Waverley Library (Quarto Edition) (no. 84) (1881 06 21)
The text was read from the page scans by machine (OCR), so it has mistakes and its columns may run together. See the pages · About this title · At the Internet Archive
Page 1
The Only Young Ladies’ Library of First-Class Copyright Novels Published! Price, but 5 cents each. ri FG ue: AAA 1 SoZ Bag RRO uh > me diy, T WAS & Ve: ty bush, indeed; that is, so far as anything fm nature can be | and being placed in circumstances where the every opportu of - ly. Te tee lop aidédecher on the one hand . atantied stump or tw mate friendship, sympathy, whatever you like to-call it; who could doubt what reall 0. while a the other a huge heavy branch swept down to the gravel walk. It | would happen é more 80, as there was no one to suggest that it might bap- ad a crooked gnarled trunk or stem, hollow enough to entice any weak- m; no one to watch them or warn them; or waken them with worldly-minded minded bird to build.a nest there—only it was so near to the ground, and also ints; or else to rise up, after the fashion of so many ‘wise parents and i- to the garden gate. Besides, the owners of the garden, evidently of ‘practical | ans and well-intentioned friends, and indignantly shut the stable-door after the mind, made use of it to place between a fork in its branches asort of | steed is stolen. ; , letter-box—not the government regulation one, for twenty years ago this had No. That something which was so sure to happen had happenetl; you might not been thought of, but a rough receptable, where, the ouse-being a good | have seen it in their eyes, have heard it in the very tones of their voices, though way off, letters might be Geoonitel. instead of hitherto, ina hole in the trunk— | they still talked ina ev ey way, and still called each other “ Miss Wil- near the foot of the tree, and under shelter of ifs mass of eve m leaves. liams ” and “ Mr. Roy.” In fact, their whole demeanor to.one another was This jetter-box, made by the boys of the family at the instigation. and with | characterized by the = and even formal decorum which was natural to ve the assistance of their tutor, had proved so attractive to some exceedingly | reserved people, just trembling on the verge of that Siecovern eaich will unloc: incautious w that during the the heart of each'to'the other, and intervals of the post she had begun a : - ee ene . annihilate, reserve forever between nest there, which was found by the | Mi A tn { | the two whom Heaven has designed We i th V TUIMTATTIVAM. . ploted existence If by any ‘mis old grandmother, with whom the | Hh ih “A chance this does not come about, were staying the summer, and the’ wlth i HH i i ! each may lead a very. creditable i 1 I ii | i I! led her, her real name being ence i SAHA R i } Hit} | AMI locked-up life, one to which no third Miss Williams—Fortune Williams. HI WH Mh Hu | | We || WEA pereon is ever likely to find; the Sa | i i H é , near the truth, asa keener observer | i | i Mh | than mischievous boys would have i) ull} ni i i HHH M1 TAN envied or pitied is more than I can read in her quiet, sometimes sad i i UL | | a= | THA SMM}: say; but atleast they are more to li qe Hy: f WN wear their hearts upon their sleeves ‘ni for daws to peck at subd very often ee het setae Me thet alt | Mit pleted. existence, , If by any mis young overness—“ Misfortune,”’ as | il A il i and not unhappy life; but it will be a The nick-name was a little too | 2 ether such matures are to-be face; and it had been stopped rather i } i} i} ti be respected than the ‘people who Tm ti iil ’ 3 i ‘ | i , are all the. prouder the/ more they H i | a | i rt ys, 4 young man whom the grand- mother had been forced to ny to keep — in order.”” He was a Aa cn ne were, and a great trouble Severely by the tutor of the elder HN) iia ni a) ih ' are aig on at; and the more ele- Mr. rt Roy, once a student, AY ! t ; tly they bleed; which was not now @ teacher of the “ humanities,’ NH HIT glee UN ) kely,.to be the .case, with either from the neighborin town—I beg a lovely ol “of these young folks, young as they city it is!—or St. Andrews, Thénce w the They were young, and youth is always interesting and ever’ come- ly;, but beyond that there was noth- ing remarkable about. either. He Was Scotch; she Buglish or rather Welsh. She had the clear blue Welsh eye, the 7etrousse’ Welsh nose; but with the prettiest little mouth un- derneath it—firm, close, and sweet; full of‘ ‘sensitiveness; but a’ sénsi- tiveness that...was. controlled and guided by that: best possession to either man or woman, a good strong will. No one could doubt that. the off on some pleasure excursion; and peng 6 lady of inexact habits—one, ba whom the tutors were tutors and nothing more—she had merely the car- drove away, ‘“ When Mr. Roy comes tell hi i tH tecthacaens at he is not wanted at the not wishi i the additional trouble of walkingwe ineering or’ obnoxious will, which srimnith at ta oe she linew every indeed “is seldom will at all, but as precious. merely obstinacy. ~~ a Pook Sle hard-working can ‘ For the rest, Miss Williams was a understand and sympathize one another. Only a tutor and Dab a governess; Mrs.. Dalziel drove away and never thought of them again, They were mere machines— servants to whom she their wages, and.so that they Aik eutiaee two distinct’ kinds of love, one in (Uwhich the eye instructs the heart and the other in which the heart ' informs and guides the-eye. There have been men who, seeing an un- known beautiful face, have felt sure it Nay oe the most beau- tiful soul found the fancy true, and loved the arowho would kikiply ene t dort are who wo mply sa: on know if such ‘a oné is ‘hhadenme somewhat rare and peculiar posi- tion of a young man ppl 9 young woman (perhaps Mrs. Dalziel woul re om exception to the words young an oung. gen man’) Uitorwn together airs after day, week after week—nay, it had
Page 2
2 THE LAUREL BUSI. ox not ; I only. know she is herself—and mine.” Both loves are good; nay, it is difficult to say which is best. But the latter would be the most likely to any one who became at- ‘tached to. Fortune Williams. Also, perhaps, to Robert Roy, though no one expects good looks.in his.sex.: indeed, they are mostly rather objectionable. Women do not usually care for a very handsome man ; and men are prone to set him down as conceited. No one-could lay either charge to Mr. Roy. He was only an honest-looking Scotchman, tall andstrong and manly, Not ‘‘red,” inspite of his name, but dark-skinned and dark-haired ; hein no way re- sembling his great nameésake, Rob Roy Macgregor, as the boys ‘sometimes call him behind his back—never to his face. Gen- tle as the young man was, there was something about him which: effectually prevented any one’s taking the smallest lib- “erty with him. Though he had been a teacher of boys ever Since he was seyenteen—and I have heard one of the fraternity “confess that it is almost impossible to be a school-master for ten years without becoming a tyrant—still it wasa pleasant and sweet-tempered’ face... Very,.far from, a weak face, though: _ when Mr, Roy said a thing must be done every one of his boys « knew it must be done, and there was no use sa¥ing any more ‘about it. He had unquestionably that rare gift; the power of authority; “though this did. not necessarily imply self-control ; for some pa can rule everybody except themselves. But Robert oy’s clear, calm, rather sad eye, and a certain patient expres- sion about the mouth, implied that he too had had enough of ‘the hard training of life to be able to govern himself. And that.is more. difficult to aman than to.a woman. “All thy passious, matched with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.”’ A truth which even Fortune’s tender heart did not fully take in, deep as was her sympathy for him ; for his toilsome, lonely life, lived. more in shadow than in sunshine, and with every temptation to the selfishness which is so apt to follow self-de- pendence, and the bitterness that to a proud spirit so often makes the sting of poverty. Yet he was neither selfish nor Fade “bitter ; only a little reserved, silent, and—except with children rather grave. _ She stood watching him now, for she could see him a long way off across'the level Links, and noticed that he stopped more than once to look at the golf-players. He was a capital golfer himself, but had never any time to play. Between his own studies and the teaching by which he earned the money to prosecute them, every hour was filled up. So he turned his back on the pleasant pastime, which seems to have such an ex- _ traordinary fascination for those who pursue it, and came on to his daily work, with that resolute deliberate step, bent on ' direct to his point and turning aside for nothing. i? i. fe peat going _ Fortune knew it well by this time ; had learned to distinguish it from all others in the world. There are some footsteps which, by a pardonable poetical license, we say ‘‘ we should ‘hear in our graves,” and though this girl did not think of that, for death looked far off, and she was scarcely a poetical person, still, many a2 morning, when, sitting at her school-room win- dow, she heard Mr. Roy coming steadily down the gravel-walk, she was conscious of—something which people cannot feel twice in a life-time. -And now, when he appro with that kind smile of his, which brightened into double pleasure whem he saw who was waiting for him, she was aware of a wild heart-beat, a sense of exceeding joy, and then of relief and rest. He was ‘‘com- for She could express it in no other way. At sight of his face and at sound of his voice all worldly cares and fortable” to. het. roubles of which she had a good many, seemed to fall off. walk by ; and she had walked alone so long. © _ “ Good-afternoon, Miss Williams.” -**Good-afternoon, Mr. Roy.” ‘They said no, more than that, but the stupidest a together. e with him like having an ar ight | be with him was like having an arm to seg lees *0 | hat at St Recdrene | | -» Its sleepy glitter seemed to have lulled Robert Roy into a fob Tee person in the | came to ; world might have seen that they were glad to meet, glad to be).ing, simply stood, as she often did, silently beside him, quite Though neither they nor any one else could have ex- plained the mysterious fact, the foundation ofall love stories in books or in life—and which the present author owns, after having written many books and seen a great deal of life, is to her also as great a mystery as ever—Why do certain people like ‘|to be together? What is the inexplicable attraction which makes them seek one another, suit one another, put.up with one another’s weaknesses, condone one another's faults (when neither are too great to lessen love), and to the last day of life find a charm in one another’s society which extends to no other human being? Happy love or lost love, a full world or an empty world, life with Joy or life without it—that is all the dif- ference. Which some people think very small, and that it does not matter; and perhaps it does-‘not—to many people. But it does tosome, and I incline to put among the category Miss Williamsand Mr. Roy. They stood by the laurel bush, having just shaken hands rather more hastily than they usually did ; but the absence of the chil- dren, and the very unusual fact of their being quite alone, gave to both a certain shyness, and she had drawn her hand away, say- ing, with a slight blush : ‘“Mrs. Dalziel desired me to meet you and tell you that you might have a. holiday torday. She has taken the boys with her to Elie. I-dare\ saw you will not be sorry to gain an hour or two for yourself ; though I am sorry you should have the trouble of the walk for nothing.” ~ ‘‘ For nothing ?”—with the least shadow of a smile, not of an- noyance, certainly. ees ‘Indeed, I would have let you know if I could, but she de- cided at the very last minute ; and if I had proposed that a mes- senger should have been sent to stop you, I am afraid—it would not have answered.” ‘*Of course not ;” and they interchanged an amused look— these fellow-victims to the well-known ways of the household —which, however, neither grumbled at ; it was merely an out- side thing, this treatment of both as mere tutor and governess. After all (as he sometimes said, when some special rudeness— not to himself, but to her—vexed him), they were tutor and governess ; but they were something else besides ; something which, the instant their chains were lifted off, made them feel free and young and strong, and comforted them with a comfort unspeakable. — ‘‘She bade me apologize. No, I am afraid, if I tell the absolute truth, she did zof bid me, but I do apologize.” ‘* What for, Miss Williams?” ‘*For your having been brought out all this way just to go back again.” f ‘*T do not mind it, I assure you.” ‘* And as for the lost lesson—” ‘The boys will not mourn over it, I dare say. In fact, their term with me is so soon coming to an end that it does notsignify much. They told me they are going back to Eng- land to school next week. Do you go back too?” “Not just yet—not till next Christmas. Mrs. Dalziel talks of wintering in London ; but she is so vague in her plans that I am never sure from one week to another what she will do.” _ “And what are your plans? You always know what you intend to do.” ; ‘* Yes, I think so,” answered Miss Williams, smiling. ‘‘One of the few things I remember of my mother was hearing her say of me, that ‘her little girl was a little girl who always knew her own mind.’ I think Ido. I may not be always able to carry it out, but I think I know it.” ‘Of course,” said Mr. Roy, absently and somewhat vaguely, as he stood beside the laurel bush, pulling one of its shiny leaves to pieces, and looking right ahead, across the sun- shiny Links, the long shore of yellow sands, where’ the mer- maids might well delight to come and ‘‘ take hands”—to the smooth, dazzling, far-awaysea. No sea is more beautiful than sudden meditation, from which no word of his companion rouse him. In truth, she, never given much to talk- satisfied with the mere comfort of his presence. I am afraid that Fortune Williams will be considered a very
Page 3
THE LAUREL BUSH. weak-minded young woman. She was not a bit of a coquette, the had not the slightest wish to flirt with any man. . Nor was she a proud beauty desirous to subjugate the other sex, and drag them triumphantly at her charrot wheels. She did not see the credit, or the use, or the pleasure of any such proceeding. She was a self-contained, self-dependent woman. Thoroughly a woman; not indifferent at all to womanhood’s best blessing ; still, she could live without it if necessary, as she could have live without anything which it had pleased God to deny her. She was a creature not likely to die for love, or do wrong for love, which some people think the only test of love's strength instead of its being its utmost weakness ; but that she was capable of love, for all her composure and quietness, capable of it, and ready for it, in its intensest, most passionate, and most enduring form, the God who made her knew, if no one else did. Her time would come ; indeed, had come already. She had too much self-respect to let him guess it, but I am afraid she was very fond of—or, if that is a foolish phrase, deeply attached to—Robert Roy. He had been so. good to her, at once strong and tender, chivalrous, respectful, and kind; and she had no father, no brother, no other man atall to judge him by, except the accidental men whom she had met in society, creaturés on two legs who wore coats and trowsers, who. had been civil to her, as she to, them, but who had never interested her in the smallest degree, perhaps because she knew so little of them. But-‘no; it would have been just the same had she known them a thousand years. She was not ‘‘a man’s woman,” that is, one of those wo- men who feel interested in them accordingly, for the root of much masculine affection is pure vanity. That. celebrated Scot ch song. “Come deaf, or come blind, or come cripple, O come, ony ane o’ them a’! Far better be married to something, Than no to be married ava.” was a rhyme that would never have touched the stony heart of Fortune Williams, And yet, let me own it once more, she was very, very fond of Robert Roy. He had never spoken to her one word of love, actual love, no more than he spoke now, as they stood side by side, looking with the same eyes on the same scene, I say the same eyes, for they were exceed- ingly alike in their tastes, There was no need ever to go into long explanations about this or that; a glance suffic- ed, or a word, to show each what the other enjoyed ; and both had the quiet conviction that they were enjoying it to- gether. Now as that sweet, still, sunshiny view met their mu- tual gaze, they fell into no poetical raptures, but just stood and looked, taking it all in with exceeding pleasure, as they had done many and many a time, but never, it seemed, so perfectly as now. ** What a lovely afternoon!” she said at last. “Yes. It isa pity to waste it, Have you anything special to do? What did you mean to employ yourself with, now your birds are flown ?” “Oh, I can always find something to do.” ‘« But need you find it? We both work so hard. If we could only now and then havea little bit of pleasure !” He putit so simply, yet almost with a sigh. This poor girl’s heart responded to it suddenly, wildly. She was only twenty-five, yet Sometimes she felt quite old, or rather as if she had never been young. The constant teaching, teaching of rough boys, too—for she had had the whole four till Mr. Roy took the two elder off her hands—the necessity of grinding hard out of school hours to keep herself up in Latin, Euclid, and other branches which do not usually form part of a feminine education, only having a great natural love of work, she had taught herself—all these things combined to make her life a dull life, a hard life, till Robert Roy came into it. And sometimes even now the desperate sac age to enjoy—not only to endure, but to enjoy—to take a little of the natural pleasures ( of her age—came to the poor governess very sorely, especi- ally on days such as this, when all the outward world looked so gay, so idle, and she worked so hard. So did Robert Roy. Life was not easier to him than to herself ; she knew that; and when he said, half joking, as if he wanted to feel his way, ‘‘Let us imitate our boys, and take a half holiday,” she only laughed, but did not refuse. How could she refuse? There were the long smooth sands on either side the Eden, stretching away into indefinite distance, with nota human being upon them to break their loneliness, or, if there was, he or she looked a mere dot, not human at all. Even if these two had been afraid of béing seen walk'ny together—which they hardly were, being too unimportant for any one to care whether they were friends or lovers, or what not—there was nobody to see them, except in the character of two black dots on the yellow sands. ‘*It is low water ; suppose we go and look for sea-ane- mones. One of my pupils wants some, and I promised to try and find one the first spare hour I had.” ‘* But we shall not find anemones on the sands.” ‘*Shells, then, you practical woman! We'll gather shells. It will be all the same to that poor invalid boy—and to me,” added he, with that involuntary sigh which she had no- ticed more than once, and which had begun to strike on her ears not quite painfully. Sighs, when we are young, mean differently to what they’do in after-years, ‘I don’t care very much where I go, or what I do; I only want—vwell, to be hap- py for an hour, if Providence will let me.” ‘« Why should not Providence let you ?”’said Fortune, gently. “* Few people deserve it more.” ‘*'You are very kind to think so; but you are always kind to everybody.” By this time theyshad left their position by the laurel bush, and were walking along side by side, according. as he sug~- gested. This silent, instinctive acquiescence in what he wished done—it had happened once or twice before, start- ling a little at herself; for, as I have said, Miss Wiiliams was not at all the kind of person to do every thing that every body asked her, without considering whether it was right or wrong. She could obey, but it would depend entirely upon whom she had to obey, which, indeed, makes the sole difference be- tween loving deeciples and slavish fools. It was a lovely day, one of those serene autumn days peculiar to Scotland—I was going to say to St. Andrews ; and any one who knows the ancient city ‘will know exactly how it looks in the still, strongly spiritualized light of such an afternoon, with the ruins, the castle, cathedral, and St. Regulus’s tower standing out sharply against the intensely blue sky, and on the other side—on other sides—the yellow sweep of sand curving away into distance, and melting into the sunshiny sea. Many a time, in their prescribed walks with their young tribe, Miss Williams and Mr. Roy had taken this stroll across the Links and around by the sands to the mouth of the Eden, leaving behind them a long and sinuous track of many foot- steps, little and large; but now there was only two lines— “foot-prints on the sands of Time,” as he jestingly called them, turning around and pointing to the marks of the dainty feet that walked so steadily and straightly beside his own. ‘* They seem made to go together, those two tracks,” said he. Why did he say it? Was he the kind of man to talk thus without meaning it! If so, alas! she was not exactly the wo- man to be thus talked to. Nothing fell on her lightly. Perhaps it was her misfortune, perhaps even her fault, but so it was. Robert Roy did not ‘‘ make love ;” not at all. Possibly he never could have done it in the ordinary way. Sweet things, polite things, were very difficult to him either to do or to say. Even the tenderness that was in him came out as if by accident; but, oh! how infinitely tender he could be! Enough to make any one who loved him die easily, quietly, contentedly, if only just holding his hand. | ll There is an incident in Dickens’s touching “‘ Tale of Two Cities,” where a young man going innocent to the guillotine, and riding on the death-cart with a young girl whom he had never before seen, is able to sustain and comfort her, even to
Page 4
