The Wetherel affair :: :: University of Virginia Library

The disinheritance of Edward and all those sorry doings of his which had
led to it were kept secret from Nestoria; even the communicative Alice being
averse to talking of the black sheep of the family and of the tremendous punishment
which had overtaken his swartness.

But while discretion is a virtue, it is not invariably a blessing to all whom
it concerns; and things would have gone more comfortably and prosperously
with the missionary's daughter had her friends been less reticent. Left in
ignorance of the young man's real character, she continued to judge him
mainly by his courtesy and amiability to herself; to look upon his misunderstanding
with his uncle as his misfortune, rather than the result of his faults;
and to think of him all the more kindly because of that mysterious calamity.
Yes, the quarrel gave him an additional attraction in her eyes; it enlisted for
him the unworldly purity and unworn fervor of her sympathy; it drew on
that passion of pity which in woman's heart is so near the fountains of affection.
She prayed by herself that this great trial might be made to end well
for him, leading him on to be better in this life and happy in the next.
And, naturally enough, the more she prayed for him, the purer and nobler he
seemed to her, and the worthier of her liking.

It was just after one of these entangling orisons in behalf of the young man
that she met him again. Edward could not long stay away from the house in
which he had been arraigned, condemned, and sentenced. It seemed to have
some such sad and angry attraction for him as the scene of a murder is said
to have for the ghost of the murdered one. In his vindictive desperation he
craved to revisit Sea Lodge, there to scowl defiance at his calamity and the
man who had inflicted it.

“I will face my uncle down,” he said to himself. “I will show him that
I care not one straw for his money; that I can bear all he can lay upon me
without flinching.”

But another sentiment, even stronger perhaps than wrath, drew him to the
spot. He longed greatly to see Nestoria; for since his outlawry by his own
blood, he had thought of her more than ever; he had set her up in this alluring
light, that she was the only friend he had left on earth; and he looked
forward to an interview with her as a support and consolation. Not that he
might make love to her, and much less ask for her in marriage. No, no; he
was too poor now to offer himself even to a chambermaid; and he said to himself
over and over again that this dear little beauty deserved all the tendernesses
of fortune.

Such at least was his general feeling, the judgment of his moments of highest
wisdom. But there were other times when the hopefulness of youth and
the stirring of the blood demanded, “Why not?” This simple, unworldly,
unselfish child would surely have the nobility to love him in spite of penury,
and the faith to wait for him until he could acquire the means to support her.
With a seraph to labor for, he would labor better than for himself alone, and
scale the summit of success more quickly. “Perhaps,” he murmured to himself
in these enchanted moments, “perhaps it would be well for us both.”

Only three days after the quarrel, this wild-headed and hot-hearted youth
stalked haughtily into the castle of that grim enchanter, one wave of whose
wand had stripped him of his golden expectations and left him clothed in insolvency.
He was ready to do instant battle, no doubt of some unwise and
calamitous sort, the moment he should meet his enemy. But he had scarcely
entered the plainly-furnished parlor ere the Luciferian wrath and defiance
faded from his brow. He beheld the innocent sweet face and radiant golden
hair of Nestoria.

The girl smiled brightly; she had, by the way, a habit of welcoming her
friends by merely smiling; it was one of her unconscious fascinations.

“You are a burst of sunshine,” he said. “You light up the whole of this
doleful house.”

“I am glad you have come,” she replied, apparently accepting his compliment
as a mere expression of friendship, and perhaps so accepting it because
she was accustomed to the superlatives of the East. “I saw your boat
in the harbor, dodging about like one of the sea-birds, and wondered if it
would stop here. Take this great chair,” she added, dragging it toward him
in a helpful way which was common with her. “You will have nobody but
me to talk with. Mrs. Dinneford has gone to town to do the marketing, and
Alice is driving with the Judge.”

“I am glad they are out,” smiled Edward, pleased to be alone with her,
and forgetting his enemy.

Nestoria glanced at him with a troubled air, innocently wondering why he
was glad, and whether she might ask why. Affectionately anxious about him,
and unable to suppose that a man would lightly express himself pleased to be
rid of his relations, she suspected that the quarrel between uncle and nephew
had fared from bad to worse. Her childlike face, as incapable of concealments
as the physiognomy of perfect innocence always is, revealed the discomfort of
her thoughts.

“What makes you look so sad?” he asked. “Because I don't care to
have my relations always in my lap?”

“It isn't that,” she said. “Though that seems to me so—strange! I don't
know that I ought to tell you what I was worrying about. And yet—I will—
I must. You needn't answer my question if it is an improper one.”

“What is it?” he inquired, as she again hesitated. “Is it about the difficulty
with my uncle?”

“Yes,” whispered Nestoria, so terrible was the subject to her, and so
breathless her interest in it.

