ARTHUR AND EDITH.
If anything could have reconciled Edith to her fate, it would have
been the fact that she was travelling with Arthur St. Claire, who,
after entering the cars, cared for her as tenderly as if she had
been a lady of his own rank, instead of a little disgraced waiting
maid, whom he was taking back, to the Asylum. It was preposterous,
he thought, for Grace to call one as young as Edith a waiting
maid, but it was like her, he knew. It had a lofty sound, and
would impress some people with a sense of her greatness; so he
could excuse it much more readily than the injustice done to the
child by charging her with a crime of which he knew she was
innocent. This it was, perhaps, which made him so kind to her,
seeking to divert her mind from her grief by asking her many
questions concerning herself and her family. But Edith did not
care to talk. All the way to Albany she continued crying; and
when, at last, they stood within the noisy depot, Arthur saw that
the tears were still rolling down her cheeks like rain.
"Poor little girl. How I pity her!" he thought, as she placed her
hand confidingly in his, and when he saw how hopelessly she looked
into his face, as she asked, with quivering lip, if "it wasn't
ever so far to New York yet?" the resolution he had been trying
all the day to make was fully decided upon, and when alone with
Edith in the room appropriated to her at, the Delavan House, he
asked her why she supposed Richard Harrington would be willing to
take her to Collingwood.
Very briefly Edith related to him the particulars of her
interviews with the blind man, saying, when she had finished,
"Don't you believe he likes me?"
"I dare say he does," returned Arthur, at the same time asking if
she would be afraid to stay alone one night in that great hotel,
knowing he was gone?"
"Oh, Mr. Arthur, you won't leave me here?" and in her terror
Edith's arms wound themselves around the young man's neck as if
she would thus keep him there by force.
Unclasping her hand's, and holding them in his own, Arthur said,
"Listen to me, Edith. I will take the Boston train which leaves
here very soon, and return to Shannondale, reaching there some
time to-night. I will go to Collingwood, will tell Mr. Harrington
what has happened, and ask him to take you, bringing him back here
with me, if he will---"
"And if he won't?" interrupted Edith, joy beaming in every
feature. "If he won't have me, Mr. Arthur, will you? Say, will you
have me if he won't?"
"Yes, yes, I'll have you," returned Arthur, laughing to himself,
as he thought of the construction which might be put upon this
mode of speech.
But a child nine and a half years old could not, he knew, have any
designs upon either himself or Richard Harrington, even had she
been their equal, which he fancied she was not. She was a poor,
neglected orphan, and as such he would care for her, though the
caring compelled him to do what scarcely anything else could have
done, to wit, to seek an interview with the man who held his
cherished secret.
"Are you willing to stay here alone now?" he said again. "I'll
order your meals sent to your room, and to-morrow night I shall
return."
"If I only knew you meant for sure," said Edith, trembling at the
thought of being deserted in a strange city.
Suddenly she started, and looking him earnestly in the face, said
to him,
"Do you love that pretty lady in the glass--the one Mrs. Atherton
thinks I stole?"
Arthur turned white but answered her at once.
"Yes, I love her very, very much."
"Is she your sister, Mr. Arthur?" and the searching black eyes
seemed compelling him to tell the truth.
"No, not my sister, but a dear friend."
"Where is she, Mr. Arthur? In New York?"
"No, not in New York."
"In Albany then?"
"No, not in Albany. She's in Europe with her father," and a shade
of sadness crept over Arthur's face, "She was hardly a young lady
when this picture was taken, and he drew the locket from its
hiding place. She was only thirteen. She's not quite sixteen now."
Edith by this time had the picture in her hand, and holding it to
the light exclaimed, "Oh, but she's so jolly, Mr. Arthur. May I
kiss her, please?"
"Certainly," he answered, and Edith's warm red lips pressed the
senseless glass, which seemed to smile upon her.
"Pretty--pretty--pretty N-n-n-Nina!" she whispered, and in an
instant Arthur clutched her so tightly that she cried out with
pain.
"Who told you her name was Nina?" he asked in tones so stern and
startling that Edith's senses all forsook her, and trembling with
fright she stammered,
"I don't know, sir--unless you did. Of course you did, how else
should I know. I never saw the lady."
Yes, how else should she know, and though he would almost have
sworn that name had never passed his lips save in solitude, he
concluded be most have dropped it inadvertently in Edith's
hearing, and still holding her by the arm, he said, "Edith, if I
supposed yon would repeat the word Nina, either at Collingwood or
elsewhere, I certainly should be tempted to leave you here alone."
"I won't, I won't, oh, Mr. Arthur, I surely won't!" and Edith
clung to him in terror. "I'll never say it--not even to Mr.
Harrington. Ill forget it, I can, I know."
"Not to Mr. Harrington of all others," thought Arthur, but he
would not put himself more in Edith's power than he already was,
and feeling that he must trust her to a certain extent, he
continued, "If you stay at Collingwood, I may sometime bring this
Nina to see you, but until I do you must never breathe her name to
any living being, or say a word of the picture."
