A Terrible Secret: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

One snowy February night, just two years before, Edith Darrel and Charles Stuart had met for the first time—met in a very odd and romantic way.

Before relating that peculiar first meeting, let me premise that Edith Darrell's mother had been born a Miss Eleanor Stuart, the daughter of a rich New York merchant, who had fallen in love at an early period of her career with her father's handsome book-keeper, Frederic Darrell, had eloped with him, and been cast off by her whole family from thenceforth, forever. Ten years' hard battling with poverty and ill-health had followed, and then one day she kissed her husband and little daughter for the last time, and drifted wearily out of the strife. Of course Mr. Darrell, a year or two after, married again for the sake of having some one to look after his house and little Edith as much as anything else. Mrs. Darrell No. 2 was in every respect the exact contrast of Mrs. Darrell No. 1. She was a brisk little woman, with snapping black eyes, a sharp nose, a complexion of saffron, and a tongue like a carving-knife. Frederic Darrell was by nature a feeble, helpless sort of man, but she galvanized even him into a spasmodic sort of life. He was master of three living languages and two dead ones.

"If you can't support your family by your hands, Mr. Darrell," snapped his wife, "support them by your head. There are plenty young men in the world ready to learn French and German, Greek and Latin, if they can learn them at a reasonable rate. Advertise for these young men, and I'll board them when they come."

He obeyed, the idea proved a good one, the young men came, Mrs. Darrell boarded and lodged them, Mr. Darrell coached them in classics and languages. Edith shot up like a hop-vine. Five more little Darrells were added in the fulness of time, and the old problem, that not all the mathematics he knew could ever solve, how to make both ends meet, seemed as knotty as ever. For his daughter he felt it most of all. The five great noisy boys who called Mrs. Darrell "ma," he looked at through his spectacles in fear and trembling. His handsome daughter he loved with his whole heart. Her dead mother's relatives were among the plutocracy of New York, but even the memory of the dead Eleanor seemed to have faded utterly out of their minds.

One raw February afternoon two years before this March morning, Edith Darrell set out to walk from Millfield, a large manufacturing town, five miles from Sandypoint, home. She had been driven over in the morning by a neighbor, to buy a new dress; she had dined at noon with an acquaintance, and as the Millfield clocks struck five, set out to walk home. She was a capital walker; she knew the road well; she had the garnet merino clasped close in her arms, a talisman against cold or weariness, and thinking how well she would look in it next Thursday at the party, she tripped blithely along. A keen wind blew, a dark drifting sky hung low over the black frozen earth, and before Miss Darrell had finished the first mile of her pilgrimage, the great feathery snow flakes began whirling down. She looked up in dismay—snow! She had not counted on that. Her way lay over hills and down valleys, the path was excellent, hard and beaten, but if it snowed—and night was coming on fast. What should she do? Prudence whispered, "turn back;" youth's impatience and confidence in itself cried out, "go on," Edith went on.

It was as lonely a five-mile walk as you would care to take in an August noontide. Think what it must have been this stormy February evening. She was not entirely alone. "Don Caesar," the house dog, a big English mastiff, trotted by her side. At long intervals, down by-paths and across fields, there were some half dozen habitations, between Millfield and Sandypoint—that was all. Faster, faster came the white whirling flakes; an out-and-out February snow storm had set in.

Again—should she turn back? She paused half a minute to debate the question. If she did there would be a sleepless night of terror for her nervous father at home. And she might be able to keep the path with the "Don's" aid. Personal fear she felt none; she was a thoroughly brave little woman, and there was a spice of adventure in braving the storm and going on. She shook back her clustering curls, tied her hood a little tighter, wrapped her cloak more closely around her, whistled cheerily to Don Caesar, and went on.

"In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as 'Fail'," she said gayly, patting the Don's shaggy head. "En avant, Don Caesar, mon brave!" The Don understood French; he licked his mistress's hand and trotted contentedly before.

"As if I could lose the path with the Don," she thought; "what a goose I am. I shall make Mamma Darrell cut out my garnet merino, and begin it before I go to bed to-night."

She walked bravely and brightly on, whistling and talking to Don Caesar at intervals. Another mile was got over, and the night had shut down, white with whirling drifts. It was all she could do now, to make her way against the storm, and it grew worse every instant. Three miles of the five lay yet before her. Her heart began to fail her a little; the path was lost in the snow, and even the Don began to be at fault. The drifting wilderness nearly blinded her, the deep snow was unutterably fatiguing. There was but one thing in her favor—the night, for February, was mild. She was all in a glow of warmth, but what if she should get lost and flounder about here until morning? And what would papa think of her absence?