SAD CONFIDENCES.
Winter was gone, spring had come, and if the song of the turtle dove was
not heard in the land, the wood-pigeons made noise enough about the
Mortomleys' house to almost deafen its occupants.
Spring had come, spring in its garments of vivid green, decked and
studded with primrose stars; spring, bringing the perfume of
up-springing sap, of tender violets, of early hyacinths to refresh the
sense; spring with its promise of daisies and buttercups, of fragrant
hawthorn, of budding wild roses.
With everything beautiful decking the earth in honour of her advent,
spring came smiling that year across the fair English landscape.
Sunshine and blue sky everywhere overhead; underfoot springing grass and
luxuriant wheat and flowers, and bud and leaf; and at the first, and
when the first spring bird's twitter announced that the loveliest season
of all the English year was close at hand, Dolly's spirits rose like the
heart of a giant refreshed to give the sweet visitor greeting.
She had been ailing and languid all through the tedious winter, but at
sight of the sunshine, at sound of the songs of birds, somewhat of her
former brightness returned.
"I know now," she said, "how glad that poor dove must have been to get
out of the ark. I never used to be tired of winter, but latterly the
winters have seemed so long and cold and dreary."
"And yet we have kept up glorious fires this winter," remarked
Mortomley, to whom health and comparative youth seemed to have been
restored as by a miracle.
"Yes," agreed his wife, "what should we have done without the great logs
of woodand you--aunt?" and she held out a grateful hand to Miss Gerace,
who never intended to go back to Dassell any more, who had given up her
house, her maid, her furniture to 'the ladies,' as they were styled in
that far-away region, Mesdames Trebasson and Werner; who never intended
to leave Dolly again, and who had with tears in her eyes entreated her
niece's forgiveness because she had, thinking Mrs. Mortomley could never
come to want, sunk the principal of her money in an annuity.
"You dear old thing," said Dolly trying to laugh away her own tears,
"when you are lost to me and mine, we shall not cry the less because you
could not leave us enough to buy mourning," and it was then Miss Gerace
and Dolly agreed they were not to part company again.
In good truth, how Dolly would have got through that winter without her
aunt's presence and her aunt's money she did not know.
Life had been a hard enough struggle when she was strong to battle, but
not long after Mrs. Werner left the little cottage, Dolly felt a
weakness come upon her against which she was impotent to struggle, which
made it easy to persuade her to take her morning cup of tea in bed, and
do little save sit near the grateful warmth of that pleasant wood-fire
through the day.
The doctor came; a pleasant chatty country doctor, who was accustomed to
patients who liked to dwell on their ailments, and who, though Mrs.
Mortomley puzzled him, never imagined she could be so stupid as to tell
him fibs.
According to all known rules Dolly ought to have had one or two very
sufficient pains, one or two very decided symptoms, but Dolly had no
pains and no symptoms. She was only tired she declared, exhausted
mentally and bodily if he preferred that form of expression, and she
should be well in the spring.
That was all any one could make out of Mrs. Mortomley, and when the
spring came it seemed to justify her prediction.
With the bright weather Dolly revived. She sat in the sunshine, she
donned her brightest apparel, she ate with a relish the simple country
fare, and she requested the kindly rector to say one day from the
reading-desk that Dollabella Mortomley desired to return thanks for
"mercies vouchsafed."
"For what mercies, my dear?" asked the good rector, who could not look
at her wistful, eager face quite unmoved.
"God has vouchsafed me another spring," she answered; "one of almost
unalloyed happiness."
And so the sunshine of old returned and stayed with her to the end.
With the spring came Mrs. Werner. Her friend had requested her visit
long before; but she delayed complying with that request till an almost
imperative message brought her South.
Then Dolly gave her that packet, the secret of which she had kept so
faithfully, and when Mrs. Werner opened it, she found notes to the
amount of two thousand pounds and a letter, her dead husband's
confession and fare-well.
