University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
VISITORS AT COLLINGWOOD AND VISITORS AT BRIER HILL.

The morning came at last on which Arthur was expected,
but as he did not appear, Grace gave him up until the
morrow, and toward the middle of the afternoon ordered
out her carriage, and drove slowly in the direction of Collingwood.
Alighting before the broad piazza, and ascending
the marble steps, she was asked by Richard's confidential
servant into the parlor, where she sat waiting
anxiously while he went in quest of his master.

“A lady, sir, wishes to see you in the parlor,” and Victor
Dupres bowed low before Richard, awaiting his commands.

“A lady, Victor? Did she give her name?”

“Yes, sir; Atherton — Mrs. Grace Atherton, an old
friend, she said,” Victor replied, marveling at the expression
of his master's face, which indicated anything but
pleasure.

He had expected her — had rather anticipated her
coming; but now that she was there, he shrank from the

interview. It could only result in sorrow, for Grace was
not to him now what she once had been. He could value
her, perhaps, as a friend, but Edith's tale had told him
that he to her was more than a friend. Possibly this
knowledge was not as distasteful to him as he fancied it
to be; at all events, when he remembered it, he said to
Victor:

“Is the lady handsome?” feeling a glow of satisfaction
in the praises heaped upon the really beautiful Grace.
Ere long the hard expression left his face, and straightening
up his manly form, he bade Victor take him to her.

As they crossed the threshold of the door, he struck his
foot against it, and instantly there rang in his ear the
words which little Edith had said to him so pityingly,
“Poor blind man!” while he felt again upon his brow the
touch of those childish fingers; and this was why the
dark, hard look came back. Edith Hastings rose up between
him and the regal creature waiting so anxiously his
coming, and who, when he came and stood before her, in
his helplessness, wept like a child.

“Richard! oh, Richard! that it should be thus we
meet again!” was all that she could say, as, seizing the
groping hand, she covered it with her tears.

Victor had disappeared, and she could thus give free
vent to her emotions, feeling it almost a relief that the
eyes whose glance she once had loved to meet could not
witness her grief.

“Grace,” he said at last, the tone of his voice was so
cold that she involuntarily dropped his hands and looked
him steadily in the face. “Grace, do not aggravate my
misfortune by expressing too much sympathy. I am not
as miserable as you may think, indeed, I am not as unhappy
even now as yourself.”

“It's true, Richard, true,” she replied, “and because I
am unhappy I have come to ask your forgiveness if ever
word or action, or taunt of mine caused you a moment's

pain. I have suffered much since we parted, and my suffering
has atoned for all my sin.”

She ceased speaking, and softened by memories of the
past, when he loved Grace Elmendorf, Richard reached
for her hand, and holding it between his own, said to her
gently, “Grace, I forgave you years ago. I know you
have suffered much, and I am sorry for it, but we will understand
each other now. You are the widow of the man
you chose, I am hopelessly blind — our possessions adjoin
each other, our houses are in sight. I want you for a
neighbor, a friend, a sister, if you like. I shall never marry.
That time is past. It perished with the long ago, and
it will, perhaps, relieve the monotony of my life if I have
a female acquaintance to visit occasionally. I thank you
much for your flowers, although for a time I did not know
you sent them, for the little girl would place them in my
hands without a word and dart away before I could stop
her. Still I knew it was a child, and I preserved them
carefully for her sake until she was last here, when I
learned who was the real donor. I am fond of flowers
and thank you for sending them. I appreciate your kindness.
I like you much better than I did an hour since,
for the sound of your voice and the touch of your hands
seem to me like old familiar friends. I am glad you came
to see me, Grace. I wish you to come often, for I am
very lonely here. We will at least be friends, but nothing
more. Do you consent to my terms?”

She had no alternative but to consent, and bowing her
head, she answered back, “Yes, Richard; that is all I
can expect, all I wish. I had no other intention in sending
you bouquets.”

He knew she did not tell him truly, but he pitied her
mortification, and tried to divert her mind by talking upon
indifferent subjects, but Grace was too much chagrined
and disappointed to pay much heed to what he said, and
after a time arose to go.

“Come again soon,” he said, accompanying her to the
door, “and send up that novelty Edith, will you?”

“Edith,” muttered Grace, as she swept haughtily down
the box-lined walk, and stepped into her carriage. “I'll
send her back to the Asylum, as I live. Why didn't she
tell me just how it was, and so prevent me from making
myself ridiculous?”

