CROSS PURPOSES.
"When love shall, pitying, call me home,
To that sweet, sweet home that has long been hers,
With yearning rapture my eyes will roam
O'er throngs of the sainted worshippers.
For I think the child with the starry eyes,
Who vanished away to that far-off land,
Will look from some window in Paradise,
And beckon me in with her tiny hand."
_Helen Marion Burnside._
Queenie's forebodings were not verified, for, in spite of two
untoward circumstances, the greater part of the winter passed quietly
to the inhabitants of the cottage and Church-Stile House.
Only two things marred its perfect harmony. Garth had not yet
spoken, and Cathy had bade good-bye to her friends at Hepshaw, and
had begun her London work in earnest.
Queenie felt the loss of her friend bitterly; every one missed the
bright, light-hearted girl. Cathy's moods had of late been strangely
variable: fits of despondency had alternated with bursts of wild,
exuberant spirits; a certain sweet recklessness had tinged even her
farewell greetings.
They were all at the station to see her off, even Mr. Logan and Miss
Cosie, and at the last moment Dr. Stewart appeared.
Queenie seemed utterly quenched, and Langley looked depressed and
tearful; but Cathy looked at them all with her bright, resolute smile.
"Good-bye, dear friends; don't miss me too much, before long I shall
be amongst you again," she said, as she waved her hand gaily, and the
train moved slowly away.
A curiously sweet expression crossed Mr. Logan's face as he walked by
Queenie's side down the path bordered by plane trees that led from
the station to the Deerhound.
"Miss her! how can we help missing her?" cried the girl, appealing to
him with sorrowful eyes, as though to claim his sympathy. "Langley
will be dreadfully lonely without her, and as for Emmie and me! why
she was the only friend that we had at Granite Lodge, the dearest,
and the kindest, and the bravest." But here Queenie's eulogy ended
in a little sob.
"Young things love to try their strength," replied Mr. Logan, softly.
"We would fain clip their wings, but they would be sure to grow
again. When I think of Miss Catherine," he went on, his eyes
darkening strangely, "going out so bravely to her work in the heart
of the great city without a tear on her bright face, however much her
heart may be aching at leaving us all behind, I cannot help thinking
of the white dove flying all those days over those wastes of water,
with the olive branch in its mouth, and what Noah must have felt when
he pulled it into the ark. It did not come to him even of its own
accord, the wild weary thing, but he must needs put out his hand and
draw it into its refuge."
Queenie looked up at him somewhat startled, but he did not seem to
notice her surprise; his eyes had a far-off, abstracted look in them,
and during the remainder of the walk he preserved an almost unbroken
silence.
Cathy wrote long cheery letters, full of amusing descriptions. She
liked her work on the whole, she told them, and was not daunted by
the difficulties that beset the path of beginners. "It was all in
the day's work," as she wrote; "and what was the good of possessing a
fount of endurance fit for a Spartan woman if there was nothing to
bear. In fact, I am determined to serve my noviciate properly, and
to make the best of things. I am no more inclined to see bugbears
now than I was to discern Emmie's favorite ghost in the old garret at
Granite Lodge; so make your mind easy, my precious old Queen, and do
not indulge in any more troublesome fancies on my account."
Queenie did not show these letters to any one but Emmie; but the two
gloated over them in private, and tried to imagine Cathy in her black
stuff dress and little white cap, moving among the dim wards with her
light springy step hushed so as not to disturb the sleepers, "looking
not a bit like our Cathy, but like any other ordinary person," as
Emmie observed with a sigh. But if Queenie missed her friend now,
the time was to come when she would yearn for her out of the fulness
of an over-charged and wounded heart; when her first thought would
be, "If only Cathy were here."
Things were not quite satisfactory between herself and Garth Clayton.
The young man had grown strangely shy in his ways with her, and held
himself almost entirely aloof from the cottage.
The fact was, Garth was in a predicament.
He was more in love than ever; but in his present circumstances
marriage was out of the question. How was he to bring home a wife to
the old home, entangled as he was by a load of debt and difficulties?
Garth was perfectly honest in his intentions. He had made up his
mind that Queenie Marriott was the woman he loved; but he had a man's
horror of a long engagement. "What's the good of telling a girl you
love her if you can't see your way clear to make her your wife?" he
always said; and he acted on this opinion so thoroughly that his
quiet withdrawal of attentions filled the girl's heart with dismay.
"Would he be so cold and distant with me if he really loved me?"