4 THE LAUREL BUSH. the last awful moment, by the look of his face and the clasp of his hand. That man, I have often thought, must have been something not unlike Robert Roy. Such men are rare, but they do exist ; lot, or she believed it was, to have found one. enough. She. went along the shining sands in,a. dream of per- fect content, perfect happiness, thinking—and was it strange or wrong that she should so think—that if it were God’s will she should thus walk through life, the thorniest path would seem smooth, the hardest road easy. She had no fear of life, if lived beside him; or of death—love is stronger than death; at least this sort of love, of which only strong natures are capa- ble, and out of which are made, not the lyrics, perhaps, but the epics, the psalms; or the tragedies of our mortal existence. I have explained thus much about these two friends—lovers that may be, or might have been—because they never would have done it themselves. Neither was given to much speaking. Indeed, I fear their conversation this day, if recorded, would have been of the most feeble kind—brief, fragmentary, mere comments on the things about them, or abstract remarks not particularly clever or brilliant, They were neither of them ' what you would call brilliant people; yet they were happy, and the;hours flew by like a few minutes, until they found them- selves back again beside the laurel bush at the gate, when Mr, Roy suddenly said: ‘Do not go in yet... 1 mean, need you go in? It is scarcely past sunset; the boys will not be home for an hour yet; they don’t want you, and I—I want.you so. In, your English sense,” he added, with a laugh, referring to one of their many arguments, scholastic. or otherwise, wherein she had _ insisted that to want meant Angiice, to wish or to crave, whereas in Scotland it was always used es the French manguer, to miss or to need, ‘Shall we begin that fight 0% over again ?” asked she, smiling; for everything, eyen fighting, seemed pleasant to-day. _ “No, Ihave no wish to fight; I want to consult you seri- one § ona. purely personal matter, if yeu would not mind tak- at that trouble, ” A OPIRE looked sorry. . That was one of the bad things in ¢, best men alive have their bad things), the pride which pet umility, the self-distrust which often wounds another so keenly, .Her answer was. given with.a grave and simple sin- cerity that ought to haye been reproach enough: _. Mr. Roy, I would not mind any < amount of trouble if I could be of use to'you; you know that.” _‘ Forgive me! Yes, I do know.it. I believe in you and your goodness to the very. bottom of my heart,” _ She tried to say, ‘‘ Thank you,” bit her lips refused to utter a word. It was so. difficult to go on talking like ordinary friends, when she knew, and he must know she knew, that one word .more would make them—not friends at. all--some- thing infinitely better, closer; dearer; but that word was his to speak, not, hers... 'T here are women who will ‘‘help a man on.”-—propose to him, marry him. indeed—while he is under the pleasing delusion that he does it, all himself; but Fortune and it was Fortune's Williams Jwas;not, one of these... She remained silent and pas-| sive, waitin ne the next;thing he should say. It came: some- thing the: shock of which she never forgot as long as she lived ; and, he said, it with his eyes .on her face, so that, if it killed her, she.must keep quiet and composed, as she did. : “You know the boys’ lessons end next week. . The week after I. go-—that i is, I have almost decided to. go—to India. ” ; ~ “To India !” | “Yes, For which, no doubt, you think me very changea- er having, said so often that I meant to keep to a. scholar’s be a, professor one day, perhaps, if by any means I cold get. Ri to my porridge... Well, now I am not satisfied to my, porridge 5 I wish to get rich.” did not say, ‘‘Why?” She thought she had not looked ie but he answered : “Never mind why. 1 do wish it, and I will, be rich yet, if I can, Are aes very, much surprised ? i Surprised she certainly . -was but she answered, honestly, last, PARR. FG should Suspect of ang | YF : ced d, you are the, ly-minded.”. k you; ‘that is kind, “No, Fast ; “merely fast. “One That was} ought to have faith in people; it does one good. I ami afraid my own deficiency is want of faith. It takes so much to make me believe for a moment that any one cares for me.” How hard it was to be silent—harder still to speak! But she did speak. ‘‘T can understand that; I have often felt the same. It is the natural consequence of a very lonely life. If you and I had had fathers and mothers and ihe oe and sisters, we might have been different.” ‘Perhaps so. But about India. Foi a long time—that is, for many weeks—I have been casting about in my mind how to change my way of life, to look out for something that would help me to earn money, and quickly, but there seemed no chance whatever. Until suddenly one has opened.” And then he explained how the father of one of his pupils, grateful for certain benefits, which Mr. Roy did not specify, and noticing certain business qualities i in him—‘‘ which I sup- pose I have, though I didn’t know it,” added he, with a smile —had offered him a situation in a merchant's office at Calcutta: a position of great trust and responsibility, for three years cer- tain, with the option of then giving it up or continuing it. “And continuing means making a fortune. Even three years means making something, with my ‘stingy’ habits. Only I must go at once. Nor is there any time left me for my decision ; it must be yes or no. Which shall it be?” The sudden appeal—made, too, as if he thought it was noth- ing—that terrible yes or no, which to her made all the differ- ence of living or half living, of feeling the sun in or out of the world. ‘What could she answer? ‘Trembling ‘violently, she yet answered, in a steady voice, “You must decide for yourself. A woman can not understand’a man,’ ‘‘Nor a man a woman, thoroughly. “There is only one thing which helps both to comprehend one another.” One thing ! she knew what it was. Surely so did he. © But that strange distrustfulness of which he had spoken, or the hesitation which the sroagest and bravest men have at times came between. “Oh, the little more, and how much it is! Oh, the little less, and what worlds away |’* If, instead ‘of looking vaguely out upon the sea, he’had ook’ into this poor girl’s face; if, instead-of keeping silence, he had only spoken one word ! But he neither looked nor spoke, and the moment passed by. And there are moments which people would sometimes give a whole lifetime to recall and use differently; but in vain. ‘“‘My engagement is only for three years, * He fidga db ‘*and then, if alive, I mean to come back. “Dead or alive, t was going to say, but you would not care to see my ghost. - presume? I beg. your pardon; - ought not to make a ice of such serious things, ” “No, you ought not.” . . She felt herself almost speechless, that in another minute sie might burst into sobs. He saw it—at least He saw @ very little of it, and misinterpreted, the rest. ‘<T Raye tired you. Take my atm. “°Vou ‘will soon be ‘at home now.” Then, after a pause, ‘You will not be displeased at anything I have ‘said? We part friends? No, we donot part; I shall see you every day for a week, and be able to tell you all particulars of my journey, | if you care to hear,” f ‘- Thank you, yes—I do care.” They stood together, arm in arm. The daws were falling; a sweet, soft, lilac haze. had begun to creep over the sea—the sol- emn, far-away sea that he was so soon to cross. Involuntarily she clung to his arm, So near, yet so apart! Why must it be? She could have borne his going away, if it was for his good, ifhe wished it; and something whispered to her that this sudden’ desire to get rich was not for himself alone. ' But, oh f’ if he would only speak! One word—one little word! at, anything might come—the separation of life, the bit of ‘| death. To the two hearts that had once opened each ts auch: ae full recognition of inutual Jove, tee could never th ore y real parting. u rape that one Ne ama exa noone He ae poy the ‘little hand that lay on his arm, pressed” it,’ and held: it-years after
Page 5
THE LAUREL BUSI. 5 qa the &eling of that clasp was as fresh on her fingers as yesterday —then, hearing the foot of some accidental passer-by, he let it go, and did not take it again. Just at this moment the sound of distant carriage wheels was heard. ‘*That must be Mrs. Dalziel and. the boys.” «*Then I had better go, Good-by.” The day dream was over. It had all come back again— the forlorn, dreary, hard working world. ‘‘Good-by, Mr. Roy.” And they shook hands. “One word,” he said, hastily, ‘I shall write to you— you willallow me? and JI shall see you several times, a good many times, before I go?” aa hope so?” “‘Then, for the present, good-by. That means,” he added, eamestly, ‘‘.‘God be with you!’ And I know he always will.” In another minute Fortune found herself standing beside the laurel bush, alone, listening to the sound of Mr, Roy’s foot- steps down the road—listening, listening, as if, with the exceed- ing tension, her brain would burst. The carriage came, passed; it was not Mrs. Dalziel’s after all. She thought he might discover this, and come back again; so she waited a little—five minutes, ten—beside the laurel bush, But he did not come. No- footstep, no voice ; noth- ing but the faint, far-away sound of the long waves washing in upon the sands. It was not the brain that felt like to burst now, but the heart. She clasped her hands above her head. It did not mat- ter; there was no creature to see or hear that appeal—was it to man or God?—that wild, broken sob, so contrary to her usual self-controlled and self-contained nature. And then she jJeaned her forehead against the gate, just where Robert Roy had accidentally laid his hand in opening it, and wept bitterly. CHAPTER II. ‘Tue ‘‘every day” on which Mr. Roy had reckoned for seeing his friend, or whatsoever else he consider Miss Williams to be, proved a failure. Her youngest pupil fell ill, and she was kept beside him, and away from the school-room, until the doctor could decide whether the illness was infectious or not. it turned out to very trifling—a most trivial thing altogether, yet-weighted with a pain most difficult to bear, a sense of fatality that almost overwhelmed one person at least. What the other felt she did not know. He came daily as usual; she watched him’ come and go, and sometimes he turned and they ex- changed a greeting from the window. But beyond that, she had to take all passively. What could she, only a woman, do or say or plan? Nothing. Women’s business is to sit down and endure. - She had counted these days—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thurs- day, Friday, Saturday—as if they had been years. And now ‘they were all. gone, had fled like minutes, fled emptily away. A few fragmentary facts she had had to feed on, comm@nicated by the boys in their rough talk. ; _ _‘“Mr. Roy was rather cross to-day.” “Not cross, Dick—only dull.” ‘‘Mr, Roy asked why David did not come in to lessons, and said he hoped he would be better by Saturday.” ‘Mr, Roy said good-by to us all, and gave us each some- thing to remember him by when he was out in India. Did Miss Williams know he was going out to India? Oh, how jolly 1” nen and he sails next week, and the name of his ship is Queen of the South, and he goes by Liverpool instead of South- ampton, because it costs less; and he leaves St. Andrews on Mon- day morning.” © “Are you sure he said Monday morning?” For that was Sat- urday night. : _ “Certain, because he has to get his outfit still. it must be |” _ And the boys went on, greatly excited, repeating everything Mr. Roy had told them—for he had made them fond of him, Oh, what fun even.in those few months—expatiating with delight on his future career, as a merchant or somethting, they did not quite know what! but no doubt it would be far nicer and more amu- sing than stopping at home and grinding forever over horrid books. Didn’t Miss Williams think so? Miss Williams only smiled. She knew how all his life he had loved ‘‘those horrid books,” preferring them to pleasure, recréation, almost to daily bread; how he had lived on the hope that one day he— born only a farmer’s son—might do something, write someth- ing. ‘‘T also am of Arcadia.” He might have done it or not —the genius may or may not have been there ; but the ambi- tion certainly was. Could he have thrown it allaside? And why? Not for mere love of money; she knew him too Well for that. He was a_ thorough bookworm, simple in all his tastes and habits—simple almost to penuriousness; but it was a> penuri- ousness born of hard fortunes, and he never allowed it to affect anybody but himself. Still, there was-no doubt he did not care for money, or luxury, or worldly position—any’ of the things that lesser men count large enough to work ‘and strug- gle and die for. To give up the pursuit he loved, deliberately to choose others, to change his whole life thus,and expatriate himself, as it were, for years—perhaps for always—why did he do it, or for whom?” > id as arid Was it fora woman? Was it for her? If ever, in those long empty days and wakeful nights, this last thought enter- ed Fortune’s mind, she stifled it as something which, once to have fully believed and then disbelieved, would haye: killed er. taritisa | That she should have done the like for him—that or any- thing else involving any amount of heroism or self-sacrifice— well, it was natural, right ; but that he should do it:for her? That he should change his whole purpose ‘of life that he might beable to marry quickly, to shelter in his bosom*a: poor girl who was not able to fight the world'as a man could, the thing —not so’ very impossible, ‘after all—seemed to! her almost incredible! And yet (I am telling a mere love story, remem- ber—a foolish, innocent love story, without apologizing for either the folly or the innocence) sometimes she was so far ‘‘left to herself,” as the Scotch say, that she did believe it; in the still twilights, in the wakeful nights, in the one solitary half hour of intense relief, when, all her boys being safe in bed, she rushed out into the garden under’ the silent stars to sob, to ei to speak out loud words which nobody could possibly ear. l tindlo-g = I love him—love him better than anything in all. this..world. I couldn’t help it—he couldn’t help it. But, oh! it’s hard —hard !” ) rd ont”) And then, altogether breaking down, she’d begin:to cry like a child. She like a missed him so, even this week, after having for months been with him every day; but it was less like a girl missing her lover—who was, after all, not ‘her lover ma child mourning helplessly for the familiar voicé, bit cera helpful hand. With all the rest of the world Fortune Williams was an independent, energetic woman, self-contained, brave, and strong, as a solitary governess had need to be; but beside oo Roy she felt like a child, and she cried for him like )a child, it ef bel ody Se eS ee ee ee ‘And with no language but a ery.’’ So-the week ended and Sunday came, kept at Mrs. Dalziel’s like the Scotch Sundays of twenty years ago. | No visitor ever entered the house, wherein all the meals were cold and the blinds drawn down, as if for a funeral. The family went to church for the entire day, St. Andrews being too far off for any return home ‘‘ between sermons.” Usually one servant was left in charge, turn and tur about ; but this Sunday Mrs. Dalziel, having put the governess'in the nurse’s place beside the ailing child, thought shrewdly she - might as well put her in the servant’s place too, and let her take charge of the kitchen fire as well as of little David. Being English, Miss Williams was not so exact about ‘‘or- dinances ” as a Scotchwoman would have been ; so Mrs, Dal- zeil had no hesitation in asking her to remain at home alone the whole day in charge of her pupil. TaD ** He is going away, and I shall never see him again. “And meow si ae
Page 6
THE LAUREL BUSH. Thus faded, Fortune thought, her last hope of seeing Robert Roy again, either at church—where he usually sat in the Dal- ziel pew, by the old lady’s request, to make the boys ‘‘ behave” —or walking down the street, where he sometimes took the two eldest to eat their ‘‘pieces” at his lodgings. All was now ended ; yet on the hope—or dread—of this last Sunday see had hung, she now felt with what intensity, till it . Was gone. ; Fortune was the kind of woman who, were it given her to fight, could fight to the death, against fate or circumstances ; but when her part was simply passive, she could also endure. Not, as some do, with angry grief or futile resistance, but with a quiet patience so complete that only a very quick eye would _ have found out she was suffering at all. Little David did not, certainly. When, hour after hour, she sat by his sofa, interesting him as best she could in the dull ‘*good” books which alone were alowed of Sundays, and then passing into. word-of-mouth stories—the beautiful bible stories over which her own voice trembled while she told them—Ruth, with her piteous cry, ‘‘ Whither thou goest, I will go; where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried ;” Jonathan, whose soul ‘‘clave to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul ”—all those histories of passionate fidelity and agonized parting—for every sort of love is essentially the - same—how they went to her very heart. . Oh, the awful quietness of that Sunday, that Sabbath which was not rest, in which the hours crawled on in sunshiny stillness, neither voices nor steps nor sounds of any kind breaking the death-like hush of every thing. At length the boy fell asleep; and then Fortune seemed to wake up for the first time to the full consciousness of what was and what was about to be. All of asudden she heard steps on the gravel below ; then the hall bell rang through the silent house. She knew who it was even before she opened the door and saw him standing there. ‘(May Icome in? They told me you were keeping house alone, and I said I should just walk over to bid you and Davie goodbye.” , Roy’s manner was grave and matter-of-fact—a little con- strained, perhaps, but not much—and he looked so exceedingly pale and tired that, without any hesitation, she took him into the school-room, where they were sitting, and gave him the arm-chair by Davie’s sofa. . Yes, I own to being rather overdone ; I have had so much to arrange, for I must leave here to-morrow, as I think you know.” ‘«The boys told me.” “TI thought they would. I should have done it myself, but every day I hoped tosee you. It was this little fellow’s fault, I suppose,” patting Davie’s head. ‘‘He seems quite well now, and as jolly as possible. You don’t know what it is to say ‘ good-bye,’ David, my son.” ve Mr. Roy, who always got on well enough with children, had a trick of calling his younger pupils ‘‘ My son.” ‘«Why do you say ‘‘ Good-bye’ at all, then?” asked the child, a mischievous but winning young scamp of six or seven, who had as many tricks as a monkey or a magpie. In fact, in chattering and hiding things he was nearly as bad asa magpie, and the torment of his governess’s life ; yet she wasfond ofhim. ‘‘ Why do you bid us good-bye, Mr. Roy? Why don’t you stay always with Miss Williams and me?” “*T wish to God I could.” | She heard that, heard it distinctly, though it was spoken be- neath his breath ; and she felt the look, turned for one moment upon her as she stood by the window. She never forgot either— nevet, as long as she lived. Some words, some looks, can de- ceive, perhaps quite unconsciously, by being either more de- monstrative than was meant, or the exaggeration of coldness to hide its opposite ; but sometumes a glance, a tone, betrays, or rather reveals, the real truth in a manner that nothing afterward can ever falsify. For one instant, one instant only, Fortune felt sure, quite sure, that in some way or other she was very dear to Robert Roy. If the next minute he had taken her into his arms, and said or looked the words which, to an earnest- minded, sincere man like him, constitute a pledge for life, never to be disannulled or denied, she could hardly have felt more completely his own. But he did not say them ; he said nothing at all ; sat leaning his head on his hand, with an expression so weary, so sad, that all the coaxing ways of little Davie could hardly win from him more than a. faint smile. He looked so old, too, and he was but just thirty. Only thirty—only twenty-five ; and yet these two were bearing, seemed to have borne for years, the burden. of life, feeling all its hardships and none of its sweetnesses. Would things ever change? Would he have the courage (it was his part, not hers) to make them change, at least in one way, by bringing about that heart-union which to all pure and true natures is consolation for every human woe? ‘*T wonder,” he said, sitting down and taking David on his knee-——‘‘ I wonder ifit is best to hear things one’s:self, or to let another share the burden ?” ; Easily—oh, how easily !—could Fortune have answered this —have told him that, whether he wished it or not, two did really bear his burdens, and perhaps the one who bore it se- cretly and silently had not the lightest share. But she did not speak; it was not possible. ‘* How shall I hear of you, Miss Williams ?” he said, after a long silence, ‘‘ You are not likely to leave the Dalziel family ?” ‘‘No,” she answered; ‘‘and if I did, I could always be heard of, the Dalziels are so well known hereabouts. Still, a poor wandering governess easily drops out of people’s memory,” ‘‘And a poor wandering tutor too. any more, and I hope I shall not be poor long. Friends can. not lose one another; such friends as you and I have been, I will take care we shall not do it, that is, if But never mind that. You have been very good to me, and I have often bothered you very much, I fear. You will be almost glad to get rid of me.” She might have turned upon him eyes swimming with tears: —woman’s tears—that engine of power which they say no man can ever resist; but I think, ifso, a woman like Fortune would. have scorned to use it. Those poor weary eyes, which could. weep oceans alone under the stars, were perfectly dry now— dry, and fastened on the ground, as she replied, in a grave steady voice, ‘You do not really believe that, else you would never have: said it,” Her composure must have surprised him, for he looked suddenly up, then begged her pardon. ‘‘I did not hurt you, surely? We must not part with the least shadow of unkind- ness. between us.” ‘“No.” She offered her hand, and he took it—gently, affec- tionately, but only affectionately. The one step beyond affec- tion, which leads into another world, another life, he seemed. determined not to pass. For at least half an hour he sat there with David on his knee, or TiSiBE up restlessly to pace the room with David on his shoulder; butapparently not desiring the child’s absence, rather wishing to keep him as a sort of barrier. Against what ?— himself? And so minute after minute slipped by; and Miss Williams, sitting in her place by the window, already saw, dot- ting the Links, group after group of the afternoon church-goers wandering quietly homé—so quietly, so happily, fathers and mothers and children, companions and friends—for whom was. no parting and pain. * Mr. Roy suddenly took out his watch. ‘‘I must go now; I. see I have spent all but my last five minutes. Good-by, David, my lad; you'll be a big man, maybe, when I see you again. Miss Williams” (standing before her with an expression on his: face such as she had never seen before), ‘‘ before I go there was a question I had determined to ask you—a purely ethical question which a friend of mine has been putting to me, and I could not answer; that is, I could, from the man’s side, the worldly side. A woman might think differently.” What is it?” «Simply this. Ifa man has nota halfpenny, ought he to ask a woman to share #? Rather an Irish way of putting the But I am not’a tutor «©
Page 7