"I cannot retain this money," said Mrs. Werner.
"Do so for a week and then we will talk about it," Mrs. Mortomley
answered, and for a week the widow maintained silence, walking alone
through those Hertfordshire woods, and for the first time keeping her
vigil with the dead.
"Do not send that money to lawyer, trustee, or creditor, Lenny," said
Mrs. Mortomley when they came to talk the matter over. "Remember your
marriage vows and obey your husband. He risked much to save that for
you; do not frustrate his intentions. When the expenses come out of
that, it would be a penny in the pound to the creditors; and if you
could send it direct to the creditors, they would not thank you for it.
Poor Lang--oh how sorry I am Archie and Lang could not get on together,
for he was one in a thousand--said to me once,
"'Look here, ma'am, creditors are this sort of folks. If you had paid
them nineteen and elevenpence in the pound, and stripped yourself of
everything to pay them that, and they saw your clean shirt lying on the
bed ready for you to put on, they would want the shirt on the bed to pay
the odd penny.' Keep that two thousand pounds, my dear. I, who have been
through it all, tell you any human being who allows sentiment to
influence business pays for his folly with his life."
"Dolly!"
"I mean what I say, Lenny; but you need not employ a crier to circulate
the news. It will not be yet; but it must be some time. Had we laid
aside two thousand pounds, I might have lived to be as old as your
friend the Countess of Desmond."
To Mrs. Werner the way in which those who were with Dolly continually,
refused to believe in anything very serious being the matter with her,
seemed at first incredible, but after a time she too found the fact of
danger hard to realise. Death and Dolly appeared as far removed from
each other as light and darkness, and yet she was going, surely, if
slowly out of the day into the night.
"I am thankful to see her so much better," remarked Miss Gerace, in
answer to some observation of Mrs. Werner's. "She did look shockingly
ill through the winter. I was quite uneasy about her, but now she has
recovered her spirits and her appetite, and is getting quite a colour in
her cheeks."
Mrs. Werner remained silent for a moment, then with an effort she said,
"Dear Miss Gerace, can not you see what that colour is--don't you know
Dolly paints?"
If she had declared Dolly to be a pickpocket, Miss Gerace could not have
been more shocked. Forthwith she took her niece to task about this
iniquity, which Mrs. Mortomley did not deny, though she tried to laugh
off the accusation.
"What is the harm of sometimes painting the lily?" she observed. "If
Leonora had either been as stupid or as wise as she ought to have been,
I should eventually have worked up that colour to one of robust health,
but as you all appear to object to my looking beautiful, I think I shall
take out my frizettes, let down my hair, wear a dressing-wrapper all
day long, and adopt the appearance and manners of an untidy ghost."
"My dear, you should not talk in that light way," expostulated Miss
Gerace; "though you may not know it, illness is a very serious thing."
Not know it! There was a little quiver about Dolly's mouth which might
have told a tale to the woman who had lived so long, if her
understanding of her niece's nature had been as thorough as that
possessed by Mrs. Werner.
Not know it! Had she lain awake through the long, long winter nights,
and the scarcely less dreary spring mornings, reconciling herself to the
idea of that long, lonely journey, thinking thoughts that lay between
herself and her God, without coming to a full comprehension of the fact
that not even sorrow is more solemn and awful than mortal sickness.
She knew all about it.
"But I never could bear the sight of sad faces," she said to Mrs.
Werner, "and if you frighten aunt and make Archie think there is
something very much amiss with me, you will render all our lives
miserable."
Mrs. Werner sighed. It was against her preconceived ideas that a woman
should smile and laugh and be still the very sunshine of her home all
the time a fatal disease was working its will upon her, and yet she felt
in her heart Dolly's was the soundest philosophy, if only she could be
induced to take care of herself to lengthen out the time before----
No, she could not even mentally finish the sentence. If Dolly would not
make an effort to save her own life, some one should fight against death
in her behalf.
