Darkness and Daylight - Mary J. Holmes (great novels of all time .txt) 📗

CHAPTER XV.

NINA.

Three or four times Edith went to Grassy Spring, seeing nothing of the mysterious occupant of the Den, hearing nothing of her, and she began to think she might have returned to Worcester. Many times she was on the point of questioning Arthur, but from what had passed, she knew how disagreeable the subject was to him, and she generously forbore.

“I think he might tell me, anyway,” she said to herself, half poutingly, when, one morning near the latter part of April, she rode slowly toward Grassy Spring.

Their quarrel, if quarrel it could be called, had been made up, or, rather, tacitly forgotten, and Arthur more than once had cursed himself for having, in a moment of excitement, asked her to marry Richard Harrington. While praying to be delivered from temptation he was constantly keeping his eyes fixed upon the forbidden fruit, longing for it more and move, and feeling how worthless life would be to him without it. Still, by a mighty effort, he restrained himself from doing or saying aught which could be constrained into expressions of love, and their interviews were much like those which had preceded his last visit to Worcester. People were beginning to talk about him and his beautiful pupil, but leading the isolated life he did, it came not to his ears. Grace indeed, might have enlightened both himself and Edith with regard to the village gossip, but looking upon the latter as her rival, and desiring greatly that she should marry Arthur, she forebore from communicating to either of them anything which would be likely to retard an affair she fancied was progressing famously. Thus without a counsellor or friend was Edith left to follow the bent of her inclinations; and on this April morning, as she rode along, mentally chiding Arthur for not entrusting his secret to her, she wondered how she had ever managed to be happy without him, and if the time would ever come when her visits to Grassy Spring would cease.

Leaving Bedouin at the rear gate she walked slowly to the house, glancing often in the direction of the DEN, the windows of which were open this morning, and as she came near she saw a pair of soft blue eyes peering at her through the lattice, then a little hand was thrust outside, beckoning to her as it did once before.

“Wait, Miggie, while I write,” came next to her ear, in a voice as sweet and plaintive as a broken lute.

Instantly Edith stopped, and at last a tiny note came fluttering to her feet. Grasping it eagerly she read, in a pretty, girlish hand:

“DARLING MIGGIE:—Nina has been SO sick this great long while, and her head is so full of pain. Why don’t you come to me, Miggie? I sit and wait and listen till my forehead thumps and thumps, just as a bad nurse thumped it once down in the Asylum.

“Let’s run away—you and I; run back to the magnolias, where it’s always summer, with no asylums full of wicked people.

“I’m so lonely, Miggie. Come up stairs, won’t you? They say I rave and tear my clothes, but I won’t any more if you’ll come. Tell Arthur so. He’s good. He’ll do what you ask him.”

“Poor little Nina,” and Edith’s tears fell fast upon the bit of paper. “I WILL see you to-day. Perhaps I may do you some good. Dear, unfortunate Nina!”

There was a step upon the grass, and thrusting the note into her pocket, Edith turned to meet Arthur, who seemed this morning unusually cheerful and greeted her with something like his olden tenderness. But Edith was too intent upon Nina to think much of him, and after the lesson commenced, she appeared so abstracted that it was Arthur’s turn to ask if she were offended. She had made herself believe she was, for notwithstanding Nina’s assertion that “Arthur was good,” she thought it a sin and a shame for him to keep any thing but a raving lunatic hidden away up stairs; and after a moment’s hesitation she answered, “Yes, I am offended, and I don’t mean to come here any more, unless–”

“Edith,” and the tone of Arthur’s voice was fraught with pain so exquisite that Edith paused and looked into his face, where various emotions were plainly visible. Love, fear, remorse, apprehension, all were blended together in the look he fixed upon her. “You won’t leave me,” he said. “Any thing but that. Tell me my error, and how I can atone.”

Edith was about to speak, when, on the stairs without,—the stairs leading from the den—there was the patter of little feet, and a gentle, timid knock was heard upon the door.

“It’s locked—go back;” and Arthur’s voice had in it a tone of command.

“Mr. St. Claire,” and Edith sprang from her chair, “I can unlock that door, and I will.”

Like a block of marble Arthur stood while Edith opened the oak-paneled door. Another moment and Nina stood before her, as she stands now first before our readers.

Edith knew her in a moment from the resemblance to the daguerreotype seen more than eight years before, and as she now scanned her features it seemed to her they had scarcely changed at all. Arthur had said of her then that she was not quite sixteen, consequently she was now nearly twenty-five, but she did not look as old as Edith, so slight was her form, so delicate her limbs, and so childlike and simple the expression of her face. She was very, very fair, and Edith felt that never before had she looked upon a face so exquisitely beautiful. Her hair was of a reddish-yellow hue, and rippled in short silken rings all over her head, curling softly in her neck, but was not nearly as long as it had been in the picture. Alas, the murderous shears had more than once strayed roughly among those golden locks, to keep the little white, fat hands, now clasped so harmlessly together, from tearing them out with frantic violence. Edith thought of this and sighed, while her heart yearned toward the helpless young creature, who stood regarding her with a scrutinizing glance, as one studies a beautiful picture. The face was very white—indeed, it seemed as if it were long since the blood had visited the cheeks, which, nevertheless, were round and plump, as were the finely moulded arms, displayed to good advantage by the loose sleeves of the crimson cashmere wrapper. The eyes were deeply, darkly blue, and the strangely gleaming light which shone from them, betrayed at once the terrible truth that Nina was crazed.