THE LAUREL BUSH. ij matter,” with a laugh, not without bitterness, ‘‘but you un- | absence at all ; we are so constantly expecting the door to be derstand. Ought he not to wait till he has at least something to offer besides himself? Is it not mean, selfish, cowardly, to bind a woman to all the chances or mischances of his lot, in- stead of fighting it out like a man? My friend thinks so, and I—] agree with him.” ‘« Then why did you ask me?” The words, though low and clear, were cold and sharp— sharp with almost unbearable pain. Every atom of pride in her was roused. Whether he loved her and would not tell her so, or loved some other woman and wished her to know it, it was all the same. He was evidently determined to go away free and leave her free; and perhaps many sensible men or women would say he was right in so doing. ‘‘I’ beg your pardon,” he said, almost humbly. ‘‘I ought not to have spoken of this at all. I ought just to have said ‘Good-by,’ and nothing more.” -And he took her hand. There was on it one ring, not very valuable, but she always liked to wear it; as it had belonged to her mother. Robert Roy drew it o and put it deliberately into his pocket. ‘*Give me this ; you shall have it back again when I am dead, or you are married, whichever happens first. Do you understand ?” Putting David aside (indeed, he seemed for. the first time to forget the boy’s presence), he took her by the two hands and looked down into her face. Apparently he read something there, something which startled him, almost shocked him. ' “*God forgive me!” he muttered, and stood irresolute. Irresolution, alas! too late ; for just then all the three Dal- ziel boys rushed into the house and the school-room, followed by their grandmother. The old lady looked a great deal sur- prised, perhaps a little displeased, from one to the other. Mr. Roy perceived it, and recovered himself in an instant, letting go Fortune’s hands and placing himself in front of her, between her and Mrs. Dalziel. Long afterward she remem- bered that trivial act—remembered it with the tender gratitude of the protected toward the protector, if nothing more. ‘You see, I came, as I told you I should, if possible, to bid Miss Williams good-by, and wee Davie. They both kindly admitted me, and we have had half an hour’s merry chat, have we not, Davie?) Now, my man, good-by.” He took up the little fellow and kissed him, and then extended his hand. ‘“Good-by, Miss Williams. I hope your little pupils will value you as you deserve.” Then, with a courteous and formal farewell to the old lady, and a most uproarious one from the boys, he went to the door, but turned round, saying to the eldest boy, distinctly and clearly—though she was at the farther end of the room, she heard, and was sure he meant her to hear every word : ‘« By-the-bye, Archy, there is something I was about to ex- plain to Miss Williams. Tell her I will write it. She is quite sure to have a letter from me to-morrow—no, on Tuesday morning.” And so he went away, bravely and cheerily, the boys accom- panying him to the gate, and shouting and waving their hats to him as he crossed the Links, until their. grandmother reprov- ingly suggested that it was Sunday. ““But Mr. Roy does not go off to India every Sunday. oo ! I wish we were all going too. Three cheers for Mr. oy.’ ‘Mr. Roy is a very fine fellow, and I hope he will.do well,” said Mrs. Dalziel, touched by their enthusiasm ; also by some old memories, for, like many St. Andrews folk, she was strongly linked with India, and -had sent off one-half of her numerous family to live or die there. There was something like a tear in her old eyes, though not for the young tutor ; but it effectually kept her from either looking at or thinking of the governess. And she forgot them both immediately.. ‘They were merely the tutor and the governess. As for the boys, they chattered vehemently all tea-time about Mr. Roy, and their envy of ‘‘jolly” life he was going to; then their minds turned to their own affairs, and there was silence. The kind of silence, most of us know it, when any one be- _ longing toa household, or very familiar there, goes away on a long indefinite absence. At first there is little consciousness of opened for the customary presence that we scarcely even miss the known voice, or face, or hand, By-and-by, however, we. do missit, and there comes a.general, loud, shallow lamentation, which soon cures itself, and implies an easy and comfortable forgetfulness before long. Except with some, or possibly only one, who is, most likely, the one who has nevér, been heard ta utter a word of regret, or seen to shed a single tear. _ Miss Williams, now left sole mistress in the school-room, gave her lessons as usual there that Monday morning, and walked with all the four boys on the Links all afternoon. It was a very bright day, as beautiful as Sunday had been, and they communicated to her the interesting facts, learned at gol- fing that morning, that Mr. Roy and his portmanteau had been seen at Leuchars on the way to Burntisland, and that he would likely have a good crossing, as the sea was very calm, There had lately been some equinoctial gales, which had in- terested the boys amazingly, and they, calculated with ingenious pertinacity whether such gales were likely to occur again when Mr. Roy was in the Bay of Biscay, and ifhis ship. were wrecked, what he would be supposed to do. They were quite sure he would conduct himself with great heroism, perhaps escape on a single plank, oraraft made by his own hands, and they con- sulted Miss. Williams, who of course was a peripatetic cyclo- pedia of all scholastic pi, She as to which port in France or Spain he was likely to be drifted to, supposing this exciting event did happen. _ She answered their questions with her usyal ready kindness. She felt like a person in a dream, yet not unhappy dream, for she still heard the voice, still felt the clasp of the strong, tender, sustaining hands. And to-morrow would be Tuesday. Tuesday was a wet morning. . The bright days were done. Soon after dawn Fortune had woke up. and watched the sun- rise, till a chill fog crept over the sea and blotted it out ; then gradually blotted out the land also, the Links, the town, every- thing. A regular St. Andrews ‘‘haar,” and St, Andrews peo- ple know what that is, Miss Williams had seen it once or twice before, but never so bad as this—blighting, penetrating, and so dense that you could hardly see your hand before you. But Fortune scarcely felt it. She said to herself, ‘“To-day is Tuesday,” which meant nothing to anyone else, everything to her. For she knew the absolute faithfulness, the careful accu- racy, in great things and small, with which she had to do. If Robert Roy said. ‘‘I will write on such a day,” he was as sure to write as that the day would dawn; that is, so’ far as his own will went; and will, not circumstance, is the strongest agent in this world. z wae: Therefore she waited quietly for the postman’s rn. It sounded at last. “Tl go,” cried Archy. ‘‘Just look at the haar ! have to grope my way to the gate.” | He came back, after whatseemed an almost endless time, rubbing his head and declaring he had nearly blinded himself - by running right into the laurel bush. ‘*T couldn’t see for the fog. I only hope I’ve left none of the letters behind. No, no; all right. Such a lot! _ It’s the Indian mail. There’s for you, and you, boys.” He dealt them out with a merry, careless hand, There was no letter for Miss Williams—a circumstance so usual that nobody noticed it or her, as she sat silent in her cor- ner, while the children read noisily and gayly the letters from their far-away parents, Her \etter—what had befallen it? Had he forgotten to write?, But Robert Roy never forgot anything. Nor did he delay anything that he could possibly do at the time he prom- ised. He was one of the very few people in this world who in small things as in great are absolutely reliable. It seemed so impossible to believe he had not written, when he said he would, that, as a last hope, she stole out with a plaid over her head and crept through the side walks of the garden, almost groping her way through the fog, and, like Archy, stumbling over the low boughs of the laurel bush to the letter-box it held. Her trembling hands felt in every corner, but no letter was there. She went wearily back ; weary at heart, but patient still, I shall A
Page 8
a rr _ — — $e i IDE ee 8 (2 - SE DAGREL-BUSH. Sees i a= love like hers, self-existent and sufficient to itself, is very pa- everything she had lacked all her life, and mever found but with tient, ‘quite unlike the other and more common form of the| him and from him. And he was gone, had broken his pro- passion ; not love, but a diseased craving to be loved, which | mise, had left her without a single farewell word. creates a thousand imaginary miseries and wrongs. Sharp} That he had cared for her, in some sort of way, she was cer- was her pain, poor girl ; but she was not angry, and after her/ tain ; for he was one of those who never say a word too large— first’ stab of disappointment her courage rose. All was well| nay, he usually said much less than he felt. Whatever he had with him ; he had been seen cheerily starting for Edinburgh ; | felt for her—whether friendship, affection, love—must have and her own temporary suffering was a comparatively small|been true. There was in his nature intense reserve, but no thing. It could not last: the letter would come to-morrow. | falseness, no insincerity, not an atom of pretense of any kind. But it did not, nor the next day, nor the next. Onthe| Ifhe did love her, why not tell herso? What was there to fourth day her heart felt like to break. hinder him? Nothing, except that strange notion of the ‘‘dis- I think, of all pangs not mortal, few are worse than this | honorable” of askinga woman’s love when one has nothing but small silent agony of waiting for the post ; letting all the day’s | love to give her in return. This, even, he had seemed at the hope climax upon a single minute, which passes by, and the | last to have set aside, asif he could not go away without speak- hope with it, and then comes another day of dumb endurance, | ing. And yet he did it. if not despair. ‘This even with ordinary letters upon which; Perhaps he thought she did not care for him? He had once anything of moment depends. With others, such as this let-| said a man ought to feel quite sure of a woman before he asked ‘ter of Robert Roy’s—let us not speak of it. Some may her. Also, that he should never ask twice, since, if she did imagine, others may have known, a similar suspense. They | not know. her own mind then, she never would know it, and will understand why, long years afterward, Fortune Williams |such a woman was the worst possible bargain a man could was heard to say, with a quiver of the lip that could have told | make in marriage. its bitter tale, ‘‘No; when I have a letter to write I never put| | Not know her own mind! Alas, poor soul, Fortune knew off writing it fora single day.” it only too well. In that dreadful fortnight it was ‘‘borne in As these days wore on—these cruel days, never remembered | upon her,” as pious people say, that though she felt kindly to without a shiver of pain, and or wonder that she could ‘have | all human beings, the one human being who was necessary to lived through them at all—the whole fabric of reasons, argu- | her—without whom her life might be busy, indeed, and useful, ments, excuses, that she had built up, tried so eagerly to build | but never perfect, an endurance instead of a joy—was this up, for him’ and herself, gradually crumbled away. Had she| young. man, as solitary as herself, as poor, as hard-working ; altogether misapprehended the purport of his promised letter? | good, gentle, brave Robert Roy. as it just some ordinary note, about her boys and their; Oh, why had they not come together, heart to heart—just studies perhaps, which, after all, he had not thought it worth | they two, so alone in the world—and everafter belonged to one while to write? Yet surely it was worth while, if only to send | another, helping, comforting, and strengthening one another, a kindly and courteous farewell to a friend, after so close an in- | even though it had been years and years before they were mar- timacy and in face of so indefinite a separation. : ried ? . A friend? Only a friend? “Words may deceive, eyes sel- “If only he had loved me, and told me so !”, was her bitter dom can, And there had been love im his eyes. Not mere cry. ‘‘I could have waited for: him all my lifelong, carned liking, but actual love. She had seen it, felt it; with that) my bread ever so hardly, and quite alone, if only I mig t have almost unefring instinct that women have, whether they return | hada tight to him, and ‘been his’ comfort, as he was mine. the love or not. In the latter case, they seldom doubt it ; in| But now—now—” . the former, they often do. Yet still she waited, looked forward daily to that dread 1 post ' “Could I have been mistaken ?” she thought. with a burn-| hour; and when it had gone. by, nerving herself to dure ing pang of shame. ‘‘Oh, why did he not speak—just one | until to-morrow. At last hope, slowly dying, was kille out- word? After that,’ I could have borne anything.” right, 1) But he had notspoken, he had not written, He had let him-} One day at tea-time the boys blurted out, with happy care- self drop out of her life.as completely as a falling star drops out | lessness, their short-lived regrets for him being quite over, the ofthe sky, aship sinks down in mid-ocean, or—any other poeti- | news that Mr. Roy had sailed. . fi cal simife, used under such circumstances by romantic people. |. ‘‘ Not for Calcutta, but» Shanghai, a_ much. longer voyage. ’ Fortune Williams was not romantic ; at least, what romance |‘He can’t be heard of for a year at. least, and. it will be many was in her lay deep down, and came out in act rather than | years before he comes back. I wonder if he will come back word. She neither wept nor raved now cultivated any exter- rich. ‘They say he ‘will; quite a nabob, perhaps, and take a nal signs of a breaking heart. A little paler she grew, a little place in the Highlands, and invite us all—you too, Miss Wil- _ Quieter, but nobody observed this; indeed, it came to be one liams’ I once asked him, and he said, ‘Of course.’ Stop, you of her deepest causes of thankfulness that there was nobody to | are pouring my tea over into the saucer.” _observe anything—that she had no living soul belonging'to her, | This was the only error she made, but. went on filling the neither father, mother, brother, nor sister, to pity her or to | cups with a steady hand, smiling and speaking mechanically, blame her; since to think him either blamable or blamed|as people can sometimes. When tea was quite over, she ‘would have been the sharpest torture she could have known. | slipped away into her room, and was missing for a long time. She was saved that arid some few other things by being only |. So all was over. No more waiting for that vague ‘‘some- a governess, instead of one of Fate’s cherished darlings, nestled | thing to happen.” Nothing could happen now. He was far in a family home. She had no time to grieve, except in the | away across the seas, and she must just go back to her old dead of night, when ‘‘the rain was on the roof.” It so hap-| monotonous life, as if it had never been any different—as ifshe pened that, after the haar, there set in a season of continuous, | had never seen his face nor heard his voiee, never known the Sullen, depressing rain. But at night time, and for the-ten | blessing of his companionship, friendship, love, whatever it minutes between post hour and lesson hour—which she gener-| was, or whatever he had meant it to be. No, he could not ally passed in her own room—if her mother, who died when | have loved her; or to have gone away would have been—she she was ten years old, could have seen her, she would have said, | did not realize whether right or wrong—but simply impossible. ~My poor, child !” Once, wearying herself with helpless conjectures, a thought, Robet Roy had once involuntarily called her so, when by'ac- | sudden and sharp as. steel, went through-her heart. He was ‘cident one of her rough boys hurt her hand, and he himself] nearly thirty ; few lives are thus long without some sort of love bound ‘it up, with the indescribable tenderness which the strong|in them. Perhaps he was already bound to some other only know how to. show or feel, Well she’ remembered this ;| woman, and finding himself drifting into too pleasant intimacy indeed, almost everything he had said or done came back upon | with herself, wished to draw back in time. Such things had ‘her know—vividly, as we recall the wordsand looks of the dead | happened, sometimes almcst blamelessly, though most miser- —mingled with such a hungering pain, such a cruel ‘‘miss” of! ably to all parties. But with him it was not likely to happen. “him, daily and hourly, his companionship, help, counsel, | He was too clear-sighted, strong, and honest, He would .
Page 9
THE LAUREL BUSH. never ‘‘drift” into anything. What he did would be done with a calm deliberate will, incapable of the slightest deception either toward others. or himself Besides, he had at different times told her the whole story of his life, and there was no love in it ; only work, hard work, poverty, courage, and endurance, like her own. “No, he could never have deceived me, neither me nor any one else,” she often said to herself, almost joyfully, though the tears were running down. ‘‘ Whatever it was, it was not that. Iam elad—glad. I had far rather believe he never loved me than that he had been false to another woman for my sake. And I believe in him still ;. I shall always believe in him. He is perfectly good, perfectly true. And so it does not much mat- ter about me. I am afraid those young ladies who like plenty of lovers, who expect to be adored, and are vexed when they are not adored, and most nobly indignant when forsaken, will think very meanly of my poor Fortune Williams. They may console themselves by thinking she was not a young lady at all—only a woman. Such women are not too common, but they exist oc- casionally, And they bear their cross and dree their weird ; but their lot, at any rate, only concerns themselves, and has one advantage, that it in no way injures the happiness of other people. Humble as,she was, she had her pride. Ifshe wept, it was out of sight. If she wished herself dead, anda happy ghost, that by any means she might get near him, know where he was, and what.he was doing, these dreams came only when her work was done, her boys asleep. ‘Day never betrayed the secrets of the night, She; set to work every morning at her daily labors with a dogged persistence, neyer allowing herself a minute’s idleness wherein to sit down and mourn. And when, despite her will, she could not. quite conquer the fits of nervous irritability. that, came over herat times—when the children’s in- nocent voices, used to pierce her, like needles, and their inces- Sant questions, and perpetual company were almost more than she.could . bear—still, even then, all she did was to run away and, hide herself ..for. a, little, coming back. with a pleasant face and.,a.smooth ,. temper, Why . should she scold them, poor lambs?.. They, were all she had to love, or that loved her, And they did love her, with all their boyish hearts. One day, however—the: day before they all left.St. Andrews for England,. the two elder. to go to school, and the younger ones to return. with her to their maternal grandmother to Lon- don—David said something. which wondered her, vexed her, -made her almost thankful to be going away. She was standing, by, the, laurel bush, which ee had for her, a, strange fascination, and her hand was on the letter-box which. the. boys and Mr, Roy had made. , There was a childish Pleasure: in touching, it, or any thing he had touched. \“I hope, grandmamma. won't take away that box,” said Ao, ', “She ought to keep, it.in memory ‘of usand of Mr. Roy. How cleverly he made it! Wasn’t he, clever, now, Miss ‘Williams? % “Yes,” she answered, and no more. rege ve.got a better letter box than. yours,’ mysteriously. “Shall I show it.to you, Miss Williams? and perhaps, ’ with a. knowing look—the mischievous lad! and yet he was more loving and lovable than all the rest, Mr. Roy’s fa- vorite,-and hers——‘‘ perhaps. you might even find a letter in it. u many atime watching for a letter Cook, says she has seen . from your sweetheart, . Who: ishe?” ‘J have. none... Tell, cook. sl should ‘not talk such non- sense to little boys,” said the governess, gravely. But she felt hot from head to foot, and tuning, walked slowly in-doors. She did not go near the laurel bush again, After that, she was almost glad to. get away, among strange | people and strange places, where, Robert Roy’s name had never ibeenheard,...,'The, familiar places—hallowed as no_ other s in this. world could ever be—passec out of sight, and in “ahotbor week, her. six , anon happy life, at St. Andrews. had vanished, | is es ae 2: Ga Ww. wes one awaketh. ” etl was, her daily, gutside Ni ‘tO, "be enews the ean an this the Pa . siblis lw Tet bt said little Davis, . CHAPTER Iii. Wuat isa ‘‘ wrecked” life? One which the waves of inex- orable fate have beaten to pieces, or one that, like an unsea- worthy ship, is ready to go down in any waters? What most destroy us? the things we might well blame ourselves for, only we seldom do, our follies, blunders, errors, not counting ac-: tual sins? or the things for which we can blame nobody but: Providence—if we dared—such as our losses and griefs, our sicknesses of body and mind, all those afflictions which we call ‘the visitation of God?” Ay, and so they are, but not sent in wrath, or for ultimate evil. No amount of sorrow need make any human life harmful to: man or unholy before God, as a discontented, unhappy life: must needs be unholy in the sight of Him who in the myste-- rious economy of the universe seems to have one absolute law —He wastes nothing. He modifies, transmutes, substitutes, re-applies material to: new usés; but apparently by Him nothing is really ever lost,. nothing thrown away. Therefore I incline to believe, when I hear people talking of a ‘* wrecked” existence, cde whosoever is to blame, it is not Providence, Nobody could have Lsptied’ the term to Fortune Willits looking at her as she sat in the drawing-room window of a house at Brighton, ’ just where the gray of the Esplanade meets the green of the Downs—a ladies’ boarding-school, where she had in ‘her charge two pupils, left behind for the holidays, while the mistress took a few weeks’ repose.” She sat watching the sea, which was very beautiful, aseven: the Brighton sea can be sometimes. «Her eyes weré soft and calm ; her hands were folded on her black silk dress, her pretty little tender looking hands, upanged, vk she was still Miss Williams, still a governess. Buteven at thirty-five—and she had now Miaka that age, nay, passed it—she was not what. you would call ‘‘ old-maid- ish.” Perhaps because.the motherly instinct, naturally very strong in her, had developed more and more, She was one .of those governesses—the only sort who ought ever attempt to be governess—who really love children, ay, de- spité their naughtinesses and mischievousnesses and worrying ways? who feel that, after ‘all, these little ones are ‘‘of the kingdom ‘of heaven, and that the task of educating them for that kingdom somehow often brings us nearer to ourselves. ~ Her heart, always tender to children, had: gone out to them’ more and more évery year, especially after that fatal yea when. a than took it and broke it. No, not broke it, but threw it carelessly away, wounding it, 80° sorely, that it never could be’ quite itself again. bey ey Was a. true and warm and womanly heart still. She had never heard of him—Robert Roy—never once, any way, ‘since that Sunday afternoon when he said, Pill. writé to-morrow,” and did not write, but'let herdrop from him: altogether like a worthless thing, Cruel, somewhat, event ve mere acquaintance—but to her. Well, all -was past and gone, and the tide of years had flowed overit. Whatever it was, a mistake, a misfortune, OF * wrong nobody knew anything about it. And’ the wound was ‘even ‘healed, in -a’ sort of a’ way, ‘and chiefly by the’ unconcious ‘hands: of these little ‘‘ ministering angels, ” “who were angels that never hurt her, except by Biot fing their copy-books or not learning their lessons: ‘I know it may sound a ridiculous thing that a forlorn gov- erness should’ be comforted for a lost love by the tow of cane drén ; but’itis true to nature. Woman's lives have su ccessive other’ in natural’ gradation- feed hood’ in tot one of whi it, ordinarly, we regret the one t} it, to whitch ‘itis neverthe éss. impossible to-go ‘back. mrok Fortune’s life had had'none ofthese, excepting, wren t own ‘six months” “dream: of love and’ spring. ‘That being Bie, she fell back a) on autumn days and autumn” pleasures ‘whi | are véry ‘teal pleasures, after all.” *“As' she sat Ai e two little ‘girls aden against her fap. phases, each foltoveng the ood, wifehood,’ mother- —— ! | they were Andian children, unaccustomed to tendemess, and.
