A Letter of Credit Part 33

Digby thinking this among other things; poor Rotha was hardly thinking at all, any more than a shipwrecked man just flung ash.o.r.e by the waves, and clinging to the rock that has saved him from sweeping out to sea again, lie blesses the rock, maybe, but it is no time for considering anything.

The one idea is to hold fast; and Rotha mentally did it, with an intensity of trust and clinging that her protector never guessed at.

"Then I must do what you say, now?" she remarked after a while.

"I suppose so," he answered, much struck by this tone of docility.

"I will try, Mr. Digby."

"Will you trust me too, Rotha?"

"For what?"

"I mean, will you trust me that what I do for you, or want you to do, is the best thing to be done?"

Rotha lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Nothing, to-day; by and by, perhaps many things. My question was general."

"Whether I will trust that what you say is the best?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Digby, mightn't you be mistaken?"

"Rotha, might not you? And would it not be more likely?"

Rotha began to reflect that in her past life she had not been wont to give such unbounded trust to anybody; not even to her father, and not certainly to her mother. She had sometimes thought them mistaken; how could she help that? and how could she help it in any other case, if circ.u.mstances warranted it? But with the thought of her mother, tears rose again, and she did not speak. Just then Mrs. Cord came in.

"O I am glad you are there, sir!" she began. "I wanted to speak to you, if you please."

Mr. Digby unclosed his arm from about Rotha, and she withdrew quietly to her former station by the window. The other two went into the adjoining room, and there Mrs. Cord received instruction and information as to various points of the arrangements for the next few days.

"And what will I do with Rotha, sir?" she asked finally.

"Do with her? In what respect?"

"She won't eat, sir."

"She will, I fancy, the next time it is proposed to her."

"She's very hard to manage," said Mrs. Cord, shaking her head. "She will have her own way, always."

"Wel--let her have it."

"But other people won't, sir; and I think it's bad for her. She's had it, pretty much, all along; but now--she don't care for what I say, no more'n if I was a post! Nor Mrs. Marble, nor anybody. And is Mrs. Marble going to take her, sir?"

"Not at all. Her mother left her in my care."

"Oh!--" said the good woman, with a rather prolonged accent of mystification and disapprobation; wondering, no doubt, what disposal Mr.

Digby could make of her, better than with Mrs. Marble; but not venturing to ask.

"Nothing can be done, till after the funeral," the young man went on.

"Take all the care of her you can until then. By the way, if you can give me something to eat, I will lunch here. If you have nothing in the house, I can get something in a few minutes."

Mrs. Cord was very much surprised; however, she a.s.sured Mr. Digby that there was ample supply in the house, and went on, still with a mystified and dissatisfied feeling, to prepare and produce it. She knew how, and very nicely an impromptu meal was spread in a few minutes. Mr. Digby meanwhile went out and got some fruit; and then he and Rotha sat down together. Rotha was utterly gentle and docile; did what he bade her and took what he gave her; indeed it was plain the poor child was in sore need of food, which she had had thus far no heart to eat. Mr. Digby prolonged the meal as much as he could, that he might spend the more time with her; and when he went away, asked her to lie down and go to sleep.

Those must be heavy days, he knew, till the funeral was over. What then?

It was a question. Mrs. Busby would not be in town perhaps before the end of September; and here it was the middle of August. Near two months of hot weather to intervene. What should he do? He would willingly be out of the city himself; and for Rotha, the spending all these weeks in her mother's old rooms, in August weather, and with Mrs. Cord and Mrs. Marble for companions, did not seem expedient. It would be good for neither body nor mind. But he could not take her to any place of public resort; that would not be expedient either. He pondered and pondered, and was very busy for the next two or three days.

The result of which activity was, that he took rooms in a pleasant house at Washington Heights, overlooking the river, and removed Rotha there, with Mrs. Cord to look after her. But as he himself also took up his abode in the house, Mrs. Cord's supervision was confined to strictly secondary matters. He had his meals in company with Rotha, and was with her most of the time, and was the sole authority to which she was obliged to refer.

