Edith Skewton

“ So you see, instead of being my maid, you have been my faithful companion—and nurse. Dear Star, I love you, and if you will always remain with me, I shall be the happiest person on earth."
"Dear Edith," said Star, with tears of gratitude in her eyes, "I knew you were good when first I beheld you; but I never knew that such goodness could be in any kinsman of mine. I never told you of the life I lived; I never told you how we lived at home; I never told you of my father or my mother. For it always gave me grief to think of it. Poor father is dead!"
"Dead!" said Edith. ”

“ And again she searched Edith's face and eyes as if she would read her inmost thoughts.
She met her glance clearly, unshrinkingly.
"I am sure that you never committed a willful wrong in your life," she gravely replied. "It was a sad mistake to go away from your home and parents, as you did; but there is no intent to sin to be laid to your charge—your soul shines, like a beacon light, through these dear eyes, and I am sure it is as pure and lovely as your face is beautiful." ”

“ I am so glad you are not dead. It is impossible to release you to-night. Those wretches have the key. How I loathe them! Edith says the hotel is wild with gossip about everything and everybody. It's just awful. Be of good heart, my beloved. I will be your faithful slave until death. With love and adoration and kisses. Your own Constance.
"P.S. Roxbury has not made a sign, Edith is frantic."
Several floors below the relieved and ecstatic Brock, Mrs. Medcroft was soon urging her sister to go to bed and let the story go until daylight. ”

“ Music had no charms for her, nor books, nor young company. Life was lifeless to her. The mansion was a dreary castle. Her days were spent in wishing for night, and nights in wishing for morning. All her mother's endearments, all her father's love, all of Star's sweet companionship, were alike to her—unconsoling. The mother was in despair, the father grief stricken, but Star, of all of them, had hope.
"Edith," said Star, this day, while standing by the pond watching the leaping fountain and playful golden fish, and noting how quiet Edith was. "I wrote to Mr. Winthrope yesterday." ”

“ Then seeing the crimson overspread Edith's cheek, she added, "perhaps your warm tears have revived it." But, as if ashamed of having said something not perfectly true, she took Edith's hand, looked earnestly in her face, as if asking an explanation of this sudden change.
Edith was wholly overcome. She threw herself into the arms of the faithful slave, and longed to hide herself there. None but a mother could understand her feelings, or one who had been to her in the place of a mother, and knew every beating of her innocent heart. ”

“ Edith returned, lifting a pair of grateful eyes to his face. "How can I thank you?"
"You do not need to do that, for I feel that I alone have been to blame for all your trouble," he said, in a self-reproachful tone; then he added, with a roguish gleam in his fine eyes: "I shall never be guilty of paying my copyist in gold again. Now come, I have a carriage waiting for you and will send you directly home to your mother," the young man concluded, as he lifted her shawl from the chair where she had been sitting and wrapped it about her shoulders. ”

“ There are moments when woman needs the sympathy of a mother, that first and dearest friend of every human being. Dinah could not understand the imaginative character of Edith's mind; she could not sympathize with her thirst for knowledge, her love of the beautiful and the unknown; but the tear in her eye, and her quivering lip, as she pressed her child closer and closer to her, as though she would cherish her in her inmost heart, showed that she understood her nature, and sympathized in her happiness with all a woman's heart. ”

“ Hire a nurse, if necessary. You might venture to express an opinion or two on vital topics, in my name. I don't care a hang what you say. I only want 'em to think I'm there. No doubt our enemies will have a spy or two hanging about to see that I am actually off for a jaunt with the Rodneys, but they will be Viennese and they won't know me from Adam. What's the odds, so long as Edith is there to stand by you? If she's willing to assume that you are her husband—"
"Good Lord!" half shouted Brock, leaping to his feet, wide-eyed. "You don't mean to say that she is—is—is to go to Vienna with me?" ”