Page 10
10 THE LAUREL BUSH. had already grown very fond of her—there was a look in her face, not at all like an ancient maiden or a governess, but. al- most motherly. You see the like in the. face of the Virgin Mary, as the old monks . used to paint her, quaint, and not always lovely, but never common. or. coarse, and spiritualized by.a look of mingled tenderness and sorrow into something beyond all. beauty. This woman’s face had it, so that people who had known Miss , Williams asa girl were astonished to find her, as a middle-aged ‘woman, grown, ‘‘so good-looking.” ‘To which one of her pu- pils once answered, naively, ‘‘It is because she .looks so B00 5A But thiswas after ten years and more. Of. the first half of those years, the less that was.said, the better. She did not live; she merely endured life. . Monotony without, a constant aching ' -within—a restless gnawing want, a perpetual expectation, half hope, half fear; no. human, being, could bear all this without being the worse for it, or the better,, But the bitterness came forward, not at first. +s Sometimes her craving to hear the smallest tidings of him, only if he were alive or dead, grew into such an agony that, had it not been for here entire helplessness in the matter, she might have tried some means of; gaining information. But from his sudden change of plans, she was ignorant even of the name of the ship he had sailed by, the firm he had gone to. She could, do absolutely nothing, and learn nothing. Hers was something like the ‘‘ Affliction of Margaret,” that poem of Wadsworth’s which, when her little pupils recited it— as they often. did—made her ready to sob.out loud from the pang of its piteous reality: im “ T look for ghosts, but none will force Their way to me ; ’tis falsely said That there was ever intercourse Betwixt the living and the dead ; For surely then I should have sight Of him I wait for day and night With love and longings infinite.’’ Still, in the depths of her heart she did not believe Robert Roy was dead; for her finger was still empty of that ring—her mother’s ring—which he had drawn off, promising its return “* when he was dead or she was married.” This implied that he never meant to lose sight of her. Nor, indeed, had he wished it, would it have been very difficult to find her, these ten years having been spent entirely in one place, an obscure village in the south of Englamd, where she had oe as governess—first in the squire’s family, then the rec- tors. From the Dalziel family, where, as she had said to Mr. Roy, she hoped to remain for years, she had drifted away almost imme- diately ; within a few months. At Christmas old Mrs. Dalziel suddenly died; her.son had éturned home, sent his four boys to school in Germany, and gone back again to India, There was now, for the first time for half a century, not a sag Dalziel left in St. Andrews, ut though all the ties were broken connecting her with the dear old city, her boys still wrote to her now and then, and she to them, with a persistency for which her conscience smote her sometimes, knowing itwas not wholly for their sakes. But they had never been near her, and she had little expec- tation of seeing any of them ever again, since by this time she had lived long enough to find out how easily people do drift assunder, and lose all clew to each other, unless some strong, firm will or unconquerable habit of fidelity exists on one side or the other. Since the Dalziels she had only lived in the two families be- fore named, and had been lately driven from the last one by a catastrophy, if it may be called so, which had been the bitterest drop in her cup since the time she left St. Andrews, The rector—a widower, and a feeble, gentle invalid, to whom naturally she had been kind and tender, regarding him with much the same sort of metherly feeling as she had regarded. his children—suddenly asked her to become their mother in real- It was a greats shock and pang; almost a temptation ; for they all loved her, and wished to keep her. She would have been such a blessing, such a brightness in that dreary home. And to a woman no longer young, who had seen her youth pass without any brightness in it, God knows what an allure- ment it is to feel she has still the power of brightening other lives. . If Fortune had yielded—if she had said yes, and married the rector—it would have been hardly wonderful, scarcely blamable. Nor would it have been the first time that a good conscientious, tender-hearted woman has married a man for pure tender- ness. oy . But she did not do it ; not even when they clung around her —those forlorn, half-educated, but affectionate girls—entreat- ing her to ‘‘ marry papa, and make us all happy.” ot She could not—how couldshe? She'felt very’ kindly to him. He had her sincere respect, almost affection ; but when she looked into her own heart,. she found there was not in it one’ atom of love, never had been, for any man alive except Robert: Roy. .Whilé he was unmarried, for her to marry would be im-’ possible. - ; " , _ And so she had the wisdom and courage. to say to herself, and’ to them all, ‘‘ This can not be;” to put aside the cup of attain- able happiness, which might never have proved real happiness, because founded on an. insincerity. But the pain this cost was so great, the wrench of parting from her poor girls so cruel, that after it Miss Williams had a sharp’ illness, the first serious illness of her life. FEST YG YS She struggled through it, quietly and alone, in one of ‘those excellent ‘‘Governess’ Homes,” where every body was very kind to her—some more than kind, affectionate. It was strange, she often thought, what an endless amount of affection followed her wherevershe went. She was by no meanes one of those women who go about the world moaning that nobody loves them. Every body loved her, and she knew it—every body whose love was worth having—except Robert Roy. Still her mind never changed ; not even when, in the weak- ness of illness, there would come vague dreams of that peaceful rectory, with its quiet rooms and green garden ; of the gentle, kindly hearted father, and the two loving girls whom she could have made so happy, and perhaps won happiness herself in doing it. ‘‘T am a great fool, some people would say,” thought she, with a sad smile; ‘‘perhaps rather worse. Perhaps I am act- ing absolutely wrong in throwing away my chance of doing good. ButI cannot help it—I can not help it.” So she kept to her resolution, writing occasional notes she: had promised to write to her poor forsaken girls, without say- ing a word of her illness ; and when she grew better, though not strong enough to undertake a new situation, finding her money slipping away—though with her good salaries and small wants, she was not cs and had already begun to lay up for alonely old age—she accepted this temporary home at. Miss Maclachlan’s, at Brighton. , . Was it—so strange are the under-currents which guide one’s outward life—was it because she had found a curious charm in the old lady’s Scotch tongue, unheard for years? that the two little pupils were Indian children, and that the house was at the seaside ?—and she had never seen the sea since she left St. An- drews. It was like going back to the days of her youth to sit, as now. watching the sunshine glitter on the faraway ocean. The very smell of the sea-weed, the lap-lap of the little waves, brought back old recollections so vividly—old thoughts, some bitter, some sweet, but the sweetest generally overcoming the bitter- ness. “I have had all the joy that the world could bestow; I have lived—I have loved.” So sings the poet, and truly. Though to this woman love had brought not joy, but sorrow, still she had loved, and it had been the main stay and stronghold of her life, even though to outsiders it might have appeared little better than a delusion, a dream. Once, and by one, her whole nature had been drawn out, her ideal of moral’ right entirely satisfied. And nothing had ever shattered this ideal. She clung to it, as we cling to the memory of our dead children, who are children forever.
Page 11
THE LAURuwL BUSH. With a passionate fidelity she remembered all Robert Roy’s goodness, his rare and noble qualities, resolutely shutting her eyes to what she might have judged severely, had it happened to another person—his total, unexplained, and inexplicable de- sertion of herself. It was utterly irreconcilable with all she had ever known. of him, and being powerless to unravel it, she left it, just as we have to leave many a mystery in heaven and earth, with the humble’ cry, ‘‘I cannot understand—l love;””.. She loved him, that was all; and sometimes even yet, across hat desert of despair, stretching before and behind her, came a wild hope, almost a conviction, that she should meet him again, -somewhere, somehow.,, This day, even, when,. after an hour’s -delicious idleness, she roused herself to take. her little girls down to the beach, and sat on the shingle while they played, the ‘sound and sights of the sea brought old times so vividly back ‘that she could almost have fancied coming behind her the fami- liar) step, the) pleasant. voice, as. when Mr. Roy and his boys used to overtake her on the St. Andrews shore—Robert Roy, a young man, with his life all before him, as washers. . Now she “was; middle-eged,.and he—-he must be over forty by this time. How strange! ; “ Stranger still that there had never occurred to her one possi- - bility—that/he ‘‘was not,” that God had taken him; But this - het/heart: absolutely refused to accept. , Solong.as he. was in. it, | the world would-never be quite empty.to her... Afterward—. But,.as Isaid, :there are some things which can not be faced, and this was one of them. ted All else she had faced; long ago. She. did not grieve now. As she walked with her children, listening to their endless talk with that patient: sympathy which. made all .children love her, and which she often found. was.a better help to their education than dozens of lessons, there was on her face that peace"! ex- pression which is the greatest preservative of youth, the greatest antidote to change. And so it was no wonder that a tall lad, passing and repassing on the Esplanade with another youth, looked at her more than once with great curiosity, and at last advanced with hesitating politeness. **I beg your pardon, ma'am, if I mistake’; like a lady I once knew, and am now; looking for. Miss Williams?” ; dt ve “« My name is Williams, certainly ; and you ”—something in the curly light hair, the mischievous twinkle of the eye, struck her—‘‘you can not be, it is scarcely possible—David Dalziel?” ‘*But I jam, though,” cried the lad, shaking her hand.as if he would shake it off. ‘‘And I call myself very clever to have. remembered you, though I was such a little fellow when you left us, and I have only.seen your photograph since. . But you are not a bit altered—not one bit. And as I knew by. your last letter to Archy that you were at Brighton, I thought I'd risk it and speak. .|Hurra! how very jolly!” - ; : He had grown a handsome lad, the pretty wee Davie, an honest-looking lad too, apparently, and she was glad to see him. From the dignity of his eighteen years and five feet ten of height, he looked down upon the governess, and patronized her quite tenderly—dismissing his friend. and. walking home “but you. are so Are. you | with her, telling her on the way all his affairs and that of his rae with the volubility of little David Dalziel at St. Andrews. “‘No, I’ve not forgotten St. Andrews one bit, though I was so small.. I remember poor old grannie, and her cottage, and the garden, and the Links, and the golfing, and Mr, Roy. By- the-bye, what has become of Mr. Roy?” - The sucdenness of the question, nay,, the very sound of a name totally silent for so many years, made Fortune’s heart. throb till its beating was actual pain. .Then came a sudden desperate hope, as she answered: ‘“‘Tican not tell. I have never heard any thing of him. Have you?” ‘*No—yet, let me see. I think Archy once got a letter from him, a year.or so after he went away; but we lost. it somehow, and never answered it. . We have never heard any thing since.” Miss Williams sat down on one of the benches facing the 8ea, with a murmured excuse of being ‘‘tired.” One of her - little girls crept beside her, stealing a hand in hers, She held it fast, her own shook so; but gradually she grew quite herself © again, ‘I have been ill,” she explained, ‘-and can not walk time, isn’t it?” i: far. Let us sit down here a little. Mr. Roy, David?” ‘“Yes. Whata good fellow he was! We called ‘him Rob. Roy, I remember, but. only behind his back. He was strict, but he wasa jc'ly.old soul for all that. I believe I should know him again any day, as I did you. But perhaps he is dead; people die pretty fast abroad, and ‘ten years is a long You were speaking about ‘A long time. And you never got any more letters?” ‘“No; or if they did come, they were lost, being directed probably to the care of poor old grannie, as ours was. We thought it so odd, after she was dead, you know.” Thus the. boy chattered on—his ‘tongue had not shortened with his increasing inches—and every idle word sank down deep. in his old governess’s heart. Then it was only her whom Robert Roy had forsaken. He had written to his boys, probably would have gone on writing had they answered his letter. He was neither faithless nor for-. getful. With an ingenuity that might have brought to any lis- tener a smile or a tear, Miss Wllliams had the conversation round, again till she could easily ask moré concerning that one letter; but David remembered little or nothing, except it was: dated from Shanghai, for his brothers had had a discussion. whether Shanghai was in China or Japan, Then, bcy-like, they had forgotten the whole matter, ; “Yes, by this time éverybody has forgotten him,” thought: Fortune to herself, when, having bidden David good-by at her door and arranged to meet him again—he was on a visit at Brighton before matriculating at Oxford’ next term—she sat. down in her own room, with a strangely bewildered feeling. ‘Mine, all mine,” she said and her heart closed itself over him, her old friend at least, if nothing more, with a tenacity of ten- derness as silent.as it was strong. ¢ “p From that day, though she saw, and was determined hence- forward to see, as much as she could of yeang David Dalziel, she never once spoke to him of Mr, Roy. Still, to have the lad coming about her wa'ta pleasure, a fond link with the past, and to talk to him about his future was a. pleasure too. He was the one of all the four—Mr. Roy al- ways said so—who had ‘‘brains” enough to become a real student; and instead of following the others t) India, he was to go to Oxford and do his best there. His (rerman education had left him few English friends. He was an affectionate sim- ple-hearted lad, and now that his mischievous days were done, was taking to thorough hardwork. He attached himselfto his: old governess with an enthusiaism that a lad in his teens often conceives for a; woman still young enough to be sympathetic, and intelligent enough to guide withoutiruling the errant fancy ofthatage. She, too, soon grew veryfond ofhim. It made herstrangely happy, the sudden reft of sunshine out of the never-- oROB ER heaven of her youth, now almost as far off as heaven. itself, : . | I have said she never spoke to David about Mr. Roy, nor did she; but sometimes he spoke, and then she listened. It seemed to cheer her for hours, only to hear that name. She grew stronger, gayer, younger. Everybody said how much good the sea wasedoing her, and so it was; but not exactly in the way people thought. ‘The spell of silence upon her life had been broken, and though she knew all sensible persons would esteem her in this, as in that other matter, a great ‘‘ fool,” still she could not stifle a vague hope that some time or other her blank life might change. Every little wave that swept in from the mysterious ocean, the ocean that’ lay between them two, seemed to carry a whispering message and lay it at her feet, ‘Wait and be patient, wait and be patient.” . She did wait, and the message came at last. One day David Dalziel called, on one of his favorite daily rides, and threw a newspaper down at her door, where she was standing. ‘‘ An Indian paper my mother has just sent. thing in it that will interest you, and—” His horse galloped off with the unfinished sentence ; and supposing it was something concerning his family, she put the paper in her pocket to read at leisure while she sat on the beach. She had almost forgotten it, as she watched the waves, full o There’s some-
Page 12
12 ; THE LAUREL BUSH. liams made a faint movement to: snatch it out, then “diggtised the gesture in some way, and silently watched it burn.» 1 don’t quite see the use of writing. He’s a family ‘man now, and must have forgotten all about his old friends. _ Don’t you think so?” ‘Perhaps; only he was not the sort. of person easily to forget.” She could defend him now ; she could speak of him, and did speak more than once afterward, when David referred to the matter.. And then the lad quitted Brighton for Oxford, and she was left in her old loneliness. ’' A loneliness which I will not speak of’ She’ herself never re- ferred to that time, After it, she roused: herself to begin her life anew in a fresh home, to work hard, not only for: daily bread, but for that humble independence which she was deter- mined to win béfore the dark hour when the most helpful become helpless, and the most independent are driven to fall.q piteous burden into the charitable hands of friends or strangers—a thing to her so terrible that to save herself from the: possibility of it, shé who had ‘never leaned upon anybody,:: never had anybody to lean on, became her one almost/morbid desire, She had no dread of a solitary old age, but»an old age be- holden to either public or private charity was to her intolerable ; and she had ‘now few years left her to work in—a governess’s life wears women out very fast. “She determined to! begim ‘to work again immediately, laying by as much) as: possible yearly ‘against the days when she could work no‘more ; consulted Miss Maclachlah, who was most kind; and then ‘sought, and was just about going tc, another situation, with: the highest: salary she had yet earned, whén an utterly unexpected change altered everything. : that pleasant idleness and dreamy peace so new in her life, and’ which the sound of the sea so often brings to peaceful hearts, who have no dislike to its monotony, no dread of those solemn thoughts of infinitude, time and eternity, God and death and love, which it unconsciously gives, and which I think is the se- Sit why some people say they have ‘‘sucha horror of the sea- “side.” She had none ; she loved it, for its sights and sounds were mixed up with all the happiness of her young days. She could have sat all this sunshiny morning on the beach doing’ abso- dutely nothing, had she not remembered David’s newspaper ; which, just to please him, she must look through. She did so, ‘and in the corner, among the brief list or names in the obitu- ‘ary, she saw that of ‘‘Roy.” Not himself, as she soon found, -as soon as she could see to read, in the sudden blindness that came over her. Not himself. Only his child. “‘On Christmas-day, at Shanghai, aged three and a half years, Isabella, the only and beloved daughter of Robert and. Isabella Roy. : He was alive, then. ‘That was her first thought, almost a joyful one, showing how deep had been her secret dread of the contrary. And he was married. His ‘‘only and beloved daughter!” Oh! how beloved she could well understand. Married, and a father ; and hisghild was dead. Many may think it strange (it would be in most women, Dutit was not in this woman) that. the torrent of tears which burst forth, after her first few minutes of dry-eyed anguish, was Jess for herself, because he was married and she had lost. him, than for him, because he had had a child and lost it,—he who was so tender of heart, so fond of children, ‘The thought of his grief brought such a consecration with it, that her grief —the ,\’ {most women might be expected to feel on reading ‘suddenly in a newspaper that the man they loved was married to another—did not come. At least no at once. It did not burst upon her, as sorrow does sometimes, like a wild beast out of a jungle, slaying and devouring. _ She was not slain, not even stunned. After a few minutes it seemed to her as if it had happened long ago—as if she had always known it must happen, and was not astonished. ' é; His ‘only and beloved daughter!” The words sung them- selves in and out of her brain, to the murmur o thesea. How | la: he must have loved the child! Sh could almost see him with | left. a letter for her)’ A ET URE OH VEINS Ori} the little one in his arms, or watching over her ‘bed, or stand-|. - Twill put it in’ my pocket and ‘read it-im the train,” she ing beside her small coffin. Three years and a half old! |'said, with a slight’ ‘change of color. . For she»recognided the Then he must haye been married a good while—long and long | handwriting’ of that good man who had loved het; and»whom after she had gone on thinking of him as no righteous woman | she could not love. r beedmomer ever can go on thinking of another woman’s husband. -*Better read it now. No time like ‘the presént;”: observéd One burning blush, one shiver from head to foot of mingled} Miss Malachlan. > ‘~~ © ‘stis tid’ B tos'stx agony and shame, one ‘cry ot piteous despair, which nobody} Miss Williams did'so.’° As soon as ‘she was fairly started) anid heard but God—and she was not afraid of His hearing—and the | alone in the fly, she. opened it, with hands slightly trembling, struggle was over. “She saw Robert Roy, with his child in his | for she was ‘touched! by the persistence of the good ‘rector,’ and arms, with his wife by his side, the same and yet a totally dif-| his faithfulness to her, a poor governess, ‘when: he’ might :have ferent man, : Ai married, as they said in his neighborhood, ‘‘any:body.” . He She, too, when she rose up and tried to walk, tried to teel| would never marry any body fhow—he was dying... | 2°) that it was the same sea, the same shore, the same earthand! ‘‘I have come to feel how wrong Iwas,” he wrote; ‘‘in -ever sky, was 4 totally’ different» woman. Something was lost, | trying to change our happy relations ‘together. ; «I have suffered something never tobe retrtved on this side the grave, but also | for this—so have we all, But it is now too late-for regret... My something was found. ih ki time has come. Do not grieve yourself by imagining, it has ‘*He is alive,” she said to herself, with the same strange |come the faster through any decision of yours, but by'slow, in- joy ; for now she knew where he was, and what had happened | evitable disease, which the doctors have. only lately:discovered. to him, The silence of all these years was broken, the dead | Nothing could have saved'me. Be ‘satisfied that there is no had come to life again, and the lost, in a sense, was found. cause for you to give yourself one moment's pain,” ’ Be she _ Fortune Williams rose up and ‘walked, in more senses than | sobbed over’ those shaky lines, more even than over) the news- one ; went round to fetch her little girls, as she had promised, | paper lines which she had read that sunshiny morning: on. the from that newly opened delight of children, the Brighton|shore!) ‘‘Remember only that you: made: me very happy— Aquarium ; staid a little with them, admiring the fishes; and/me and all mine—for years ; ‘that I loved you, as even at my when she reached home, and found David Dalziel in the draw-|age a man can love; as I shall love you to the end, which can ing-room, met him and thanked him for bringing her the news-| not be very far off now. . Would you dislike coming to:see me paper. . just once again?’ My girls’ will be so very glad, and nobody ‘*T suppose it was on account of that obituary notice of Mr. |will ‘remark it, for ‘nobody knows any thing. Besides, what Roy’s child,” said she, calmly naming the name now. ‘What! matter? Iam dying. Come, if you can, within a week or so ; asad thing! But still I am glad to know he is alive and well | they tell me I may last thus Icng. And I want to consult with So will you be. Shall you write to him ?” you about my children. Therefore I will not say good-by now, «Well, I don’t know,” answered the lad, carelessly crump-| only good-night, and God bless you.” bt ing up the newspaper and throwing it on the fire. Miss Wil-| But it was good-by, after all. Though she did not wait the r) DULL CHAPTER IV. Tue fly was already at the door, and Miss Williams, with her small luggage, would in five minutes have departed, followed by the good wishes of all the household, from Miss Maclach- lan’s school to her new situation, when the postman passed’ and
Page 13