Grace was far too much disturbed to go home at once.
She should do or say something unlady-like if she did,
and she bade Tom drive her round the village, thus unconsciously
giving the offending Edith a longer time in
which to entertain and amuse the guest at Brier Hill, for
Arthur St. Claire had come.

Edith was the first to spy him sauntering slowly up the
walk, and she watched him curiously as he came, mimicing
his gait, and wondering if he didn't feel big.

“Nobody's afraid of you,” she soliloquised, “if you do
belong to the firstest family in Virginia.” Then, hearing
Rachel, who answered his ring, bid him walk into the
parlor and amuse himself till Mrs. Atherton came, she
thought, “Wouldn't it be jolly to go down and entertain
him myself. Let me see, what does Mrs. Atherton say to
the Shannondale gentlemen when they call? Oh, I know,
she asks them if they've read the last new novel; how
they liked it, and so on. I can do all that, and maybe he'll
think I'm a famous scholar. I mean to wear the shawl she
looks so pretty in,” and going to her mistress' drawer, the
child took out and threw around her shoulders a crimson
scarf, which Grace often wore, and then descended to the
parlor, where Arthur St. Claire stood, leaning against the
marble mantel, and listlessly examining various ornaments
upon it.

At the first sight of him Edith felt her courage forsaking
her, there seemed so wide a gulf between herself and
the haughty-looking stranger, and she was about to leave
the room when he called after her, bidding her stay, and
asking who she was.

“I'm Edith Hastings,” she answered, dropping into a
chair, and awkwardly kicking her heels against the rounds
in her embarrassment at having those large, quizzical
brown eyes fixed so inquiringly upon her.

He was a tall, handsome young man, not yet nineteen
years of age, and in his appearance there certainly was
something savoring of the air supposed to mark the F. F.
V's. His manners were polished in the extreme, possessing,
perhaps, a little too much hauteur, and impressing
the beholder with the idea that he could, if he chose, be
very cold and overbearing. His forehead, high and intellectually
formed, was shaded by curls of soft brown hair,
while about his mouth there lurked a mischievous smile,
somewhat at variance with the proud curve of his upper
lip, where an incipient mustache was starting into life.
Such was Arthur St. Claire, as he stood coolly inspecting
Edith Hastings, who mentally styling him the “hatefullest
upstart” she ever saw, gave him back a glance as
cool and curious as his own.

“You are an odd little thing,” he said at last.

“No I ain't neither,” returned Edith, the tears starting
in her flashing black eyes.

“Spunky,” was the young man's next remark, as he
advanced a step or two toward her. “But don't let's
quarrel, little lady. You've come down to entertain me,
I dare say; and now tell me who you are.”

His manner at once disarmed the impulsive Edith of
all prejudice, and she replied:

“I told you I was Edith Hastings, Mrs. Atherton's
waiting maid.”

“Waiting maid!” and Arthur St. Claire took a step or
two backwards as he said: “Why are you in here? This
is not your place.”

Edith sprang to her feet. She could not misunderstand
the feeling with which he regarded her, and with an air
of insulted dignity worthy of Grace herself, she exclaimed,

“Oh, how I hate you, Arthur St. Claire! At first I
thought you might be good, like Squire Harrington; but
you ain't. I can't bear you. Ugh!”

“'Squire Harrington? Does he live near here?” and
the face which at the sight of her anger had dimpled all
over with smiles, turned white as Arthur St. Claire asked
this question, to which Edith replied:

“Yes; he's blind, and he lives up at Collingwood.
You can see its tower now,” and she pointed across the
fields.

But Arthur did not heed her, and continued to ply her
with questions concerning Mr. Harrington, asking if he
had formerly lived near Geneva, in western New York, if
he had a crazy father, and if he ever came to Brier Hill.

Edith's negative answer to this last query seemed to
satisfy him, and when, mistaking his eagerness for a desire
to see her divinity, Edith patronizingly informed him that
he might go with her some time to Collingwood, he answered
her evasively, asking if Richard recognized voices,
as most blind people did.

Edith could not tell, but she presumed he did, for he
was the smartest man that ever lived; and in her enthusiastic
praises she waxed so eloquent, using, withal, so good
language, that Arthur forgot she was a waiting maid, and
insensibly began to entertain a feeling of respect for the
sprightly child, whose dark face sparkled and flashed with
her excitement. She was a curious specimen, he acknowledged,
and he began adroitly to sound the depths of her
intellect. Edith took the cue at once, and not wishing to
be in the background, asked him, as she had at first intended
doing, if he'd read the last new novel.

