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

can’t,” said the voice of Edith Hastings, who had approached him cautiously, and heard his sad soliloquy.

Richard started, and stretching out his long arm, caught the sleeve of the little girl, who, finding herself a captive, ceased to struggle, and seated herself beside him as he requested her to do.

“Be you holding your breath?” she asked, as for a moment he did not speak, adding as he made no answer, “Tell me when you’re dead, won’t you?”

Richard laughed aloud, a hearty, merry laugh, which startled himself, it was so like an echo of the past, ere his hopes were crushed by cruel misfortune.

“I do not care to die now that I have you,” he said; “and if you’d stay with me always, I should never be unhappy.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be jolly,” cried Edith, using her favorite expression, “I’d read to you, and sing to you, only Rachel says my songs are weird-like, and queer, and maybe you might not like them; but I’d fix your hair, and lead you in the smooth places where you wouldn’t jam your heels;” and she glanced ruefully at one of hers, bound up in a cotton rag. “I wish I could come, but Mrs. Atherton won’t let me, I know. She threatens most every day to send me back to the Asylum, ‘cause I act so. I’m her little waiting-maid, Edith Hastings.”

“Waiting maid!” and the tone of Richard’s voice was indicative of keen disappointment.

The Harringtons were very proud, and Richard would once have scoffed at the idea of being particularly interested in one so far below him as a waiting-maid. He had never thought of this as a possibility, and the child beside him was NOT of quite so much consequence as she had been before. Still he would know something of her history, and he asked her where she lived, and why she had brought him so many flowers.

“I live with Mrs. Atherton,” she replied. “She sent the flowers, and if you’ll never tell as long as you live and breathe, I’ll tell you what Rachel says. Rachel’s an old colored woman, who used to be a nigger down South, but she’s free now, and says Mrs. Atherton loves you. I guess she does, for she fainted most away that day I went home and told her you were blind.”

“Mrs. Atherton!” and Richard’s face grew suddenly dark. “Who is Mrs. Atherton, child?”

“Oh-h-h!” laughed Edith deprecatingly; “don’t you know her? She’s Grace Atherton—the biggest lady in town; sleeps in linen sheets and pillow cases every night, and washes in a bath-tub every morning.”

“Grace Atherton!” and Edith quailed beneath the fiery glance bent upon her by those black sightless eyes. “Did Grace Atherton send these flowers to me?” and the bright-hued blossoms dropped instantly from his hand.

“Yes, sir, she did. What makes you tear so? Are you in a tantrum?” said Edith, as he sprang to his feet and began unsteadily to pace the summer-house.

Richard Harrington possessed a peculiar temperament, Grace Atherton had wounded his pride, spurned his love, and he THOUGHT he hated her, deeming it a most unwomanly act in her to make these overtures for a reconciliation. This was why he TORE so, as Edith had expressed it, but soon growing more calm, he determined to conceal from the quick-witted child the cause of his agitation, and resuming his seat beside her, he asked her many questions concerning Grace Atherton and herself, and as he talked he felt his olden interests in his companion gradually coming back. What if she were now a waiting-maid, her family might have been good, and he asked her many things of her early life. But Edith could tell him nothing. The Orphan Asylum was the first home of which she had any vivid remembrance, though it did seem to her she once had lived where the purple grapes were growing rich and ripe upon the broad vine stalk, and where all the day long there was music such as she’d never heard since, but which came back to her sometimes in dreams, staying long enough for her to catch the air. Her mother, the matron told her, had died in New York, and she was brought to the Asylum by a woman who would keep her from starvation. This was Edith’s story, told without reserve or the slightest suspicion that the proud man beside her would think the less of her because she had been poor and hungry. Neither did he, after the first shock had worn away; and he soon found himself wishing again that she would come up there and live with him. She was a strange, odd child, he knew, and he wondered how she looked. He did not believe she was golden-haired and blue-eyed now. Still he would not ask her lest he should receive a second disappointment, for he was a passionate admirer of female beauty, and he could not repress a feeling of aversion for an ugly face.

“Is Mrs. Atherton handsome?” he suddenly asked, remembering the fresh, girlish beauty of Grace Elmendorff, and wishing to know if it had faded.

“Oh, jolly,” said Edith, “I guess she is. Such splendid blue hair and auburn eyes.”

“She must be magnificent,” returned Richard, scarcely repressing a smile. “Give her my compliments and ask her if she’s willing NOW to share my self-imposed labor. Mind, don’t you forget a word, and go now. I’ll expect you again to-morrow with her answer.”

He made a gesture for Edith to leave, and though she wanted so much to tell him how she loved him for saving that Swedish baby, she forbore until another time, and ran hastily away, repeating his message as she ran lest she should forget it.

