For Edith, she shrank away with the old feeling of dislike and repulsion, and yet she listened to her chatter, too.
"How sad it was," said gay Mrs. Featherbrain, "about the poor, dear
Stuarts. That delightful Charley, too! ah! it was very sad. Did Lady
Catheron correspond with them? But of course she did, being a relative
and everything."
"No," Edith answered, her pale face a shade paler than usual; "she had entirely lost sight of them lately. She would be very glad to hear of them, though. Did Mrs. Featherbrain know—"
"Oh, dear, no!" Mrs. Featherbrain answered; "I have lost sight of them too—every one has. When people become poor and drop out of the world, as it were, it is impossible to follow them up. She had heard, just before their party started, that Trixy was about to be married, and that Charley—poor Charley! was going to California to seek his fortune. But she knew nothing positively, only that they were certainly not to be seen in New York—that the places and people who had known them once, knew them no more." That was all.
It could not be, then, that the hope of meeting them was in Edith's mind, and yet, her whole soul yearned to meet them—to ask their forgiveness, if no more. To clasp Trixy's hand once again,—honest, loving, impulsive, warm-hearted Trixy,—to feel her arms about her as of old, it seemed to Edith Catheron, she could have given half her life. Of any other, she would not let herself think. He had passed out of her life forever and ever—nothing could alter that.
"Everywhere she went, she was admired," her servants had said, "but to all she was cold as marble." Yes, and it would always be so while life remained. There had been but one man in all the world for her from the first—she had given him up of her own free will; she must abide by her decision; but there never would be any other. One loveless marriage she had made; she never would make another. Charley Stuart might—would, beyond doubt—forget her and marry, but she would go to her grave, her whole heart his.
They reached New York; and there were many kindly partings and cordial farewells. Lady Catheron and her two servants drove away to an up-town hotel, where rooms had been engaged, and all the papers duly chronicled the distinguished arrival. One day to rest—then down to Sandypoint, leaving gossiping Betts and the silent elderly gentleman behind her. And in the twilight of an August day she entered Sandypoint, and walked slowly through the little town, home. Only three years since she had left, a happy, hopeful girl of eighteen—returning now a saddened; lonely woman of twenty-one. How strangely altered the old landmarks, and yet how familiar. Here were the stores to which she used to walk, sulky and discontented, through the rain, to do the family marketing. Here spread the wide sea, smiling and placid, whereon she and Charley used to sail. Yonder lay the marsh where, that winter night, she had saved his life. Would it have been as well, she thought with weary wonder, if they had both died that night? Here was the nook where he had come upon her that wet, dark morning with his mother's letter, when her life seemed to begin—here the gate where they had stood when he gave her his warning: "Whatever that future brings, Edith, don't blame me." No, she blamed nobody but herself; the happiness of her life had lain within her grasp, and she had stretched forth her hand and pushed it away. There was the open window where he used to sit, in the days of his convalesence, and amuse himself setting her inflammable temper alight. It was all associated with him. Then the house door opens, a tall, elderly man comes out, there is a great cry,—father and daughter meet, and for an hour or so, she can forget even Charley.
She remains a week—how oddly familiar and yet strange it all seems. The children noisier and ruder than ever, her father grown grayer and more wrinkled, her stepmother, shrill of tongue and acid of temper as of yore, but fawningly obsequious to her.
The people who used to know her, and who flock to see her, the young men who used to be in love with her, and who stare at her speechlessly and afar off now. It amuses her for a while, then she tires of it, she tires of everything of late, her old fever of restlessness comes back. This dull Sandypoint, with its inquisitive gapers and questioners, is not to be endured, even for her father's sake. She will return to New York.
In the bustling life there—the restless, ceaseless flow of humanity, she alone finds solitude and rest now. She goes, but she leaves behind her that which renders keeping boarders or teaching classics forever unnecessary to Frederick Darrell.