EDITH REVEALS HER SECRET TO HER FATHER AND HE GOES TO NEW YORK.
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. During the hour which she consumed in making her toilet, she revolved the whole matter, as related to her by Star, over and over in her now becalmed and determined little head; and the more she revolved it, the brighter became the sparkle in her strong blue eyes, and fiercer grew the militant spirit in her nature. The fatigue that had put her into a nervous state the night before had been routed by that blind force that comes upon depression through a quick series of changes attendant upon a wrong done, to be displaced only through wearying fortitude.
Edith, being primarily one of those strong natures that survives by shock of incident, went boldly to her conceived duty, as though it were given her to be ever strong when the crucial moment arrived. She now knew that her father's good nature was being imposed on by that man of unconscienceable principles. Before she fell ill the year before, the actions of Monroe, two or three times, excited her suspicion, and she had then thought of a plan to forestall him; but by reason of the fatal auto ride, her movements were delayed; and as well did it delay the schemers in their dark and dastardly plotting. It seemed a formidable undertaking for one so frail as Edith, just coming out of a spell of mental derangement; not in its simpleness of action was it so big, but in the momentousness of its results on her enervated system. She would brook no importunate pleading of her friend, Star, to stay her in her course, and leaped into it, as if she were a veritable Goliath of strength.
When she arrived in the dining room that morning with re-enforced courage, she greeted her father and mother, both waiting her arrival, with a kiss, and sat down next to them. Several times she was on the point of bringing up the subject, but lest it should disturb her mother, she calmly awaited a more convenient time for the rehearsal she expected to have with him. Breakfast was usually a quiet affair with the Jarneys, so little was thought of the reserve with which each held speech. After breakfast, Edith took her father's arm and guided him to a quiet nook in the drawing room, and seated him in his favorite seat on one side of a long plate-glass window that opened on his private grounds in front of the mansion.
"Papa, I want a word or two with you this morning before you leave," said Edith, drawing a chair up and sitting down by his side.
"This is unusual, Edith; now, what can my little girl want?" he said, endearingly, taking one of her hands. "You are not going to give me a secret, are you?"
"Too true, papa," replied Edith, and Mr. Jarney expected something else just then than what he heard.
"I am not going to lose my little girl, I hope?" he said, patting her hand.
"Not yet, papa; now, you must sit real quiet, and be not so inquisitive, nor so suspecting till you have heard me," she said, fondly.
"Why, Edith, I had suspected some dark and mysterious deed you had committed; but, with your assurance that I am not to lose you yet. I am listening," he replied.
Then she related all that Star had unfolded to her the night previous; and even how Monroe had acted.
"From whom did Star get the information?" he asked, meditatively, after Edith had finished.
"From her step-father, Peter Dieman."
"Humph! Peter Dieman! and he married Kate Jarney at last—to her betterment," he said, in a ruminating mood. "Well, after all, I am satisfied. Had she heeded me, she would not have gone through all these years of misery that her profligate husband brought upon her. Once I offered to assist her; but she was too proud in her lowliness to respond to my proffered aid. 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?" he asked, as he turned his head and looked at her trustfully. "I have trusted him in his department all these years, and he has given such satisfaction that no one mistrusted his motives, or questioned his integrity. I can hardly believe it, Edith. What would you do?"
"Do you leave it to me?" she asked, her eyes sparkling with suppressed fire.
"I do," he answered, half seriously; half in jest.
"Then eliminate him, and his dupes, at once," she answered, with great seriousness.
"It is hard for me to do that of my own volition," he replied. "He is so fortified with friends on the board of directorate that they must all be taken into consideration."
"Will they not see the necessity of his removal, when apprised of the facts?" she asked.
"They may; but he is so strongly entrenched that his removal would be almost disastrous to me."
"How, papa? How?" she asked, now quickly perceiving a new gleam of the entangling meshes of business associates.
"By turning them against me, if the story should turn out to be false," he answered, reflectively. "But I shall lay it before them at once and investigate."
"In the event that you should remove him, would you bring Mr. Winthrope to your office?" asked Edith, and a tiny flush suffused her cheeks.
"No; Mr. Winthrope must remain in New York," unthinking of the effect his answer might have on his daughter.
Edith turned a little pale at this response, and her hand trembled in his.
"Why, Edith, are you so much interested in him that you want him to be ever present?" asked the father, noting the tremor of her hand.
"Oh, no, papa—not that much—yes—what am I saying, papa—I don't know," she replied, excitedly, turning her head at the sound of her mother approaching, which seemed to have been prearranged at that moment; but, of course, was not. Mrs. Jarney left, after seeing the interview was private.
