THROUGH DEEP WATERS
Mr. Turner was the first to speak. "Sit down," he said kindly. "You
must not stand."
Miss Blake sank into her place upon the divan, but she did not lean
back. She sat stiffly upright, nervously locking and unlocking her
fingers in her lap and compressing her lips tightly, but asking no
questions--saying no word.
The lawyer drew a chair beside her and slowly, deliberately seated
himself in it.
"You remember," he began at length, in a hesitating sort of way, "that
I told you some time ago that I had some reason to fear that affairs
were not prospering at Bombay. I wish to come to the point at once; to
spare you all suspense. I am afraid Mr. Cutler is in some serious
difficulty, and--"
He paused. The governess leaned forward, and her breath came quickly.
"Go on," she whispered.
"For some time past his letters have been most unsatisfactory. He has
seemed depressed and discouraged. What word I have received from him
during the past few months has been of such a character as to lead one
to form the gravest suspicions. His letters have been short and
hurried--written, evidently, under great mental strain. And latterly
they have ceased altogether. For the last two months, ever since you
have been ill, I have heard literally nothing from him. His plan was
to leave Bombay in September. That he kept to his original purpose I
have no reason to doubt. He was on the steamer, or, at least, his name
was on its passenger list. Of course while you were so ill I could say
nothing to you of this--besides I had only my suspicions then. But as
time passed, and no communication from him reached me I grew
apprehensive. Within the last two weeks I have sent numberless
dispatches to him to his London address, but not one of them has
received a reply--in fact, no one of them has been delivered to him.
The people there do not know where he is. I have cabled to Bombay,
thinking he might have been detained there unexpectedly, but that, too,
has proved of no avail. The Bombay house know nothing of his
whereabouts. He left them as he intended to do in September, and since
then they have heard from him as little as I."
Miss Blake's eager eyes seemed to search the lawyer through and
through. He shifted uneasily in his place.
"It is very difficult to go on," he said, with a nervous, constrained
cough.
"Quick! Quick!" whispered the governess. "Tell me everything
now--this minute. Tell me! Tell me!"
"There is little more to tell," said Mr. Turner sadly. "This afternoon
I received a wire from his London banker, and it seems--that--he,
William Cutler, is--is--dead."
There was a low cry. Miss Blake had leaped to her feet at his words,
and now she was swaying forward as though too faint to stand. The
lawyer sprang forward to save her from falling, but she pushed him away
with both hands almost savagely.
"No, no!" she gasped. "I am strong. I am strong. But--God pity us!
My poor little Nan--and--oh, my poor little Nan!"
She sank back upon the divan and buried her face in her outstretched
arms.
The lawyer rose and went to the window.
Outside the wind blew drearily. The bare trees showed but dimly
through the gathering dusk. It was a bleak, cold outlook. Presently
down the street came a man with a lighted torch and set the gas-flames
to flickering in every lamp along his way.
Mr. Turner watched him until he had passed out of sight--then he turned
about and came back to the sofa once more.
Miss Blake had raised her head and sat staring blankly before her,
dry-eyed, but with an expression far sadder than tears; the dull,
lifeless look of helpless misery that has not yet been touched with
submission.
"Shall I leave you now?" asked the lawyer softly. "Perhaps you would
rather be alone. I can come again--whenever you wish. Perhaps it
would be better for me to come again when you are stronger--better able
to bear it."
She turned her large eyes upon him in a sort of mute supplication. All
the light had gone out of them now. Mr. Turner reseated himself and
continued:
"He died in a hospital in London of a malignant fever. No one saw him.
He was buried within twenty-four hours, I presume according to the law
in such cases. Of course, I have no particulars, only the barest
outline of facts. Undoubtedly I shall receive a letter by the next
steamer, giving details. It is all desperately sad--heart-breakingly
sad. Poor fellow! So young and to die alone among strangers."
Miss Blake stretched out her hands supplicatingly.
"Don't," she pleaded.
"Shall I tell Nan?" Mr. Turner asked after a moment. "Perhaps it would
be better if I should. You have undergone enough."
