Part 29 (1/2)
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,”