edith, suppose you don't speak of her at all?"

And then Charley, with that resolute light in his eyes, that resolute compression of his lips, turned and walked up-stairs. It was an unusually lengthy, and unusually grave speech for him, and his volatile sister was duly impressed. She shrugged her shoulders, and went back to her pa's room.

"The amount of it is," she thought, "he is as fond of her as ever, and can't bear, as he has lost her, to hear her spoken of. The idea of his scampering down into Chester to see her once more! Ridiculous! She _is_ heartless, and I hate her!"

And then Trixy took out her lace pocket-handkerchief, and suddenly burst out crying. O dear, it was bad enough to lose one's fortune, to have one's European tour nipped in the bud, without losing Edith, just as Edith had wound her way most closely round Trixy's warm little heart. There was but one drop of honey in all the bitter cup--a drop six feet high and stout in proportion--Captain Angus Hammond.

For Captain Angus Hammond, as though to prove that _all_ the world, was not base and mercenary, had come nobly to the front, and proposed to Trixy. And Trixy, surprised and grateful, and liking him very much, had hesitated, and smiled, and dimpled, and blushed, and objected, and finally begun to cry, and sobbed out "yes" through her tears.

Charley slept until twelve--they were to depart for Liverpool by the two o'clock express. Then his sister, attired for travelling, awoke him, and they all breakfasted together; Mr. Stuart, too, looking very limp and miserable, and Captain Hammond, whose state would have been one of idiotic happiness, had not the thought that the ocean to-morrow would roll between him and the object of his young affections, thrown a damper upon him. He was going to Liverpool with them, however; it would be a mournful consolation to see them off. They travelled second-class. As Charley said, "they must let themselves down easily--the sooner they began the better--and third-class to start with might be coming it a little too strong. Let them have a few cushions and comforts still."

Mr. Stuart kept close to his wife. He seemed to cling to her, and depend upon her, like a child. It was wonderful, it was pitiful how utterly shattered he had become. His son looked after him with a solicitous tenderness quite new in all their experience of Charley. Captain Hammond and Trixy kept in a corner together, and talked in saccharine undertones, looking foolish, and guilty, and happy.

They reached Liverpool late in the evening, and drove to the Adelphi. At twelve next day they were to get on board the tender, and be conveyed down the Mersey to their ship.

Late that evening, after dinner, and over their cigars, Captain Hammond opened his masculine heart, and, with vast hesitation and much embarrassment, poured into Charley's ear the tale of his love.

"I ought to tell the governor, you know," the young officer said, "but he's so deucedly cut up as it is, you know, that I couldn't think of it. And it's no use fidgeting your mother--Trixy will tell her. I love your sister, Charley, and I believe I've been in love with her ever since that day in Ireland. I ain't a lady's man, and I never cared a fig for a girl before in my life; but, by George! I'm awfully fond of Trixy. I ain't an elder son, and I ain't clever, I know," cried the poor, young gentleman sadly; "but if Trix will consent, by George! I'll go with her to church to-morrow. There's my pay--my habits ain't expensive, like some fellows--we could got along on that for a while, and then I have expectations from my grandmother. I've had expectations from my grandmother for the last twelve years, sir, and every day of those twelve years she's been dying; and, by George! she ain't dead yet, you know. It's wonderful--I give you my word--it's wonderful, the way grandmothers and maiden aunts with money do hold out. As Dundreary says, 'It's something no fellow can understand.' But that ain't what I wanted to say--it's this: if you're willing, and Trix is willing, I'll get leave of absence and come over by the next ship, and we'll be married. I--I'll be the happiest fellow alive, Stuart, the day your sister becomes my wife."

You are not to suppose that Captain Hammond made this speech fluently and eloquently, as I have reported it. The words are his, but the long pauses, the stammerings, the repetitions, the hesitations I have mercifully withheld. His cigar was quite smoked out by the time he had finished, and with nervous haste he set about lighting another. For Mr. Stuart, tilted back in his chair, his shining boots on the window-sill of the drawing-room, gazing out at the gas-lit highways of Liverpool, he listened in abstracted silence. There was a long pause after the captain concluded--then Charley opened his lips and spoke:

"This is all nonsense, you know, Hammond," he said gravely, "folly--madness, on your part. A week ago, when we thought Trixy an heiress, the case looked very different, you see; then I would have shaken hands with you, and bestowed my blessing upon your virtuous endeavors. But all that is changed now. As far as I can see, we are beggars--literally beggars--without a dollar; and when we get to New York nothing will remain for Trixy and me but to roll up our sleeves and go to work. What we are to work at, Heaven knows; we have come up like the lilies of the field, who toil not, neither do they spin. It is rather late in the day to take lessons in spinning now, but you see there is no help for it. I don't say much, Hammond, but I feel this. I hold a man to be something less than a man who will go through life howling over a loss of this kind. There are worse losses than that of fortune in the world." He paused a moment, and his dreamy eyes looked far out over the crowded city street. "I always thought my father was as rich as Crow--Crae--the rich fellow, you know, they always quote in print. It seemed an impossibility that we could ever be poor. But we are, and there is an end of it. Your family are wealthy, your father has a title; do you think _he_ would listen to this for a moment?"

"My family may go--hang!" burst forth the captain. "What the deuce have they got to do with it. If Trixy is willing--"

"Trixy will not be willing to enter any family on those terms," Trixy's brother said, in that quiet way of his, which could yet be such an obstinate way; "and what I mean to say is this: A marriage for the present is totally and absolutely out of the question. You and she may make love to your heart's content--write letters across the ocean by the bushel, be engaged as fast as you please, and remain constant at long as you like. But marriage--no, no, no!"

That was the end of it. Charley was not to be moved--neither, indeed, on the marriage question, was Trix. "Did Angus think her a wretch--a monster--to desert her poor pa and ma just now, when they wanted her most, and go off with him? Not likely. He might take back his ring if he liked--she would not hold him to his engagement--she was ready and willing to set him free--"

"So Jamie, an' ye dinna wait
Ye canna marry me,"

sang Charley, as Trix broke down here and sobbed. Then with a half smile on his face he went out of the room, and Trixy's tears were dried on Angus Hammond's faithful breast.

Next day, a gray overcast, gloomy day, the ship sailed. Captain Hammond went with them on board, returning in the tender. Trix, leaning on her father's arm, crying behind her veil; Charley, by his mother's side, stood on deck while the tender steamed back to the dock. And there under the gray sky, with the bleak wind blowing, and the ship tossing on the ugly short chop of the river, they took their parting look at the English shore, with but one friendly face to watch them away, and that the ginger-whiskered face of Captain Hammond.

* * * * *

Edith Darrell left Charley Stuart, and returned to the brilliantly-lit drawing room, where her lover and Lady Helena and their friends sat waiting the announcement of dinner. Sir Victor's watchful eyes saw her enter. Sir Victor's loving glance saw the pallor, like the pallor of death, upon her face. She walked steadily over to a chair in the curtained recess of a window. He was held captive by Lady Portia Hampton, and could not join her. A second after there was a sort of sobbing gasp--a heavy fall. Everybody started, and arose in consternation. Miss Darrell had fallen from her chair, and lay on the floor in a dead faint.

Her lover, as pale almost as herself, lifted her in his arms, the cold, beautiful face lying, like death on his shoulder. But it was not death.

They carried her up to her room--restoratives were applied, and presently the great dark eyes opened, and looked up into her lover's face.

She covered her own with her hands, and turned away from him, as though the sight was distasteful to her. He bent above her, almost agonized that anything should ail his