"No, no!" she cried. "No one must tell her but myself. But first I
must talk to you about--about--you know when I came here I had reasons
for wishing her not to know who I was. Now I will tell her. There is
no more need to withhold anything. Delia always knew--from the
first--but she never told Nan and she never would have told. But that
is all over now. There is no need for secrecy any more. And I will
stay with her. I will keep her with me always. She has no one else
now, and I--I--I am free to do as I please. If--if he has left her
unprovided for, why, that shall make no difference to her. I have
plenty and she shall share it with me. She shall never feel the care
or want of anything that I can supply. Ah, Mr. Turner, I am glad I
came. It has been hard, but I am glad I came."
She broke down completely. Her frail figure shook with shuddering sobs.
But she was not a woman to give way long, and in a moment she regained
her self-control.
"I must have time to think," she said. "Everything seems so changed
and strange. I scarcely know where I stand. The suddenness of it has
been so horrible. I suppose he must have been ill for a long time--too
ill to write. And by and by when they took him to the hospital he must
have been unconscious, and so they could not communicate with his
friends. That would account for it all, his not writing nor receiving
the dispatches--and his friends not knowing where he was."
Mr. Turner nodded. Then he rose.
"I will leave you now," he said. "You are completely worn out. If you
will take my advice you will defer telling Nan until tomorrow. I fear
the strain will prove too great for you."
She smiled faintly.
"Oh, no," she replied. "I am stronger than you think. But the child
shall not be told tonight. I will leave her in peace for one night
longer. I will let her get one more good night's rest. Then
to-morrow, when she is refreshed and strengthened by her sleep she can
learn it all."
The lawyer held out his hand. "This has been one of the hardest trials
of my life," he said. "But you have helped me by your bravery and
fortitude. I thank you from my heart. Good night!" and in a moment he
was gone.
That evening Miss Blake bade Delia take Nan to the Andrews'. She wrote
a short note to Ruth's mother in which she begged her to keep the girl
through the evening and make her as happy as she could. She briefly
stated the reason for her request.
Nan knew that something was being kept from her but she never suspected
what. She fancied it must be connected with Miss Blake's private
affairs, and she asked no questions. When she reached the Andrews' her
exuberant spirits reasserted themselves and she spent a gay evening
with Ruth, Mrs. Andrews leading in the fun and seeing that no one
passed a dull moment. They played all sorts of games, and then finally
Bridget appeared with the crowning delight, a tray upon which a
tempting array of good things was set forth. How Nan enjoyed it! She
often thought afterward what a happy evening it was. At ten o'clock
Delia called for her and she went home through the still night,
thinking all sorts of merry thoughts. Miss Blake listened with
apparent interest to her description of her evening's jollification,
and when she had finished gave her an especially tender good-night
kiss, saying:
"God bless you, my Nan. Sleep well, dear, and let us both pray for
strength to bear God's will."
The next morning after breakfast Nan discovered why Miss Blake had bade
her especially to pray for strength.
Poor child! She felt so utterly weak and helpless in her misery. At
first she could scarcely realize what had befallen her and she kept
insisting, "It isn't my father that has died. It is some one else.
How can I feel that he isn't alive? He can't be dead! He isn't! He
isn't! Why, only yesterday I was expecting he would soon be home.
It's some other man who hasn't got a daughter that loves him so."
But by and by she grew desperate in her wretchedness and then it took
all Miss Blake's influence to restrain her from really wearing herself
out in the abandon of her grief.
But by evening the house was quiet. Nan's loud sobbing had ceased and
she lay quite still and exhausted, stretched upon the divan in Miss
Blake's room, with her throbbing head in the governess' lap. A tender
hand stroked her disheveled hair, a tender voice spoke words of comfort
to her, and she was soothed and solaced by both.
"Shall I tell you a story, Nan?" asked Miss Blake at length.
The girl gave a silent nod of assent.
"Well, once upon a time," began the governess in a gentle monotone,
"there lived two girls and they were friends. They loved each other
dearly. One was tall and fair and beautiful, and the other was small
and dark, and if people ever thought her even pretty it was because
love lighted their kind eyes and made it seem that what they looked
upon was sweet.
