Part 23 (1/2)
”Splendid!” cried Edith; ”and you married them, didn't you? Tell us all about it; how the bride looked, and every thing.”
”I cannot gratify you in that respect,” returned Richard. ”There was a veil of darkness between us, and I could see nothing distinctly, but I knew she was very slight, so much so, indeed, that I was sorry afterward that I did not question her age.”
”A runaway match from the Seminary, perhaps,” suggested Arthur, in tones so steady as to astonish himself.
”I have sometimes thought so since,” was Richard's reply, ”but as nothing of the kind was ever known to have occurred, I may have been mistaken.”
”But the names?” cried Edith, eagerly, ”you could surely tell by that, unless they were feigned.”
”Which is hardly probable,” Richard rejoined, ”though they might as well have been for any good they do me now. I was too unhappy then, too much wrapped up in my own misfortunes to care for what was pa.s.sing around me, and though I gave them a certificate, keeping myself a memorandum of the same, I soon forgot their names entirely.”
”But the copy,” chimed in Edith, ”that will tell. Let's hunt it up. I'm so interested in these people, and it seems so funny that you should have married them. I wonder where they are. Have you never heard a word from them?”
”Never, since that night,” said Richard; ”and what is more unfortunate still for an inquisitive mother Eve, like you, the copy which I kept was burned by a servant who destroyed it with sundry other business papers, on one of her cleaning house days.”
”Ah-h,” and Arthur drew a long, long breath, which prompted Edith to ask if be were tired.
”You're not as much interested as I am,” she said. ”I do wish I knew who the young bride was--so small and so fair. Was she as tall as Nina?” and she turned to Richard, who replied,
”I can hardly judge the height of either. Stand up, Snow Drop, and let me feel if you are as tall as the bride of ten years ago.”
”Yes, Nina is the taller of the two,” said Richard, as he complied with his request and stood under his hand. ”I have often thought of this girl-wife and her handsome boy-husband, doubting whether I did right to marry them, but the young man who accompanied them went far toward rea.s.suring me that all was right. They were residents of the village, he said, and having seen me often in town, had taken a fancy to have me perform the ceremony, just for the novelty of the thing.”
”It's queer you never heard of them afterward,” said Edith; while Nina, looking up in the blind man's face, rejoined,
”YOU DID IT THEN?”
”Nina,” said Arthur ere Richard could reply, ”it is time we were going home; there is Sophy with the shawl which you forgot.” And he pointed toward Sophy coming through the garden, with a warm shawl tucked under her arm, for the dew was heavy that night and she feared lest Nina should take cold.
”Nina won't go yet; she isn't ready,” persisted the capricious maiden. ”Go till I call you,” and having thus summarily dismissed Soph, the little lady resumed the seat from which she had arisen, and laying her head on Richard's, whispered to him softly, ”CAN'T YOU SCRATCH IT OUT?”
”Scratch what out?” he asked; and Nina replied,
”Why, IT; what you've been talking about. Nothing ever came of it but despair and darkness.”
”I do not know what you mean,” Richard said, and as Arthur did not volunteer any information, but sat carelessly sc.r.a.ping his thumb nail with a pen-knife, Edith made some trivial remark which turned the channel of Nina's thoughts, and she forgot to urge the request that ”it should be scratched out.”
”Nina'll go now,” she said, after ten minutes had elapsed, and calling Soph, Arthur was soon on his way home, hardly knowing whether he was glad or sorry that every proof of his early error was forever destroyed.
CHAPTER XX.
THE DECISION.
The summer was over and gone; its last breath had died away amid the New England hills, and the mellow October days had come, when in the words of America's sweetest poetess,
”The woods stand bare and brown, And into the lap of the South land, The flowers are blowing down.”
Over all there was that dreamy, languid haze, so common to the Autumn time, when the distant hills are bathed in a smoky light and all things give token of decay. The sun, round and red, as the October sun is wont to be, shone brightly upon Collingwood, and looked cheerily into the room where Edith Hastings sat, waiting apparently for some one whose tardy appearance filled her with impatience. In her hand she held a tiny note received the previous night, and as she read for the twentieth time the few lines contained therein, her blushes deepened on her cheek, and her blank eyes grew softer and more subdued in their expression.
”Edith,” the note began, ”I must see you alone. I have something to say to you which a third person cannot hear. May I come to Collingwood to-morrow at three o'clock, P.M.? In haste, Arthur St.
Claire.”