Without in the least comprehending what novel she
meant, Arthur promptly replied that he had.

“How did you like it?” she continued, adjusting her
crimson scarf as she had seen Mrs. Atherten do under
similar circumstances.

“Very much indeed,” returned the young man with
imperturbable gravity, but when with a toss of her head
she asked: “Didn't you think there was too much 'physics
in it?” he went off into peals of laughter so loud and
long that they brought old Rachel to the door to see if
“he was done gone crazy or what.”

Taking advantage of her presence, the crest-fallen
Edith crept disconsolately up the stairs, feeling that she
had made a most ridiculous mistake, and wondering what
the word could be that sounded so much like 'physics,
and yet wasn't that at all. She knew she had made herself
ridiculous, and was indulging in a fit of crying when
Mrs. Atherton returned, delighted to meet her young
cousin, in whom she felt a pardonable pride.

“You must have been very lonely,” she said, beginning
to apologize for her absence.

“Never was less so in my life,” he replied. “Why,
I've been splendidly entertained by a little black princess,
who called herself your waiting maid, and discoursed
most eloquently of metaphysics and all that.”

“Edith, of course,” said Grace. “It's just like her.
Imitated me in every thing, I dare say.”

“Rather excelled you, I think, in putting on the fine
lady,” returned the teasing Arthur, who saw at once that
Edith Hastings was his fair cousin's sensitive point.

“What else did she say?” asked Grace, but Arthur
generously refrained from repeating the particulars of his
interview with the little girl who, as the days went by,
interested him so much that he forgot his Virginia pride,
and greatly to Mrs. Atherton's surprise indulged with her
in more than one playful romp, teasingly calling her his
little “Metaphysics,” and asking if she hated him still.

She did not. Next to Richard and Marie, she liked him
better than any one she had ever seen, and she was enjoying
his society so much when a most unlucky occurrence
suddenly brought her happiness to an end, and afforded

Grace an excuse for doing what she had latterly frequently
desired to do, viz. that of sending the little girl back
to the Asylum from which she had taken her.

Owing to the indisposition of the chambermaid, Edith
was one day sent with water to Mr. St. Claire's room.
Arthur was absent, but on the table his writing desk lay
open, and Edith's inquisitive eyes were not long in spying
a handsome golden locket, left there evidently by mistake.
Two or three times she had detected him looking at this
picture, and with an eager curiosity to see it also, she took
the locket in her hand, and going to the window, touched
the spring.

It was a wondrously beautiful face which met her view
— the face of a young girl, whose golden curls rippling
softly over her white shoulders, and whose eyes of lustrous
blue, reminded Edith of the angels about which
Rachel sang so devoutly every Sunday. To Edith there
was about that face a nameless but mighty fascination, a
something which made her warm blood chill and tingle
in her veins, while there crept over her a second time dim
visions of something far back in the past — of purple fruit
on vine-clad hills — of music soft and low — of days and
nights on some tossing, moving object — and then of a
huge white building, embowered in tall green trees, whose
milk-white blossoms she gathered in her hand; while distinct
from all the rest was this face, on which she gazed
so earnestly. It is true that all these thoughts were not
clear to her mind; it was rather a confused mixture of
ideas, one of which faded ere another came, so that there
seemed no real connection between them; and had she
embodied them in words, they would have been recognized
as the idle fancies of a strange, old-fashioned child.
But the picture — there was something in it which held
Edith motionless, while her tongue seemed struggling to
articulate a name, but failed in the attempt; and when,
at last, her lips did move, they uttered the word Marie,

as if she, too, were associated with that sweet young face.

“Oh, but she's jolly,” Edith said. “I don't wonder
Mr. Arthur loves her,” and she felt her own heart throb
with a strange affection for the beautiful original of that
daguerreotype.

In the hall without there was the sound of a footstep.
It was coming to that room. It was Grace herself, Edith
thought; and knowing she would be censured for touching
what did not belong to her, she thrust the locket into her
bosom, intending to return it as soon as possible, and
springing out upon the piazza, scampered away, leaving
the water pail to betray her recent presence.

