| Chapter 23
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| That evening, as I sat with Edith in the music room, listening
to some pieces in the programme of that day which had
attracted my notice, I took advantage of an interval in the music
to say, "I have a question to ask you which I fear is rather
indiscreet."
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| "I am quite sure it is not that," she replied, encouragingly.
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| "I am in the position of an eavesdropper," I continued, "who,
having overheard a little of a matter not intended for him,
though seeming to concern him, has the impudence to come to
the speaker for the rest."
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| "An eavesdropper!" she repeated, looking puzzled.
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| "Yes," I said, "but an excusable one, as I think you will
admit."
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| "This is very mysterious," she replied.
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| "Yes," said I, "so mysterious that often I have doubted
whether I really overheard at all what I am going to ask you
about, or only dreamed it. I want you to tell me. The matter is
this: When I was coming out of that sleep of a century, the first
impression of which I was conscious was of voices talking around
me, voices that afterwards I recognized as your father's, your
mother's, and your own. First, I remember your father's voice
saying, "He is going to open his eyes. He had better see but one
person at first." Then you said, if I did not dream it all,
"Promise me, then, that you will not tell him." Your father
seemed to hesitate about promising, but you insisted, and your
mother interposing, he finally promised, and when I opened my
eyes I saw only him."
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| I had been quite serious when I said that I was not sure that I
had not dreamed the conversation I fancied I had overheard, so
incomprehensible was it that these people should know anything
of me, a contemporary of their great-grandparents, which I did
not know myself. But when I saw the effect of my words upon
Edith, I knew that it was no dream, but another mystery, and a
more puzzling one than any I had before encountered. For from
the moment that the drift of my question became apparent, she
showed indications of the most acute embarrassment. Her eyes,
always so frank and direct in expression, had dropped in a panic
before mine, while her face crimsoned from neck to forehead.
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| "Pardon me," I said, as soon as I had recovered from bewilderment
at the extraordinary effect of my words. "It seems, then,
that I was not dreaming. There is some secret, something about
me, which you are withholding from me. Really, doesn't it seem
a little hard that a person in my position should not be given all
the information possible concerning himself?"
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| "It does not concern you--that is, not directly. It is not about
you exactly," she replied, scarcely audibly.
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| "But it concerns me in some way," I persisted. "It must be
something that would interest me."
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| "I don't know even that," she replied, venturing a momentary
glance at my face, furiously blushing, and yet with a quaint smile
flickering about her lips which betrayed a certain perception of
humor in the situation despite its embarrassment,--"I am not
sure that it would even interest you."
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| "Your father would have told me," I insisted, with an accent
of reproach. "It was you who forbade him. He thought I ought
to know."
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| She did not reply. She was so entirely charming in her
confusion that I was now prompted, as much by the desire to
prolong the situation as by my original curiosity, to importune
her further.
| 14 | |
| "Am I never to know? Will you never tell me?" I said.
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| "It depends," she answered, after a long pause.
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| "On what?" I persisted.
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| "Ah, you ask too much," she replied. Then, raising to mine a
face which inscrutable eyes, flushed cheeks, and smiling lips
combined to render perfectly bewitching, she added, "What
should you think if I said that it depended on--yourself?"
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| "On myself?" I echoed. "How can that possibly be?"
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| "Mr. West, we are losing some charming music," was her only
reply to this, and turning to the telephone, at a touch of her
finger she set the air to swaying to the rhythm of an adagio.
After that she took good care that the music should leave no
opportunity for conversation. She kept her face averted from me,
and pretended to be absorbed in the airs, but that it was a mere
pretense the crimson tide standing at flood in her cheeks
sufficiently betrayed.
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| When at length she suggested that I might have heard all I
cared to, for that time, and we rose to leave the room, she came
straight up to me and said, without raising her eyes, "Mr. West,
you say I have been good to you. I have not been particularly so,
but if you think I have, I want you to promise me that you will
not try again to make me tell you this thing you have asked
to-night, and that you will not try to find it out from any one
else,--my father or mother, for instance."
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| To such an appeal there was but one reply possible. "Forgive
me for distressing you. Of course I will promise," I said. "I
would never have asked you if I had fancied it could distress you.
But do you blame me for being curious?"
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| "I do not blame you at all."
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| "And some time," I added, "if I do not tease you, you may tell
me of your own accord. May I not hope so?"
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| "Perhaps," she murmured.
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| "Only perhaps?"
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| Looking up, she read my face with a quick, deep glance.
"Yes," she said, "I think I may tell you--some time": and so our
conversation ended, for she gave me no chance to say anything
more.
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| That night I don't think even Dr. Pillsbury could have put me
to sleep, till toward morning at least. Mysteries had been my
accustomed food for days now, but none had before confronted
me at once so mysterious and so fascinating as this, the solution
of which Edith Leete had forbidden me even to seek. It was a
double mystery. How, in the first place, was it conceivable that
she should know any secret about me, a stranger from a strange
age? In the second place, even if she should know such a secret,
how account for the agitating effect which the knowledge of it
seemed to have upon her? There are puzzles so difficult that one
cannot even get so far as a conjecture as to the solution, and this
seemed one of them. I am usually of too practical a turn to waste
time on such conundrums; but the difficulty of a riddle embodied
in a beautiful young girl does not detract from its fascination.
In general, no doubt, maidens' blushes may be safely assumed to
tell the same tale to young men in all ages and races, but to give
that interpretation to Edith's crimson cheeks would, considering
my position and the length of time I had known her, and still
more the fact that this mystery dated from before I had known
her at all, be a piece of utter fatuity. And yet she was an angel,
and I should not have been a young man if reason and common
sense had been able quite to banish a roseate tinge from my
dreams that night.
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