A Terrible Secret by May Agnes Fleming (motivational novels TXT) 📕

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