: THE LAUREL BUSH. bce a TS SRR SSR TTS A SS RS PE RT SPAS TS RSS SEs REA SCRCERAENSTR SEIS TE ESSE TNTONNT week; indeed, she waited for nothing, considered nothing, except her-gratitude to this good. man— the only man who had loyed her—and_ her affection for the two girls, who would soon be fatherless; though she sent a telegram from Brighton to say she was coming, and arrived within twen- ty-four hours; still—she came too late, When she reached the village she heard that his sufferings were all oyer; and a few yards from his garden wall, in the shade of the church-yard lime-tree, the old sexton was busy reopening, after fourteen years, the family grave, where he was to be laid beside his wife the day after to-morrow.. His two daughters, sitting alone together in. the melancholy house, heard Miss. Williams enter, and ran to meet her. With a feeling of nearness and tenderness she had scarcely ever felt for any human being, she clasped them close, and let them weep their hearts out. in her motherly arms. Thus the current of her whole life was changed; for when Mr. Mosely’s will was opened, it was found that, besides leaving Miss Williamsa handsome legacy, carefully explained as being given ‘‘in gratitude for care of his children,” he had chosen her as their guardian, until they came of age or married,entreating herto reside with them, and desiring them to pay herall the respect due to “‘a nearand dear relative.” The tenderness with which he had arranged. every thing, down to the minutest points, for them and herself, even amidst all his bodily sufferings, and in face.of the supreme hour—which he had met, his daughters said, with a mar- vellous calmness, even joy—touched Fortune, as perhaps, nothing had ever touched her in all her life before... When she stood with her two poor orphans beside their father’s grave, and returned with them to the desolate house, vow- ing: within sherself to be to them, all but in name, the mother he had wished her to be, this sense of duty—the strange’ néw duty which had suddenly come -to, fill: her empty life--was so strong, that she forgot,every thing else —even Robert Roy. : le And for months afterward—months of anxious business, involving the leaving of the Rectory, and the taking of a temporary house in: the Mar until they could decide where finally to settle—Miss Williams had scarcely a mo- ‘mentor a thought to spare for any beyond. the vivid pres- ent. Past'and future faded away together, except so: far as concerning her girls. ¢ 63 She had no'time to think of herself at ali...» The great change which had come, rendering’ it impossible for her to let herself feel as she had‘ used to feel, dream as she used to dream, for years and years past. That one pathetic line, _' ““Tdarena think 0” Jamie, for that’ wad be a sin,” _ | burned itself into her heart, and needed nothing more. **My children! I must only,love my children now,” was her continual thought, and she believed she did so. Jt was not until spring came, healing the. girls’ grief as naturally as it covered their father’s grave with violets. and pees and making them cling a little less to home and er,.a little more to the returning pleasures of their youth, for they were two pretty girls, well-born, with tolerable - fortunes, and likely to be much sought after—not until the spring days left her much alone, did Fortune’s mind recur to an idea which had struck her once, and then. been. set aside—to write to Robert Roy, Why should she not?, Just a few friendly lines, telling him how, after long years, she had seen his name in the papers ; how; sorry-she. was, and et glad—glad to think he was alive and well, and married; iw she sent all kindly wishes-to his wife and. himself, and so on. In’ short, the sort of letter that anybody might write or receive, whatever had been the: previous link. be- tween them. ~~ 3: od And she wrote it on an April day, one of those first days of spring which make young hearts throb. with a yague de- light; a nameless hope; and older.ones—but is there any age when hope is quite dead? Ithink not, even to those who know that only the spring that will ever come to them will dawn in-the-world everlasting. | When her girls, entering, offered to post her letter, and unhappy life. to.receive visitors now and then: among the F broken;masts, maybe, but still did not Miss Williams answered gently that she would rather post it herself, as it required a foreign stamp, how little they uessed all that lay underneath, and how, over the first few mes, her hand had shaken so that she had to copy it three times. - But the address, ‘‘ Robert Roy, Esquire, Shanghai,” —all she could put, butshe had little doubt it would find him—was written with that firm hand which he had often so admired, saying he wished she could teach his boys to write as well. Would he recognize it? Would he be glad orsorry, or only indifferent ? Had the world changed him? or, if she could look at him now, would he be the same Robert Roy—simple, true, sincere and brave—every inch a man. and a gentleman, ~ . ne te For the instant the old misery came back ; the sharp, sharp pain; but she smothered it down, His déad child, his living unknown wife, came between, with their soft ghostly hands. He was still himself; she hoped absolutely unchanged; but he was. hers no more. Yet that strange yearning, the same which had impelled Mr. Moseley to write and say, ‘“Come and see me before I die,” seemed. impell- ing her to stretch a hand out across the seas—‘‘ Haye you forgotten me? I hayenever forgotten you.” = As she passed. through the church-yard on her way to the village, and. saw the rector’s graye lie smiling in the evening sunshine, Fortune thought what astrange lot hers had been. .The man who had loved her, the man whom she had loved, were equally lost to her; equally dead and buried. And yet she lived still—her busy; active, and not It was God’s will, all; and it was best, Another six months went by, and she still, remained in the same place, though talking daily of leaving. ., They began to go into society again, she and her girls, an _Test, David Dalziel, who had. preseryed. his. affectionate aon y even when he went back to college, and had begun to, discover somehow that the direct road from Oxford to everywhere was through this secluded village. Tamafraid Miss Williams was not as alive.as she ought to have been to this fact, and to the other faet:that He and Jannetta were not quite children now } but she: let the young people be happy, and was happy with them, after er fashion, Still, hers, was less happiness than peace ; the deep peace which a storm-tossed vessel, finds, when kindly fate has towed it into harbor ; with torn. sails ‘and safe, never needing to go to J SER AOE MOR off? food x, ai ialoeuds e logaidie bel he had come. to that point in life when. , we cease.to be to, us. beyond what.has happened... She told herself that she Deak teen to der susie from Shanghai, if in- deed any came; nevertheless, she had ascertained what time the return: mail would. be likely to bring it..And almost punctual to the day, a letter arrived with, the postmar ‘« Shanghai.” Not,.this-Jetter, nor, his anda Ang, at; all. And, besides, ,it was addressed to, Mrs..Williams.”. A shudder of fear, the only fear which coul strike her now--that, he might, be. dead—made Fortune. stand irres- olute a, moment, then. go up to her own room before she opened it,.., +). WE, ‘“MADAM,—— ‘afraid of evil tidings,” since nothing is py, 16 nape I beg. to apologize, for .haying.,read, nearl through your loticr batons commraneuee that it was. ope meant for me, but probably for another Mr. ; Robert, Roy, who left this place.not long after I came here, and. between. whom, and myself some confusion. arose, till we. became in- timate, and discovered that we..were, most likely distant,. oe distant, cousins. ) i ) 9 said e came from St. Andrews, and was head clerk in a firm here, doing a very good business in tea, and ‘silk, until they mixed themselyes upin the opium trade, which Mr. Roy, with one or two more of our community here, thought so objectionable that at last he threw up his situation and de- termined to seek his fortunes in Australia. . It was a great pity, for he was in a good way to get on rapidly; but everybody who knew. him agreed that. it was just the sort of thing that he was sure to do, and ~
Page 14
‘14 THE LAUREL BUSH. = some respected him highly for doing it. He was indeed what the. Scotch call ‘weel respeckit’. wherever he went. “But he was a reserved man; made few intimate friends, though those he did: make were’ warmly attached to him. My family were; and thozgh itis now five years since we have heard anything. of or from him, we remémber him still.” Five years! The letter dropped from her hands. Lost and found, yet, found and lost. »What might not haye happened to. him i in five years? But she read, on, dry-eyed: women do not weep very much or very easily at her age, “‘T will do my utmost, madam, that your, letter shall reach the hands for which I arn sure it was intended; but that may ‘take some time, my only clue to Mr. Roy’s whereabouts being the chance that he has left his address with our branch house ‘at Melbourne. -I can not think he is dead, because such tid- ‘ings pass rapidly from one to another in our colonial communi- ties, and he was too much beloved for his death to excite no ‘concern. ~ «T ‘make this long explanation becausé it strikes me You “may be a ‘lady, -4 friend’ or relative of Mr. Roy’s,. concerning whom he employed me to make some inquiries, only you Say ‘so very little—absolutely nothing—of yourself in. your letter, t I can not be at all certain if you are the same person. “Wwas''a gov erhéss in a family named Dalziel, living at St. An- aed e'said he had written to that, family repeatedly, but ‘got. no. answer, and then asked me, if’ anything resulted from my inquiries, to write to him to. the caré of our Melbourne house. “But fio news ever came, and I never wrote to him, for which fny wife still blames me exceedingly. She thanks you, dear madam, forthe kind things you say about our poor child, though meant for another person, We have seven bo . but little Bell was our youngest, and cur heart's delight. “She died fter six houts’, illness. é ‘Again begging you to pardon my uncouscious Gifeiige in ‘reading a stranger’s letter, and the length of this one, I remain your As obedient servant, RR oY. ‘tween } thirty-five and forty,’ tall; dark-haired, walked witha slight! stoop... | He had, I, believe, no near relatives whatever, ants I nevér heard of his having ‘been, married.” oy Unadestionably: Miss Willidms did‘ well in retiring to her Whitin Bet hd locking the door before she opened the letter. It ‘is 4 mistake to’su eee’ ‘that at thirty-five or forty—or what age? “womeén céase to I once was walking with: an old maiden ata ‘of the very best man I ever’ knew; whom I saw a OC deal of when I was a girl.” And to the natural question, “young.” Her voice'kept its ordinary tone, but there came a slight fish on’ the cheek, a sudden quiver over the whole with- = y another word, re I say a word’ now of Fortune Williams; when’ she hile began for her again—life’ ona new tid yet on the old onidat 9 ‘for it was'still waiting, ‘waiting—she seemed to be among “was hot nowin that absolute darkness anid silence Which it used wb bei © “etill somewhere, and’ hope never could wholly die out of the ~ world so long’as he was init. ‘His ‘caréer, too, if not prosper- him content—content and proud. For if he had failed in his ‘fortunes, was it not from doing what she would most have wished ly, talking of a character in « book. ‘‘He reminded me,” jae alive é answered: ‘*No; ‘he died’ while he was still face—she was some years past seventy~—gnd I felt I could ad 5 through and wholly taken ‘in itis contents of this those ’ whose lotit is ‘‘stand and wait” all their days: But'it o She knew that i Ha ‘eal Heettias probability Robert Roy was alive ous in wordly things, had been one to make any heart that loved him to‘do—the right, at all costs?’ Nor had’ he quite forgotten “her, since even "so late as’ five years back le had been making inquiries about her. ‘Also, he was then unmartied. » But human nature is weak, and human hearts are so hungry ‘sometimes, "0 **Qh, if he had only lived me, and told me so ‘ some-times, a8 piteously as fifteen years ago. 4 she said, She ‘which Miss Williams was’ the head ‘went on its innocent -way, always seven,” she suggested, smilng. But ‘the tears | which followed were not, as then, a.storm of passionate despair ‘only a quiet, sorrowful rain. For what could, she do? Nothing. Now, as ever, her part seemied just, to fold her hands and endure.’ If alive, he might be found some day ; but now she could not find hiin—oh, if she could !' ‘Had she been the man and he thé woman—nay, had she been still herself, a poor, lonely governess, having to earn every crumb of her own bitter bread; yet knowing that he: loved her, might, not things have been’ different? Had she belonged to him, they would never have Tdst dé another. She would have sought him, as Evangeline sought Gabriel, half the world over, And little did het.two girls imagine, as’'they'called ‘her down stairs that night, secretly wondering what important business could make ‘‘Auntié” keep tea waiting fully five’ minutes, and set her after tea to read some of the pretty ““poetty, , especially Longfellow’s, which they had a fancy for—littlé did ‘they think, those ‘two: happy creatures, listening to their’ middle-aged gov- erness, who read 'so well that. ‘sometimes her voiee: actually: fal- tefed over thé lines,. how there was being transacted under ‘their very: €yés a’ stoty which’ in ‘its ‘constant anguish of patience” was Scarcély less pathetic than that of Acadia.: Fof ‘nearly a'year' after that letter came ‘the. little. family of planing yet never aerated Hehaies, sr at last fate drove thet to it): ‘Neither Helen nor Janetta were very healthy’ ginis anit bi: inst a London doctor gave as his absolute fiat: that: they must cease: to live in their warm inland village, and migrate, for some years: at any rate} to a bracing sea-side place. Whereupon David Dalziel, who had / somehow established himself as‘ the one masculine adviser of the family, suggested St. Andrews. Bracing enough it was, at any rate: he remem- ‘bered the winds’ used almost to cut hig nose. off.’ And it was such a nice place too, so pretty, with sucheéxcellent society. He was sure the young ladies would find it delightful, . Did | Miss Williams remember the walk by the shore, enti the golfing o P.SiLought to: say that:this Mr. Robert Roy seemed be- seas the Links? “Quite: as well ‘as you:.could hve! done, at the peer age of ‘Why are yous vey anxious: we'should:go to liveiat:St. Andrews?” The young fellow blushed all over his. kindly eager face, and then frankly owned he had a motive. His grandmother's cot- tage, which she had left to him, the youngest and her pet al- ways, was now unlet. He. meant, perhaps, to'go-and live at it himself when—when. he was of age and could/afford. it ;. but‘ in ; the mean time: he was a poor solitary bachelor, and—and—— ‘And you would Jike us.to. keep, your, nest warm for. you till you can, claim. jit? You want. us. for your, tenants, a Davie ?” ‘< Just that.’ You've hit it:' Couldn’t wish better. ' [In fact, Ihave alteadywritten to ay trustees to drive the hardest’ par ye possible.” Which was an ingesious sodifieation of the tmnth; as | ishe afterward found; ‘but evidently the: lad had eat) he: héart upon the thing. ‘And'she? | At first she Chad! shrank acl fone the pian with Pe shiver Mienione of fear’ .It was’ like’ having to meet face to face someé- thing—-some one—long dead. To walk among the old famil- iar places, to see the old familiar sea and ‘shoré, nay, to live in the ‘very same’ house, haunted, as houses are sometimes, every room. and every nook: ‘with ghotte—yet with onal Annocent ghosts. ’Could she bear it? There are some people who have: an - actual dectbs of the past—who' the moment a thing ceases to .be pleasurable fly from it, would willingly bury it out -of sight for ever. | But. others have no fear of their harmless dead—dead hopes, mem-. ories, loves—can sit’ by a grave-side, or look. behind them ata dim spectral shape without grief, without Bi only with tenderness. This woman could.’ « After a long, wakeful night, spent/in very | sexions thoughts for every one’s good, not excluding: her own—since there isa . certain — beyond which: one has no right to forget one’s. . self, and perpetual martyrs rarely make yery pleasant heads of | families —she said to her girls next mronninig’ that she, thought "
Page 15
THE LAUREL BUSH. @ 15 David Dalziel’s brilliant idea had a great deal of sense in it ; St. Andrews was a very nice place, and the cottage there. would exactly suit their finances, while the tenure upon which he pro- posed they should hold it (from term.to term) would also fit in with their undecided future; because, as. all knew, whenever Helen or Janetta married each would just,take her fortune and go, leaving Miss Williams with her little legacy, above want certainly, but not exactly a millionaire. ) These and other points she set before them in her practical fashion, , just.as if her heart did. not. leap—sometimes, with pleasure, sometimes with pain—at the very thought-of St. An- drews, and as if to see herself sit.daily.and hourly. face to face with her old self, the ghost of her own youth, would be a quite easy thing. The girls were delighted... They left.all to Auntie, as was their habit to do. Burdens naturally fall upon. the. shoulders fitted for them, and which. seem. even to haye.a faculty for drawing them down, there.. Miss Williams’s new duties had developed in hera whole range of new qualities, dormant dur- ing her governess life. Nobody knew better than she how to manage and guide a family. The girls soon felt that Auntie might have been a mother all her.days, she was so thoroughly motherly, and they gave up everything into her hands. So the whole matter was settled, David rejoicing exceedingly, and considering it ‘‘jolly fun,” and quite like a bit of a play, that his former governess should come back as_ his tenant, and inhabit the old familiar cottage. ; “And Pll take a run over to see you as soon as:the long vacation begins, just to teach the young ladies golfing, Mr. Roy taught all us boys, you know.; and we’ take that very walk he used to take us, across the Links and aiong the sands to the Eden. Wasn’t it the river Eden, Miss Williams? I am sure [remember it. Ithink I am very good at remember- ing. ced € *e ** Very.” . Other people were also ‘‘ good at remembering.” During the first few weeks after they settled down at St. Andrews the girls noticed that Auntie became excessively pale, and was sometimes quite ‘‘ distrait” and bewildered-looking, which was little wonder, considering all she had todo and to arrange. But she got better in time. The cottage was so sweet, the sea So fresh, the whole place so charming. Slowly Miss Williams’s ordinary looks returned—the ‘‘good” looks which her girls so energetically protested she had now, if never before. They never allowed her to confess herself old by caps or shawls, or any of those pretty temporary hindrances to the march of Time. She resisted not; she let them dress her as they pleased, in a reasonable way, for she felt they loved her; and as to her age, why she knew it, and knew that nothing could alter it, so what did it matter? She smiled, and tried to look as nice as she could, for her girls’ sake. I suppose there are such things as broken or breaking hearts, €ven at St. Andrews, but it is certainly not a likely place for them. They have little chance against the fresh, exhilarating air, Strong as new wine; the wild sea waves, the soothing sands, giving with health of body wholesomeness of mind. By-and- by the busy world recovered its old face to Fortune Williams— not the world as she once dreamed of it, but the real world, as she had fought through it all these years. a | was ever a fighter, so one fight more!” as she read some- 1 3 in the ‘‘pretty” posty her girls were always asking for —read steadily, even when she came to the last verse in that passionate ‘‘ Prospice :” | | “ Till, sudden, the worst Ge oe meee 8 &. i esha dwindle, shai blend, voices that rave change, 8 ecome Giken sctietaep-avel ia aga u my sou | ix tod "And with God be the ors a on re To that life to come, during all the burden and heat of the da (no, the:afternoon, a time, faded, yet hot and busy still, whic 1s often a very trying bit of woman’s life) she now often began yearningly to look. To meet him again, even in old age, or turns the best to the brave, then a joy, with death between, was her only desire.. Yet she did her duty still, and enjoyed all she could, knowing that one by one the years were hurrying onward, and the night coming, ‘‘in» which no man can work,” Faithful to his promise, about the middle of July David Dal- ziel appeared, in overflowing spirits, having done well at college. He was such a boy still in character and behavior ; though—as he carefully informed the family—now twenty-one and a. man, expecting to be treated as such, .He was their landlord too, and drew up the agreement in his own name, meaning to be a lawyer, and having enough to. live on—something better than bread and salt—‘‘till I.can earn a fortune, as I certainly mean to. do some day.” And he looked at Jenetta, who. looked down on the parlor carpet—as young people will.. Alas! I fear that the eyes of her anxious friend and governess was not half wide enough open to the fact that these young folk were no longer boy and girls, and that things might happen—in fact, were almost certain to happen—which had happened to herself in her youth—making life not quite easy to her, as it seemed to be to those two bright girls, Yet they were so bright, and their relations. with David Dal- ziel were so frank and free—in fact the young fellow himself was such a thoroughly good fellow, so very difficult to shut her door against, even if she had thought of so doing. But she did not. She let him come and go, ‘‘ miserable bachelor” as he proclaimed, himself, with all kith and kin across the seas, and cast not a thought to the future, or to the sad necessity which sometimes occurs to parents and guardians—of shutting the stable door a/er the steed is stolen, , Especially as, not long after David appeared, there happened a certain thing—a very small thing to all but her, and yet to her it was, forthe time being, utterly overwhelming, — It ab- sorbed all her thoughts into one maddened channel, where they writhed and raved and dashed themselves blindly against inevitable fate. For the first time in her life this patient woman felt as ifendurence were wof the right thing ; as if wild shrieks of pain, bitter outcries against Providence, would be somehow easier, better : might reach His throne, so that He might listen , and hear. e " The thing was this. One day, waiting for some one beside the laurel bush at her gate—the old familiar bush, though it had grown and grown till its branches, which used. to drag on the gravel, now covered the path entirely—she overheard David explaining to Jeannetta how he and his brothers and Mr. Roy had made the wooden letter-box, which actually existed still, though in very ruinous condition. al ‘‘And no wonder, after fifteen years and more. It is fully that old, isn’t Miss Williams? You will have to superanuate it shortly, and return to the old original letter-box—my letter- bow which I remember so well. I do believe I could find it still.” Kneeling down, he thrust his hand through the thick barri- cade of leaves into the very heart of the tree. ‘*T’ve found it ; I declare I’ve found it ; the identical hole in the trunk where I used to put all my treasures—my ‘ magpie’s nest,’ as they called it, where I hid every thing I could find. What a mischievous young scamp I was !” ‘‘Very,” said Miss Willams, affectionately, laying a gentle hand on his curls—‘‘ pretty” still, though cropped down to the frightful modern fashion. Secretly she was By ts proud of him, this tall young fellow, whom she had had on her lap many a time, “Curious it all comes back to me—even to the very last thing I hid here, the day before we left, which was a letter.” , of letter !”—Miss Williams slightly started—‘‘what let-- ter ?’ _ “One I found lying under the laurel bush, quite hidden by its leaves. It was all soakec! with rain. _ I dried it in the sun, and then put it in my letter-box, <slling nobody, for I meant to deliver it myself at the hall door with a loud ring—an Eng- lish postman’s ring. Our Scotch one used to blow his horn, | een, Pemeranes ean ¥ grot svrit ow by ‘“ Yes,” said Miss Williams, She was leaning against the fa~ tal bush, pale to the very lips, but her veil was down—nobody *,
Page 16
16 saw. ‘‘ What sort ofa letter was it, David? Who was it to? Did you notice the handwriting?” “Why, I was such a little fellow,” and he looked up in won- der and'slight concern, ‘‘how could I remember? Some let- ter that somebody had dropped, perhaps, in taking the rest out of the box. It could not matter—certainly not now. You would not bring my youthful misdeeds up against me, would you?” And he turned up a half-comical, half-pitiful face. -Fortune’s first impulse—what was it? She hardly knew. But her second was that safest. easiest thing—now grown into the habit and refuge of her whole life—silence. ‘© No, it certainly does not matter now.” A ‘deadily sickness came over her. What if this letter was Robert Roy’s, asking her that question which he said no man ought ever to aska woman twice? And she had neverseen it —never answered it. So, of course, two whole lives—had been destroyed, and by a mere accident, the aimless mischief ofa child’s innocent hand. - She could never prove it, but it might have been so. Arid, alas! alas! God, the merciful God, had allowed it to be sc. Which was the worst, to wake up suddenly and find that our life has been wrecked by our own folly, mistake, or sin, or that ithas been done for us either diréctly by the hand of Provi- dence, or indirectly through some innocent—nay, possibly not innocent, but intentional—hand? In both cases the agony is equally sharp—the sharper because irremediable. “All these thoughts, vivid as lightning; ‘and as rapid, darted through poor Fortune’s brain during the few moments that she stood with her hand ‘on Davie’s ‘shoulder, while he drew from his magpie’s nést a heterogeneous mass of rubbish—pebbles, snail shells, bits of glass and china, fragments even of broken toys. % ’* Just look there.’ What ghosts of my childhood, as people would say!» Dead’ and. buried; though.” And’ he laughed merrily—hé in the full tide and glory of his youth. ) Fortune Williams lookéd down on his happy face. This lad that really loved her would not‘have hurt her for the world, and her determination’ was made. Heshould never know any thing. Nobody should’ever knew any’ thing. The ““dead and buried” of fifteen years ago must be dead and ‘buried forever. idee she said ‘‘just out of curiosity, put your hand down tot ¥ bottom ‘Of that: hole, ‘and sée if you can fish up the mysteftious'letter.”" = 9 & | Then she waitéd; just as one would wait ‘at the edge of some long“elosed’gtave to see if the dead could possibly be claimed as Our deal é¥en if but a‘hind ul-of unhonored bones, ‘eee! . f OF 2D TOD CHAPTER VW," seh. VIoV < nn 7 i - “« Shall vel febbid sti sharpest pathos blight us, doing no wrong ?” ih UG JOTIRL SOI TDM PINs ids - _ So «writes our! greatest ‘living “poet; ‘in’ one of: the nobles’ poems he'‘éverpenned: ) And ) cankerof- human’ existence is not misery, butsin) 6 9 _ After the: first cruel pang; the bitter‘wail after : her lost life— and’ we-‘have here but one life to lose !—her Jost: happiness; for’ ~ she «knew: now: that though she . might /be very peaceful,’ very hodon——nw r tod iad zqil nev off of slag sed fe ‘speaks truth. "The ‘real THE LAUREL BUSH. content, no real happiness ever had come, ever could come to her in this world, except Robert Roy’s love—after this, Fortune sat down, folded her ‘hands, and bowed her head to the waves of sorrow and kept sweeping over her, not for one day or two days, but for many days and weeks—the anguish, not of pa- tience, but regret—sharp, stinging, helpless regret. They came rolling in, those remorseless billows, just like the long break ers on the sands of St. Andrews. Hopeless to resist, she could only crouch down and let them pass, ‘‘ All ‘Thy waves have gone over me.” Of course this is spoken metaphorically. Outwardly, Miss Williams neither sat still nor folded her hands. She was seen every where as usual, her own proper self, as the world knew it; but underneath all that was the self that she knew, and God knew. No one ever could have known, except Robert Roy, had things been different from what they were—from what God had apparently willed them to be. | A sense of inevitable fate came over her. It was now nearly two years' since that letter from Mr. Roy of Shanghai, and no more tidings had reached her. She began to think none ever would reach her now. She ceased to hope or to fear, but let herself drift on, accepting the small pale pleasures of every day, and never omitting one of its duties. One only thought re- mained ; which, contrasted with the darkness of all else, often. gleamed out as an actual joy. °° af If the lost letter really was Robert Roy’s—and' though she hadno positive proof, she had the strongest conviction, remem- bering the thick fog of that Tuesday morning, how easily Archy might have dropped it out of his hand, and how, during those days of soaking rain, it might have lain, unobserved by any one under the laurel branches, ‘till the child ‘picked it up and hid it as he said—if ‘Robert Roy. had written to her, ‘written in anv way, he ‘was at least not faithless.’ ‘And he might’ have loved her then: Afterward, he’ might have married, or died: she might never find him again in this world, or if she found him, he might be totally changed : still, whatever happened,- he had. lovedther. The fact remainéd. No power'in ‘earth or heaven. could alterit. / AWeb 726 Yond Tete Pho hyl And sometimés, even “yet, ‘a’ half-superstitious feeling aj over her ‘that’ all this era heh for HOtHER Be the “titi putas which had impelled her to-write'to Shanghai, ‘the other impulse, or concatenation of circumstances, which had floated ‘her, after $0 many changes, back to the 6ld place, the old life. Tt looked like chance, but was it? Is ary thing chance?’ Does not'our own will,.soon or late, accomplish for us what we desire? That is, when we'try to-reconcile it’to the wilPof God. . She hhad accepted His ‘willall these years, seeing no reason for it; often feeling it very hard arid cruel, but still accepting it. And: now ? when, Dye ak it,might be some) law: business which! concerned her girls, she had-grown) so tenderly-anxious: ) ) save from, any, trou carey » ${INo, © I will 0 and spea | of vignimamesy
