A Terrible Secret Part 21

But cold and white as the snow itself, "Charley" lay, dumb and unresponsive.

And so an hour wore on.

What an hour it was--more like an eternity. In all her after-life--its pride and its glory, its downfall and disgrace, that night remained vividly in her memory.

She woke many and many a night, starting up in her warm bed, from some startling dream, that she was back, lost in the snow, with Charley lying lifeless in her lap.

But help was at hand. It was close upon nine o'clock, when, through the deathly white silence, the sound of many voices came. When over the cold glitter of the winter night, the red light of lanterns flared, Don Caesar came plunging headlong through the drifts to his little mistress' side, with loud and joyful barking, licking her face, her hands, her feet. They were saved.

She sank back sick and dizzy in her father's clasp. For a moment the earth rocked, and the sky went round--then she sprang up, herself again. Her father was there, and the three young men, boarders. They lifted the rigid form of the stranger, and carried it between them somehow, to Mr. Darrell's house.

His feet were slightly frost-bitten, his leg not broken after all, only sprained and swollen, and to Edith's relief he was p.r.o.nounced in a fainting-fit, not dead.

"Don't look so white and scared, child," her step-mother said pettishly to her step-daughter; "he won't die, and a pretty burthen he'll be on my hands for the next three weeks. Go to bed--do--and don't let us have _you_ laid up as well. One's enough at a time."

"Yes, Dithy, darling, go," said her father, kissing her tenderly.

"You're a brave little woman, and you've saved his life. I have always been proud of you, but never so proud as to-night."

It certainly _was_ a couple of weeks. It was five blessed weeks before "Mr. Charley," as they learned to call him, could get about, even on crutches. For fever and sometimes delirium set in, and Charley raved and tossed, and shouted, and talked, and drove Mrs. Frederic Darrell nearly frantic with his capers. The duty of nursing fell a good deal on Edith. She seemed to take to it quite naturally. In his "worst spells" the sound of her soft voice, the touch of her cool hand, could soothe him as nothing else could. Sometimes he sung, as boisterously as his enfeebled state would allow: "We won't go home till morning!" Sometimes he shouted for his mother; very often for "Trixy."

_Who_ was Trixy, Edith wondered with a sort of inward twinge, not to be accounted for; his sister or--

He was very handsome in those days--his great gray eyes brilliant with fever, his cheeks flushed, his chestnut hair falling damp and heavy off his brow. What an adventure it was, altogether, Edith used to think, like something out of a book. Who was he, she wondered. A gentleman "by courtesy and the grace of G.o.d," no mistaking _that_.

His clothes, his linen, were all superfine. On one finger he wore a diamond that made all beholders wink, and in his s.h.i.+rt bosom still another. His wallet was stuffed with greenbacks, his watch and chain, Mr. Darrell affirmed were worth a thousand dollars--a sprig of gentility, whoever he might be, this wounded hero. They found no papers, no letters, no card-case. His linen was marked "C. S." twisted in a monogram. They must wait until he was able himself to tell them the rest.

The soft suns.h.i.+ne, of April was filling his room, and basking in its rays in the parlor or rocking-chair sat "Mr. Charley," pale and wasted to a most interesting degree. He was sitting, looking at Miss Edith, digging industriously in her flower-garden, with one of the boarders for under-gardener, and listening to Mr. Darrell proposing he should tell them his name, in order that they might write to his friends. The young man turned his large languid eyes from the daughter without, to the father within.

"My friends? Oh! to be sure. But it isn't necessary, is it? It's very thoughtful of you, and all that, but my friends won't worry themselves into an early grave about my absence and silence. They're used to both.

Next week, or week after, I'll drop them a line myself. I know I must be an awful nuisance to Mrs. Darrell, but if I _might_ trespa.s.s on your great kindness and remain here until--"

"My dear young friend," responded Mr. Darrell, warmly, "you shall most certainly remain here. For Mrs. Darrell, you're no trouble to her--it's Dithy, bless her, who does all the nursing."

The gray dreamy eyes turned from Mr. Darrell again, to that busy figure in the garden. With her cheeks flushed, her brown eyes s.h.i.+ning, her rosy lips apart, and laughing, as she wrangled with that particular boarder on the subject of floriculture, she looked a most dangerous nurse for any young man of three-and-twenty.

"I owe Miss Darrell and you all, more than I can ever repay," he said, quietly; "_that_ is understood. I have never tried to thank her, or you either--words are so inadequate in these cases. Believe me though, I am not ungrateful."

"Say no more," Mr. Darrell cut in hastily; "only tell us how we are to address you while you remain. 'Mr. Charley' is an unsatisfactory sort of application."

"My name is Stuart; but, as a favor, may I request you to go on calling me Charley?"

"Stuart!" said the other, quickly; "one of the Stuarts, bankers, of New York?"

"The same. My father is James Stuart; you know him probably?"

The face of Frederic Darrell darkened and grew almost stern. "Your father was my wife's cousin--Edith's mother. Have you never heard him speak of Eleanor Stuart?"

"Who married Frederic Darrell? Often. My dear Mr. Darrell, is it possible that you--that I have the happiness of being related to you?"

"To my daughter, if you like--her second cousin--to me, _no_," Mr.

Darrell said, half-smiling, half-sad. "Your father and his family long ago repudiated all claims of mine--I am not going to force myself upon their notice now. Edie--Edie, my love, come in here, and listen to some strange news."

She threw down her spade, and came in laughing and glowing, her hair tumbled, her collar awry, her dress soiled, her hands not over clean, but looking, oh! so indescribably fresh, and fair, and healthful, and handsome.

"What is it?" she asked. "Has Mr. Charley gone and sprained his other ankle?"

