“If we are ever in doubt what to do, it is a good rule to ask
ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow we had done.”
—Sir John Lubbuck.
The first day of September, late in the afternoon, Judith stood over
the kitchen stove making beef-tea for Aunt Rody. The weekly letters
from Don had failed—failed for three weeks; but twice before in five
years had she missed a letter. At the step behind her she did not
raise her eyes; the beef-tea was ready to strain; at this moment she
had no interest in the world but that beef-tea.
“Judith, are you ready for news?” asked Roger.
“Good news?” she asked, forgetting her beef-tea and turning towards
him, radiant.
“That depends upon how you take it.”
“I’ll take it in the way to _make_ it good, then. I’m not ready for
anything unpleasant,” she said, with a vain attempt to keep her lips
from quivering.
“Then I’ll tell you. Guess who is married. But you will never guess,”
he replied with confident eagerness.
“Some one in Bensalem?”
“No.”
“Bensalem is all my world.”
“You forget somebody on the other side of the world.”
“Not Cousin Don,” in the most startled surprise.
“Cousin Don. It’s a stroke of genius, or something. He never did
anything like other people. Just as he was on the point of starting
for home, he decided to stay and marry an English girl he found out
he was in love with; or found out she was in love with him; he seems
rather surprised himself. They were married the day he expected to
sail for home.”
“Then why didn’t he come and bring her?” asked Judith as soon as she
could find her voice.
“The English girl would rather stay in England, or on the Continent;
she has no fancy to live in America.”
“I’m afraid—he didn’t want to,” said Judith who could not believe
that Cousin Don had failed her.
“He never did a thing he didn’t want to in his life.”
“But he has not been quite fair to keep it from us; I did not think
he _could_ do such a thing.”
“He did not keep it all from me,” Roger replied, seriously; “perhaps
I should have prepared you for it. He has been interested in her for
some time, visited her in England—whether he did not know his own
mind, or she did not know hers does not appear; but now they both
seem to be of the same mind. Judith, dear, it isn’t such a dreadful
thing.”
“Not to you,” said Judith.
Now, he would never come and take her away. No one would ever take
her away. She did not belong to him any longer.
“Judith,” began Aunt Affy, hurriedly in the kitchen doorway. “Oh, you
_are_ fixing the beef-tea.”
She strained the beef-tea, salted it, poured it into a cup, and went
to Aunt Rody’s entry bed-room as if she were in a dream, not
thinking, or feeling anything but that she was left alone in the
world, her Cousin Don had cast her off, he had broken his word to her
mother, he had not cared for her as if she were his little sister. He
did not even care to write and tell her that he was married and not
coming home.
“Poor child,” Aunt Affy was saying in the kitchen, “it will break her
heart.”
“It shall not break her heart,” was the fierce answer. “I would
rather have told her he was dead than married—for her own sake. I
cannot understand his shameful neglect. No money has come for her for
six months—but she will never know that. His letter to me gives only
the news of his marriage—his first letter for a month—but he has
never written to me regularly as he has to her. It would be a
satisfaction to run over to England to have it out with him.”
“But he had a right to be married,” said Aunt Affy, doubtfully.
“I am not questioning that. He had no right to hurt this child so—she
has believed in him as if he were an angel sent out of Heaven for her
special protection.”
“He isn’t the only angel,” said Aunt Affy, composedly. “I have been
counting on him. That’s why I have had no help—I didn’t bestir myself
for I expected news of his coming every week. Mrs. Evans’s sister, a
widow who goes out nursing, can come the middle of this month. I
didn’t tell Judith. I thought she was happy in being a ministering
angel herself. And then she was going away so soon, if her Cousin Don
should come I wanted her here when he came.”
“You had better send for the nurse,” said Roger, dryly.
“I’ll go after supper and see Mrs. Evans. I suppose you and Miss
Marion will want my little girl again.”
“We certainly shall,” replied Roger with emphasis, “more than ever,
now.”
“But she mustn’t be an expense to you,” said Aunt Affy, with an
anxious frown.
“Never you mind the expense. If I don’t burn Don Mackenzie up in a
letter, it will be because there are no words hot enough. I wish I
could send him her face as she came to the understanding of my news.
It would rather mar his honeymoon. I’ve kept this news a week, and
now I had to come and blurt it out.”