“ It is better, perhaps; it is better. It seems that the scheme of things is wrong, sometimes; but in the end it is righted."
"Now, what is to be done, dear papa?" asked Edith, seeing that he had taken a discursive course in response to her irrefutable facts.
"I shall act at once," said he, gazing out the window, abstractedly, as if he had been wounded by an aspersion cast upon his magnanimity. "Ingrate! Ingrate! all of them!" he mused, drumming on the arm of the chair with his fingers, deep in study over some plan of action. "Edith, what would you do?" ”

“ I am so weak all the time, papa, that I am—"
"Don't; don't, Edith, my dear child," he said, with anguish in his kind heart, and parental remorse on his conscience. "You would not have been in this state, pet, had you not become so wrought up over that Monroe affair, I know; and I am to blame for being so blind, so blind—so—"
The father laid his head in his hands on the bed, and wept; and as he wept, Edith laid her hand upon his head, and smoothed down his ruffled hair. "Dear, papa," she said, "dear papa, don't cry for me; I will get better." ”

“ She stepped from the carriage and was soon informed of the accident, and its probable cause. She was a tall, elegantly-formed woman, of perhaps forty-three years, with large, dark brown eyes and rich brown hair. Her skin was fair and flawless, as that of a girl of twenty, with a delicate flush upon her cheeks, and Edith thought her face the most beautiful she had ever seen. ”

“ She watched them until she saw her husband give that guilty start, of which Edith took advantage to escape, and then, her hands clenched until the nails almost pierced the tender flesh, her lips convulsed—her whole face distorted with passion and pain, she turned from the spot.
"I have no longer any conscience," she hissed, as she sped swiftly back to her room. "The girl is doomed—she has sealed her own fate. ”

“ Refreshing sleep, though late in coming, restored Edith's composure. She came down to breakfast temperamentally disposed to enter into negotiations with her father toward the combating of any plot laid by Monroe and his friends to entice John Winthrope into questionable dealings.
Like a wronged woman, through an excess of virtuous actions, she felt it peculiarly incumbent upon herself to frustrate the plotters—not that it would save John alone; but that it would, as well, be consistently in line with her ideas of just dealings between man and man. ”

“ Edith murmured again with a long-drawn sigh of relief, "for of course you will assert your claim upon him, and"—with a glance at the child—"he will not dare to deny it."
"You are so anxious to be free? You would bless me for helping you to be free?" repeated her companion, studying the girl's face earnestly, questioningly.
"Ah, yes; I was almost in despair when you came in," Edith replied, shivering, and with starting tears; "now I begin to hope that my life has not been utterly ruined." ”

“ Then he left them.
"Are they not very good people," said Edith to Star, after the father had gone out with Anne.
"I like them very much," opined Star; "they are so pleasant."
John came in shortly, and sat down on a split-bottom chair in the middle of the room.
"I hope you ladies are enjoying yourselves," he said, toying with his hat he held in his hands.
"I could not enjoy myself any more if it were my own home," answered Edith. "Why, you have such a delightful home, Mr. Winthrope, and such nice parents, and such a sweet little sister, with whom I have already fallen in love. ”

“ Edith admitted loyally.
They were silent, seized irresistibly by the emotion that mastered the mighty crowd in the dark streets below. Edith was strangely moved. Presently she could speak:
"Is there anything sweeter in life than to know that you have done a good thing—and done it well?"
"Yes," said Clayton, "just one: to have a few friends who understand."
"You are right," said Edith. "It is so with art, and it must be so with life; it makes an art of life."
It was dark enough there by the window for her to slip her hand into that of Neil, who had been musing silently on the crowd. ”

“ When you go home, you will take her with you, as your own, and no one need ever know that she is not your own. Do not ever reveal the truth to her; let her grow up happy and care-free, like other girls who are of honorable birth; and if the dead can watch over and shield the living, you and yours shall be so shielded and watched over by your lost but still loving. Belle."
"She was my mother! I am that child of shame!" came hoarsely from Edith's bloodless lips as she finished reading that dreadful letter. ”

“ Jarney opened it, and they silently filed within, like going into the chamber of the dead, so softly did they move.
At one side of a bed sat a nurse, on the other sat Star Barton, faithful in her bleeding heart. On the bed lay the fevered form of Edith in snowy whiteness. To the beholders she was like a transporting angel, only the flush of life was in her cheeks—the flush of her affliction. Her white hands lay twitching over the coverlets. Her face was upturned, her blue eyes staring, her lips mumbling indistinct words. She was apparently dead to all things mortal. No wonder Star was in tears ”