"Not quite so bad as that." And then her father narrated the discovery they had mutually made. Miss Dithy opened her bright brown eyes.

"Like a chapter out of a novel where everybody turns out to be somebody else. 'It is--it is--it is--my own, my long-lost son!' And so we're second cousins, and you're Charley Stuart; and Trixy--now who's Trixy?"

"Trixy's my sister. How do you happen to know anything about her?"

Edith made a wry face.

"The nights I've spent--the days I've dragged through, the tortures I've undergone, listening to you shouting for 'Trixy,' would have driven any less well-balanced brain stark mad! May I sit down? Digging in the suns.h.i.+ne, and rowing with Johnny Ellis is awfully hot work."

"Digging in the suns.h.i.+ne is detrimental to the complexion, and rowing with Johnny Ellis is injurious to the temper. I object to both."

"Oh, you do?" said Miss Darrell, opening her eyes again; "it matters so much, too, whether you object or not. Johnny Ellis is useful, and sometimes agreeable. Charley Stuart is neither one nor t'other. If I mayn't dig and quarrel with him, is there anything your lords.h.i.+p would like me to do?"

"You may sit on this footstool at my feet--woman's proper place--and read me to sleep. That book you were reading aloud yesterday--what was it? Oh, 'Pendennis,' was rather amusing--what I heard of it."

"What you heard of it!" Miss Darrell retorts, indignantly. "You do well to add that. The man who could go to sleep listening to Thackeray is a man worthy only of contempt and scorn! There's Mr. Ellis calling me--I must go."

Miss Darrell and Mr. Stuart, in his present state of convalescence, rarely met except to quarrel. They spoke their minds to one another, with a refres.h.i.+ng frankness remarkable to hear.

"You remind me of one I loved very dearly once, Dithy," Charley said to her, sadly, one, day, after an unusually stormy wordy war--"in fact, the only one I ever _did_ love. You resemble her, too--the same sort of hair and complexion, and exactly the same sort of--ah--temper!

Her name was Fido--she was a black and tan terrier--very like you, my dear, very like. Ah! these accidental resemblances are cruel things--they tear open half-healed wounds, and cause them to bleed afresh. Fido met with an untimely end--she was drowned one dark night in a cistern. I thought I had outlived _that_ grief, but when I look at you--"

A stinging box on the ear, given with right good will, cut short the mournful reminiscence, and brought tears to Mr. Stuart's eyes, that were not tears of grief for Fido.

"You wretch!" cried Miss Darrell, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes. "I've a complexion of black and tan, have I, and a temper to match! The only thing _I_ see to regret in your story is, that it wasn't Fido's master who fell into the cistern, instead of Fido. To think I should live to be called a black and tan!"

They never met except to quarrel. Edith's inflammatory temper was up in arms perpetually. They kept the house in an uncommonly lively state.

It seemed to agree with Charley. His twisted ankle grew strong rapidly, flesh and color came back, the world was not to be robbed of one of its brightest ornaments just yet. He put off writing to his friends from day to day, to the great disapproval of Mr. Darrell, who was rather behind the age in his notions of filial duty.

"It's of no use worrying," Mr. Stuart made answer, with the easy _insouciance_ concerning all things earthly which sat so naturally upon him; "bad s.h.i.+llings always come back--let that truthful old adage console them. Why should I fidget myself about them. Take my word they're not fidgeting themselves about _me_. The governor's absorbed in the rise and fall of stocks, the maternal is up to her eyes in the last parties of the season, and my sister is just out and absorbed body and soul in beaux and dresses. They never expect me until they see me."

About the close of April Mr. Stuart and Miss Darrell fought their last battle and parted. He went back to New York and to his own world, and life stagnant and flat flowed back on its old level for Edith Darrell.

Stagnant and flat it had always been, but never half so dreary as now.

Something had come into her life and gone out of it, something bright and new, and wonderfully pleasant. There was a great blank where Charley's handsome face had been, and all at once life seemed to lose its relish for this girl of sixteen. A restlessness took possession of of her. Sandypoint and all belonging to it grew distasteful. She wanted change, excitement--Charley Stuart, perhaps--something different certainly from what she was used to, or likely to get.

Charley went home and told the "governor," and the "maternal," and "Trixy" of his adventure, and the girl who had saved his life. Miss Beatrix listened in a glow of admiration.

"Is she pretty, Charley?" she asked, of course, the first inevitable female question.

"Pretty?" Charley responded, meditatively, as though the idea struck him for the first time. "Well, ye-e-es. In a cream-colored sort of way, Edith isn't bad-looking. It would be very nice of you now, Trix, to write her a letter, I think, seeing she saved my life, and nursed me, and is your second cousin, and everything."

Beatrix needed no urging. She was an impetuous, enthusiastic young woman of eighteen, fearfully and wonderfully addicted to correspondence. She sat down and wrote a long, gus.h.i.+ng letter to her "cream-colored" cousin. Mrs. Stuart dropped her a line of thanks also, and Charley, of course, wrote, and there her adventure seemed to come to an end. Miss Stuart's letters were long and frequent. Mr. Stuart's rambling epistle alternately made her laugh and lose her temper, a daily loss with poor, discontented Edith. With the fine discrimination most men possess, he sent her, on her seventeenth birthday, a set of turquoise and pearls, which made her sallow complexion hideous, or, at least, as hideous as anything _can_ make a pretty girl. That summer he ran down to Sandypoint for a fortnight's fis.h.i.+ng, and an oasis came suddenly in the desert of Edith's life. She and Charley might quarrel still, and I am bound to say they did, on every possible occasion and on every possible point, _but_ they were never satisfied a moment apart.