Page 17
~~, — THE LAUREL BUSH. 17 She rose and walked quietly into the parlor, already shadow- ed into twilight ; a neat, compact little person, dressed in soft ‘gray homespyn, with a pale pink bow on her throat, and an- other in her cap, a pretty little fabric of lace and cambric, ‘which, being now the fashion, her girls had at last condescend- ‘ed to let her wear. She had ona black silk apron, with pock- ‘ets, into one of which she had hastily thrust her work, and her thimble was yet on her finger. This was the figure on which ‘the eyes of the gentleman rested as he turned round. Miss Williams lifted her eyes inquiringly to his face—a ‘bearded face, thin and dark. “‘T beg your pardon, I have not the pleasure of knowing you; I—” She suddenly stopped. Something in the bright, the turn of the head, the crisp dark hair, in which were not more than a few threads of gray, while hers had so many now, reminded her of—some one, the bare thought of whom made her feel®dizzy and blind. “No,” he said, ‘‘I did not expect you would know me; ‘and indeed, until I saw you, I was not sure you were the right Miss Williams, Possibly you may remember my name—Roy, Robert Roy.” Faces alter, manners, gestures; but the one thing which mever changes is a voice. Had Fortune heard this one—ay, at her last dying hour, when all worldly sounds were fading away— She would have recognized it at once. ; The room being full of shadow, no one could see any thing distinctly ; and it was as well. In another minute she had arisen, and held out her hand. ‘“‘T am very glad to see you, Mr. Roy. How long have you been in England? Are these your little boys?” Withoutanswering, he took her hand—a quiet friendly grasp, just as it used to be. of fifteen—seventeen years was overleaped, and Robert. Roy and Fortune Williams had met once more. if any body hai told her when she rose that morning what would happen bewre night, and happen so naturally, too, sne ‘would have said it was impossible, That, after a very few min- utes, she could have sat there, talking to him as to any ordi- Mary acquaintance, seemed incredible, yet it was truly so. ‘I was in great doubts whether the Miss Williams who, they told me, lived here was yourself or some other lady; but I thought I would take the chance. Because, were it yourself, I thought, for the sake of old times, you might be willing to advise me concerning my two dittle boys, whom I have brought to St. Andrews for their education,” Set is “*Your sons, are they ?” “No. Iam not married.” . There was a pause, and then he told the little fellow to go and look out of the window, while he talked with Miss Wil- liams, _ He spoke to them in a fatherly tone ; there was noth- ing of the young man left in him now.. His*voice was sweet, his manner grave, his whole appearance unquestionably ‘‘mid- dle-aged,”’ “They are orphans. Their name is Roy, though they are not my relatives, or so distant that it matters.nothing. But their father was a very good friend of mine, which matters a great deal. He died suddenly, and his wife soon after, leaving their affairs in great confusion. Hearing this, far up in the Australian bush, where I have been a sheep-farmer for some _ years, I came round by Shanghai, but too late to do more than take these younger boys and bring them home. ‘The rest of the family are disposed of. These two will be henceforward mine. Thatisall.” + A very little ‘‘all” and wholly about other people ; scarcely a word about himself. Yet he seemed to think it sufficient, and as if she had no possible interest in hearing more. Cursorily he mentioned having received her letter, which was ‘friendly and kind,” that it had followed him to Australia, and then back to Shanghai. But his return home seemed to have been entirely without reference to itor to her. So she let all pass, and accepted things as they were. It was enough. When a shipwrecked man sees land—ever so barren a land, ever so desolate a shore—he does not argue within him- And so, without another word, the gulf self, ‘‘Is this my heaven !” he simply puts into it, and lets him- self be drifted ashore. It took but a few minutes more to explain further what Mr. Roy wanted—a home for his two ‘‘poor little fellows.” ‘They are’ so young still—and they have lost their mother. They would do very well in their classes here, if some kind wo- man would take them and look after them. I felt, if the Miss Williams I heard: of were really the Miss Williams I used to know, I could trust them to her, more than to any woman I ever knew.” ‘Thank you.” And then she explained that she had al- ready two girls incharge. Shecould say nothing till had she consulted them. In the mean time Just then the tea-bell sounded. The world was going on just as usual—this strange commonplace, busy, regardless world ! ‘‘I beg your pardon for intruding on your time so long,” said Mr. Roy, rising. ‘‘I willleave you ta consider the ques- tion, and you will let me know as soon as you can. staying at the hotel here, and shall remain until I can have my boys settled. Good-evening.” Again she felt the grasp of the hand: that ghostly touch, so vivid in dreams for all these years, and now a warm living real- ity. It wastoomuch. She could not bear it. ‘‘If you would care to'Stay,” she said—and though it was too dark to see her, he must have heard the faint tremble in her voice—‘‘our tea is ready. © f et me introduce you to my girls, and they can make friends with your little boys.” The matter was soon settled, and the little party ushered in- to the bright warm parlor, glittering with all the -apendages of that pleasant meal—essentially feminine—a ‘‘ hungry” tea. Robert Roy put his hand over his eyes as if the light dazzled him, and then sat down in the arm-chair which Miss Williams brough forward, turning as he did so to look upatsher—right in her face---with his grave, soft, earnest eyes. i bn ‘“Thank you. How likethat was to your old-ways? How little you are changed |” ; This was the only reference he made, in the slighest degree, to former times. And she? She went out of the room, ostensibly to get a pot of guava jelly for the boys—found it after some search, and then sat down. » ‘Only in her store closet, with her housekeeping things all about her. But it was a quite place, and the door was shut. . There is, in one of those infinitely pathetic Old Testament stories, a sentence—‘‘And he sought where to weep ; and he entered into his chamber and wept there.” : uit ns She did not weep, this woman, not a young woman now; she. only tried during her few minutes of solitude to gather up her thoughts to realize what had happened-to her, and who it was that satin the next room—under her roof—at her very fire- side, Then she clasped her hands with sudden sob, wild -as any of the emotions of her girlhood. ‘*Oh, my love, ‘the love of all my life? Thank God!” The evening passed, not very merrily, but peacefully; the girls, who had hearda good deal of Mr. Roy from David Dal- ziel, doing their best to be courteous to him, and to amuse‘his shy little boys. _ He did not stay long, evidently havinga mor- bid dread of ‘‘ intruding,” and his manner was exceedingly re- served, almost awkward sometimes, of which he seemed pain- fully conscious, apologizing for being ‘‘ unaccustomed to civili- zation and to ladies’ society,” having during his lifein the bush passed monthsat a time without ever seeing 2 woman’s face. ‘‘And women are your only civilizers,” he said. ‘‘ That is why I wish my motherless lads to be taken into this household of yours, Miss Williams, which looks so—so comfortable,” and he glanced round the pretty parlor with something very like a sigh, ‘‘I hope you will consider the matter, and let me know as soonas you have made up your mind.” ‘* Which I shall do very soon,” she answered. ‘* Yes; I know you will. And your decision once made you a>”? /never change. *< Very ‘seldom, Tam not one of those who are ‘given te change, 37” ‘ lam.
Page 18
18 an i a RT Tn a a A IE He stood a moment, ‘lingering in the pleasant, lightsome warmth, as if loath to quit it, then took his little boys in either hand and went away. There was a grand consultation that night, for Miss Williams nevet did anything without speaking to her girls; but still it was merely nominal. They always left the decision to her. And her heart yearned over the two little Roys, orphans, yet childrenstill; while Helen and Janetta were growing up and needing very little from her except a general motherly supervision. Besides, 4e asked it. He had said distinctly that she was the only woman to whom he could thoroughly trust his boys. So—she took them. After a few days the new state of things grew as familiar that it seemed as if it had lasted for months, the young Roys going to and fro to their classes and their golf-playing, just as the young Dalziels had done; and Mr. Roy coming about the house almost daily, exactly as Robert Roy had used to do of old. Sometimes it was to Fortune Williams the strangest reflex of former times; only—with a difference. Unquestionable he. was very much changed. In outward appearance more even than the time accounted for. No man can knock about the world, in different lands and climates, for seventeen years, without bearing the marks of it. Though still under fifty, he had all the airof an ‘‘elderly” man, and had grown a little ‘‘peculiar” in his ways, his modes of thought and speech—except that he spoke so very little. He accounted for this by his long lonely life in Australia, which had produced, ‘he said, an almost unconquerable habit of si- lence. Altogether, he was far more of an old batchelor than she was of an old maid, and Fortune felt this; felt, too, that in spite of her gray hairs she was in reality quite as young as he—nay, sometimes younger; for her innocent, simple, shut-up life had kept her young. And he, what had his life been, in so far as he gradually be- trayed it? Restless, struggling; a perpetual battle with the world ; having to hold his own, and fight his way inch by inch —he who was naturally a born student, to whom the whirl of a business career was especially obnoxious. What had made him choose it? Once chosen, probably he could not help himself; besides, he was not one to put his shoulder to the whe! and then draw back. Evidently, with the grain or against the grain, he had gone on with it; this sad, strange, wandering life, until he had ‘* made his fortune,” for he told her so. Buthe said no more; whether he meant to stay at home and spendit, or go out again to the antipodes (and spoke of those far lands without any dis- taste, even with a lingering kindness, for indeed he seemed to have no unkindly thought of any place in all the world), his friend did not know. His friend. That wasthe word. No other. After her first outburst of uncontrollable emotion, to call Robert Roy her \ THE LAUREL BUSH present it soon grew to. be—just as if there were no past at all. So perforce did she. But, as I think I have said once before, human nature is weak, and there were days when the leaves were budding, and the birds singing in the trees, when the sun was shining, and the waves rolling in upon the sands, just ac they rolled in that morning over those two lines of foot-raarks, which might have walked together through life; and who knows what mu- tual strength, help, and comfort tiic might have proved to both ?—then it was, for one at least, very hard. Especially when, bit by bit, strange ghostly fragments of his old self began to reappear in Robert Roy; his keen delight in nature, his love of botanical or geological excursions. Often he would go wandering down the familiar shore for hours in search of marine animals for the girl’s aquarium, and then would come and sit down at their tea-table, reading or talking, so like the Robert Roy of old that one of the little group, who always crept in the background, felt dizzy and strange, us ‘f all her later years had been a dream, and she were living her youth over again, only with the difference aforesaid : a difference sharp as that between death and life—yet with something of the peace of death in it. : Sometimes, when they met at the little innocent tea-parties which St. Andrews began to give—for of course in that small community every body knew every body, and all their affairs to boot, often a great deal better than they did themselves, so that there was great excitement and no end of speculation over Mr. Roy—sometimes meeting, as they were sure to do, and walking home together, with the moonlight shining down the empty streets, and the stars out by myriads over the silent distant sea, while the nearer tide came washing in upon the sands—all was so like, so frightfully like, old times that it was very sore to Ir. But, as I have said, Miss Williams was Miss Williams, and Mr. Roy Mr. Roy, and there were her two girls always besides them ; also his two boys, who soon took to ‘‘ Auntie” as natu- rally as if they were really hers, or she theirs. ; ‘‘T think they had better call you so, as the others do,” said Mr. Roy, one day. ‘‘Are these young ladies really related to ou!” : ‘‘No; but I promised their father on his death-bed to take charge of them. ‘That is all.” ‘*He is dead, then. Was he a great friend of yours?” She felt the blood flashing all over her face, but she answered, steadily: ‘‘ Not a very intimate friend, but I respected him ex- ceedingly. He wasagood man. His daughters had a heavy loss when he died, and I am glad to be a comfort to them so long as they need me.” ‘<T have no doubt of it.” This was the only question he ever asked her concerning her past life, though, by slow degrees, he told her a good deal of his own. Enough to make her quite certain, even if her keen “* love,” even in faticy, or to expect that he would deport himself| feminine instinct had not already divined the fact, that whatever in any love-like way, became ridiculous, pathetically ridiculous. She was sure of that, Evidently no idea of the kind entered his‘mind. She was Miss Williams and he was Mr. Roy—two middle-aged people, each with their different responsibilities, . their altogether seperate lives ; and, hard as her own had been, it seemed as if his had been the harder of the two—ay, though he was now a rich man, and she still better than a poor gov- erness. She did not think much of worldly things, but still she was aware of this fact—that he was rich and she was poor. She did not suffer herself to dwell upon it, but the consciousness was there, sustained with a certain feeling called ‘proper pride.” The conviction was forced upon her the very first days of Mr. Roy’s return—that to go back to the days of their youth was as impossible as to find primroses in September. If, indeed, if there was any thing to go back to. Sometimes - she felt, if she could only have found out that, all the rest would be easy, painless. If she could only have said to him, ‘“‘ Did you write to me the letter you promised? Did you ever love me?” But that one question was, of course, utterly impossible. He made no reference whatever to old things, but seemed resolved to take up the present—a very peaceful and happy j there might have been in it of suffering, there was nothing in the smallest degree either to be ashamed of or to hide, What Robert Roy of Shanghai had written about him had continued true. Ashe said one day to her, ‘‘We never stand still We either grow better or worse. You have not grown worse,” Nor had he. All that was good in him had developed, all his little faults had toned down. The Robert Roy of to-day was slightly different from, but in no wise inferior to, the Rob- ert Roy of her youth. She saw it, and rejoiced in the seeing. What he saw in her she could not tell. He seemed deter- mined to rest wholly in the present, and take out of itall the peace and pleasantness that he could. In the old days, when the Dalziel boys were naughty, and Mrs. Dalziel tiresome, and work was hard, and holidays were few, and life was altogether the rough road that it often seems to the young, he had once called her ‘‘ Pleasantness and Peace.” He never said so now; but sometimes he looked it. ret Many an evening he came and sat by her fireside, in the arm- chair, which seemed by right to have devolved upon him ; never staying very long, for he was still nervously sensitive about being ‘‘in the way,” but making himself and them all very cheerful and happy while he didstay. Only sometimes, when
Page 19
THE LAUREL BUSH. , 19 Fortune’s eye stole to his face—not a young man’s face now— she fancied she could trace, besides the wrinkles, a sadness, ap- proaching to hardness, that never usedto be. But again, when interested in some book or other he said it was delicious to take to reading again. after the long fast of years), he would look around to her for sympathy, or utter one of his dry drol- leries, the old likeness, the old manner and tone, would come back so vividly that she started, hardly knowing whether the feeling it gave her was pleasure or pain. But beneath both, lying so deep down that neither he nor any one could ever suspect its presence, was something else. Can many waters quench love? Can the deep sea drown it? What years of silence can wither it? What frost of age can freeze itdown? God only knows. Her’s was not like a girl’s love. Those two girls sitting by her day after day would have smiled at it, and at its object. Be- tween themselves they considered Mr. Roy somewhat of an “old fogy ;’ were very glad to make use of him now and then in the great dearth of gentlemen at St. Andrews, and equally glad afterward to turn him over to Auntie, who was always kind to him. Auntie was so kind to évery body Kind? Of course she was, and above all when he looked worn and tired. He didso sometimes ; as if life had ceased to be all pleasure, and the constant mirth of these young folks was just a little to much for him. Then she ingeniously used to save him from it and them fora while. They never knew—how tenfold deeper than all the passion of youth is the tenderness with whicha woman cleaves to the man she loves when she sees him growing old. Thus the days went till Easter came, announced by the sud- den apparition, one evening, of David Dalziel. That young man, when the very first day of his holidays, he walked in upon his friends at St. Andrews, and found sitting at their tea-table a strange gentleman, did not like it at all, scarcely even when he found out that the intruder was his old friend, Mr. Roy. - ‘ *¢ And you never told me a word about this,” said he, re- proachfully, to Miss Williams. ‘‘ Indeed you have not written to me for weeks ; you have forgotten all about me.” She winced at the accusation, for it was true. Beyond her daily domestic life, which she still carefully fulfilled, she had in truth forgotten everything. Outside people were ceasing to affect her at all. What 4e liked, what Ae wanted to do, day by day, whether he looked ill or well, happy or unhappy, only he rarely looked either—this was slowly growing to be once more her whole world. With a sting of compunction, and another, half of fear, save that there was nothing to dread, nothing that could affect any body beyond herself—Miss Williams roused herself to give young Dalziel an especially hearty welcome, and to make his little visit as happy as possible. Small need of that; he was bent on taking all things pleasant- ly. Coming now near the end of a very creditable college career, being of age and independent, with the cozy little for- tune that his old grandmother had left him, the young fellow was disposed to see every thing couleur de rose, and this feeling communicated itself to all his friends. Tt was a pleasant time. Often in years to come did that little knot of friends, old and young, look back upon it as upon one of _those rare bright bits in life when the outside current of things moves smoothly on, while underneath it there may or may not be, but generally there is, a secret or two which turns the most trivial events into sweet and dear remembrances for- ever. David’s days being few enough, they took pains not to lose one, but planned excursions here, there, and every where—to Dundee, to Perth, to Elie, to Balearras—all together, children, young folks, and elders: that admirable melange which generally makes such expeditions ‘‘go off” well. Theirs did, especially the last one, to the old house of Balcarras, where they got ad- mission to the lovely quaint garden, and Janetta sang “ Auld Robin Gray” on the spot where it was written. She had a sweet voice, and there seemed to have come into. it a pathos which Fortune had never remarked before. The touching, ever old, ever new story made the young people quite quiet for a few minutes; and then they all ? wandered away together, Helen promising to look after the two wild young’ Roys, to see that they did not kill themselves in. some unforseen way, as, aided and abetted by David and Janet- ta, they went on a scramble up Balcarras Hill. “Will you go too? said Fortune to Robert Roy. ‘‘I have the provisions to see to; besides, I cannot scramble as well as the rest. 1 am not quite so young as I used to be.” “Nor I,” he answered, as, taking her basket, he walked si- lently on beside her. It was a curious feeling, and all to come out of a foolish song ; but if ever she felt thankful to God from the bottom of her heart that she had said “‘ No,” at once and decisively, to the good man who slept at peace beneath the church-yard elms, it was at that moment. But the feeling and the moment passed by immediately. Mr. Roy took up the thread of conversation where he had left it off—it was some bookish or ethical argument, such as he: would go on with for hours ; .so she listened to him in silence. They walked on, the larks singing and the primroses blowing. All the world was saying to itself, ‘‘I am young ; Iam happy ;” but she said nothing at all. People grow used to pain ; it dies down at intervals, and be- comes quite bearable, especially when no one sees it or guesses at it. . They had a very merry picnic on the hilltop, enjoying those mundane consolations of food and drink while Auntie was ex- pected always to have forthcomirig, and which those young peo- ple did by no means despise, nor Mr. Roy neither.” He made himself so very pleasant with them all, looking thoroughly happy, and baring his head to the spring breeze with the eager- ness of a boy. ‘Qh, this is delicious! It makes me feel young. again. There’s nothing like home. One thing lam determined upon - I will never quit bonnie Scotland more.” It was the first clear intimation he had given of his intentions regarding the future, but it thrilled her with measureless con- tent. Ifonly he would not go abroad again, if she might have him within reach for the rest of her days—able to see him, to talk to him, to know where he was and what he was doing, in- stead of being cut off from him by those terrible dividing seas— it was enough ! Nothing could be so bitter as what had been ; and whatever was the mystery of their youth, which it was impossible to un- ravel now—whether he had ever loved her, or loved her and crushed it down and forgotten it, or only felt very kindly and cordially to her, as he did now, the past was—well, only the past !—and the future lay still before her, not unswe hen. we are young, we insist on.having everything or nothing ; when we are older, we learn that ‘‘ everything” is an impossible and “nothing” a somewhat bitter word. We are able to stoop meekly and pick up the fragments of the children’s bread, with- out feeling ourselves to be altogether ‘‘ dogs.” Fortune went home that night with a not unhappy, almost a satisfied heart. She sat back in the carriage, close beside that other heart which she believed to be the truest in all the world, though it had never been hers. There was a tremendous clat- ter of talking and laughing and fun of all sorts, between David Dalziel and the little Roys on the box, and the Misses Moseley sitting just below them, as they had insisted on doing, no doubt finding the other two members of the party a little ‘‘slow.” _ Nevertheless Mr. Roy and Miss Williams took their part in laughing with their young people, and trying to keep them in order; though after a while both relapsed into silence. — One did at least, for it had been a long day and she was tired, being, as she had said, ‘‘not so young as she had been.” But if any of these lively young people had asked her the question whether she was happy, or at least contented, she would have never hesitated about her reply. Young, gay, and prosperous as they were, I doubt if Fortune Williams would have changed lots with any one of them all.
