A Terrible Secret Part 31

CHAPTER VIII.

IN TWO BOATS.

Early next morning our tourists remounted the car and jogged slowly over that lovely stretch of country which lies between Glengariff and Killarney.

Their places were as on the day before--Sir Victor in the possession of Trix, Charley with Edith. But the baronet's gloom was gone--hope filled his heart. She did _not_ love her cousin,--of that he had convinced himself,--and one day he might call her wife.

Sir Victor Catheron was that _rara avis_, a modest young man. That this American girl, penniless and pedigreeless, was beneath him, he never thought--of his own rank and wealth, as motives to influence her, he never once dreamed. Nothing base or mercenary could find a place in so fair a creature; so n.o.ble and beautiful a face must surely be emblematic of a still more n.o.ble and beautiful soul. Alas! for the blindness of people in love.

It was a day of delight, a day of cloudless skies, sparkling suns.h.i.+ne, fresh mountain breezes, sublime scenery. Wild, bleak valleys, frowning Kerry rocks, roaring torrents, bare-footed, ragged children, pigs and people beneath the same thatched roof, such squalor and utter poverty as in their dreams they had never imagined.

"Good Heaven!" Edith said, with a shudder, "how can life be worth living in such horrible poverty as this?"

"The bugbear of your life seems to be poverty, Edith," Charley answered. "I daresay these people eat and sleep, fall in love, marry, and are happy even here."

"My dear Mr. Stuart, what a sentimental speech, and sillier even than it is sentimental. Marry and are happy! They marry no doubt, and the pig lives in the corner, and every cabin swarms with children, but--_happy_! Charley, I used to think you had one or two grains of common-sense, at least--now I begin to doubt it."

"I begin to doubt it myself, since I have had the pleasure of knowing Edith Darrell. I defy mortal man to keep common-sense, or uncommon-sense, long in her company. Poverty and misery, in your lexicon, mean the same thing."

"The same thing. There is no earthly evil that can equal poverty."

They reached Killarney late in the evening, and drove to the "Victoria." The perfect weather still continued, the moon that had lit their last night at sea, on the wane now, lifted its silver light over the matchless Lakes of Killarney, lying like sheets of crystal light beneath.

"Oh, how lovely!" Trix exclaimed. The rest stood silent. There is a beauty so intense as to be beyond words of praise--so sweet, so solemn, as to hush the very beating of our hearts. It was such beauty as this they looked upon now.

They stood on the velvety sward--Sir Victor with Trixy on his arm, Charley and Edith side by side. A glowing ma.s.s of soft, scarlet drapery wrapped Miss Darrell, a coquettish hat, with a long, black ostrich plume, set off her Spanish face and eyes. They had dined--and when is moonlight half so poetical as after an excellent dinner?

"I see two or three boats," remarked Sir Victor. "I propose a row on the lakes."

"Of all things," seconded Beatrix, "a sail on the Lakes of Killarney!

Edith, do you realize it? Let us go at once, Sir Victor."

"Will you come with me, Edith?" Charley asked, "or would you rather go with them?"

She looked at him in surprise. How grave his face--how quiet his tone!

He had been like this all day, silent, preoccupied, grave.

"My very dear Charley, how polite we grow! how considerate of others'

feelings! Quite a new phase of your interesting character. I'll go with you, certainly--Mr. Charles Stuart, in a state of lamblike meekness, is a study worth contemplating."

He smiled slightly, and drew her hand within his arm.

"Come, then," he said, "let us have this last evening together; who knows when we shall have another?"

Miss Darrell's brown eyes opened to their widest extent.

"'This last evening! Who knows when we shall have another!' Charley, if you're meditating flight or suicide, say so at once--anything is better than suspense. I once saw a picture of 'The Knight of the Woful Countenance'--the K. of the W. C. looked exactly as you look now! If you're thinking of strychnine, say so--no one shall oppose you. My only regret is, that I shall have to wear black, and hideous is a mild word to describe Edith Darrell in black."

"Hideous!" Charley repeated, "you! I wonder if you could possibly look ugly in anything? I wonder if you know how pretty you are to-night in that charming hat and that scarlet drapery?"

"Certainly I know, and charming I undoubtedly must look to wring a word of praise from you. It's the first time in all your life, sir, you ever paid me a compliment. Hitherto you have done nothing but find fault with my looks and everything else."

"There is a time for everything," he answers, a little sadly--sadly!

and Charley Stuart! "The time for all that is past. Here is our boat.

You will steer, Edith? Yes--then I'll row."

The baronet and Trix were already several yards off, out upon the s.h.i.+ning water. Another party--a large boat containing half-a-dozen, Captain Hammond among them, was farther off still. In this boat sat a girl with a guitar; her sweet voice as she sang came romantically over the lake, and the mountain echoes, taking it up, sang the refrain enchantingly over and over again. Edith lifted up her face to the starry sky, the moonlight bathing it in a glory.

"Oh, what a night!" she sighed. "What a bright, beautiful world it is, and how perfectly happy one could be, if--"

"One had thirty thousand a year!" Charley suggested.

"Yes, exactly. Why can't life be all like this--moonlight, capital dinners, lots of friends and new dresses, a nice boat, and--yes--I will say it--somebody one likes very much for one's companion."

"Somebody one likes very much, Edith? I wonder sometimes if you like me at all--if it is in you to like any one but yourself."

"Thanks! I like myself, certainly, and first best I will admit. After that--"

"After that?" he repeats.

"I like _you_. No--keep quiet, Charley, please, you'll upset the boat.

Of course I like you--aren't you my cousin--haven't you been awfully kind--don't I owe all this to you? Charley, I bless that night in the snow--it has been the luckiest in my life."

"And the unluckiest of mine."

"Sir!"

"O Edith, let us speak for once--let us understand one another, and then part forever, if we must. Only why need we part at all?"

She turns pale--she averts her face from him, and looks out over the radiant water. Sooner or later she has known this must come--it has come to-night.

"Why need we part at all?" He is leaning on his oars, and they are floating rightly with the stream. "I don't need to tell you how I love you; you know it well enough; and I think--I hope--you care for me. Be true to yourself, Edith--you belong to me--come to me; be my wife."

There is pa.s.sion in his tone, in his eyes, but his voice is quiet, and he sits with the oars in his hands. Even in this supreme moment of his life Mr. Stuart is true to his "principles," and will make no scene.

"You know I love you," he repeats, "as the man in the Cork theatre said the other night: 'I'll go down on my knees if you like, but I can love you just as well standing up.' Edith, speak to me. How can you ever marry any one but me--but me, whose life you saved. My darling, forget your cynicism--it is but lip-deep--you don't really mean it--and say you will be my wife."

"Your wife!" She laughs, but her heart thrills as she says it. "Your wife! It would be pleasant, Charley; but, like most of the pleasant things of life, it can never be."

"Edith!"

"Charley, all this is nonsense, and you know it. We are cousins--we are good friends and stanch comrades, and always will be, I hope; but lovers--no, no, no!"

"And why?" he asks.