It was a novel sight, those two young girls watching each other so intently, both so beautiful and yet so unlike—the one, tall, stately, and almost queen-like in her proportions, with dark, brilliant complexion; eyes of midnight blackness, and masses of raven hair, bound around her head in many a heavy braid—the other, fairy-like in size, with golden curls and soft blue eyes, which filled with tears at last as some undefinable emotion swept over her. In the rich, dark beauty of Edith’s face there was a wonderful fascination, which riveted the crazy girl to the spot where she had stopped when first she crossed the threshold, and when at last, sinking upon the sofa, Edith extended her arms, as a mother to her child, poor little Nina went forward, and with a low, gasping sob, fell upon her bosom, weeping passionately, her whole frame trembling and her sobs so violent that Edith became alarmed, and tried by kisses and soft endearing words to soothe her grief and check the tears raining in torrents from her eyes.

“It’s nice to cry. It takes the heavy pain away,” and Nina made a gesture that Edith must not stop her, while Arthur, roused from his apathy, also said,

“She has not wept before in years. It will be a great relief.”

At the sound of HIS voice Nina lifted up her head, and turned toward the corner whence it came, but Edith saw that in the glance there was neither reproach nor fear, nothing save trusting confidence, and her heart insensibly softened toward him.

“Poor Arthur,” Nina murmured, and laying her head again on Edith’s bosom, she said, “Every body is sad where I am, but I can’t help it. Oh, I can’t help it. Nina’s crazy, Miggie, Nina is. Poor Nina,” and the voice which uttered these words was so sadly touching that Edith’s tears mingled with those of the young creature she hugged the closer to her, whispering,

“I know it, darling, and I pity you so much. Maybe you’ll get well, now that you know me.”

“Yea, if you’ll stay here always,” said Nina. “What made you gone so long? I wanted you so much when the nights were dark and lonesome, and little bits of faces bent over me like yours used to be, Miggie—yours in the picture, when you wore the red morocco shoe and I led you on the high verandah.”

“What does she mean?” asked Edith, who had listened to the words as to something not wholly new to her.

“I don’t know,” returned Arthur, “unless she has confounded you with her sister, MARGUERITE, who died many years ago, I have heard that Nina, failing to speak the real name, always called her MIGGIE. Possibly you resemble Miggie’s mother. I think Aunt Phillis said you did.”

Edith, too, remembered Phillis’ saying that she looked like “Master Bernard’s” wife, and Arthur’s explanations seemed highly probable.

“Dear, darling Nina,” she said, kissing the pure white forehead, “I WILL be a sister to you.”

“And stay with me?” persisted Nina. “Sleep with me nights with your arms round my neck, just like yon used to do? I hate to sleep alone, with Soph coiled up on the floor, she scares me so, and won’t answer when I call her. Then, when I’m put in the recess, it’s terrible. DON’T let me go in there again, will you?”

Edith had not like Grace, looked into the large closet adjoining the Den, and she did not know what Nina meant, but at a venture she replied,

“No, darling. You’ll be so good that they will not wish to put you there.”

“I CAN’T,” returned Nina, with the manner of one who distrusted herself. “I try, because it will please Arthur, but I must sing and dance and pull my hair when my head feels so big and heavy, and once, Miggie, when it was big as the house, and I pulled my hair till they shaved it off, I tore my clothes in pieces and threw them into the fire. Then, when Arthur came—Dr. Griswold sent for him, you see—I buried my fingers in HIS hair, so,” and she was about to clutch her own golden locks when Edith shudderingly caught her hands and held them tightly lest they should harm the tresses she thought so beautiful.

“Arthur cried,” continued Nina—“cried so hard that my brain grew cool at once. It’s dreadful to see a man cry, Miggie—a great, strong man like Arthur. Poor Arthur, didn’t you cry and call me your lost Nina?”

A suppressed moan was Arthur’s answer, and Nina, when she heard it, slid from Edith’s arms and crossing over to where she sat, climbed into his lap with all the freedom of a little child, and winding her arms about his neck, said to him softly,

“Don’t be so sorry, Arthur, Nina’ll be good. Nina is good now. He’s crying again. Make him stop, wont you? It hurts Nina so. There, poor boy,” and the little waxen hands wiped away the tears falling so fast over Arthur’s face.

Holding one upon the end of her finger and watching it until it dropped upon the carpet, she said with a smile, “Look,