A NIGHT IN THE SNOW.
One snowy February night, just two years before, Edith Darrel and
Charles Stuart had met for the first time--met in a very odd and
romantic way.
Before relating that peculiar first meeting, let me premise that Edith
Darrell's mother had been born a Miss Eleanor Stuart, the daughter of
a rich New York merchant, who had fallen in love at an early period of
her career with her father's handsome book-keeper, Frederic Darrell,
had eloped with him, and been cast off by her whole family from
thenceforth, forever. Ten years' hard battling with poverty and
ill-health had followed, and then one day she kissed her husband and
little daughter for the last time, and drifted wearily out of the
strife. Of course Mr. Darrell, a year or two after, married again for
the sake of having some one to look after his house and little Edith
as much as anything else. Mrs. Darrell No. 2 was in every respect the
exact contrast of Mrs. Darrell No. 1. She was a brisk little woman,
with snapping black eyes, a sharp nose, a complexion of saffron, and a
tongue like a carving-knife. Frederic Darrell was by nature a feeble,
helpless sort of man, but she galvanized even him into a spasmodic
sort of life. He was master of three living languages and two dead
ones.
"If you can't support your family by your hands, Mr. Darrell," snapped
his wife, "support them by your head. There are plenty young men in
the world ready to learn French and German, Greek and Latin, if they
can learn them at a reasonable rate. Advertise for these young men,
and I'll board them when they come."
He obeyed, the idea proved a good one, the young men came, Mrs.
Darrell boarded and lodged them, Mr. Darrell coached them in classics
and languages. Edith shot up like a hop-vine. Five more little
Darrells were added in the fulness of time, and the old problem, that
not all the mathematics he knew could ever solve, how to make both
ends meet, seemed as knotty as ever. For his daughter he felt it most
of all. The five great noisy boys who called Mrs. Darrell "ma," he
looked at through his spectacles in fear and trembling. His handsome
daughter he loved with his whole heart. Her dead mother's relatives
were among the plutocracy of New York, but even the memory of the dead
Eleanor seemed to have faded utterly out of their minds.
One raw February afternoon two years before this March morning, Edith
Darrell set out to walk from Millfield, a large manufacturing town,
five miles from Sandypoint, home. She had been driven over in the
morning by a neighbor, to buy a new dress; she had dined at noon with
an acquaintance, and as the Millfield clocks struck five, set out to
walk home. She was a capital walker; she knew the road well; she had
the garnet merino clasped close in her arms, a talisman against cold
or weariness, and thinking how well she would look in it next Thursday
at the party, she tripped blithely along. A keen wind blew, a dark
drifting sky hung low over the black frozen earth, and before Miss
Darrell had finished the first mile of her pilgrimage, the great
feathery snow flakes began whirling down. She looked up in
dismay--snow! She had not counted on that. Her way lay over hills and
down valleys, the path was excellent, hard and beaten, but if it
snowed--and night was coming on fast. What should she do? Prudence
whispered, "turn back;" youth's impatience and confidence in itself
cried out, "go on," Edith went on.
It was as lonely a five-mile walk as you would care to take in an
August noontide. Think what it must have been this stormy February
evening. She was not entirely alone. "Don Caesar," the house dog, a big
English mastiff, trotted by her side. At long intervals, down by-paths
and across fields, there were some half dozen habitations, between
Millfield and Sandypoint--that was all. Faster, faster came the white
whirling flakes; an out-and-out February snow storm had set in.
Again--should she turn back? She paused half a minute to debate the
question. If she did there would be a sleepless night of terror for
her nervous father at home. And she _might_ be able to keep the path
with the "Don's" aid. Personal fear she felt none; she was a
thoroughly brave little woman, and there was a spice of adventure in
braving the storm and going on. She shook back her clustering curls,
tied her hood a little tighter, wrapped her cloak more closely around
her, whistled cheerily to Don Caesar, and went on.
"In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as 'Fail'," she
said gayly, patting the Don's shaggy head. "_En avant_, Don Caesar,
_mon brave_!" The Don understood French; he licked his mistress's
hand and trotted contentedly before.
"As if I _could_ lose the path with the Don," she thought; "what a
goose I am. I shall make Mamma Darrell cut out my garnet merino, and
begin it before I go to bed to-night."
She walked bravely and brightly on, whistling and talking to Don Caesar
at intervals. Another mile was got over, and the night had shut down,
white with whirling drifts. It was all she could do now, to make her
way against the storm, and it grew worse every instant. Three miles of
the five lay yet before her. Her heart began to fail her a little; the
path was lost in the snow, and even the Don began to be at fault. The
drifting wilderness nearly blinded her, the deep snow was unutterably
fatiguing. There was but one thing in her favor--the night, for
February, was mild. She was all in a glow of warmth, but what if she
should get lost and flounder about here until morning? And what would
papa think of her absence?
She stopped short again. If she could see a light she would make for
it, she thought, and take refuge from the night and storm. But through
the white whirl no light was to be seen. Right or wrong, nothing
remained but to go on.
Hark! what was that? She stopped once more--the Don pricked up his
sagacious ears. A cry unmistakably--a cry of distress.
Again it came, to the left, faint and far off. Yes--no doubt about it,
a cry for help.
She did not hesitate a moment. Strangers, who had tried this hillpath
before now, had been found stark frozen next day.
"Find him, Don--find him, good fellow!" she said and turned at once in
the direction of the call.
"Coming!" she shouted, aloud. "Where are you? Call again."
"Here," came faintly over the snow. "Here, to the left."
She shouted back a cheery answer. Once more came a faint reply--then
all was still.
Suddenly the Don stopped. Impossible to tell where they were, but
there, prostrate in a feathery drift, lay the dark figure of a man.