"It appears to me, Edith, that you are acting strangely about this matter," said her father, beginning to be enlightened.
"Papa, I—I—love him," she whispered in his ear, as she put her cheek up to his to hide the blushes in her face, and to conceal his own countenance which she expected to see turn into a frown upon her at this unexpected answer. "Papa, you will forgive me, won't you?—yes, you will. It is my heart, dear papa—I cannot help it—do forgive me?" she went on, with her eyes filled with tears of happiness and weakness and misery over her uncontrollable feelings.
"Let me see your face, Edith?" said her father, making an effort to turn his head, which she held pressed to her own.
"No, no; I won't papa, till you say you will forgive me," she answered, kissing him.
"To keep peace, Edith, I will forgive you; let me see your face?"
"There!" she exclaimed, suddenly releasing him, and standing off, with tear stains marking through her flushes, and her hair tousled by the performance.
"I believe you," he said, beholding her in a state of mixed emotions; "but I am not yet ready to approve of your selection."
Her heart sank at this answer, and she sank to the floor by his side. Throwing one arm over his knee, and her head upon her arm, she burst into a fit of passionate grief that shook her frame.
"My dear Edith," said he, placing his hand on her head, grieved himself by her outburst of new affliction, "you cause me grief. I would not hurt your dear little heart for anything. Now, come, explain to me fully what that heart of yours tells you?"
She arose, half laughing, half crying, almost hysterically discomposed, rubbing her tears away, as she smiled through them rolling down her face.
"I feel ashamed, papa, for being so weak; but I cannot help it," she said, sitting down on his knee, and throwing her head upon his shoulder and one arm around his neck.
"Well! Edith. I am in sympathy with you," said he; "but you gave me a severe shock being so plainly spoken about such an affair of the heart. Does he suspect it of you?"
"I do not think so, papa—but, papa, he told Star that he loved me, and told her not to tell—and, goosey that she is, she told me, and caused me more—because he said he could not expect to ever meet me on the same level; and that is all I have against him—"
"Well! Of all things I ever heard of," said the father. "I had not been inclined to interfere with you, Edith, in such affairs; but I—" he hesitated. "You make your choice, but be careful, child; be careful."
"Don't you think he is good, papa?" she asked.
"Very good—fine—perfect, Edith! I should not disfavor him; but he must love you for your own dear self before I shall ever give my consent."
"He may never find it out, papa," she said, drearily; "and if he does not, I shall never let him know, and shall go through the world alone."
"That is noble in you, Edith," said her father, kissing her. "It is time for me to go," he said, as she released him.
On arriving at his office, Mr. Jarney was informed that Mr. Monroe had quietly taken himself off that morning for New York. He was further informed that Mr. Monroe had been requested to make the trip by certain members of the Board of Directors; and further, that he was entrusted with a large sum of money, in the form of drafts, made payable to the order of the treasurer of the company at the Broadway office. When this news was flashed upon Mr. Jarney, there seemed to penetrate his tractable mind, like a thunderbolt, the concatenating links of a plot, too realistic to be waived aside; which he was prone to do, when Edith gave him her story that morning.
Side by side with the facts concerning Monroe's leave-taking and purpose, he also learned that the genteel ghost had taken with him certain office books and papers, to be used in checking over accounts while auditing the books of the branch office. This was not in accordance with precedence, and proved another corroborative circumstance in the duplicity of the culpable Monroe.
Putting all these correlated facts together, Mr. Jarney, after due deliberation, and after duely weighing them all as incriminating integral parts, and after combining them with the main story of the plot, arrived at the inevitable conclusion that Monroe was up to some deviltry that should be probed to the bottom. He, therefore, called a meeting of the Board of Directors, and put the whole question, in all its phases, before that body. It was almost noon when the board met. They must act without going through the circumlocution of formal discussion and the entanglements of red tape, he told them. Some of the members were for postponing the meeting till the next day, to await a telegram from New York, so great was their faith in Monroe's honor. Monroe, they said, would be in the metropolis on the morrow. The procrastinating members prevailed in their vote on the question, and adjournment was had till the next day.
But Mr. Jarney was not disconcerted, nor did he allow himself to be wholly blocked in his plan of action. So as soon as the board had arrived at the decision to go slow, he took it upon himself, knowing the shrewdness of John Winthrope, to send him a private wire, addressed personally, briefly saying:
"Beware of Monroe; I will be there tomorrow afternoon, if possible."
Dispatching this message, Mr. Jarney returned home, related to Edith what he had discovered as confirmatory evidence against Monroe, got ready, and left on the next train for the seat of trouble.