“Sent his compliments, and says ask you if you’re willing to share, his—his—his—share his—now—something—anyway, he wants you to come up there and live, and I do so hope you’ll go. Won’t it be jolly?” she exclaimed, as half out of breath she burst into the room where Grace sat reading a letter received by the morning’s mail.

“Wants me to what?” Grace asked, fancying she had not heard aright, and as Edith repeated the message, there stole into her heart a warm, happy feeling, such as she had not experienced since the orange wreath crowned her maiden brow.

Edith had not told her exactly what he said, she knew, but it was sufficient that he cared to see her, and she resolved to gratify him, but with something of her olden coquetry she would wait awhile and make him think she was not coming. So she said no more to Edith upon the subject, but told her that she was expecting her cousin Arthur St. Claire, a student from Geneva College, that he would be there in a day or two, and while he remained at Brier Hill she wished Edith to try and behave herself.

“This Mr. St. Claire,” said she, “belongs to one of the most aristocratic Southern families. He is not accustomed to anything low, either in speech or manner.”

“Can’t I even say JOLLY?” asked Edith, with such a seriously comical manner that Grace had great difficulty to keep from smiling.

“Jolly” was Edith’s pet word, the one she used indiscriminately and on all occasions, sometimes as an interjection, but oftener as an adjective. If a thing suited her it was sure to be jolly—she always insisting that ‘twas a good proper word, for MARIE used it and SHE knew. Who Marie was she could not tell, save that ‘twas somebody who once took care of her and called her jolly. It was in vain that Grace expostulated, telling her it was a slang phrase, used only by the vulgar. Edith was inexorable, and would not even promise to abstain from it during the visit of Arthur St. Claire.

 

CHAPTER V.

VISITORS AT COLLINGWOOD AND VISITORS AT BRIER HILL.

 

The morning came at last on which Arthur was expected, but as he did not appear, Grace gave him up until the morrow, and toward the middle of the afternoon ordered out her carriage, and drove slowly in the direction of Collingwood. Alighting before the broad piazza, and ascending the marble steps, she was asked by Richard’s confidential servant into the parlor, where she sat waiting anxiously while he went, in quest of his master.

“A lady, sir, wishes to see you in the parlor,” and Victor Dupres bowed low before Richard, awaiting his commands.

“A lady, Victor? Did she give her name?”

“Yes, sir; Atherton—Mrs. Grace Atherton, an old friend, she said,” Victor replied, marveling at the expression of his master’s face, which indicated anything but pleasure.

He had expected her—had rather anticipated her coming; but now that she was there, he shrank from the interview. It could only result in sorrow, for Grace was not to him now what she once had been. He could value her, perhaps, as a friend, but Edith’s tale had told him that he to her was more than a friend. Possibly this knowledge was not as distasteful to him as he fancied it to be; at all events, when he remembered it, he said to Victor:

“Is the lady handsome?” feeling a glow of satisfaction in the praises heaped upon the really beautiful Grace. Ere long the hard expression left his face, and straightening up his manly form, he bade Victor take him to her.

As they crossed the threshold of the door, he struck his foot against it, and instantly there rang in his ear the words which little Edith had said to him so pityingly, “Poor blind man!” while he felt again upon his brow the touch of those childish fingers; and this was why the dark, hard look came back. Edith Hastings rose up between him and the regal creature waiting so anxiously his coming, and who, when he came and stood before her, in his helplessness, wept like a child.

“Richard! oh, Richard! that it should be thus we meet again!” was all that she could say, as, seizing the groping hand, she covered it with her tears.

Victor had disappeared, and she could thus give free vent to her emotions, feeling it almost a relief that the eyes whose glance she once had loved to meet could not witness her grief.

“Grace,” he said at last, the tone of his voice was so cold that she involuntarily dropped his hands and looked him steadily in the face. “Grace, do not aggravate my misfortune by expressing too much sympathy. I am not as miserable as you may think, indeed, I am not as unhappy even now as yourself.”

“It’s true, Richard, true,” she replied, “and because I am unhappy I have come to ask your forgiveness if ever word or action, or taunt of mine caused you a moment’s pain. I have suffered much since we parted, and my suffering has atoned for all my sin.”

She ceased speaking and softened by memories of the past, when he loved Grace Elmendorf, Richard reached for her hand, and holding it between his own, said to her gently, “Grace, I forgave you years ago. I know you have suffered much, and I am sorry for it, but we will understand each other now. You are the widow of the man you chose, I am hopelessly blind—our possessions adjoin each other, our homes are in sight. I want you for a neighbor, a friend, a sister, if you like. I shall never marry. That time is past. It perished with the long ago, and it will, perhaps, relieve the monotony of my life if I have a female acquaintance to visit occasionally. I thank you much for your flowers, although for a time I did not know you sent them, for the little girl would place them in my hands without a word and dart away before I