"It is wrong of you," she said, "knowing how precious you are to us all;
you should use every effort to get well again. You ought to have
first-rate advice. You ought to have change of air. You ought to have
everything nourishing and tempting in the way of food. I shall take
charge of you myself now. You belong to me as much as to your husband. I
am sure no man ever loved a woman more than I have loved you."
"Come here, Lenny," was the answer. "Come close beside me, dear--here in
the sunshine, and let us settle all this at once, never to speak of it
again. For myself, for my own very individual self's sake," she went on,
taking Mrs. Werner's hand in hers, and stroking it absently, "I am not
certain that if I could, I should care to live, unless, indeed, I were
able to find some waters of Lethe in which I might plunge and forget all
the misery, all the humiliation of the past. There are some people who
cannot forget. I am one of them. There are some who cannot remember and
be quite happy; that is my case. There are some who think life not much
worth having unless they can be very happy in it; I fear I hold some
such heretical doctrine."
She stopped and kissed Mrs. Werner, smiling all the time the bright
smile of old.
"So much for myself," she said, "but for Archie's sake, for Lenore's,
for yours, not least for the sake of my poor aunt who has grown so to
love me, just when it would have been well for her to have done nothing
of the kind, I would stay if I could--I would spend money and time and
thought, to get strong again.
"I have consulted doctors, I have told great physicians every symptom of
my complaint, though I do not choose to be quite frank with a medical
man, who, knowing Archie, might make the poor fellow wretched before
there is any necessity for him to be told the truth.
"I have followed every scrap of advice so far as I possibly could, I
have taken care of myself, and the result is I am here still; and it may
be, if affairs continue to go well with us, that I may remain for a long
time yet, as time counts in such cases. And now, Lenny, do not let us
speak of this ever again."
"But cannot you get away from this place?" asked Mrs. Werner.
"I am as well here as I should be anywhere else," was the reply; "and it
would be folly to move to a fresh neighbourhood just when the works are
really beginning to return a good income. Besides, though the house is
small, I love it; and those woods are, to my mind, the very realization
of peace."
"How did it happen Lang left you?"
"I can scarcely tell you, such a variety of reasons went to make up the
sum total of his discontent. Of course, till Archie took the reins, he
had everything almost his own way; he bought and he sold and he kept the
books and he employed whom he liked, and finally he lost his head as all
people of his class do. I dare say you never had a cook able to grill a
chop, who did not fancy you never could get on without her. Well, of
course, Archie found this unpleasant. Lang got discontented and jealous
and very troublesome, and made things uncomfortable for himself and
every one else.
"At last matters came to a crisis about a clerk who had such good
testimonials, we thought he would prove a treasure. We shortly found he
was anything rather than a treasure however, and Archie would have got
rid of him at once if Lang had not come up one evening and given us the
choice of parting with him or Roberts--that was the clerk's name.
"He said, he Lang, need not remain long out of a situation; that Hart,
Mayfield, and Company had offered him a good salary, and that if he was
not put on some different footing with us, he would go to those able to
appreciate his services.
"So Archie answered he had better go to them, and he went and we were
all very sorry, Lang included,--he repented, and would have stayed at
the last, but I don't see how Archie could have kept him."
"Neither do I," said Mrs. Werner; and then she asked, "Now that Mr.
Mortomley is making money, is he not afraid of Mr. Swanland demanding a
share of the profits?"
Dolly laughed. "Everything is in the name of Miss Gerace, and you cannot
think how pleased the old darling is when we joke about her colour-works
and ask how orders are coming in for her new blue and her famous yellow.
She is learning to write a plain commercial hand so as to take the whole
of the correspondence. I cannot tell you the comfort she is to me. I do
not know what Archie and I and the child would have done without her
all through the dull, dark winter days."
Mrs. Werner did not answer; she was wondering at that moment how Archie
and Miss Gerace and the child would do without Dolly through the days of
the sorrowful summers and winters yet to come.