A Letter of Credit Part 21

"What is it?" asked Rotha.

"How much does a thing like that cost, now?" Mrs. Marble went on. "Oh see the dust on it! There's a half bushel or less. Here--wait till I get my brush.--How is it ever to go up stairs? that's what I'm lookin' at."

Help had to be called in; and meantime Rotha rushed up stairs and informed her mother that a chair was come for her that was like nothing she had ever seen in her life; "soft all over," as Rotha expressed it; "back and sides and all soft as a pillow, and yet harder than a pillow; like as if it were on springs everywhere;" which was no doubt the truth of the case. "It's like getting into a nest, mother; I sat down in it; there's no hard place anywhere; there's no wood to it, that you can see."

When a little later the chair made its appearance, and Mrs. Carpenter sank down into its springy depths, it is a pity that Mr. Digby could not have heard the low long-drawn 'Oh!--' of satisfaction and relief and wonder together, which came from her lips. Rotha stood and looked at her.

Mrs. Carpenter was resting, in a very abandonment of rest; but in the abandonment of the moment shewing, as she did not use to shew it, the great enervation and prostration of her system. Her head, leaning back on the soft support it found, her hands laid exhaustedly on one side and on the other, the motionless pose of her whole person, struck Rotha with some strange new consciousness.

"Is it good?" she asked shortly.

"Very!" The word was almost a sigh.

"What makes you so weak to-day?"

"I am not weaker than usual."

"You don't always look like that."

"She's never had anything like that to rest in before," Mrs. Cord suggested. "A bed aint like one o' them chairs, for supportin' one everywhere alike. You let her rest, Rotha. Will you have an oyster, dear?"

Rotha sat down at the corner of the fireplace and stared at her mother; taking the oyster, and yet not relinquishing that air of helpless la.s.situde. She was not sewing either; and had not been sewing, Rotha remembered, except by s.n.a.t.c.hes, for several days past. Rotha sat and gazed at her, an anxious shadow falling upon her features.

"You needn't look like that at her," said the good woman who was preparing Mrs. Carpenter's gla.s.s of wine; "she'll be rested now in a little, and feel nicely. She's been a wantin' this, or something o' this sort; but there aint nothing better than one o' them spring chairs, for resting your back and your head and every inch of you at once. Now she's got her oyster and somethin' else, and she'll pick up, you'll see."

"How good it is you came to live here," said the sick woman. "I do not know what we should do without you. You seem to understand just how everything ought to be done."

"Mother," said Rotha, "do you think I couldn't take care of you just as well? Didn't I, before Mrs. Cord came?"

"You haven't had quite so much experience, you see," put in the latter.

"Didn't I, mother?" the girl said pa.s.sionately.

Mrs. Carpenter answered only by opening her arms; and Rotha coming into them, sat down lightly upon her mother's lap and hid her head on her bosom. A shadow of, she knew not what, had fallen across her, and she was very still. Mrs. Carpenter folded her arms close about her child; and so they sat for a good while. Mother and daughter, each had her own thoughts; but those of the one were dim and confused as ever thoughts could be. The other's were sharp and clear. Rotha had an uneasy sense that her mother's strength was not gaining but losing; an uneasy impatience of her la.s.situde and powerlessness, which yet she could not at all read. Mrs. Carpenter read it well.

She knew of a surety that her days were numbered; and not only so, but that the number of them was running out. Many cares she had not, in view of this fact; but one importunate, overwhelming, intolerable, were it not that the mother's faith was fixed where faith is never disappointed. Even so, she was human; and the question, what would be the fate of her little daughter when she herself was gone, pressed hard and pressed constantly, and found no solution. So the two were sitting, in each other's arms, mute and thoughtful, when Mr. Digby came in.

Rotha did not stir, and he came up to them, bent down by the side of the chair and took Mrs. Carpenter's hand. If he put the usual question, Mrs.

Carpenter did not answer it; her eyes met his silently. There was a power of grateful love and also of grave foreboding in her quiet face; one of those looks which from an habitually self-contained spirit come with so much power on any one capable of understanding them. The young man's eyes fell from her to Rotha; the two faces were very near each other; and for the first time Rotha's defiance gave place to a little bit of liking. She had not seen her mother's look; but she had watched Mr. Digby's eyes as they answered it, in their ear nest, intent expression, and then as the eyes came to her she felt the warm ray of kindness and sympathy which beamed from them. A moment it was, but Rotha was Mr. Digby's opponent no more from that time.

"You seem to be having a pleasant rest," he remarked in his usual calm way. "I hope you have got all your work done for me?"

"I never do rest till my work is done," said the girl.

"That is a very good plan. Will you prove the fact on the present occasion?"

Rotha unwillingly left her place.

"Mr. Digby, what sort of a chair is this?"

"A spring chair."

"It is a very good thing."

"I am glad it meets your approbation."

"It meets mother's too. Do you see how she rests in it?"

"Does she rest?" asked the young man, rather of Mrs. Carpenter than of her daughter.

"All the body can," she answered with a faint smile.

"'Underneath are the everlasting arms'--" he said.

But that word caused a sudden gush of tears on the sick woman's part; she hid her face; and Mr. Digby called off Rotha at once to her recitations.

He kept her very busy at them for some time; Latin and arithmetic and grammar came under review; and then he proceeded to put a pen in her hand and give her a dictation lesson; criticised her handwriting, set her a copy, and fully engrossed Rotha's eyes and mind.

CHAPTER VI.

A LEGACY.

"Mother," said Rotha, when their visiter was again gone and her copy was done and she had returned to her mother's side, "I never knew before to- day that Mr. Digby has handsome eyes."

"How did you find it out to-day?"

"I had a good look at them, and they looked at me so."

"How?"

"I don't know--as if they meant a good deal, and good. Don't you think he has handsome eyes, mother?"

"I always knew that. He is a very fine-looking man altogether."

"Is he? I suppose he is. Only he likes to have his own way."

"I wonder if somebody else doesn't, that I know?"

"That's the very thing, mother. If I didn't, I suppose I shouldn't care.

But when Mr. Digby says anything, he always looks as if he expected it to be just so, and everybody to mind him."

Mrs. Carpenter could not help laughing, albeit she was by no means in a laughing mood. Her laugh was followed by a sigh.

"What makes you draw a long breath, mother?"

"I wish you could govern that temper of yours, my child."