The girl bent down in the darkness, and touched the cold face with her
hand.
"What is the matter?" she asked. "How do you come to be lying here?"
There was just life enough left within him, to enable him to answer
faintly.
"I was on my way to Sandypoint--the night and storm overtook me. I
missed the path and my footing; I slipped, and have broken my leg, I'm
afraid. I heard you whistling to your dog and tried to call. I didn't
dream it was a woman, and I am sorry I have brought you out of your
way. Still, as you _are_ here, if you will tell them at the nearest
house, and--" his voice died entirely away, in the sleepy cadence
of a freezing man.
The nearest house--where _was_ the nearest house? Why, this poor
fellow would freeze to death in half an hour if left to himself.
Impossible to leave him. What should she do? She thought for a moment.
Quick and bright of invention, she made up her mind what to do, she
had in her pocket a little passbook and pencil. In the darkness she
tore out a leaf--in the darkness she wrote, "Follow Don. Come at once."
She pinned the note in her handkerchief--tied the handkerchief securely
round the dog's neck, put her arms about him, and gave his black head
a hug.
"Go home, Don, go home," she said, "and fetch papa here."
The large, half-human eyes looked up at her. She pushed him away with
both hands, and with a low growl of intelligence he set off. And in
that sea of snow, lost in the night, Edith Darrell was alone with a
freezing man.
In her satchel, among her other purchases, she had several cents'
worth of matches for household consumption. With a girl's curiosity,
even in that hour, to see what the man was like, she struck a match
and looked at him. It flared through the white darkness a second or
two, then went out. That second showed her a face as white as the snow
itself, the eyes closed, the lips set in silent pain. She saw a shaggy
great coat, and fur cap, and--a gentleman, even in that briefest of
brief glances.
"You mustn't go to sleep," she said, giving him a shake; "do you hear
me, sir? You mustn't go to sleep."
"Yes--mustn't I?" very drowsily.
"You'll freeze to death if you do." A second shake. "Oh, do rouse up
like a good fellow, and try to keep awake. I've sent my dog for help,
and I mean to stay with you until it comes. Does your leg pain you
much?"
"Not now. It did, but I--feel--sleepy, and--"
"I tell you, you _mustn't_!" She shook him so indignantly this time
that he did rouse up. "Do you want to freeze to death? I tell you,
sir, you must wake up and talk to _me_."
"Talk to you? I beg your pardon--it's awfully good of you to stay with
me, but I can't allow it. You'll freeze yourself."
"No, I won't. _I'm_ all right. It isn't freezing hard to-night, and
if you hadn't broken your leg, you wouldn't freeze either. I wish
I could do something for you. Let me rub your hands--it may help to
keep you awake. And see, I'll wrap this round your feet to keep them
out of the snow."
And then--who says that heroic self-sacrifice has gone out of
fashion?--she unfurled the garnet merino and twisted its glowing folds
around the boots of the fallen man.
"It's awfully good of you, you know," he could but just repeat. "If I
am saved I shall owe my life to you. I think by your voice you are a
young lady. Tell me your name?"
"Edith."
"A pretty name, and a sweet voice. Suppose you rub my other hand? How
delightfully warm yours are! I begin to feel better already. If we
_don't_ freeze to death, I shouldn't much mind how long this sort
of thing goes on. If we do, they'll find us, like the babes in the
wood, under the snow-drifts to-morrow."
Miss Darrell listened to all this, uttered in the sleepiest, gentlest
of tones, her brown eyes open wide. What manner of young man was this
who paid compliments while freezing with a broken leg? It was quite a
new experience to her and amused her. It was an adventure, and excited
all the romance dormant in her nature.
"You're a stranger hereabouts?" she suggested.
"Yes, a stranger, to my cost, and a very foolhardy one, or I should
never have attempted to find Sandypoint in this confounded storm.
Edith--you'll excuse my calling you so, _my_ name is Charley--wouldn't
it have been better if you had left me here and gone for some one.
I'm dreadfully afraid you'll get your death."
His solicitude for her, in his own danger and pain, quite touched Miss
Edith. She bent over him with maternal tenderness.
"There is no fear for me. I feel perfectly warm as I told you, and can
easily keep myself so. And if you think I could leave you, or any one
else with a broken leg, to die, you mistake me greatly, that is all. I
will stay with you if it be till morning."
He gave one of her hands a feebly grateful squeeze. It was a last
effort. His numbed and broken limb gave a horrible twinge, there was a
faint gasp, and then this young man fainted quietly away.
She bent above him in despair. A great fear filled her--was he dead,
this stranger in whom she was interested already? She lifted his head
on her lap, she chafed his face and hands in an agony of pity and
terror.
"Charley!" she called, with something like a sob; "O Charley, don't
die! Wake up--speak to me."
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 pronounced 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 God," 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 shirt 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 sunshine, 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_ trespass 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 shining,
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 sunshine, and rowing with Johnny Ellis is awfully hot work."
"Digging in the sunshine 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 lordship 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 refreshing 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 flashing 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 shillings 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, gushing 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 fishing, 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.
The fortnight ended, the fish were caught, he went back, and the dull
days and the long nights, the cooking, darning, mending began again,
and went on until madness would have been a relief. It was the old
story of the Sleeping Beauty waiting for the prince to come, and wake
her into life and love with his kiss. Only in this instance the prince
had come and gone, and left Beauty, in the sulks, behind.
She was eighteen years old and sick of her life. And just when disgust
and discontent were taking palpable form, and she was debating between
a jump into Sandypoint bay and running off, came Charley, with his
mother's letter. From that hour the story of Edith Darrell's life
began.