Page 20
os 20 THE LAUREL BUSH. CHAPTER VI, As it befell, that day at Balcarras was the last of the bright days, in every sense, for the time being. Wet weather set in, as even the most partial witness. must allow does occasionally ‘happen in Scotland, and the domestic barometer seemed to go down accordingly. The girls grumbled at being kept in-doors, and would willingly have gone out golfing under umbrellas, ‘but Auntie was remorseless. They were delicate girls at best, so that her watch over them was never-ceasing, and her patience inexhaustible. David Dalziel also was in a very troublesome mood, quite ‘unusual for him. He came and went, complained bitterly that the girls were not allowed to go out with him ; abused the place, the climate, and did all those sort of bearish things ‘which young gentlemen are sometimes in the habit of doing, ‘when—when that wicked little boy whom they read about at school and college makes himself known to them as a pleasant or unpleasant reality. Miss Williams, who, I am afraid, was far too simple a ‘woman for the new generation, which has become so ex- traordinarily wise and wide-awake, opened her eyes and won- dlered why David was so unlike his usual self Mr. Roy, too, to whom he behaved worse than to any one else, only the elder man, quietly ignored it all, and was very patient and gentle with the restless, ill-tempered boy. Mr. Roy even remarked that he thought David would be happier at his work again; idling was a bad thing for young fellows at his age, or amy age. At last it all came out, the bitterness which rankled in the poor lad’s breast; with another secret, which, foolish woman that she was, Miss Williams, had never in the smallest degree ~ suspected. Very odd that she had.not,. but so. it was. Weall find it difficult to realize the,moment, when. our children cease to bechildren. Still more difficult is it for very serious and earnest natures to recognize that there are other natures who take things in a totally different way, and yet it maybe the right and natural way forthem. Such is the fact ; we must learn it, and the sooner we learn it the better. One day, when the rain had a little abated, David appeared greatly disappointed to find the girls had gone out, down to the West Sands with Mr. Roy. : _, ‘Always Mr. Roy! Iam sick of his very name,” muttered David, and then caught Miss Williams by the dress as she was _mising. She had a gentle but rather dignified way with her of repressing bad manners in young people, either by perfect si- lence, or by putting the door between her and them. ‘‘ Don’t go! Qhe never can get a quiet word with you, you are al- ways so preternaturally busy.” _Itwas true. To be always busy was her only shield against —certain things which the young man was never likely to know, and would not understand if he did know. “Do sit down, if you ever can sit down, for a minute,” said he, imploringly; ‘‘I want to speak to you seriously, very seriously.” She sat down, a little uneasy. The young fellow was such a good fellow ; and yet he might have got into a scfape of some sort, Debt, perhaps, for he was a trifle extravagant; but then life had been all roses tohim. He had never known a want since he was born. ‘Speak, then, David; I am listening. Nothing very wrong I hope ?” said she, witha smile. ; ‘Nothing at all wrong, only—When is Mr. Roy. going away ?” . The question was so unexpected that she’ felt her color changing a little; mot much, she wasto old for that, ~ COME. Roy leaving St. Andrews, do you mean? How can I tell? He has never told me. Why do you ask ?” ‘‘ Because until he is gone, I stay,” said the young man dog- gedly. ‘‘I’m not going back to Oxford leaving him master of the field. I have stood him as longas I possibly can, and I'll not stand him any longer.” “David, you forget yourself,” ‘*There—now youare offended ; I know you are, when you draw yourself up in that way, my dear litt'e auntie. But just . You are such an innocent woman, you don’t know Can’t you see—no, of course you Andrews will be talking about hear me. the world as we men do. can’t—that very soon all St. you. ” ‘* About me?” ‘“Not about you exactly, but about the family. A single man—a marrying man, as all the world says he is, or ought to be, with his money—cannot go in and.out, likea tame cat, in a household of women, without having, or being supposed to have—ahem !—intentions. I assure you ”—and he swung himself on the arm of her chair, and looked into her face with an angry earnestness, quite unmistakable—‘‘I assure you I never go into the club without being asked, twenty times a day, which of the Miss Moseleys Mr. Roy is going to marry.” ‘‘Which. of the Miss Moseleys Mr. Roy is. going to marry |” She repeated the words, as if to gain time and to be cer- tain she heard them rightly. No fear of her blushing now ; every pulse in her heart stood dead still ; and then she nerved herself to meet the necessity of the occasion. ‘‘ David, you surely do not consider what you are saying. This is a; most extraordinary idea,” ‘‘ Tt isa most extraordinary idea ; in fact, I call it ridiculous, monstrous: an old, battered fellow like him, who has knocked about the world, Heaven knows where, all these years, to come home, and, because he has got a lot of money, think to go and marry one of these nice, pretty girls. They wouldn’t have him, I believe that ; but nobody else believes it; and everybody seems to think it the most natural thing possible. What do you say ?” “6 I es «Surely you don’t think. it right, or even possible? ~ But, Auntie, it might turn out a rather awkward affair, and you ought to take my advice, and stop it in. time.’ was “How?” ‘‘Why, by stopping him out of the house. You and he are great friends.. If he had any notion of marrying I,suppose he would mention, it to you—he ought. It would be a cow- ardly trick to come and steal one of your chickens from under your wing. Would’tit? Do say something, instead of merely echoing what I say. It really isa serious matter, though you don’t think so,” | «Yes, I do, think so,” said, Miss Williams, at last;,and I would stop.it.if I thought I had any right, But Mr. Roy is quite able to manage his own affairs; and he is not so very old—not more than five-and-twenty years, older than—Helen,” ‘‘ Bother Helen !, .I beg her. pardon, she is a. dear, good girl, But do you think any man would look at Helen when there was Janetta ?” R in ot i It was out now, out with a burning blush over all the lad’s honest face,’ and the sudden crick-crack of a pretty Indian paper-cutter he unfortunately was twiddling in. his fingers. Miss Williams must have been blind indeed not to have guessed the state of the case. ) R ‘‘What! Janetta? Oh, David?” was all she said, He nodded. ‘‘ Yes, that’s it, just it. I thought you must have found it it out long ago, though I kept myself to myself pretty close ; still you might have guessed.” ‘«T never did. I had not the remotest idea, Oh, how re- miss I have been ! ., It is all my fault.” ‘Excuse me, I, can not:see that it is any body’s fault, or any body’s. misfortune, either,” said the young fellow, with a not unbecoming pride. ‘‘I hope I should not be a bad husband to any girl, when it comes to. that, But it has not come; I have never said a single word to her... I wanted to be quite clear of Oxford, and in a way to win my Own position first. And really we are so very jolly together as it is. What are you smiling for?” . She could not help it, There was something so funny in the whole affair. They seemed such babies, playing at love ; and their love-making, if such it was, had been carried on in such an exceedingly open and lively way, not a bit of tragedy about it, rather genteel comedy, bordering on farce. It was such a contrast to—certain other love stories that she had known, quite buried out of sight now.
Page 21
THE LAUREL BUSH. Gentle ‘‘ Auntie ’’—the grave maiden lady, the old hen with all these young ducklings who would take to the water so soon —held out her hand to the impetuous David. ‘*T don’t know what to say to you, my boy; you really are little more than a boy, and to be taking upon yourself the re- sponsibilities of life so soon! Still, I am glad you. have said nothing to her about it yet, She isa mére child, only eigh- tegn..; ‘‘Quite old enough to. marry, and to marry Mr, Roy even, the St. Andrews folks think, But I won’t.stand it. I won’t tamely sit by and see her sacrificed, He might persuade her ; he has a very winning way with him sometimes. Auntie, I have not spoken, but. I won’t promise not to speak. It is all very well for you ; you are old, and your blood runs cold, as you said to us one day—no, I don’t mean that ; you area real brick still, and you'll never be old to us, but you are not in love, and you can’t understand what it is to.a young fellow like me to see an old fellow like Roy coming in and just walking over the course. But he shan’t do it! Long ago, when I was quite a lad, | made up my mind to get her; and get her I will, spite of Mr. Roy or any body.” * Fortune was touched. That strong witl which’she two had had, able, like faith, to ‘remove mountains,” synapathized involun- tarily with the lad. © It was just what: she would have said and done, had she beén a man‘ and loved a woman. She gave David’s hand a warm clasp which he returned. ‘* Forgive me,” said he, affectionately. ‘‘I did not mean to bother you ; but as things stand, the matter is better out than in. I hate underhandness. I may have made an awful fool of myself, but at least I have not made a fool of her. I have been as careful as‘ possible not to compromise her in any way ; for I know how people do talk, and a man has ‘no right to let the girl he loves be talked about. ‘The more he loves her, the more he ought to take care of her.. Don’t you think so 2” ; s3 reat Pies | : ‘ lo. Ear Fon : _ ‘Vd cut myself up into little pieces for Jannette’s sake,” he went on, ‘‘and I’d do a deal for Helen too, the sisters. are so fond of one another, . She shall always have a home with us, when we were married.” “Then,” said Miss Williams, hardly able again to resist a smile, ‘‘you are quite-certain you will be marriéd? . You. have no doubt about her caring for you?” ” David pulled his whiskers, not very voluminons yet, looked conscious, and yet humble. ‘“‘Well, I don’t exactly say that. . I know I’m not, half good enough for her, Still I thought, when I had taken my degree and fairly settled myself at the bar, I’d try. I have a tolerably good income of my own too, though of course I am not as well off as that confounded old Roy. There he. is at this minute meandering up and down the West Sands with those two girls, setting every body’s tongue going! I can’t stand it. I declare to you I won’t stand it another day.” “‘Stopa moment,” and she caught hold of David as he started up. “*Whatare you going to do?” ‘‘I don’t know and I don’t care, only. I won’t haye my girl talked about—my pretty, merry, innocent girl. know better, a shrewd old fellow like him, It is silly, ‘selfish, mean, Sn tg iran This was more than Miss. Williams could bear. She stood up, pale to the lips, but speaking strongly, almost fiercely : ‘« Fou ought to know better, David Dalziel... You ought. to know that Mr. Roy has not,an atom of selfishness or meaness in him—that he would be the last man in the world to compro- mise any girl. If he chooses to marry Janetta, or any one else, he has a perfect right to do it; and I for one, will not try to hind- er him, + ae \ 4 é ' _ Then you'll not stand by,me any more?” y Ad aos ‘Not if you are blind and unfair.) You may die of love, though I don’t think you will ; people don’t do it nowadays,’ (there was a slightly. bitter.jar in the voice); .“‘ but love ought to make you all the more honorable clear-sighted, and just. "And as to. Mr., 3 ] 7 ~ F. ar ? 4 vy oe L, as any c . tf id! ¢ Pe . i» eh iy She might have talked to the winds, for David was not listen-! pc He ought to. a K sh Res bg ing. He had heard the click of the garden gate, and turning round with blazing eyes. ‘“There he is again! I can’t stand it, Miss Williams. Tf give you fair warning I can’t stand it. He was walking home with them, and is waiting about at the laurel bush, mooning after them. Oh!, hang him 1” Before she had time to speak, the young man was gone. But she had no fear of any very tragic consequences when she saw the whole party standing together—David talking to Janetta, Mr. Roy to Helen, who looked so fresh, so young, so pretty, almost as pretty as Janetta. Nor did Mr. Roy, pleased and animated, look so very old. That strange clear-sightedness, that absolute justice, of which. Fortune had just spoken, were qualities she herself possessed to a remarkable, almost a painful, degree, She could not de-. ceive herself, even if she tried. The more cruel the sight, the clearer she saw it ; even as now she perceived a certain natural- ness in the fact that a middle-aged man so often chooses a. young girl in preference to those of his own generation, for she: brings him that which he has not ; she reminds him of what he used to have ; she is to him like the freshness of spring, the warmth of summer, in his cheerless autumn days.» Sometimes. these marriages are not unhappy—far from it; and Robelt Roy might ere long make such a marriage. Despite poor David’s. jealous contempt, he was neither old nor ugly, and then he was rich, : . The thing, either as regarded Helen, or some other girl of Helen’s standing, appearing more than possible—probable ; and if so, what then ? Fortune looked out once, and saw that the little group at the: laurel bush were still talking ; then she slipped up stairs into- her own room and bolted the door. % sn? The first thing she did was to go straight up and look at her own face in the glass—her poor old face, which had never been beautiful, which she had never wished beautiful, except that it might be pleasant in one man’s eyes, Sweet it was still, but the sweetness lay in its expression, pure and placid, and inno- cent as a young girl’s. But she saw not that ; she saw only its - lost youth, its faded bloom, She covered it over with beth her hands, as if she would fain bury it out of sight ; knelt down by- her bedside and prayed. . ‘dane ‘‘Mr. Roy is waiting below, ma’am—-has been waiting some: time ; but he says if you are busy he will not disturb you ; he will come to-morrow instead.” a ee “Tell him I shall be very glad to see him ‘to-morrow. it IRE She spoke through the locked, door, too feeble to rise and’ open it; and then lying down on her bed and turning her face to the wall, from sheer exhaustion fell fast asleep. People dream strangely sometimes. The dream she dreamt was so inexpressibly soothing and peaceful, so entirely out of keeping with the reality of things, that it almost seemed to have been what in ancient times would be called a vision; First, she thought that she and Robert Roy were little child— ren—mere girl and boy. together, as they might have been: fronr the few years difference in. their age—running hand in hand: about the sands of St. Andrews, and so fond of one another—-- so yery fond? with that innocent love a big boy often has‘for a little girl, and a little girl returns with the tenderest fidelity. So: she did; and she was so happy. They were both’so happy. In the’second part of the dream she was happy still, ‘but some how she knew she was dead—had been dead and in paradise for a long time, and was waiting for him to cométhere. He was coming now; she felt him coming, and held out her hands, but he took and clasped her in hisarms; and she‘heard a voice saying those mysterious words :' ‘‘In heaven they neither yaa! nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of od,” ee. gy? Baindcics: It was very strange, all was very strange, but it comforted Her.. She rose up, and in the twilight of the soft spring evening she: washed her face and combed her hair, and went down, like: Ra er rie ye ae ee hg = bread.” vai Her young people were not there. They had gone out again, e heard, with Mr. Dalziel, riot Mr: Roy, who bad sat reading in Oe Beto) alone for upward of an hour. They were sup- posed to be golfing, butthey staid out till long-after it was pos— |
Page 22
x > 22 THE LAUREL BUSH. sible to see balls or holes; and Miss Williams was beginning to be a little uneasy, when they all three walked in, David and Janetta with a rather sheepish air, and Helen beaming all over with mysterious delight. How the young man had managed it---to propose to two sis- ters at once, at any rate to make love to one sister while the other was by---remained among the wonderful feats which David Dalziel, who had not too small an opinion of himself, ‘was always ready for and generally succeeded in; and if he did wear his heart somewhat ‘‘on his sleeve,” why, it was a very honest heart, and they must have been ill-natured ‘‘daws” in- deed who took pleasure in ‘‘pecking at it.” ‘“Wish me joy, Auntie |” he cried, coming forward, beaming all over, the instant the girls had disappeared to take their hats off. ‘I’ve been and gone and done it, and it’sall right. I didn’t intend itjust yet, but he drove me.to it, for which I am, rather obliged to him. He can’t get her now. Janetta’s mine.” There was a boyish triumph in his air; in fact, his whole conduct was exceedingly juvenile, but so simple, frank, and sincere as to be quite irresistible. I fear Miss Williams was a very weak-minded woman, or would be so considered by a great part of the world—the ex- ceedingly wise and prudent and worldly-minded ‘‘ world.” Here were two young people, one twenty-two, the other eigh- teen, with—it could hardly be said ‘‘nota half-penny,” but stilla very small quantity of half-pennies, between them—and they had not only fallen in love, but engaged themselves to be married! She ought to have been horrified, to have severely reproached them for their imprudence, used all her influence, and, if needs be, her authority, to stop the whole thing; advis- ing David not to bind himself t> any girl till he was much old- er, and his prospects secured; and reasoning with Janetta on the extreme folly ofa long engagement, and how very much better it would be for herto pause, and make some, “good marriage with a man of wealth and position, who could keep her comfortably. All this, no doubt, was what a prudent and far-seeing moth- er or friend ought to have said and done. Miss Williams did no such thing, and said notasingle word. She only kissed her ‘‘children”—Helen, too, whose innocent delight was the pret- tiest thing to behold—then sat down and made tea for them all, as if nothing had happened. But such events do not happen without making a slight stir in a family, especially such a quiet family as that at the cot-|- tage. Besides, the lovers were too childishly happy to be at all reticent over their felicity, Before David was turned away that night to the hotel which he and Mr. Roy both inhabited, every body in the housc knew quite well that Mr. Dalziel and Miss Janetta were going to be married. And every body had of course suspected it long ago, and was not in the least surprised, so that the mistress of the household herself was half ashamed to confess how very much surprised she had been. However, as every body seemed delighted, for most people have a ‘‘sneaking kindness” toward young lovers, she kept her own counsel; smiled blandly over her old cook’s half-pathetic congratulations to the young couple, who were *‘like the young bears, with all their troubles before them,” and laughed at the sympathetic forebodings of the girls’ faithful maid, a rather elderly person, who was supposed to have been once ‘‘disappointed,” and who ‘‘hoped Mr. Dalziel was not too young to knowhis own mind.” Still, in spite ofall, the family were very much delighted, and not a little proud. David walked in, master of the position now, directly after breakrast, and took the sisters out for a walk, both of them. declaring he was as much encumbered as if he was going to marry two young ladies at once, but bearing his lot with great equanimity. His love-making indeed, was so extraordinary open and undisguished that it did not much matter who was by. _ And Helen was of that sweet negative nature that seemed made for th2 express purpose of playing ‘‘ gooseberry.” Directly they had parted, Mr. Roy came in. : He might have been a far less acute observer than he was not ‘to detect at once that ‘‘something had happened” in the little family, Miss Williams kept hin waiting several minutes, and when she did come in her manner was nervous and agitated. They spoke about the weather and one or two trivial things; but more than once Fortune felt him looking at her with that keen, kindly observation which had been sometimes, during all these weeks now running into months, ofalmost daily meet- ing, and of the closest intimacy—a very difficult thing to bear. He was exceedingly kind to her always ; there was no ques- tion of that. Without making any show of it, he seemed always to know where she was and what she was doing. Nothing ever lessened his silent care of her. If ever she wanted help, there he was to giveit. Andinall their excursions she had a quiet con- viction that whoever forgot her or her comfort; he never would. But then it was his way. Some men have eyes and ears for only one woman, and that merely while they happen to be in love with her; whereas Robert Roy was courteous and considerate to every woman, even as he was kind to every weak or helpless creature that crossed: his path. Evidently he preceived that all was not right; and, though he said nothing, there was a tenderness in his manner which went to her heart. “You are not looking well to-day ; should you not go out ?” he said. ‘‘I met all youryoung people walking off to the sands; they seemed extraordinarily happy.” Fortune was much perplexed. She did not like to tell him the news—him, who had. so completely established himselfas a friend of the family. And yet to tell him was not exactly her place; besides, he might not care to hear,, Old maid asshe was or thought herself, Miss Williams knew enough of men not to fall into the femine error of fancying they feel as we do—that their world is our world, and theirinterests our interests. To most men, a leader in the Zimes, an article in the Quarérly, or a fall in the money market is of far more importance than any love affair in the world, unless it happens.to be their own. Why should I tell him? she thought, convinced that he no- ticed the anxiety in her eyes, the weariness at heart. .She had passed an almost sleepless night, pondering over the affairs of these young people, who never thought ofanything beyond their own new born happiness. And she had perplexed herself with wondering whether in consenting to this engagement she was really doing her duty by her girls, who had no one but her, and whom she was soten- , der of, for their dead father’s sake. But what good wasit to say anything? She must bear her own burden. And yet— Robert Roy looked at her with his kind, halfamused smile. “ You had better tell meall about it ; for, indeed, I know al- ready.” ‘“What ! did you guess ?” ‘“Perhaps. But Dalziel came to my room last night and poured out everything. He is a candid youth. Well, and am I to congratulate ?” Greatly relieved, Fortune looked up. **That’s right,” he said ; I like to see you smile. A minute or two ago you seemed as if you had the cares of all the world on your shoulders, Now, that is not exactly the truth. Al- ways meet the truth face to face, and don’t be frightened at it.” Ah, no! Ifshe had had that strong heart to lean on, that tender hand to help her through the world, she never would have been ‘‘frightened ” at anything. ‘‘T know I am very foolish,” she said ; ‘‘ but there are many things which these children of mine don’t see, and I can’t help seeing.” “ Cettainly ; they are young, and we are—well, never mind Sit down here, and let you and me talk the matter quietly over. On the whole, are you glad or sorry ?” ‘« Both, I think. David is able to take care of himself; but poor little Janetta, my Janetta—what if he should bring her to poverty? Heis a littlerecklessabout money, and has onlya very mall certain income. Worse; suppose being so young he shouldby-and-by get tired of her, and neglect her, and break her heart ?” j ‘Or twenty other things which may happen, or may not, and of which they must take the chance, like their neighbors, You do not believe very much in men, I see, and perhaps. you. are toa @ .