It was not Grace, as she had supposed, but Arthur St.
Claire himself, come to put away the locket, which he
suddenly remembered to have left upon the table. Great
was his consternation when he found it gone, and that no
amount of searching could bring it to light. He did not
notice the empty pail the luckless Edith had left, although
he stumbled over it twice in his feverish anxiety to find
his treasure. But what he failed to observe was discovered
by Grace, whom he summoned to his aid, and who
exclaimed:

“Edith Hastings has been here! She must be the
thief!”

“Edith, Grace, Edith — it cannot be,” and Arthur's face
indicated plainly the pain it would occasion him to find
that it was so.

“I hope you may be right, Arthur, but I have not so
much confidence in her as you seem to have. There she
is now,” continued Grace, spying her across the yard and
calling to her to come.

Blushing, stammering, and cowering like a guilty thing,
Edith entered the room, for she heard Arthur's voice and
knew that he was there to witness her humiliation.

“Edith,” said Mrs. Atherton, sternly, “what have you
been doing?”

No answer from Edith save an increase of color upon
her face, and with her suspicions confirmed, Grace went
on,

“What have you in your pocket?”

“'Taint in my pocket; it's in my bosom,” answered
Edith, drawing it forth and holding it to view.

“How dare you steal it,” asked Grace, and instantly
there came into Edith's eyes the same fiery, savage gleam
from which Mrs. Atherton always shrank, and beneath
which she now involuntarily quailed.

It had never occurred to Edith that she could be accused
of theft, and she stamped at first like a little fury, then
throwing herself upon the sofa, sobbed out, “Oh, dear —
oh, dear, I wish God would let me die. I don't want to
live any longer in such a mean, nasty world. I want to
go to Heaven, where everything is jolly.”

“You are a fit subject for Heaven,” said Mrs. Atherton,
scornfully, and instantly the passionate sobbing ceased;
the tears were dried in the eyes which blazed with insulted
dignity as Edith arose, and looking her mistress
steadily in the face, replied,

“I suppose you think I meant to steal and keep the
pretty picture, but the one who was in here with me knows
I didn't.”

“Who was that?” interrupted Grace, her color changing
visibly at the child's reverent reply.

“God was with me, and I wish he hadn't let me touch
it, but he did. It lay on the writing desk and I took it to
the window to see it. Oh, isn't she jolly?” and as she recalled
the beautiful features, the hard expression left her
own, and she went on, “I couldn't take my eyes from her;
they would stay there, and I was almost going to speak
her name, when I heard you coming, and ran away. I
meant to bring it back, Mr. Arthur,” and she turned appealingly
to him. “I certainly did, and you believe me,
don't you? I never told a lie in my life.”

Ere Arthur could reply, Grace chimed in.

“Believe you? Of course not. You stole the picture
and intended to keep it. I cannot have you longer in my
family, for nothing is safe. I shall send you back at once.”

There was a look in the large eyes which turned so
hopelessly from Arthur to Grace, and from Grace back
to Arthur, like that the hunted deer wears when hotly
pursued in the chase. The white lips moved but uttered
no sound, and the fingers closed convulsively around the
golden locket which Arthur advanced to take away.

“Let me see her once more,” she said.

He could not refuse her request, and touching the spring
he held it up before her.

“Pretty lady,” she whispered, “sweet lady, whose name
I most know, speak, and tell Mr. Arthur that I didn't do
it. I surely didn't.”

This constant appeal to Arthur, and total disregard of
herself, did not increase Mrs. Atherton's amiability, and
taking Edith by the shoulder she attempted to lead her
from the room.

At the door Edith stopped, and said imploringly to
Arthur,

“Do you think I stole it?”

He shook his head, a movement unobserved by Grace,
but fraught with so much happiness for the little girl.
She did not heed Grace's reproaches now, nor care if she
was banished to her own room for the remainder of the
day. Arthur believed her innocent; Uncle Tom believed
her innocent, and Rachel believed her innocent, which last
fact was proved by the generous piece of custard pie hoisted
to her window in a small tin pail, said pail being poised
upon the prongs of a long pitch-fork. This act of thoughtful
kindness touched a tender chord in Edith's heart, and
the pie choked her badly, but she managed to eat it all
save the crust, which she tossed into the grass, laughing to
see how near it came to hitting Mrs. Atherton, who looked
around to discover whence it could possibly have come.

That night, just before dark, Grace entered Edith's
room, and told her that as Mr. St. Claire, who left them
on the morrow, had business in New York, and was going
directly there, she had decided to send her with him to the
Asylum. “He will take a letter from me,” she continued,
“telling them why you are sent back, and I greatly fear
it will be long ere you find as good a home as this has
been to you.”