"But Mr. Harrington," interrupted the far-seeing Edith, "He'll
have to know why Mrs. Atherton sent me away.
"I'll attend to that," returned Arthur. "I shall tell him it was a
daguerreotype of a lady friend. There's nothing wrong in that, is
there?" he asked, as he noticed the perplexed look of the honest-
hearted Edith.
"No," she answered hesitatingly. "It is a lady friend, but--but--
seems as if there was something wrong somewhere. Oh, Mr. Arthur--
"and she grasped his hand as firmly as he had held her shoulder.
"You ain't going to hurt pretty Nina, are you? You never will do
her any harm?"
"Heaven forbid," answered Arthur, involuntarily turning away from
the truthful eyes of the dark-haired maiden pleading with him not
to harm the Nina--who, over the sea, never dreamed of the scene
enacted in that room between the elegant Arthur St. Claire and the
humble Edith Hastings. "Heaven forbid that I should harm her---"
He said it twice, and then asked the child to swear solemnly never
to repeat that name where any one could hear.
"I won't swear," she said, "but I'll promise as true as I live and
breathe, and draw the breath of life, and that's as good as a
swear."
Arthur felt that it was, and with the compact thus sealed between
them, he arose to go, reaching out his hand for the picture.
"No," said Edith, "I want her for company. I shan't be lonesome
looking in her eyes, and I know you will come back if I keep her."
Arthur understood her meaning, and answered laughingly, "Well,
keep her then, as a token that I will surely return," and pressing
a kiss upon the beautiful picture he left the room, while Edith
listened with a beating heart, until the sound of his footsteps
had died away. Then a sense of dreariness stole over her; the
tears gathered in her eyes, and she sought by a one-sided
conversation with her picture to drive the loneliness away.
"Pretty Nina! Sweet Nina! Jolly Nina!" she kept repeating, "I
guess I used to see you in Heaven, before I came down to the nasty
old Asylum. And mother was there, too, with a great long veil of
hair, which came below her waist. Where was it?" she asked herself
as Nina, her mother and Marie were all mingled confusedly together
in her mind; and while seeking to solve the mystery, the darkness
deepened in the room, the gas lamps were lighted in the street,
and with a fresh shudder of loneliness Edith crept into the bed,
and nestling down among her pillows, fell asleep with Nina,
pressed lovingly to her bosom.
At a comparatively early hour next morning, the door of her room,
which had been left unfastened, was opened, and a chambermaid
walked in, starting with surprise at sight of Edith, sitting up in
bed, her thick black hair falling over her shoulders, and her
large eyes fixed inquiringly upon her.
"An, sure," she began, "is it a child like you staying here alone
the blessed night? Where's yer folks?"
"I hain't no folks," answered Edith, holding fast to the locket,
and chewing industriously the bit of gum which Rachel, who knew
her taste, had slipped into her pocket at parting.
"Hain't no folks! How come you here then?" and the girl Lois
advanced nearer to the bedside.
"A man brought me," returned Edith. "He's gone off now, but will
come again to-night."
"Your father, most likely," continued the loquacious Lois.
"My father!" and Edith laughed scornfully, "Mr. Arthur ain't big
enough to be anybody's father--or yes, maybe he's big enough, for
he's awful tall. But he's got the teentiest whiskers growing you
ever saw," and Edith's nose went up contemptuously at Arthur's
darling mustache. "I don't believe he's twenty," she continued,
"and little girl's pa's must be older than that I guess, and have
bigger whiskers."
"How old are you?" asked Lois, vastly amused at the quaint
speeches of the child, who replied, with great dignity,
"Going on TEN, and in three years more I'll be THIRTEEN!"
"Who are you, any way?" asked Lois, her manner indicating so much
real interest that Edith repeated her entire history up to the
present time, excepting, indeed, the part pertaining to the locket
held so vigilantly in her hand.
She had taken a picture belonging to Mr. Arthur, she said, and as
Lois did not ask what picture, she was spared any embarrassment
upon that point.
"You're a mighty queer child," said Lois, when the narrative was
ended; "but I'll see that you have good care till he comes back;"
and it was owing, in a measure, to her influence, that the
breakfast and dinner carried up to Edith was of a superior
quality, and comprised in quantity far more than she could eat.
Still the day dragged heavily, for Lois could not give her much
attention; and even Nina failed to entertain her, as the western
sunlight came in at her window, warning her that it was almost
night.
"Will Arthur come? or if he does, will Mr. Harrington be with
him?" she asked herself repeatedly, until at last, worn out with
watching and waiting, she laid her head upon the side of the bed,
and fell asleep, resting so quietly that she did not hear the
rapid step in the hall, the knock upon the door, the turning of
the knob, or the cheery voice which said to her:
"Edith, are you asleep?"
Arthur had come.