Darkness and Daylight Part 29

What was it she did not mean? That it could not be, or that he was an owl? He asked himself this question many times during the moment of silence which intervened; then as he felt her still clinging to him, his love for her rolled back upon him with overwhelming force, and kneeling before her as the slave to his master, he pleaded with her again to say IT COULD BE, the great happiness he had dared to hope for.

"Is there any other man whom my darling expects to marry?" he asked, and Edith was glad he put the question in this form, as without prevarication she could promptly answer,

"No, Richard, there is none."

"Then you may learn to love me," Richard said. "I can wait, I can wait; but must it be very long? The days will be so dreary, and I love you so much that I am lost if you refuse. Don't make my darkness darker, Edith."

He laid his head upon her lap, still kneeling before her, the iron-willed man kneeling to the weak young girl, whose hands were folded together like blocks of lead, and gave him back no answering caress, only the words,

"Richard, I can't. It's too sudden. I have thought of you always as my elder brother, Be my brother, Richard. Take me as your sister, won't you?"

"Oh, I want you for my wife," and his voice was full of pleading pathos. "I want you in my bosom, I need you there, darling. Need some one to comfort me. I've suffered so much, for your sake, too.

Oh, Edith, my early manhood was wasted; I've reached the autumn time, and the gloom which wrapped me then in its black folds lies around me still, and will you refuse to throw over my pathway a single ray of sunlight? No, no, Edith, you won't, you can't. I've loved you too much. I've lost too much. I'm growing old--and--oh, Birdie, Birdie, I'M BLIND! I'M BLIND!"

She did not rightly interpret his suffering FOR HER SAKE. She thought he meant his present pain, and she sought to soothe him as best she could without raising hopes which never could be realized. He understood her at last; knew the heart he offered her was cast back upon him, and rising from his kneeling posture, he felt his way back to his chair, and burying his head upon a table standing near, sobbed as Edith had never heard man sob before, not even Arthur St. Claire, when in the Deering Woods he had rocked to and fro in his great agony. Sobs they were which seemed to rend his broad chest asunder, and Edith stopped her ears to shut out the dreadful sound.

But hark, what is it he is saying? Edith fain would know, and listening intently, she hears him unconsciously whispering to himself; "OH, EDITH, WAS IT FOR THIS THAT _I_ SAVED YOU FROM THE RHINE, PERILING MY LIFE AND LOSING MY EYESIGHT? BETTER THAT YOU HAD DIED IN THE DEEP WATERS THAN THAT _I_ SHOULD MEET THIS HOUR OF ANGUISH."

"Richard, Richard!" and Edith nearly screamed as she flew across the floor. Lifting up his head she pillowed it upon her bosom, and showering kisses upon his quivering lips, said to him, "Tell me-- tell me, am _I_ that Swedish baby, _I_ that Eloise Temple?"

He nodded in reply, and Edith continued: "the child for whose sake you were made blind! Why have you not told me before? I could not then have wounded you so cruelly. How can I show my grat.i.tude? I am not worthy of you, Richard; not worthy to bear your name, much less to be your bride, but such as I am take me. I cannot longer refuse. Will you, Richard? May I be your wife?"

She knelt before HIM now; hers was the supplicating posture, and when he shook his head, she continued,

"You think it a sudden change, and so it is, but I mean it. I'm in earnest, I do love you, dearly, oh, so dearly, and by and by I shall love you a great deal more. Answer me--may I be your wife?"

It was a terrible temptation, and Richard Harrington reeled from side to side like a broken reed, while his lips vainly essayed to speak the words his generous nature bade them speak. He could not see the eagerness of the fair young face upturned to his--the clear, truthful light s.h.i.+ning in Edith's beautiful dark eyes, telling better than words could tell that she was sincere in her desire to join her sweet spring life with his autumn days. He could not see this, else human flesh had proved too weak to say what he did say at last.

"No, my darling, I cannot accept a love born of grat.i.tude and nothing more. You remember a former conversation concerning this Eloise when you told me you were glad you were not she, as in case you were you should feel compelled to be grateful, or something like that, where as you would rather render your services to me from love. Edith, that remark prevented me from telling you then that you were Eloise, the Swedish mother's baby."

Never before had the words "that Swedish mother" touched so tender a chord in Edith's heart as now, and forgetting every thing in her intense desire to know something of her own early history, she exclaimed, "You knew my mother, Richard. You have heard her voice, seen her face; now tell me of her, please. Where is she? And Marie, too, for there was a Marie. Let's forget all that's been said within the last half hour. Let's begin anew, making believe it's yesterday instead of now, and, when the story is ended, ask me again if the singing bird can mate with the eagle. The grand, royal eagle, Richard, is the best similitude for you," and forcing herself to sit upon his knee, she put her arms around his neck bidding him again tell her of her mother.

