The Letter of Credit

"You know. It is not true!" she repeated vehemently.

"But Rotha, my child, what if it were true?"

"You know it couldn't be true," she said, fixing on him a pair of eyes almost wild in their intensity. "It couldn't be true. What would become of me?"

"I will take care of you, always."

"You!" she retorted, with a scorn supreme and only matched by the pain with which she spoke. "What are you? It couldn't be, Mr. Digby."

"Listen to me, child. Rotha, I have come here to talk to you about it." He saw how full the girl's eyes were growing, of tears just swelling and ready to burst forth; and he stopped. But she impatiently dashed them right and left.

"I don't want to talk about it. It's no use, here or anywhere else. I would like to go home."

"Not yet. Before you go home I want you to be quite composed, and to have good command of yourself, so that you may not distress your mother. She cannot bear it. Therefore she asked me to tell you, because she dreaded to see your suffering. Can you bear it and hide it, Rotha, bravely, for her sake?"

"She asked you to tell me?" cried the girl; and Mr. Digby never forgot the face of wild agony with which she looked at him. He answered quietly, "Yes;" though his heart was bleeding for her.

"She thinks – "

"She knows how it must be. It is nothing new, or strange, or sorrowful, to her, – except only for you. But in her love for you, she greatly dreads to see your sorrow. Do you think, Rotha, for her sake, you can bear up bravely, and be quiet, and not shew what you feel? For her sake?"

He doubted if the girl rightly heard him. She looked at him, indeed, while he spoke, as if listening; but her face was white, or rather livid, and her eyes seemed to be gazing into despair.

"I do not think it can be, Mr. Digby," she said. "She don't look like it.

And what would become of me?

"I will take faithful care of you, Rotha, as long as you live, and I live."

"You are nothing!" she said contemptuously. But then followed a cry which curdled Mr. Digby's blood. It was not a piercing shriek, yet it was a prolonged cry, pointed and sharpened with pain and heavy with despair. One such wail, and the girl dropped her face in her hands and sat motionless. Her companion would rather have seen sobs and tears; he did not know what to do with her. The soft beat and wash of the waves sounded drearily in the silence. Mr. Digby waited. Nothing but time, he knew, can cover the roughness of life's rough places with its moss and lichen of patience and memory. Comfort was not to be spoken of, not here. He comprehended now why Mrs. Carpenter had shrank from telling the tidings herself. But the day was wearing away; they must go home; the burden, however heavy, must be lifted and carried. —

"Rotha – my child – " he said after a long interval.

No answer.

"Rotha, my child, cannot you look up and speak to me? Rotha – my poor little Rotha – it is very heavy for you! But won't you make it as light as you can for your mother?"

The child writhed away from under the hand he had gently laid on her shoulder; but uttered no sound.

"Rotha – we must go home presently. Do you know, your mother will be very anxious to see you. She is expecting us now, I dare say."

It came then, the burst of tears which he had dreaded and yet half longed for. The girl turned a little more from him and flung herself down on the sand, and there wept as he had never seen anybody weep before. With all the passion of an intense nature, and all the self abandonment of an ungoverned nature, sobbing such sobs as shook her whole frame, and with loud weeping which could not be restrained into silence. Better it should not be, Mr. Digby thought; better she should be allowed to exhaust herself so that very fatigue should induce quiet. But to the sitter-by it was unspeakably painful; a scene never to be recalled without a profound prayer, like Noah's, I fancy, after the deluge, that the like might never come again.

And happily, nature did exhaust herself; and just because the passion of sobs and tears was so violent, it did yield after a time, as strength gave way. But it lasted fearfully long. However, at last Rotha grew quieter, and then still; and not till then Mr. Digby spoke again. He spoke as if all this had been an interlude not noticed by him.

"Rotha, my child, can you gather up your courage and be quiet and be brave now?"

She hesitated, and then in a smothered voice said, "I'm not brave."

"I think you can be."

"I wish – I could die," she said slowly.

"But what we have to do, is to live and act for others. Yes, it would often seem a great deal easier to die; but we have something to do in the world. You have something to do. Your mother's comfort, and even the prolonging of her stay with us, may depend on your quietness and self- command. For love of her, can you be strong and do it?"

"I am not strong – " said Rotha, as she had spoken before.

"Love makes people strong. And Jesus will help the weak, if they trust him, to do anything they have to do."

"You know I am not a Christian," Rotha answered in the same matter-of- fact way.

"Suppose you do not let that be true after to-day."