“ Edith flushed crimson at her words.
"I—I do not understand you," she faltered, filled with surprise and dismay at being thus addressed by the veiled stranger.
"I wish to see Madam Correlli," the woman remarked, in an impatient and bitter tone. "I am sure I am not mistaken addressing you thus."
"Yes, you are mistaken—there is no such person," Edith boldly replied, determined that she would never commit herself by responding to that hated name.
"Are you not the girl whose name was Edith Allen?" demanded her companion, sharply. ”

“ If God sees fit to tear me from you before I can legally provide for you and my beloved mother, I shall be enabled to forget the bitter truth in listening to your sweet voice. You promise me this, Edith?"
"I do—Heaven will sustain me even then, my darling brother, and give me power to forget my own anguish in soothing your last moments."
Edith Euston pressed his hand to her lips, and raising from the floor a guitar which lay beside her, she poured forth a strain of melody which seemed to soothe the senses of the invalid to rest. ”

“ I do not know what makes me think so much of Edith. I sometimes think the spirits of our dearest friends can follow us, and it seems as if she was now beside us."
"You superstitious little thing!—don't you know, Nelly, the Scotch say, 'It's no canny to talk always of one person,' and, 'that ill comes of it.'"
"You have expressed exactly my thoughts; I wish I could think less of her, not that I would wish to love her less, or could do so; but when memory obtrudes her at all seasons, I seem to have a strange presentiment all is not well. ”

“ Edith, in dressing-jacket and petticoat, comes in through the tower, swiftly and determinedly, pamphlet in hand, principles up in arms, more of a bishop than her father, yet as much a gentlewoman as her mother. She is the typical spoilt child of a clerical household: almost as terrible a product as the typical spoilt child of a Bohemian household: that is, all her childish affectations of conscientious scruple and religious impulse have been applauded and deferred to until she has become an ethical snob of the first water. ”

“ The time set, was to be as soon as possible after you were able to be seen by Monroe. Having seen him this evening, Edith, it must be time for them to strike. We must intercede to save him, Edith, if possible."
"I cannot do anything, in my enfeebled condition; but I shall see papa early in the morning. I shall forestall Monroe, in his madness! Mr. Winthrope shall be saved from those bad men! Star, something seemed to have told me that all was not going well for him. Bless your dear heart!" said Edith, firmly, sternly, but calmer. ”

“ And you've been married less than a week!"
"Roxbury and I didn't have our first quarrel until we'd been married a year," said Edith reflectively.
"Oh, I say, Edith," exclaimed Brock, with a dark frown, "I'd rather you wouldn't be forever extolling the good qualities of my predecessor. It's very bad taste. Very much like the pies mother used to make."
"Silly!" cried Medcroft's wife, now in fine humour.
"Besides, Rox is an Englishman. It would take him a year to produce a quarrel. The American husband is not so confounded slow. I won't live up to Roxbury in everything." ”

“ He lifted her face when he ceased speaking, and pressed his first caress upon her lips.
A little later he inquired:
"And have you no clue to the name of your parents?"
"No; all the clue that I have is simply the name of 'Belle' that was signed to the letters of which I have told you," Edith replied, with a regretful sigh.
"It is perhaps just as well, dear, after all," said her lover, cheerfully; "if you knew more, and should ever chance to meet the man who so wronged your mother, it might cause you a great deal of unhappiness." ”

“ Edith breathed, in a scarcely audible voice, while she began to tremble with a secret hope.
"I am the child's mother—yes," the girl returned, with a look of despair in her dusky orbs.
But she was not prepared for the light of eager joy that leaped into Edith's eyes at this confession—the [152] new life and hope that swept over her face and animated her manner until she seemed almost transformed, from the weary, spiritless appearing girl she had seemed on her entrance, into a new creature.
"Then, of course, you are Emil Correlli's wife," she cried, in a glad tone ”