With the elastic buoyancy of youth Edith could easily shake off the gloom which for a few brief moments had shrouded her like a pall, but not so with Richard. "The singing-bird must not mate with the owl," rang continually in his ears. It was her real sentiment he knew, and his heart ached so hard as he thought how he had staked his all on her and lost it.

"Begin," she said, "Tell me where you first met my mother."

Richard heaved a sigh which smote heavily on Edith's ear, for she guessed of what he was thinking, and she longed to rea.s.sure him of her intention to be his sight hereafter, but he was about to speak and she remained silent.

"Your mother," he said "was a Swede by birth, and her marvellous beauty first attracted your father, whose years were double her own."

"I'm so glad," interrupted Edith, "As much as twenty-one years older, wasn't he?"

"More than that," answered Richard, a half pleased, half bitter smile playing over his dark face, "Forgive me, darling, but I'm afraid he was not as good a man as he should have been, or as kind to his young wife. When I first saw her she lived in a cottage alone, and he was gone. She missed him sadly, and her sweet voice seemed full of tears as she sang her girl baby to sleep. You have her voice, Edith, and its tones came back to me the first time I ever heard you speak. But I was telling of your father. He was dissipated, selfish and unprincipled,--affectionate and kind to Petrea one day, cold, hard and brutal the next. Still she loved him and clung to him, for he was the father of her child. You were a beautiful little creature, Edith, and I loved you so much that when I knew you had fallen from a bluff into the river, I unhesitatingly plunged after you."

"I remember it," cried Edith, "I certainly do, or else it was afterwards told to me so often that it seems a reality."

"The latter is probably the fact," returned Richard. "You were too young to retain any vivid recollections of that fall."

Still Edith persisted that she did remember the face of a little girl in the water as she looked over the rock, and of bending to touch the arm extended toward her. She remembered Bingen, too, with its purple grapes; else why had she been haunted all her life with vine-clad hills and plaintive airs.

"Your mother sang to you the airs, while your nurse, whose name I think was Marie, told you of the grapes growing on the hills,"

said Richard. "She was a faithful creature, greatly attached to your mother, but a bitter foe of your father. I was too much absorbed in the shadow stealing over me to pay much heed to my friends, and after they left Germany I lost sight of them entirely, nor dreamed that the little girl who came to me that October morning was my baby Eloise. Your voice always puzzled me, and something I overheard you saying to Grace one day about your mysterious hauntings of the past, together with an old song of Petrea's which you sang, gave me my first suspicion as to who you were, and decided me upon that trip to New York. Going first to the Asylum of which you were once an inmate, I managed after much diligent inquiry to procure the address of the woman who brought you there when you were about three years old. I had but little hope of finding her, but determining to persevere I sought out the humble cottage in the suburbs of the city. It was inhabited by an elderly woman who denied all knowledge of Edith Hastings until told that I was Richard Harrington. Then her manner changed at once, and to my delight I heard that she was Marie's sister. She owned the cottage, had lived there more than twenty years, and saw your mother die. Petrea, it seems, had left her husband, intending to return to Sweden, but sickness overtook her and she died in New York, committing you to the faithful Marie's care in preference to your father's. Such was her dread of him that she made Marie swear to keep your existence a secret from him, lest he should take you back to a place where she had been so wretched and where all the influences, she thought, were bad. She would rather you should be poor, she said, than to be brought up by him, and as a means of eluding discovery, she said you should not bear his name, and with her dying tears she baptised you Edith Hastings. After her decease Marie wrote to him that both of you were dead, and he came on at once, seemed very penitent and sorry when it was too late."

"Where was his home?" Edith asked eagerly; and Richard replied,

"That is one thing I neglected to enquire, but when I met him in Europe I had the impression that it was in one of the Western or South-western states."

"Is he still alive?" Edith asked again, a daughter's love slowly gathering in her heart in spite of the father's cruelty to the mother.

"No," returned Richard. "Marie, who kept sight of his movements, wrote to her sister some years since that he was dead, though when he died, or how, Mrs. Jamieson did not know. She, too, was ill when he came to her house, and consequently never saw him herself."

"And the Asylum--how came I there?" said Edith; and Richard replied,

"It seems your mother was an orphan, and had no near relatives to whom you could be sent, and as Marie was then too poor and dependent to support you she placed you in the Asylum as Edith Hastings, visiting you occasionally until she went back to France, her native country. Her intention was to return in a few months, but a violent attack of inflammatory rheumatism came upon her, depriving her of the use of her limbs, and confining her to her bed for years, and so prevented her from coming back. Mrs.