"The first girl had father and mother and a happy home. The second was
an orphan, having nothing to remind her of the parents she had lost
when she was a baby but the fortune they had left her. She never knew
what love meant until she met her beautiful friend. Then she learned.
Oh, how those two girls loved each other! When Florence, the beautiful
one, found that Isabel had no home she pleaded with her parents to take
her into theirs, and they not only took her to their home but to their
hearts as well. And so she and her dear friend grew up together like
sisters, and the little lonely girl was not lonely any more, but very,
very happy among those she loved. Well, time went on, and by and by
when the two girls had become quite young women, the first more
beautiful than ever, the other a little less plain, maybe, something
happened that, in the end, caused them to be separated forever.
"God sent into their lives the self-same experience and into their
hearts the self-same thought. It was a beautiful experience and a
beautiful thought, but if it was to mean happiness for one, it must be
at the cost of grief to the other. Perhaps it was because they both
knew this that neither of them told her secret. But presently it was
decided which was to have the happiness. It came to the one who
expected it least--who had the least right to expect it. It came to
Isabel, and for a moment she thought she might accept it. But it was
only for a moment. Then she knew that she must relinquish it. It
would have been base, would it not, my Nan, to have defrauded the
friend who had done so much for her? And so she, Isabel, left the
house that had been her home for so many years, and quite solitary and
alone sailed across the sea to the other side of the world, and there
she stayed for--well, over a dozen years, my dear.
"It was soon after she went away that your mother--I mean Florence--was
married. Isabel heard of it and was glad. And later, when she learned
that a dear little daughter had been born to Florence, she was happier
still. But then came sad news. Oh, such sad news! The beautiful
young mother died, died and left her little baby girl behind her with
only the poor father to take care of it.
"Then, after that, Isabel heard nothing more for a long, long time, for
Florence's good parents were dead and her husband and Isabel
were--well, not at enmity, Nan, but not at peace together. It was all
owing to a misunderstanding, but that did not alter it. They were not
friends and Isabel was too proud to write and ask him whether all went
well with him and the little daughter or whether she might perhaps help
to care for the child. And so years passed and then one day Isabel
felt that she could remain away from America no longer. All the time
there had been a great longing in her heart to return, but she had
tried to smother it and tell herself that she had no Fatherland; that
America was no more to her than any of the strange countries she had
lived in; that her acquaintances abroad were as much to her as her
friends at home. But, as I say, by and by she could resist her desire
no longer, and so one day she set sail for America--I think it must
have been after she had been absent for quite fourteen years--and oh!
how her heart beat when she saw the dear land once more. Well, I must
make my story short, Nan, so I will not tell you how it came about that
she first heard that Florence's little daughter had grown into a tall
girl; that she was living in the old house where Isabel had spent so
many happy years; that her father had gone to some far Eastern country
and left her in the charge of a faithful servant of her mother's who
had loved them all in days gone by. But she learned all this and more
beside and then something told her that it was her duty to go to
Florence's child and care for her and show her as well as she might how
to be a noble, true, and lovely woman, as her mother had been before
her. So she went to the little girl as governess and at first the
child was opposed to her, but by and by she--I really think she grew to
love her almost as much as the governess loved the child. And all this
time the father never knew who was caring for his girl because in the
letters that went to him the governess was spoken of by but part of her
name. She chose to live incognito, you know what that is, Nan, because
she feared if he knew who was serving his child as governess he would
write to her in his proud fashion and say:
"No; I need no one to care for my daughter for love. Whomever I employ
I will pay. You are a wealthy woman. You need not work for money. My
few poor dollars are nothing to you. Besides--"
"And then I think, Nan, he would have referred to the old disagreement
and it would all have been very painful, and she would have had to go
away and been lonely ever after and have left undone her duty to
Florence's child. So she lived quietly in the old house with the
little girl and the servant and all went well for a year and
then--well, then, dear Nan, I think I need not tell what happened then.
But, oh, my dear, you are my own little girl--Florence's child and I
loved her, ah! I loved her so. For her sake you are mine now. Never
say that you are 'all alone' again. I have taken you as a sacred
trust. Come to me, Nan, for I am lonely too, I am lonely too."