Edith, from the morning of her conversation with her father to the time she received a wire from him, went through a siege of terrible mental conflicts. She confided in no one, at first, not even Star, the cause of her father's sudden call to New York. She was in a highly nervous fright throughout the hours that seemed never to pass between his going and the receipt of the telegram. Her flights of fancy went to unreasonable complications for the doomed young man in the New York office. She thought she must rescue him at all odds to her health. Had she been in a condition physically able to bear the journey, she would have gone alone, if need be; or with her father, if permitted; but as it was, she remained in her prison like an unwilling subject in a sanitorium. Thus exhibiting an excitable demeanor in her actions, her mother and Star made futile attempts to draw from her the cause of her fervid agitation. Still strung to a high tension of determination, still overcome with an uncommon fear, still anxious and studiously meditating over the eventualities that might come to pass before her father should reach his destination, she wandered about the house in uncontrollable perturbation, sticking tenaciously to her secret.
"Edith," said Star, approaching her in one of her rounds of walking the floor, "come, tell me what is agitating you so today, that I might be of help."
Placing her arm around Star's waist, without a word, she drew Star along in her walk, looking dreamily, and seeing nothing, save what the illusive eye might see in the distance. Star returned the friendly embrace of Edith, and with their arms around each other, the two walked and walked, both silent. Edith silent over what she was pondering on, Star silent over what she feared was an unnatural mental balance.
"Are you ill today, Edith?" asked Star.
"Oh, no, Star; I am feeling very well today," replied Edith.
"But you are so quiet and unresponsive that I can't quite make you out," said Star.
Then leading Star to the window where she sat with her father the day before, Edith asked her to sit down that she might have a word with her.
"Star," she said, seriously, relenting in her purpose to keep her secret longer, "what you told me two nights ago I have discovered to be too true—at least in a circumstantial way," said Edith.
"Why, then, haven't you told me, Edith, so that I could have a fellow-feeling for you?" asked Star.
"Papa requested me to keep it a secret till he returns; which I should do. But, deary, you know I am like you, it is hard to keep a secret," said Edith, still uncertain whether to proceed farther.
"Now, my dear Edith! I never tell anybody any secrets but you, and you tell them to nobody else, and you never tell any to me, so that is as far as yours ever get."
"Star. I must refreshen your memory a little," said Edith, playfully. "I am not scolding you, you know; but just reminding you a little. Now, didn't you tell Mr. Winthrope something?"
"Well, wasn't he entitled to it?" said Star, laughing.
"Then you won't, in this instance, tell anybody?"
"No—o—hope'm'die," returned Star, crossing her breast.
"Papa has gone to New York to intercept Monroe."
"Has he?" said Star, with wide eyes. "Monroe, then, has gone?"
"Went yesterday morning before papa reached his office. Papa learned some things that substantiated what Mr. Dieman told you, and, putting everything together, he became convinced of the truthfulness of the stratagem of that man Monroe to bring Mr. Winthrope into disrepute. Star, had Monroe succeeded in his designs before I had learned the true status of affairs, I should not have believed anything against him; but now that I have been forewarned, I shall never lose faith in his honor and integrity. Star, I told papa of my love for him, which papa did not accept pleasantly at first, thinking I was in fun, or doing it as a lark to tease him; but when he realized I was never more serious, he called him a fine, perfect young man, and was pleased. There, Star, I have told you what has been on my mind since yesterday. Am I a goosey still?"
"You are a little dove, Edith," said Star, sweetly.
"Star, I should like to see Mr. Dieman," said Edith, changing the subject. "Can you have him come here?"
"I may; but it is doubtful."
"I would go to him, if I could."
"He has a young man named Eli Jerey, who transacts business matters for him. He might be summoned. Mr. Dieman places implicit confidence in him. Everything now must be conveyed through him to Mr. Dieman, I am told. I have seen Mr. Jerey; and I can have him called here to see you for whatever you might want to impose upon Mr. Dieman."
"Is Mr. Dieman so exclusive as that?" asked Edith.
"He is, indeed, Edith. Since his marriage to mother, he has set up in great state, and does nothing but look after his family affairs personally, and transacts other affairs by the way of Mr. Jerey."
"You will vouch for his trustworthiness? at least you can promise that much through what Mr. Dieman represents him to be?"
"Oh, yes; whatever Mr. Dieman says can be relied on."
"Then you may have Mr. Jerey call here at eight o'clock this evening, if he can come."
"Shall I call him now?" asked Star, rising to go to the phone to have a talk with that gentleman.
"Yes. Papa must be in New York by this time; I should know soon, by wire, what Monroe has accomplished," said Edith, as Star was leaving her.