Page 23
THE LAUREL BUSH. 23 right. Weare abad lot—a bad lot, But David Dalziel is as good as most of us, that I can assure you.” She could hardly tell whether he was in jest or earnest ; but this was certain, he meant to cheer and comfort her, and she took the comfort, and was thankful. ‘“Now to the point,” continued Mr. Roy. ‘‘You feel that, in a wordly point of view, these two have done a very foolish thing, and you have aided and abetted them in doing it ?” “Not so,” she cried, laughing; ‘‘I had no idea of such a thing till David told me yesterday morning of his intentions.” «Yes, and he explained to me why he told you, and why he dared not wait any longer. He blurts out every thing, the foolish boy! But he has made friends with me now. They do seem such children, do they not, compared with old folks like you and me!” What was it in the tone or: the words which made her feel room is just a trifle dull, isn’t it, Dalziel? And, Miss Williams, your parlor looks so comfortable. Will you let me stay?” He made the request with a simplicity quite pathetic: One of the most lovable things about this man—is it not in all men? was—that with all his shrewdness and cleverness, and his having been knocked up and down te world for so many years, he . still kept a directness and simpleness of character almost child- like. To refuse would have been unkind, impossible ; so Miss Wil- liamstold him he should certainly stay if he could make himself comfortable. And to that end she soon succeeded in turning off her two turtle-doves intoa room by themselves, for the use of which they had already bargained, in order to ‘‘read to- gether, and improve their minds.” Meanwhile she and Helen tried to help the two little boys to spend a dull holiday indoors —if they were ever dull beside Uncle Robert, who had not lost not in the least vexed, nor once attempt to rebut the charge of| his old influence with boys, and to those boys. was already a fa- being “ old ?” “*T'll tell you what it is,” said Robert Roy, with one of his sage smiles, ‘‘ you must not go and vex yourself needlessly about trifles. We should not judge other people by ourselves. Ev- ery body is so different. Dalziel may make his way all the bet- ter for having that pretty creature for a wife, not but what some other pretiy creature might soon have done just as well. Very few men have tenacity of nature enough, if they can not get the one woman they love, to do without any other to the end of their days. But don’t be distressing yourself about your girl. David will ‘make hera verygood husband. They will be happy enough, even though not very rich.” © i ‘* Does that matter much?’ “*T used to think so. I had so sore a lesson of poverty in my youth, that it gave me an almost morbid terror of it, not for myself, but for any woman I cared for. .Once I would not have done as Dalziel has done for the world. NowI have changed my mind. At any rate, David will not have one mis- fortune to contend with. He hasa thoroughly good opinion of himself, poor fellow! He will not suffer from that horrible self-distrust which makes some men let themselves drift on and on with the tide, instead of taking the rudder into their own hands and steering straight on—direct for the haven where they would be. Oh, that I had done it!” He spoke passionately, and then sat silent. At last, mutter- ing something about ‘‘begging her pardon,” and ‘‘taking a liberty,” he changed the conversation into another channel, by asking whether this marriage, when it happened—which, of course, could not be just immediately—would make any differ- ence to her circumstances. Some difference, she explained, because the girls would re- ceive their little fortunes whenever they came of age or married, and the sisters would not like to be parted ; besides, Helen’s money would help the establishment. Probably, whenever David married, he would take them both away ; indeed, he had said as much. ‘* And then shall you stay on here?” ‘“‘I may, for I have asmall income of my own; besides, there are your two little boys, and I might find two or three more. ButIdo not trouble myself much about the future. One thing is certain, I need never work as hard as I have done all my life.” ‘‘ Have you worked so very hard, then, my poor—” He left the sentence unfinished ; his hand half extended, was drawn back, for the three young people were seen coming down the garden, followed by the two boys, returning from their classes. It was nearly dinner-time, and people must dine, even though in love; and boys must be kept to their schvol work, and all the daily duties of life must be done. Well, perhaps, for many of us, that such should.be! JI think it was as well for poor Fortune Williams. The girls had come in wet through, with one of those sudden ‘*haars” which are not uncommon at St. Andrews ix. spring, and it seemed likely to last all day. Mr, Roy looked out of the window at it with a slightly dolorous air. “I suppose I am rather de /rop here, but really I wish you t ? ther in all but the name. Often had Fortune watched them, sitting upon his chair, hanging about him as he walked, coming to him for sympathy in everything. Yes, everybody loved him, for there. was such an amount of love in him toward every mortal creature, except— teal : She looked at him and his boys, then turned away. What was to be had been, and always would be. That which we fight against in our youth as being human will, human error, in our age we take humbly, knowing it to be the will of God. By-and-by in the little household the gas was lighted, the curtains drawn, and the two lovers fetched in for tea, to behave themselves as much as they could like ordinary mortals, in gen- eral society, for the rest of the evening. ~ A very pleasant even- ing it was, spite of this new element; which was got rid of as much as possible by means of the window recess, where Ja- netta and David encamped composedly, a little aloof from: the rest, “I hope they don’t mind me,” said Mr. Roy, casting an amused glance in their direction, and then adroitly manoeuvring with the back of his chair so as to interfere as little as possible with the young couple’s felicity. ‘‘Oh, no, they don’t mind you at all,” answered Helen, al- ways affectionate, if not always wise. ‘‘ Besides, I dare say you yourself were young once, Mr. Roy.” Evidently Helen had no idea of the plans for her future which were being talked about in St. Andrews. Had he? No one could even speculate with such an exceedingly reserved person. He retired behind his newspaper, and said not a sin- gle word. Nevertheless, there was ao cloud in the atmosphere. Every body was used to Mr. Roy’s silence in company ; and he never troubled any body, not even the children, with either a gloomy look or a harsh word. He was so comfortable to live with, so unfailingly sweet and kind. ; Altogether there was a strange atmosphere of peace in the cottage that evening, though nobody seemed to do any thing or say very much. Now and then Mr. Roy read aloud bits out of his endless newspapers—he had a truly masculine mania for newspapers, and used to draw one after another out of his pockets, as endless as a conjurer’s pocket-handkerchiefs. And he liked to share their contents with any body that would listen; though I am afraid nobody did listen much to-night except Miss Williams, who sat beside him at her sewing, in order to get the benefit of the same lamp. And between his readings he often turned and. looked at her, her bent head, her smooth soft hair, her busy hands. Especially after one sentence, out of the ‘‘ Varieties” of some Fife newspaper. He had begun to read it, then stopped sud- denly, but finished it. It consisted only of a few words: “** Young love is passionate, old lovers faithful ; but the very ten- derest thing in all this world ts a love revived. That is true.” He said only those three words, ina very low, quiet voice, but Fortune heard. His look she did not see, but she felt it— even as a person long kept in darkness might feel a sunbeam strike along the wall, making it seem possible that there might would not turn me out. - In weather like this our hotel coffee | be somewhere in the earth such a thing as day. .
Page 24
r 24 About nine Pp, m. the lovers in the window recess discovered that the haar was all gone, and that it was a most beautiful moonlight night; full moon, the very night they had planned to go in a body to the top of St. Regulus tower. “T suppose: they must,” said Mr. Roy to. Miss Williams; adding, ‘‘ Let the young folks make the mee of their youth; it will never come again.” 7) fe) “And you and I must go too, It will be more comme il faut, as people say.”’ So, with a half-regretful look at the cozy fire, Mr. Roy marshaled the lively party, Janetta and David, Helen and the two boys; engaging to get them the key of that silent garden of graves over whch St. us tower keeps stately watch. How beautiful it looked, with the clear sky shining through its open arch, and the brilliant moonlight eg as day almost, but softer, flooding every alley of that peace- ful spot! ‘It quieted even the noisy gerry, who were bent on climbing the tower, to catch a view, such as _ is rarely Pieri of the picturesque old city and its beau bay. . “A ‘comfortable place to sleep in,’ as some one once said tome ina Melbourne churchyard. But ‘ east or west, home is best.’ I think, Bob, I shall leave it in my will that you are to bury me at St, Andrews.” ‘“*Nonsense, Uncle Robert! You are not to talk of oe But an are to come with us to the top of e tower. iss W: 8, will you come too?” “No, [think she had better not,’ said Uncle Robert, decisively, | ‘She will stay here, and I will keep her com! i So the young people all vanished up the tower, and the two elder walked eager side by side by the quiet graves—by the hearts which had ceased beat- ing, the hands which, however close they lay, would never ¢ one another any more. “Yo Andrews is a pleasant place,” said Robert Roy at last. pads in jest, but T meant in earnest; I have no to leave it ne tons no me you ” he added, seeing that she answe) ‘what tate have you? Shall you stay on at the co these young people are married?”’ ‘* Most likely. e are all fond of the little house.” “‘No wonder. They say a wandering life after a certain number of years unsettles a man forever; he. rests nowhere, but goes on wandering to the end. But I feel just the contrary. I think I shall stay permanently at St. Andrews. You will let me come about your e, ‘like a tame cat,’ as that foolish tir owned he ad called me—will you not?” But at the same time she felt there was a strain beyond which she could not bear. To be so near, yet so far; so much to him, and yet so little. She bay conscious of a aoe ona 4 ~~ Satan where—run away and escape ; of a longing to be dead and buried, deep in the'sea, up away among w Will those young people be very long, do you k 19 > 4 +4 H Ab the sound ise her vole he neem to look. bas her, and saw | e was deadily pale, an ve from head to foot. Fed “This will never do, You must ‘come under my now appearing like jackdaws at the top of the fowe™ ju. ; . Which he did, wrapping her well in the half of his laid,drawing her head under his arm and holding it Frere choking it closé and warm at his heart all the way along the Scores and across the Links; scarcely ng & le word until they reached the gar- en gate. Even there he held it still. “T see your girls coming, sol shall leave you. You are bis eg now, are you not?” Ww R39" dood. ht, then. Stay. Tell me,’’—he spoke us rapidly, and with much agitation—‘“‘ tell me just one thing, an Wh d I will never'trouble you again. y did you not answer a letter I wrote to you seventeen years ago?” “T never ge tag Arte I mever had‘ one word from you after the Sunday you bade me good-by, promising to write. ‘*And I did write,” cried he, passionately... ‘‘I sted it with my own hands. You should have got t on the Tuesday morning.” She leaned against the laurel bush, that fatal lau- rel bush, and in a few breathless words told him what David had said about the hidden letter. ‘It must have been my letter. Why did you not tell me this before?” ; escaped him—a man’s groan over his lost life—lost, not wh through fa iy : rew only, never forgot in all her days. { t mind it,” she whispered—‘‘ don’t mind it, It is so long past now.” He made no immediate answer, then said: ‘ Have you no idea what was in the letter?’’ 4 otf ack Jon then ion, which I had deter- mined not to ask just then, bu anged. my mind. The answer, I told you, Sho a walt for TA Edin- "He was silent, So was she LTSoR fin A sense of cruel - anything that youth could either give or take away. ae he said once, when she Jamented m ‘filled. So he took the largest house in St. Andrews, ‘| pathos in it, “that they liked to have young life ~* And’ by -| a8 Sweet as spring : poison the present by regretting Fe peas past came, and I THE LAUREL BUSH. fatality came over her, Alas! those lost years, that might have been such happy years! At length she said, faintly, ‘‘Forgetit. It was not your fault.” _ ‘It was my fault.. If not mine, you were still yourself—I ought never to have let you go. I ought to have asked again; to have sought through the whole world tillI found you again, And now thatI have found you—” ‘* Hush! the girls are here.”’ They came along laughing, that merry group— with whom life was at its spring—who had lost_ nothing, knew not what it was to lose! “Good-night,” said Mr, Roy, hastily, “ But— to-morrow morning ?”’ “ Yes. ” ‘There never is & — to which comes no morn,” says the proverb. ich is not always true, at least as to this world; but it is true sometimes.”’ That April morning Fortune Williams rose with a sense of strange solemnity—neither sorrow nor joy. Both had gone by; but they had left behind them a deep peace. After her youn Heine had walked themselves off, which —_ di mediately after breakfast, she attended to all her household duties, neither few nor small, and then sat down with her needle-work be- side the open window. It was a lovely day; the birds were singing, the leaves budding, a few early flowers making all the air smell like spring. And she—with her it was autumn now. e knew it, but still she did not grieve. Presently, walking down the garden walk, almost with the same firm step of years ago—how well she remembered it!—Robert Roy came; but it was still a few minutes before she could go into the little par- lor to meet him, At last she did, entering softly, her hand extended as usual. He took it alse as usual, and then looked down into her face, as he had done that Sunday. “Do you remember this? I have kept it for seventeen years.”’ : was her mother’s ring. She looked up with a dumb inquiry. “‘ My love, did you think 1 did not love you—you alway'’s, and only you?” So saying, he opened his arms; she felt him close them around her, just asin her dream. they were warm, living arms; and it was this world, not the next. those seventeen bitter years seomed iid 9 away, annihilated ina moment; she laid her head on his shoulder and wept out her happy heart there. . * * * * * * * the good folks were half with him; To go: and marry, an old maid when he might have had his choice of half.a dozen youn. ones! when, with his fortune and character, he might, as le’ say— as they had said/of that other good man, Mr. Moseley —‘‘have married an ig oe : They forgot that Mr, Roy was one of those men who have no particular desire to marry ‘‘anybody;” to whom the woman, whether found early or late— alas! in this case found early and won late—is the one woman in the world forever. Poor Fortune— rich Fortune, she need not be afraid of her fading cheek, her silvering hair; he would never see either. The. things. he loved her for were quite apart from hers, ‘* Never ind, let it go. _ You will always be yourself—and mine, > £y This was enough. He loved her, He had always loved her; she had no fear but that he would love her faithfully to the end. om ; Theirs was a very at wedding, ana = weed one. - hy should they wait? they had waited too long already,” he said, with some bitterness. But she felt none, With her all was peace, Mr. Roy, did another very foolish thing, which I cannot conscientiously recommend, to, any middle- aged bachelor. Besides marrying his wife, he mar- ried her whole family; There was-no other way out of the difficulty, and neither of them was inclined’ to be content with happiness, leaving duty unful- and Le 4 to it Janetta and Helen, till. David Dal- ziel could ‘claim them; likewise his two orphan boys, until they went to Oxford; for he meant to send them there, and bring them up in every way like his own sons. , eantime, it was rather a heterogeneous family; but the two heads of it bore their burden with great equanimity, nay, cheerfulness; saying sometimes with a smile which had the. faintest shadow of about them, d they grew younger themselves; less of the old bachelor and old maid, and: more ‘of, the ha: middle-aged couple to whom Heaven gave, i their decline, Oe Martin's summer almost .. They were both too wise to pian who. y which gow at 1 Pippa to stran fatality w erns SO ves 2) Sottie alive the w to Gomi er it others not. And there two to eve’ ; rt Roy, tg rd Jomistinice Wit br stein hoy ie Yorks we ate _58 Tur Epon MAskx. 87 88 A Still, for a long time there lay at the bottom of that strong, gentle heart of his a kind of remorseful tenderness, which showed itself in heaping his wife with every luxury that his wealth could bring; bet-: ter than all, in surrounding her with that unceasing care which love alone teaches, never allowing the ‘wind to blow on her too roughly—his “poor lamb,’” as Ld sometimes called her, who had suffered so much. t They are sure, humanly speaking, to “live very happy to the end of their aa And.I almost fancy sometimes, if I were to 6° to St. Andrews, as I et ¥, to do many a time, for I am as fond of the Aged City as they are, that I should see those two made one at last, after all those cruel divided years, wandering together along the sunshiny sands, or standing to watch the gay golfing parties;- nay, I am not sure that Robert would not be visible sometime in his red coat, club in hand, crossing the Links, a victim to the universal insanity of St. Andrews, yet enjoying himself, as golfers always: seem to do, with the enjoyment of a very boy. She is not a girl,far from it; but there will be a girl— ish sweetness in her faded face till its lastsmile. And: to see her sitting beside her husband on the green slopes of the pretty garden—knitting, gene oe! while: he reads his eternal newspapers—is a pe ture. They do not talk very much; indeed, the were neither of them ever great talkers. But knows the other is close at hand, ready for a need-- ful work, and always ready with that silent sym-- pathy which is so mysterious a thing, the rarest. hing to find in all human lives. These have found’ it, and are satisfied. And day by day truer grows. the truth of that sentence which Mrs. Roy once dis-. covered in her husband’s pocket-book, cut out of a, newspaper—she read and replaced it without a. word, but with something between a smile and a tear—‘* Young love is passionate, old love is faithful re ee Pay. tenderest thing in all this world is a love: revived, THE END, Waverley Library. 26 Wirsour a Heart. By Col. Prentiss Ingraham... 27 Was SHE A sg ey) By Henrietta Thackeray, . 28 Sypru CHASE. Mrs, Ann §. Stephens; 29 For Her Dear Sake. By Sara Claxton: 30 Tux Bovguet Girt. By Agile Penne. 381 A Map Marriage. By Mary A. Dennison. 32 MIRIANNA, THE oNNA. By A. Southworth>. 83 Toe Taree Sisters. By Alice Fleming. 34 A MArRRiAGE OF ConvENIENCE. By Sara Claxton, 35 SmnneD AGarnsr, By Clara Anerste. e 386 Sm ArcHER’s Brive. ~ By Aral i Southworth.. ce : . A, Deniso: i Alice Fleming. 48 In Spite or ELF. By 8. R. Sherwood. 49 His Heart’s Mistress, in wees Southworth,. 50:THe Cusan Herress. By Mrs. A. Denison, 51 Two Youne Girts. . By Alice Fle " 52 Tux Winaep Messencer. By Mrs. M R. Crowell, . 53 AanEes Hope, THE AcTrREss. By Wm. M. Turner, . 54 OnE Woman's Heart, By George 8, Kaime, 55 Sux Dip Nor Lovze-Hm. By A. Southworth. 56 Love-Map, By William Mason Turner, M, D, 57 A Brave Girt. By Alice Fleming. ; Reed a ell. - y Mrs. Mary 59 A Wipow’s Witzs. By Rachel 60 Crecr’s Drecerr. By Mrs, Jennie | ; Burton. 61,A. Wicked Harr, By Sara TEER E 62 THe Manrac Brive. % M oe 63 Tum CREOLE SISTERS. by Mrs. Anna E. Porter 64 War JEALOusY Dip. . By Silos Henne. 65 Toe Wirn’s Sroret. By Col. Juan Lewis. 66 A BrRoTHER’s Suy, By Rachel Bernhardt, 67 ForsippEn Bans, By Arabella Southworth. 68 WEAVERS AND Wert. By | M. E. Braddon. 69 Cammttx, By Alexander Dumas, — 70 Tun Two ORPHANS. By Fon 71 My Youne Wiru. BY, Beanies ife’s Husband, 72 Taz Two Wipows. By Annie Thomas, bs poses pene By ogee oe ECIL CASTLEMAINE’S GAGE, Ouida, 7% Tar Buack Lapy or Duna. ry 8. Le Fanu, 18 Sasa on te ere py Mrs. ree ihe . HRISTIAN ’s MisTakn, e author 0: « John Halifax, Gentleman.” Y ee 78 My Youne Huspanp, TWA B MA RTE : QuEEN AMONGST Wore Ey the author of © “Dora Th EID? 1D re Her Lorp anp Master, By Florence Marryat, Meta Orred), «> .. By Annie Thomas, the author of ohn 85 Li Octave Feuillet. a 88 Jax 2 AIENEANCE Mot icy ouna Man. uillet, Tends | ‘Dud. By Emma Gettinde eae: ar: A new issue every week, By : Ne t € five cents each, . oF sent, f 6 pad on rece of six cents, . reat ~’" “BEADLE AND ADAMS, Publish j "$8 Willlam street, 8. ¥,