Queenie asked herself. "He never comes to see me now, and if I go up
to Church-Stile House he is always so busy, and seems as if he fears
to be alone with me. Does he think that I want him to pay me
attentions if he has ceased to care for me in the way he did?" asked
the girl, her breast heaving at the thought; and she mourned for the
loss of her friend, and in her secret soul refused to be comforted.
But she knew nothing of the conflict that went on under that assumed
coldness of manner that wounded her so greatly.
Garth found his life anything but easy just now; to be sure, ruin no
longer stared him in the face, but his debt was a secret torment to
him, and fretted his proud nature with a sense of positive injury.
He would fain have drawn out as little as possible of the sum placed
for his benefit, but his needs were pressing. Scarcity of orders,
the rise in the men's wages, the heavily-freighted accounts of the
cottages he had so lavishly provided for his workmen, had obliged him
to expend already seven or eight hundred pounds of the money. The
quarry was now in good working order again; and in a few months the
young master of Warstdale trusted that he would be enabled to repay
the first instalment of the debt; and then, and not till then, would
he open his lips to speak any words of love.
Garth was capable of keeping any resolution that he had formed. It
was no fear of betraying himself that made him avoid Queenie; but the
girl's presence was so sweet to him, and the longing to tell what was
in his heart was so great, that the pain of such silence was
unendurable to him.
And so he quietly withdrew himself, and went on with his daily work
as though no such thoughts were his; and Queenie meekly accepted her
banishment and bore Langley's reproaches on her unsociability as
patiently as she could, until Langley discovered how matters were,
and held her peace ever afterward like a wise woman, and petted and
made much of the girl when she came down to the cottage.
And Queenie saw little of Garth, only lifting her brown eyes timidly
to his face when she met him in the village, and he stopped to
exchange a greeting with her and Emmie; but he never once said, "Why
do we see you so seldom at Church-Stile House?" but only asked kindly
after hers and the child's welfare, and bade her wrap up Emmie and
cherish her now the bitter winter weather had set in.
Queenie ate her Christmas dinner at the vicarage, with only Mr. Logan
and Miss Cosie; and her New Year's day was spent at Juniper Lodge.
The Claytons were not present on either of these occasions; Garth had
gone up to London to see Cathy, and Langley had spent both days at
Karldale Grange in Gertrude Chester's sick room. A long season of
suffering that no skill could avert or tenderness alleviate had set
in for the unhappy lady, and Langley's services were in constant
requisition.
Now and then Mr. Chester came over to Hepshaw. He always paid a
visit to the cottage, and would go up, as a matter of course, into
Emmie's little room, and sit for a long time by the empty bed where
his darling had slept her little life away, and then he would come
sorrowfully down again, and he and Queenie would talk softly of the
child and her endearing ways.
These visits always made Queenie feel very sad. Time had not
mitigated the father's heavy loss. He still mourned heavily for his
little Nan. His florid face looked pale and haggard. A few threads
of grey were clearly perceptible in the golden brown beard; but his
eyes always lighted up with a look of tenderness when Queenie
mentioned his wife.
"Ah, my poor Gertie," he would say, sorrowfully. "You would scarcely
know her, Miss Marriott, she is so changed; she suffers so terribly.
Langley will have told you; and yet since the death of our little
darling there has never been a word or breath of complaint. She
endures her worst agonies with fortitude; even Dr. Stewart marvels at
her, and says he had never witnessed greater stoicism. It is only
'Hold my hand, Harry,' or 'I shall soon be relieved, dear husband,
when this attack has passed,' just that, and nothing more."
"Yes, indeed; Langley cannot say enough in her praise, she says her
self-control is wonderful."
"Poor soul, she's fighting away her life by inches. You cannot tell
what a man feels when he sees his wife suffering and is helpless to
relieve it. Sometimes I think that for her sake I shall be thankful
when it is over, and she is with the child. I can't get it out of my
mind that she ought to have her mother or myself to take care of her;
she must feel so lost in that great glittering place."
"She is safer and better cared for there than even in your arms, dear
Mr. Chester."
"Yes, I know; and Gertie reproves me and says I am a sad heathen, and
so I am; but I am sure of one thing," speaking in a voice of
suppressed emotion: "that if I am ever good enough--God help me for
the sinner that I am,--but if I am ever helped to win an entrance in
heaven, that my little Nan will be the first to see me, and she will
come running to me, the darling, and I shall feel the clasp of her
sweet arms about me, and the softness of her baby face against mine;
and 'father's come,' she will say that first, I know," breaking off
hurriedly as the tears came into Queenie's eyes.
