A Letter of Credit Part 50

"Mebbe. I doesn't know all de places on dis yere arth."

"How long is he going to be gone?"

"Can't tell dat, miss. I haint heerd n.o.body say. La, I dare say he'll come back. It's as easy to come as to go. Folks is allays goin' and comin'. But if you tell Mis' Busby, then I've done gone and lost my place, Miss Rotha."

Rotha stood still and said not a word more. But she turned so white that Lesbia looked on in alarm, expecting every moment she would faint. There was no faintness, however. Rotha was not one of those who lose present knowledge of misery in the weakness of a swoon. She turned white and even livid in the intensity of pa.s.sion, the fury of rage and despair which held her; then, knowing that she must not betray Lesbia and that accordingly she must not meet anybody's eyes, she seized her books and rushed up stairs to her own little room.

It was dark there, but so much darker in the child's heart that she never noticed that. It was cold, yet not to her, for in her soul a fire was burning, hot enough to dispense with material warmth. She never missed that. But the walls of her room did seem to her a prison, a dreadful prison, from which she must flee if there were any place to flee to. Had her only refuge failed her? Was her one heart's treasure lost to her? Was the world empty, and all gone? The bewilderment of it almost equalled the pain. Rotha held her head in both hands and tried to find some hope, or some stay for her thoughts and for her feelings.

She charged it all presently with the certainty of intuition upon her aunt. For in her Rotha had not one particle of trust. She had received at her hands no unkind treatment, (what was the matter with the mantua- makers, though?) she had heard from her lips no unkind word; yet both would not have put such a distance between them as this want of trust did. It was Rotha's nature to despise where she could not trust; and here unhappily there was also the complication of fear. Somehow, she was sure, her aunt had done it; she had prevented Mr. Digby from seeing her; and now he was away, and how could she tell but cunning arrangements would be potent enough to keep him from seeing her evermore? Any reason for such machinations Rotha indeed failed to divine; why her aunt should desire to keep them apart, was a mere mystery; all the same, she had done it; and the chances were she would choose to do it permanently. Mr. Digby had been duped, or baffled somehow; else he would never have left the country without seeing his charge. She did not know before that Mr. Digby could be duped, or baffled; but if once or twice, why not again.

She would write to him. Ah, she had not his address, that he was to have given her. _He_ would write. Yes, but somebody else would get the letters.

Rotha was of anything but a suspicious disposition, yet now suspicion after suspicion came in her mind. The possible moving cause for her aunt's action was entirely beyond her imagination; the action itself and the drift of it she discerned clearly. There rose in her a furious opposition and dislike towards her aunt, a storm of angry abhorrence. And yet, she was in Mrs. Busby's care, under her protection, and also--in her power. Rotha gnashed her teeth, mentally, as she reviewed the situation.

But by degrees grief overweighed even anger and fear; grief so cutting, so desolating, so crushing, as the girl had hardly known in her life before; an agony of anguish which held her awake till late in the night; till feeling and sense were blunted with exhaustion, and in her misery she slept.

When the day came, Rotha awaked to a cold, dead sense of the state of things; the ashes of the fire that had burned so fiercely the night before; desolate and dreary as the ashes of a fire always are. She revolved while she was dressing her plan of action. She must have certain information from Mrs. Busby herself. She was certain indeed of what she had heard; but she must hear it from somebody besides Lesbia, and she must not betray Lesbia. She thought it all over, and went down stairs trembling in the excitement and the pain of what she had to do.

It was winter now in truth. The bas.e.m.e.nt room where the family took their meals in ordinary, was a very warm and comfortable apartment; handsomely furnished; only Rotha always hated it for being half underground. The fire was burning splendidly; Mr. Busby sat in his easy chair at the side of the hearth next the light; Mrs. Busby was at the table preparing breakfast. Rotha stood by the fire and thought how she should begin. The sun shone very bright outside the windows. But New York had become a desert.

"Mr. Busby, will you come to the table?" said his wife. "Rotha, I am going to see about your cloak to-day."

Rotha could not say "thank you." She began to eat, for form's sake.

"What are you going to get her, mother?" Antoinette enquired.

"You can come along and see."

"Aunt Serena," said Rotha, trying to speak un-concernedly, "what has become of Mr. Digby--Mr. Southwode, I mean."

"I do not know, my dear," the lady answered smoothly.

"Why haven't I seen him?"

"My dear, you have not seen anybody. Some day I hope you will be able; but I begin to despair of the dress-makers."

"If my tailor served me so, I should give him up," said Mr. Busby's quick, husky utterance.

"Yes, papa, but you wouldn't, if there was only one tailor you liked."

"Isn't there more than one mantua-maker for all this big city?"

"My dear, Miss Hubbell suits me, and is uncommonly reasonable, for the quality of her work; and she has so much custom, we cannot get her without speaking long beforehand."

"Why don't you speak, then?"

"When was Mr. Digby--Mr. Southwode here, aunt Serena?" Rotha began again.

"A few nights ago. I do not recollect. Mr. Busby, as you go down town will you stop at Dubois's and order the piano tuner? The piano is quite out of tune. And I wish you would order me a bag of coffee, if you say you can get it more reasonably at your down town place."

"Very well, my dear." The words used to amuse Rotha, they rolled out so, brisk and sharp, like the discharge from a gun. To-day she was impatient.

"Aunt Serena, I have been wanting to see Mr. Southwode very much."

No answer. Mrs. Busby attended to her breakfast as if she did not hear.

"When can I?" Rotha persisted.

"I am sure, I cannot say. Mr. Busby, I will trouble you for a little of that sausage."

"This sausage has too much pepper in it, mamma."

"And too little of something else," added Mr. Busby.

"Of what, Mr. Busby?"

"That I do not know, my dear; it belongs to your department."

"But even the Chaldean magicians could not interpret the dream that was not told to them," Mrs. Busby suggested, with smiling satisfaction. "How can I have the missing quality supplied, if you cannot tell me what it is you miss?"

"You can divine, my dear, quite as well as the Chaldean magicians."

"Then if that is true, aunt Serena," Rotha put in desperately, "will you please tell me where Mr. Southwode is?"

"Her divining rod is not long enough for that," said Mr. Busby. "Mr.

Southwode is on the high seas somewhere, on his way to England."

"On the high seas!" Rotha repeated slowly.

"There was no occasion to mention that, Mr. Busby," said his wife. "Mr.

Southwode's movements are nothing to us."

"Seem to be something to Rotha," said the gentleman.

"You knew that," said Rotha, steadily. "Why did you keep it from me, aunt Serena?"

"I did not keep it from you," Mrs. Busby returned, bridling. "The papers are open. I did not speak of it, because Mr. Southwode and his affairs are no concern of yours, or of mine, and therefore are not interesting."

"Of yours? No! But they are all I have in the world!" said Rotha, with fire in her cheeks and in her eyes. Mrs. Busby went on with her breakfast and avoided looking at her. But Antoinette cried out.

"All she has in the world! Mr. Southwode! Pretty well for a young lady!

Mamma, do you hear that? Mr. Southwode is all she has in the world."

"Once hearing a silly thing is quite enough. You need not repeat it, Antoinette."

"Didn't he come to say good bye?" asked Rotha, her eyes blazing.

"I do not answer questions put in that tone," said Mrs. Busby, coldly.