That evening, as I sat with Edith in the music room, listening to some
pieces in the programme of that day which had attracted my notice, I
took advantage of an interval in the music to say, "I have a question
to ask you which I fear is rather indiscreet."
"I am quite sure it is not that," she replied, encouragingly.
"I am in the position of an eavesdropper," I continued, "who, having
overheard a little of a matter not intended for him, though seeming to
concern him, has the impudence to come to the speaker for the rest."
"An eavesdropper!" she repeated, looking puzzled.
"Yes," I said, "but an excusable one, as I think you will admit."
"This is very mysterious," she replied.
"Yes," said I, "so mysterious that often I have doubted whether I
really overheard at all what I am going to ask you about, or only
dreamed it. I want you to tell me. The matter is this: When I was
coming out of that sleep of a century, the first impression of which I
was conscious was of voices talking around me, voices that afterwards I
recognized as your father's, your mother's, and your own. First, I
remember your father's voice saying, "He is going to open his eyes. He
had better see but one person at first." Then you said, if I did not
dream it all, "Promise me, then, that you will not tell him." Your
father seemed to hesitate about promising, but you insisted, and your
mother interposing, he finally promised, and when I opened my eyes I
saw only him."
I had been quite serious when I said that I was not sure that I had not
dreamed the conversation I fancied I had overheard, so incomprehensible
was it that these people should know anything of me, a contemporary of
their great-grandparents, which I did not know myself. But when I saw
the effect of my words upon Edith, I knew that it was no dream, but
another mystery, and a more puzzling one than any I had before
encountered. For from the moment that the drift of my question became
apparent, she showed indications of the most acute embarrassment. Her
eyes, always so frank and direct in expression, had dropped in a panic
before mine, while her face crimsoned from neck to forehead.
"Pardon me," I said, as soon as I had recovered from bewilderment at
the extraordinary effect of my words. "It seems, then, that I was not
dreaming. There is some secret, something about me, which you are
withholding from me. Really, doesn't it seem a little hard that a
person in my position should not be given all the information possible
concerning himself?"
"It does not concern you--that is, not directly. It is not about you
exactly," she replied, scarcely audibly.
"But it concerns me in some way," I persisted. "It must be something
that would interest me."
"I don't know even that," she replied, venturing a momentary glance at
my face, furiously blushing, and yet with a quaint smile flickering
about her lips which betrayed a certain perception of humor in the
situation despite its embarrassment,--"I am not sure that it would even
interest you."
"Your father would have told me," I insisted, with an accent of
reproach. "It was you who forbade him. He thought I ought to know."
She did not reply. She was so entirely charming in her confusion that I
was now prompted, as much by the desire to prolong the situation as by
my original curiosity, to importune her further.
"Am I never to know? Will you never tell me?" I said.
"It depends," she answered, after a long pause.
"On what?" I persisted.
"Ah, you ask too much," she replied. Then, raising to mine a face which
inscrutable eyes, flushed cheeks, and smiling lips combined to render
perfectly bewitching, she added, "What should you think if I said that
it depended on--yourself?"
"On myself?" I echoed. "How can that possibly be?"
"Mr. West, we are losing some charming music," was her only reply to
this, and turning to the telephone, at a touch of her finger she set
the air to swaying to the rhythm of an adagio. After that she took good
care that the music should leave no opportunity for conversation. She
kept her face averted from me, and pretended to be absorbed in the
airs, but that it was a mere pretense the crimson tide standing at
flood in her cheeks sufficiently betrayed.
When at length she suggested that I might have heard all I cared to,
for that time, and we rose to leave the room, she came straight up to
me and said, without raising her eyes, "Mr. West, you say I have been
good to you. I have not been particularly so, but if you think I have,
I want you to promise me that you will not try again to make me tell
you this thing you have asked to-night, and that you will not try to
find it out from any one else,--my father or mother, for instance."
To such an appeal there was but one reply possible. "Forgive me for
distressing you. Of course I will promise," I said. "I would never have
asked you if I had fancied it could distress you. But do you blame me
for being curious?"
"I do not blame you at all."
"And some time," I added, "if I do not tease you, you may tell me of
your own accord. May I not hope so?"
"Perhaps," she murmured.
"Only perhaps?"
Looking up, she read my face with a quick, deep glance. "Yes," she
said, "I think I may tell you--some time": and so our conversation
ended, for she gave me no chance to say anything more.
That night I don't think even Dr. Pillsbury could have put me to sleep,
till toward morning at least. Mysteries had been my accustomed food for
days now, but none had before confronted me at once so mysterious and
so fascinating as this, the solution of which Edith Leete had forbidden
me even to seek. It was a double mystery. How, in the first place, was
it conceivable that she should know any secret about me, a stranger
from a strange age? In the second place, even if she should know such a
secret, how account for the agitating effect which the knowledge of it
seemed to have upon her? There are puzzles so difficult that one cannot
even get so far as a conjecture as to the solution, and this seemed one
of them. I am usually of too practical a turn to waste time on such
conundrums; but the difficulty of a riddle embodied in a beautiful
young girl does not detract from its fascination. In general, no doubt,
maidens' blushes may be safely assumed to tell the same tale to young
men in all ages and races, but to give that interpretation to Edith's
crimson cheeks would, considering my position and the length of time I
had known her, and still more the fact that this mystery dated from
before I had known her at all, be a piece of utter fatuity. And yet she
was an angel, and I should not have been a young man if reason and
common sense had been able quite to banish a roseate tinge from my
dreams that night.