"And a little child shall lead them." The words seemed to come to
her mind with sudden, irrepressible force. What if he were right,
though he spoke only the language of love's fantasy? Might not the
baby hand be stretched out to him through the darkness and silence
that lay between those two loving souls, ever beckoning him on to
possible good and high endeavour, through devious wanderings, past
yawning pitfalls, over the tumultuous sea of life, beckoning with
faint invisible touches, ever higher and higher.
"Father's come." Fanciful, and yet what more probable in the mystery
of Providence and God's dealing with men than this, that amid the
shining crowds the form of his little Nan should softly glide towards
him; and even there in God's bright home a little child shall lead
them.
And so with all apparent quietness, but with many secret anxieties,
the winter wore softly away.
A week's holiday at Christmas had given the young school-mistress a
short reprieve from her duties, and she had taken advantage of it to
pay a three days' visit to her old friend Caleb Runciman. Emmie had
pleaded hard to accompany her, but the weather was unusually
inclement, and Queenie shrank from exposing the child's delicacy to
such a test; so she remained under Mrs. Fawcett's charge, as Langley
was engrossed with continual visits to Karldale Grange.
Caleb and Molly made much of their visitor, but the old man grumbled
a good deal over his favorite's looks.
"Well, Miss Queenie, I don't believe school-keeping has agreed with
you after all," he began, shaking his head. "She is thin, Molly, is
she not, and looks a bit graver than she used to look?"
"Now, Caleb, don't begin fancying such nonsense. I was never better
in my life. Think of this hearty meal I have just eaten; thin
indeed!" and Queenie opened her brown eyes and threw up her pretty
head with a movement of disdain.
"Of course you must be having your own way, Miss Queenie dear,"
returned the old man as he lighted his pipe; "but, all the same, I
don't believe that Hepshaw air agrees with you both. There, why the
precious lamb has a cough, didn't you tell Molly so just now? and you
are ever so much thinner yourself, my pretty; and when is it all
going to end, this play-acting, the school-mistressing, I mean, and
you and the blessed lamb settle down comfortably, like
sensible-minded Christians, in a nice handsome home of your own, eh,
Miss Queenie?"
"Why, I don't know, Caleb," stammered the girl, rather startled at
this very direct question, "I don't know at all; I have not made up
my mind. Not before the end of the summer; no, certainly not before
then."
Caleb laid down his pipe, with a dissatisfied look.
"I thought better of your common-sense, I did, indeed, Miss Queenie."
"Now, Caleb, if you are going to be cross I shall tell Molly to pack
up my bag, and I shall just take the next train home. What is the
good of being an heiress if one is never to have one's own way?"
"You have had it for a pretty long spell, I'm thinking," returned the
old man with unusual pettishness, but the girl's whim fretted him
sorely. "Mark my words, Miss Queenie, you will play at this thing a
bit too long."
"I shouldn't wonder if you were right," a touch of gravity replacing
her fun; "and I think myself that it would be as well to fix a limit,
for fear I should be tempted to put off the evil hour."
"Eh, eh! now you are going to be sensible."
"I must have six clear months. Let me see, I will say the first of
August. There, Caleb, on the first of August I will enter into
possession of my riches. Will that content you?"
"Why not say May or June, Miss Queenie?"
"No; not a day, not an hour before," returned the girl resolutely.
"My dear old friend, this is not a whim only, it is real stern
necessity. The dearest friends I possess have been in great trouble,
as you know, and my seeming poverty has enabled me to help them; it
is for their sake, not mine, that I am making this further delay.
There, it is decided; and now let us talk of something else," she
finished gaily.
But Caleb was only half-mollified.
"She is thinner, and looks different somehow," he said to his
faithful confidante, Molly, that night. "There is a peaking look in
her brown eyes, like a half-fledged bird that sees its nest, but
can't find its way to it. I doubt that she is not quite happy,
Molly."
"Nay; she is no differ from other young girls," returned Molly
shrewdly. "Bless your dear heart, Mr. Runciman, they are all alike!
they fret a bit, and then cheer up. It is the law of nature, that's
where it is; she will be as perky and chirping-like as ever
by-and-bye," and Molly, who knew the symptoms well, and had buried
her own sweetheart many years ago, changed the subject with womanly
tact and sympathy.