“Then, my darling,” he responded, “there is nothing before us but happiness, if God so wills it, and may He deal by me as I do by you, my precious wife.”
He was growing to love her so fast, and Edith knew it, and felt her misery giving way, and her heart grew light again as it had been when she fancied he knew the whole.
Edith had known from the first that it was the colonel’s plan to visit Alnwick and go over the grand old castle which at this season of the year was open to visitors, and she did not oppose him, though the neighborhood of Alnwick was fraught with sad memories for her as having been Abelard’s home. His friends were still living there, she knew from Godfrey, and the first night at the inn where they took rooms was passed in wakefulness, with a feeling of oppression and sadness which she could not shake off. Abelard had told her so much of Alnwick and the castle, and had talked of the time when she would visit it with him; and now, he was dead, and she was there, the wife of another man, with that great secret weighing her down at times and casting a shadow on everything. How she wished she might see his home and the old mother he used to talk of so fondly, and yet when her husband said to her one morning: “Edith, I am going to call on some poor people who live about two miles from here. Perhaps you will like to go with me when I tell you who they are,” she trembled and grew cold, and scarcely heard a word of the story he told her, and which she knew so much better than he did. “I called upon them last summer,” he said, “when Godfrey was with me, and it is not necessary that I should go again, but I know it will please them, and I am so happy myself that I feel like conferring happiness on others. Will you go, darling? They will feel honored if I bring them my young bride.”
“Oh, Howard, no! Please don’t ask me. I’d so much rather not,” Edith cried, feeling how terrible it would be to go with her husband into the presence of Abelard’s mother and hear her talk of him, as she assuredly would.
She could not do it, and she expressed herself so decidedly, that the colonel looked at her curiously while a cloud passed over his face; and, without meaning to do so, he seemed displeased and out of sorts. He was not accustomed to have his wishes thwarted, and he had set his heart upon taking his wife with him when he visited the Lyles, and after he had told her of his indebtedness to them he thought she ought to go out of deference to his wishes. Surely it was not pride which prompted her unwillingness to call upon such people, for what business had she to be prouder than himself, he thought, and he seemed so moody and silent that Edith detected the change in his manner at once, and resolving to conquer her own personal feelings, went up to him and said:
“Howard, I have changed my mind; I will go with you if you wish it.”
His face cleared as he said: “Thank you, darling, I am very glad, both because I like to have you with me, and because I know the attention will be sure to please those people. Did I tell you of the little boy to whom Godfrey gave his name, when we stopped there last year on our way to Oakwood? He is always doing such things; has two or three namesakes at home, a thing of which I do not altogether approve, but in the case of these Nesbits I could not oppose it. Shall we start at once? It is only two miles distant; will you walk or ride?”
Edith chose to walk, and they set off together across the fresh green fields, and through the quiet, shaded lanes toward the low-thatched cottage where Abelard Lyle was born, and where his mother sat knitting by the door with a placid expression on her calm face, and the sunlight falling on her snowy hair. It would be impossible to describe Edith’s emotions as she walked with her husband through the lanes, and fields, and woods where her boy-lover had so often been, and where he had thought some day to bring her and show her to his mother, and it seemed to her almost as if he was there, moving silently beside her, and once when a leaf rustled at her feet, she started with a nervous cry and clung close to her husband’s arm. And yet it was not regret for the dead which thus affected her. Her life with Abelard was like a far-off dream to her now, a thing apart from herself and her present life, and had her husband known, she would not have felt as she did with that secret on her mind, making her breathe quickly, and grow faint and pale when at last the house was reached and she saw for the first time how humble and poor Abelard’s home had been. Everything pertaining to it, however, was scrupulously neat, and the little grass-plat before the door showed frequent acquaintance with sickle or shears, while the old-fashioned flowers on the narrow border told of good taste in some one. But it was all so small and meagre and poor, and the calico dress of the old lady, knitting on the porch, was faded and patched, and the white kerchief pinned about her neck was darned in several places. She had a fair, sweet old face, with a resemblance to Abelard, Edith thought, when at the sound of their footsteps she looked up with a smile of welcome and inquiry. From having always lived near the border she spoke with a broad Scotch accent, which Edith did not comprehend at first. She was evidently greatly pleased and flattered that Col. Schuyler had come to see her again, and brought his bonny bride, whose hand she held in her own, and into whose face she gazed curiously as she bade her welcome, and led her into the house where Mrs. Nesbit, the daughter, sat with her sleeves rolled up combing her long black hair, with a bit of glass before her, and Godfrey Schuyler asleep in his rude cradle.
Mrs. Nesbit, or Jenny as she was called, was not naturally as refined as her mother, and she kept on combing her hair without any apology, talking rapidly all the time, and saying what an honor she felt it to be for the likes of Col. Schuyler to visit the likes of them, though to be sure he owed them something for her poor brother’s death. “You know about that, I s’pose,” and she looked at Edith, whose dress she had been closely inspecting between each passage of the comb through her hair.
Edith nodded in token that she did know. She could not speak; the room was so small and so close, and the iron fingers held her throat with so firm a clutch that she could only sit perfectly still and listen while the old story was told again by Colonel Schuyler, and the mother wept silently, ejaculating now and then, “Oh, my puir bairn, my puir bairn!”