Jamieson, however, kept her informed with regard to you, and told me that Marie was greatly when she heard you were with me, whom she supposed to be the same Richard Harrington who had saved your life, and of whom her mistress had often talked. Marie is better now, and when I saw her sister more than a year ago, she was hoping she might soon revisit America. I left directions for her to visit Collingwood, and for several months I looked for her a little, resolving if she came, to question her minutely concerning your father. He must have left a fortune, Edith, which by right is yours, if we can prove that you are his child, and with Marie's aid I hope to do this sometime. I have, however, almost given her up; but now that you know all I will go again to New York, and seek another interview with Mrs. Jamieson. Would it please you to have the little orphan, Edith Hastings, turn out to be an heiress?"

"Not for my own sake," returned Edith; "but if it would make you love me more, I should like it;" and she clung closer to him as he replied,

"Darling that could not be. I loved you with all the powers I had, even before I knew you were Petrea's child. Beautiful Petrea! I think you must be like her, Edith, except that you are taller. She was your father's second wife. This I knew in Germany, and also that there was a child of Mr. Temple's first marriage, a little girl, he said."

"A child--a little girl," and Edith started quickly, but the lightning flash which had once gleamed across her bewildered mind, when in the Den she stood gazing at the picture of Miggie Bernard, did not come back to her now, neither did she remember Arthur's story, so much like Richard's. She only thought that possibly there was somewhere in the world a dear, half-sister, whom she should love so much, could she only find her. Edith was a famous castle-builder, and forgetting that this half-sister, were she living, would be much older than herself, she thought of her only as a school-girl, whose home should be at Collingwood, and on whom MRS. RICHARD HARRINGTON would lavish so much affection, wasting on her the surplus love which, perhaps, could not be given to the father--husband. How then was her castle destroyed, when Richard said,

"She, too, is dead, so Mrs. Jamieson told me, and there is none of the family left save you."

"I wish I knew where mother was buried," Edith sighed, her tears falling to the memory of her girl mother, whose features it seamed to her she could recall, as well as a death-bed scene, when somebody with white lips and mournful black eyes clasped her in her arms and prayed that G.o.d would bless her, and enable her always to do right.

It might have been a mere fancy, but to Edith it was a reality, and she said within herself,

"Yes, darling mother, I will do right, and as I am sure yon would approve my giving myself to Richard, so I will be his wife."

One wild, longing, painful throb her heart gave to the past when she had hoped for other bridegroom than the middle-aged man on whose knee she sat, and then laying her hot face against his bearded cheek, she whispered,

"You've told the story, Richard. It does not need Marie to confirm it, though she, too, will come sometime to tell me who I am, but when she comes, I shan't be Edith Hastings, shall I. The initials won't be changed, though. They will be 'E.H.' still--Edith Harrington. It has not a bad sound, has it?"

"Don't, darling, please don't," and Richard's voice had in it a tone much like that which first rang through the room, when Edith said,

"It cannot be."

"Richard," and Edith took his cold face between her soft, warm hands, "Richard, won't you let the singing bird call you husband?

If you don't, she will fly away and sing to some one else, who will prize her songs. I thought you loved me, Richard."

"Oh, Edith, my precious Edith! If I knew I could make the love grow where it is not growing--the right kind of love, I mean--I would not hesitate; but, darling, Richard Harrington would die a thousand deaths rather than take you to his bosom an unloving wife. Remember that, and do NOT mock me; do not deceive me. You think now in the first flush of your grat.i.tude to me for having saved your life and in your pity for my blindness that you can do anything; but wait awhile--consider well--think how I shall be old while you still are young,--a tottering, gray-haired man, while your blood still retains the heat of youth. The Harringtons live long. I may see a hundred."

"And I shall then be seventy-nine; not so vast a difference,"

interrupted Edith.

"No, not a vast difference then," Richard rejoined, "but 'tis not then I dread. 'Tis now, the next twenty-five years, during which I shall be slowly decaying, while you will be ripening into a matured, motherly beauty, dearer to your husband than all your girlish loveliness. 'Tis then that I dread the contrast in you; not when both are old; and, Edith, remember this, you can never be old to me, inasmuch as I can never see you. I may feel that your smooth, velvety flesh is wrinkled, that your s.h.i.+ning hair is thin, your soft round arms more sinewy and hard, but I cannot see it, and in my heart I shall cherish ever the image I first loved as Edith Hastings. You, on the contrary, will watch the work of death go on in me, will see my hair turn gray, my form begin to stoop, my hand to tremble, my eyes grow blear and watery, and when all has come to pa.s.s, won't you sicken of the shaky old man and sigh for a younger, more vigorous companion?"