There was another silence.

"I am ready to go, Mr. Digby," Rotha said.

"And you will be a woman, and wise, and quiet?"

"I don't know!"

Mr. Digby thought it was not best to press matters further. He put Rotha into the wagon again and drove back to the hotel. Quiet she was, at any rate, now; he did not even see any more tears; but alas, of all the things in the world which she had been so glad to look at on the way down, she saw nothing on the way back. Driving or sailing, it was all the same; only when Mr. Digby put her into the omnibus at Whitehall he saw a flash of something like terror which crossed her face and left it blanched. But that was all.

He went into the invalid's room at Mrs. Marble's with trepidation. Rotha however was merely less effusive and more hasty than usual in her greetings to her mother, and after a kiss or two turned away "to get her things off," as she said. And when Mrs. Cord unluckily asked her in passing, if she had had a pleasant day? Rotha choked, but managed to get out that it had been "as good as it could be." What she went through in the little hall room which served for closet and wardrobe, no one knew; but Mr. Digby, who stayed purposely till she came back again, was reassured to see that she was perfectly quiet, and that she set about her wonted duties in a grave, collected way, more grave than usual, but quite as methodical. He went away sighing, at the same time with a relieved heart. One of the hard things he had had to do in his life, was over.

Mr. Digby however, as he walked homeward to his hotel, saw the difficulties yet in store for him. How in the world was he to perform his promise of taking care of this wildfire girl? Her aunt surely, would be the fittest person to be intrusted with her. If he only knew what sort of person Mrs. Busby really was, and how much of Mrs. Carpenter's story might have two sides to it? The lady was not in the city, or he would have been tempted to go and see her at once, for the purpose of studying her and gathering information. Nothing of the kind was possible at present; and he could only hope that Mrs. Carpenter's frail life would be prolonged until her sister's return to New York would lift, or might lift, one difficulty out of his path.

CHAPTER IX.

FORT WASHINGTON

No such hope was to be realized. With all that care and kindness could do, the sick woman failed more and more. The great heats weakened her. The drives in the Park were refreshing, but alas, fatiguing, and sometimes had to be relinquished; and this happened again and again. Rotha behaved unexceptionably; was devoted to the service of her mother; untiring, and unselfish, and quiet; "another girl," Mrs. Cord said. Poor child! she was another girl in more ways than one; her fiery brightness of spirits was over, her cheeks grew thin, her eyes had dark rings round them, and their brown depths were heavy with a shadow darker yet. Energetic she was, as ever, but in a more staid and womanly way; the gladness of her doings was gone. Still, Mrs. Carpenter never saw her weep. In the evenings, or in the twilight, when there was nothing particular to be done, the child would nestle close to her mother, lay her head in her lap or rest it against her knee, and sit quiet. Still, at least, if not quiet; Mrs. Carpenter did sometimes fancy that she felt the drawing of a convulsive breath; but if she spoke then to Rotha, Rotha would answer with a specially calm and clear voice; and her mother did not get at her sorrow, if it were that which moved her. And Mrs. Carpenter was too weak now to try.

Mr. Digby came as usual, constantly. It was known to none beside himself, that he staid in town through the hot July and August days for this purpose solely. He saw that his sick friend grew weaker every day, yet he did not expect after all that the end would come so soon as it did. He had yet a lingering notion of bringing the sisters together, when Mrs. Busby should return. He was thinking of this one August afternoon as he approached the house. Mrs. Marble met him in the hall.

"Well, Mr. Digby, – it's all up now!"

The gentleman paused on his way to the stairs and looked his inquiry.

"She aint there. Warn't she a good woman, though!" And Mrs. Marble's face was all quivering, and some big tears fell from the full eyes.

"Was?" said Mr. Digby. "You do not mean – "

"She's gone. Yes, she's gone. And I guess she's gone to the good land; and I guess she aint sorry to be free; but —I'm sorry!"

For a few minutes the kind little woman hid her face in her apron, and sadly blotched with tears the apron was when she took it down.

"It's all over," she repeated. "At two o'clock last night, she just slipped off, with no trouble at all. And the house does feel as lonely as if fifty people had gone out of it. I never see the like o' the way I miss her. I'd got to depend on her living up there, and it was good to think of it; there warn't no noise, more'n if nobody had been up there; but if I aint good myself and I don't think I be – I do love to have good folks round. She was good. I never see a better. It's been a blessin' to the house ever since she come into it; and I always said so. An' she's gone!"