Edna Browning;

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Don’t, don’t,” she cried, lifting up both her hands. “Please go away. Don’t talk. I can’t bear it. Oh I wish I had never been born.”

“She was getting out of her head,” the woman thought, and she went after Jack Heyford, who seemed to be more to her than any one else.

But Edna was not crazy, and when Jack came to her, there were no tears in her eyes, no traces of violent emotion on her face,—nothing but a rigid, stony expression on the one, and a hopeless, despairing look in the other.

She did not tell him what she had heard, for if it were true she did not wish him to know how she had been deceived. Of her own future she did not think or care. Charlie had not been true and honest with her. Charlie had died with his falsehoods unforgiven; that was the burden of her grief, and if prayers of the living can avail to save the dead, then surely there was hope for Charlie in the ceaseless, agonized prayers which went up from Edna’s breaking heart all that long, terrible day, when Georgie thought her asleep, so perfectly still she lay with her hands folded upon her breast and her eyelids closed tightly over her eyes. She knew they had telegraphed to Charlie’s friends, and she heard Miss Burton telling some one that an answer had been received, and Russell was then on his way to Iona. Who Russell was she did not know; and at first she felt relieved that it was not Roy coming there to look at her as coldly and curiously as Miss Burton did. Then her feelings underwent a change, and she found herself longing to see some one who had been near and dear to Charlie, and she wondered if a message would not be sent to her by Russell,—something which would look as if she was expected to go back to Leighton, at least, for the funeral. She wanted to see Charlie’s old home; to hear his mother’s voice; to crouch at her feet and ask forgiveness for having been instrumental in Charlie’s death; to get the kind look or word from Roy, and that would satisfy her. She would then be content to go away forever from the beautiful place, of which she had expected to be mistress.

But Russell brought no message, and when she heard that, Edna said, “I cannot go,” and turned her face again to the wall, and shut her lids tightly over the hot, aching eyes which tears would have relieved. When Mrs. Dana came from Chicago and took the young creature in her motherly arms, and said so kindly, “Don’t talk about it now,” her tears flowed at once, and she was better for it, and clung to her cousin as a child clings to its mother in some threatened peril. Russell was very kind to her too, for her extreme youth and exceeding great beauty affected even him, and he spoke to her very gently, and urged her to accompany him back to Leighton. And perhaps she might have yielded but for Georgie, who said to Russell:

“You know your mistress as well as I, and that just now this girl’s presence would only augment her grief.” This remark was overheard by Mrs. Dana, who reported it to her cousin, and that settled the matter; Edna would not go, and lay with her hands clasped over her eyes when they took Charlie away. Jack Heyford had come to her side, and asked if she wished to see her husband again, and with a bitter cry she answered him:

“No, I could not bear it now. I’d rather remember him as he was.”

And so they carried him out, and Edna heard them as they went through the yard to the wagon which was to take the coffin to the station, and the house seemed so lonely now that all were gone, and she missed Jack Heyford so much, and wondered if she should ever see him again to thank him for all his kindness to her. He was a clerk in one of the large dry-goods stores in Chicago, and Mrs. Dana said she had occasionally seen him there, and they were talking of him and wondering how his sister chanced to be so unlike him, when a rapid step came up the walk, and Jack’s voice was heard in the adjoining room. He had never intended going to Leighton, he said, in reply to Edna’s remark, “I supposed you had gone with your sister.”

He seemed very sad indeed as he sat a few moments by the fire kindled in Edna’s room, and as she lay watching him, she fancied that she saw him brush a tear away, and that his lips moved as if talking to some one. And he was talking to a poor little crippled girl, waiting so anxiously in Chicago for his coming, and whose disappointed voice he could hear asking, “Where is sister?”

“Poor Annie! Sister is not here. There! there! Don’t cry. She is coming by and by.”