It was an infinite blessing to the child, whose heart was very sore, and who stood in need of very judicious handling. And somewhat to Mr. Digby's surprise, it was not a bore to himself. The pleasure of ministering is always a pleasure, especially when the need is very great; it is also a pleasure to excite and to receive affection; and he presently saw, with some astonishment, that he was doing this also. Certainly it was not a thing in the circ.u.mstances to be astonished at; and it moved Mr. Digby so, simply because he was so far from thinking of himself in his present plan of action. All the pleasanter perhaps it was, when he saw that the forlorn girl was hanging upon him all the dependence of a very trusting nature, and giving to him all the wealth of a pa.s.sionate power of loving.

This came by degrees.

At first, in a strange place and with new surroundings and utterly changed life, the girl was exceedingly forlorn. The days pa.s.sed in alternations of violent outbreaks of grief and fits of seeming apathy, which I suppose were simply nature's reaction from overstrain and exhaustion. The violence she rarely shewed in Mr. Digby's presence; Rotha was taking her first lessons in self-command; nevertheless he saw the work that was going on, knew it must be, for a time, and wisely abstained from interference with it. "There is a time to weep"; and he knew it was now; comfort would be mockery. He was satisfied that Rotha should have so much diversion from her sorrow as his presence occasioned; that she should be obliged to meet him at meals, and to behave then with a certain degree of outward calm, and the necessary attention to little matters; all useful in a sort of slow, unnoticed way. Otherwise for a few days he let her alone. But then he began to give her things to do. Lessons were taken up again, by degrees multiplied, until Rotha's time was well filled with occupation. It went very hard at first. Rotha even ventured on a little pa.s.sive rebellion; even declared she could not study. Mr. Digby shewed her that she could; helped her, led her on, and let her see finally that he expected certain things of her, which she could not neglect without coming to an open rupture with him. That was impossible.

Rotha bent her will to do what was required of her; and from that time the difficulty of Mr. Digby's task was over. She began soon to be interested again in what she was about and to make excellent progress.

Then Mr. Digby would put himself in a hammock on the piazza or out under a great walnut-tree, and make Rotha read to him, and incite her to talk of what she read; or he would give her lessons in drawing; both occasions of the utmost gratification to Rotha; and when the scorching sun had got low down over the Palisades, he would take her in an easy little vehicle and go for a long drive. So one way and another they came to be together all the time. And after the first miserable days were past, and Rotha had been constrained to busy herself with something besides herself; her mental powers called into vigorous exertion and furnished with an abundant supply of new food; by degrees a sort of enjoyment began to creep into her life again, and grew, and grew. It was a help, that everything was so strange about her. Even her own dress.

"Mrs. Cord," Mr. Digby had said in the first week of this new life,--"how is Rotha off for clothes?"

"Well, sir," said the nurse, "of course they were people not likely to have much of that sort of thing; but Rotha has what will do her through the warm season."

"But is she supplied as a young lady ought to be, with everything needful?"

"As a young lady!--no, sir. It's what she never set up for, and don't need, and knows nothing about. Her mother was a very good woman, and didn't pretend to dress her as a young lady. But she's comfortable."

Mr. Digby half smiled at the collocation of things, however he went on with full seriousness.

"She will go to school by and by, and she will go there as a young lady.

I wish, Mrs. Cord, you would see to it, as far as you know, that she has a full supply of everything. Go to one of the best shops for outfits and get plenty of every thing and of good quality, and send the bills to me.

And get Mrs. Marble to make her some dresses."

"Mourning, sir?"

"No. Simple things, but no black."

"I asked, because it's customary, sir."

"It's a bad custom; better broken."

"Then what shall I get, sir?" asked Mrs. Cord with unwonted stolidity.

"You need not get anything. I will see to it myself. Only the linen and all that, Mrs. Cord, which I should not know how to get. The rest I will take care of."

And he took such good care, that the good woman was filled with a displeased surprise which was inexplicable. Why should she be displeased?

Yet Mrs. Cord was quite "put about," as she said, when the things came home. They were simple things, indeed; a few muslins and ginghams and the like. But the ginghams were fine and beautiful, and the muslins of delicate patterns and excellent quality; and with them came a set of fine cambrick handkerchiefs, and ruffles, and lace, and a little parasol, and a light summer wrap; for Rotha had nothing to put on that made her fit to go to drive with her guardian. He had taken her, all the same, dressed as she was, but it seems he thought there must be a change in this state of things. Mrs. Cord was full of dissatisfaction; and when she took the dresses to Mrs. Marble to be made up, the two good women held a regular pow wow over them.