“We are on speaking terms now, but I am to have none of his property,”
he stated dryly and plainly, feeling that such a tale of calamity and injustice
required no garnish of rhetoric or elocution.

“Oh!” exclaimed Nestoria, looking entirely relieved and even happy, it
was so much better than she had feared.

“You seem pleased,” he commented with a sort of peevish surprise, closely
bordering on vexation.

“I am pleased because you are on speaking terms,” was her answer. “I
could not bear to have two such kind friends of mine hold apart from each
other.”

“You must not misunderstand me,” he went on with creditable frankness.
“We are not on genial speaking terms. Not much geniality in my uncle
when people don't agree with him. I think he is hard, and he means to be
hard.”

“Does he?” sighed Nestoria. “I don't see how it can be so, he seems
so just. But you know far more of this matter than I do. I know almost
nothing. At any rate, if you see each other often, perhaps the trouble will
wear away.”

“Little chance of it,” he muttered. “And meanwhile I haven't a cent in
the world.”

He made this confession in such a drooping, desperate tone, that the girl
could not but perceive that here was a great misfortune, at least in his
opinion.

“I am so sorry!” she said heartily, at the same time looking at him with
profound pity, though wondering how he could be thus depressed by mere poverty.
Then her face brightened, partly with her natural cheerfulness, and
partly with a desire to console him, and she added smiling, “Well, we have
the same destiny. We must both work for a living. I am going to teach
school and paint fans.”

“And so will I work!” exclaimed Edward, thoroughly ashamed of his
cowardice and sense of helplessness. He sprang to his feet and walked the
room with a resolute step, repeating, “Yes, I will work. I'll work like a
Trojan.”

Nestoria gazed at him with admiration, fully believing in his manliness
and feeling a humble awe of it. Of a sudden he became in her eyes something
more than charming; he rose in one instant to be noble, heroic, and
worshipful; and in that instant she loved him. Gentleness is fascinating to a
woman, but strength is subduing. Nestoria had seen Edward courteous, and
she had given him her earnest friendship; now she saw him, as she thought,
virile and mighty, and with a single throb she gave him her heart.

He did indeed look noble, for the loftiness of worthy resolve was in his air,
and the beautiful confidence of young and healthy manhood in his face. It
seemed to him at the moment that he would indeed labor terribly, that he
would deserve a success which should command the respect of his fellow

creatures, and that he would (most bewitching thought of all) rise superior to
that enemy, his uncle.

Presently he glanced at Nestoria, and the instant his eyes met hers he was
fascinated, for in their sincere azure he beheld her heart. The undisguisable
sympathy and affection of that innocent gaze threw down all the battlements
of his prudence as easily as the sunlight eats up the minutest drop of dew.
The dandy, the practised beau, the worldling who supposed himself to be superbly
selfish, the man-about-town who trusted that he was hardened, became
in one breath a reckless lover.

“My dear little friend, how good you are!” he said, walking straight up to
her, and bending over her with brooding tenderness. “You do really care for
my welfare.”

Nestoria could not reply; her heart was all at once full of terror; her voice
was suffocated by pulsations. She rose to her feet with difficulty, feeling that
she ought to run away, but unable to go.

“My dear, dear child, I must love you,” he went on, impelled by that headlong
eagerness of his which made him always do what he wanted to do, regardless
of consequences. “Will you let me? I am unworthy of it. But do
let me. Do let me hope that some day you will love me in return.”

By this time he had taken her hand, and we are compelled to confess that
Nestoria was not wise enough to withdraw it, and indeed did not think of
withdrawing it. She had lost all control of her destiny, and although she was
crying a little, it was with happiness.

“Oh! what are you crying for?” be asked, prodigiously troubled by the
sight of a tear on her cheek, for the tenderness of deep affection possessed
him. “Am I vexing you—paining you?”

She looked up in his face with such an expression of content and joy that
he could not possibly mistake her feelings.

“You surprise me so!” she whispered. “I didn't expect this. I didn't
know—”

“Then you will promise to wait for me?” he urged, eager for a complete
answer, an unmistakable word.

“But, Edward,” she said, hesitating, “I want to ask you one question.”

“What is it, Nestoria?”

She put her mouth close to his ear and whispered her query so low that he
could scarcely hear it. The shy, yet anxious and solemn interrogatory was,
whether he were a member of the church of Christ.

He stared at her. A grave look come over his face. At last he said, “I
am.”

“Oh!” she sighed, relieved from a great terror. “I will wait all my life
for you.”

We will describe this interview no further; indeed, it only lasted a minute
longer. Glancing accidentally out of a window, Edward saw Judge Wetherel
drive up to the gate, too late to prevent a scene which, as we can easily understand,
might well be the first act in the drama of trouble.

“There is my uncle,” he said, releasing Nestoria's hand. “I must tell
him this at once.”

In his heart he added, with some anxiety as well as with some triumph,
“How will he take it?”