Richard nodded, and Victor read aloud: "I, the blind man, Richard
Harrington, do hereby solemnly swear that the marriage of Arthur
St. Claire and Nina Bernard, performed by me and at my house, is
null and void,"
"What! Read it again! It cannot be that I heard aright," and Richard listened while Victor repeated the lines. "Arthur and Nina! Was she the young girl wife, he, the boy husband, who came to me that night?" Richard exclaimed. "Why have I never known of this before? Why did Edith keep it from me? Say, Victor," and again Richard listened, this time, oh, how eagerly, while Victor told him what he knew of that fatal marriage, kept so long a secret, and as he listened, the beaded drops stood thickly upon his forehead and gathered around his ashen lips, for Victor purposely let fall a note of warning which shot through the quivering nerves of the blind man like a barbed burning arrow, wringing from him the piteous cry,
"Oh, Victor, Victor, does she—does Edith love Arthur? Has she loved him all the time? Is it this which makes her voice so sad, her step so slow? Speak—better that I know it now than after 'tis too late. What other paper is it you are unfolding?"
"'Tis a letter from Nina to you. Can you hear it now?"
"Yes, but tell me first all you know. Don't withhold a single thing. I would hear the whole."
So Victor told him what he knew up to the time of their going to Florida; and then, opening Nina's letter, he began to read, pausing, occasionally, to ask if he should stop.
"No, no; go on!" Richard whispered, hoarsely, his head dropping lower and lower, until the face was hidden from view and the chin rested upon the chest, which heaved with every labored breath.
Once at the words, "When you hear this Nina'll be there with you. She'll sit upon your knee and wind her arms around your neck"—he started, and seemed to be thrusting something from his lap— something which made him shiver. Was it Nina? He thought so, and strove to push her off but when Victor read, "She will comfort you when the great cry comes in—the crash like the breaking up of the ice in the Northern ponds," he ceased to struggle, and Victor involuntarily stopped when he saw the long arms twine themselves as it were around an invisible form. Then he commenced again: "And when you feel yourself broken up like they are in the spring, listen and you'll hear me whispering, 'Poor Richard! I pity you so much, and I'll kiss your tears away.'"
Did he hear her? hear Nina whispering comfort to his poor bruised heart? We cannot tell. We only know he bent his ear lower, as if to catch the faintest breath; but alas! there were no tears to kiss away. The blind eyes could not weep—they were too hot, too dry for that—and blood-red rings of fire danced before them as they did when Nina came to him with the startling news that Miggie was dead in the Deering woods.
Victor was reading now about these woods and the scene enacted there, and Richard understood it all, even to the reason why Edith had persisted in being his wife. The deepest waters run silently, it is said, and so, perhaps, the strongest heart when crushed to atoms lies still as death, and gives outwardly no token of its anguish. True it is that Richard neither moaned, nor moved, nor spoke; only the head drooped lower, while the arms clung tightly to the fancied form he held, as if between himself and Nina, wherever she was that dreary day, there was a connecting link of sympathy which pervaded his whole being, and so prevented him from dying outright as he wished he could.