Edith sat like one stunned by a heavy blow. She had
not really believed that a calamity she so much dreaded,
would overtake her, and the fact that it had, paralyzed her
faculties. Thinking her in a fit of stubbornness Mrs. Atherton
said no more, but busied herself in packing her
scanty wardrobe, feeling occasionally a twinge of remorse
as she bent over the little red, foreign-looking chest, or
glanced at the slight figure sitting so motionless by the
window.

“Whose is this?” she asked, holding up a box containing
a long, thick braid of hair.

“Mother's hair! mother's hair! for Marie told me so.
You shan't touch that!” and like a tigress Edith sprang
upon her, and catching the blue-black tress, kissed it passionately,
exclaiming, “'Tis mother's —'tis. I remember
now, and I could not think before, but Marie told me so
the last time I saw her, years and years ago. Oh, mother,
if I ever had a mother, where are you to-night, when I
want you so much?”

She threw herself upon her humble bed, not thinking
of Grace, nor yet of the Asylum, but revelling in her new-born
joy. Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, an incident
of the past had come back to her bewildered mind, and
she knew now whose was the beautiful braid she had
treasured so carefully. Long ago — oh, how long it
seemed to her — there had come to the Asylum a short,
dumpy woman, with a merry face, who brought her this
hair in a box, telling her it was her mother's, and also that

she was going to a far country, but should return again
sometime — and this woman was Marie, who haunted her
dreams so often, whispering to her of magnolias and capejessamines.
All this Edith remembered distinctly, and
while thinking of it she fell asleep, nor woke to consciousness
even when Rachel's kind old hands undressed her
carefully and tucked her up in bed, saying over her a
prayer, and asking that Miss Grace's heart might relent
and keep the little girl. It had not relented when morning
came, and still, when at breakfast, Arthur received a
letter, which made it necessary for him to go to New York
by way of Albany, she did suggest that it might be too
much trouble to have the care of Edith.

“Not at all,” he said; and half an hour later Edith
was called into the parlor, and told to get herself in readiness
for the journey.

“Oh, I can't, I can't,” cried Edith, clinging to Mrs.
Atherton's skirt, and begging of her not to send her back.

“Where will you go?” asked Grace. “I don't want
you here.”

“I don't know,” sobbed Edith, uttering the next instant
a scream of joy, as she saw, in the distance, the carriage
from Collingwood, and knew that Richard was in it.
“To him! to him!” she exclaimed, throwing up her arms.
“Let me go to Mr. Harrington! He wants me, I know.”

“Are you faint?” asked Grace, as she saw the sudden
paling of Arthur's lips.

“Slightly,” he answered, taking her offered salts, and
keeping his eyes fixed upon the carriage until it passed
slowly by. “I'm better now,” he said, returning the salts,
and asking why Edith could not go to Collingwood.

Grace would rather she should go anywhere else, but
she did not say so to Arthur. She merely replied that
Edith was conceited enough to think Mr. Harrington
pleased with her just because he had sometimes talked to
her when she carried him flowers.

“But of course he don't care for her,” she said. “What
could a blind man do with a child like her? Besides,
after what has occurred, I could not conscientiously give
her a good name.”

Arthur involuntarily gave an incredulous whistle, which
spoke volumes of comfort to the little girl weeping so
passionately by the window, and watching with longing
eyes the Collingwood carriage now passing from her view.

“We must go or be left,” said Arthur, approaching her
gently, and whispering to her not to cry.

“Good bye, Edith,” said Mrs. Atherton, putting out
her jewelled hand; but Edith would not touch it, and in
a tone of voice which sank deep into the proud woman's
heart, she answered:

“You'll be sorry for this some time.”

Old Rachel was in great distress, for Edith was her pet;
and winding her black arms about her neck, she wept
over her a simple, heartfelt blessing, and then, as the carriage
drove from the gate, ran back to her neglected
churning, venting her feelings upon the dasher, which
she set down so vigorously that the rich cream flew in
every direction, bespattering the wall, the window, the
floor, the stove, and settling in large white flakes upon
her tawny skin and tall blue turban.

Passing through the kitchen, Grace saw it all, but offered
no remonstrance, for she knew what had prompted
movements so energetic on the part of odd old Rachel.
She, too, was troubled, and all that day she was conscious
of a feeling of remorse which kept whispering to her of
a great wrong done the little girl whose farewell words
were ringing in her ear: “You'll be sorry for this some
time.”