"Shall sharpest pathos blight us, doing no wrong?"
So writes our greatest living poet, in one of the noblest poems he ever
penned. And he speaks truth. The real canker of human existence is not
misery, but sin.
After the first cruel pang, the bitter wail; after her lost life--and we
have here but one life to lose!--her lost happiness, for she knew now
that though she might be very peaceful, very content, no real happiness
ever had come, ever could come to her in this world, except Robert Roy's
love--after this, Fortune sat down, folded her hands, and bowed her head
to the waves of sorrow that kept sweeping over her, not for one day or
two days, but for many days and weeks--the anguish, not of patience, but
regret--sharp, stinging, helpless regret. They came rolling in, those
remorseless billows, just like the long breakers on the sands of St.
Andrews. Hopeless to resist, she could only crouch down and let them
pass. "All Thy waves have gone over me."
Of course this is spoken metaphorically. Outwardly, Miss Williams
neither sat still nor folded her hands. She was seen every where as
usual, her own proper self, as the world knew it; but underneath all that
was the self that she knew, and God knew. No one else. No one ever
could have known, except Robert Roy, had things been different from what
they were--from what God had apparently willed them to be.
A sense of inevitable fate came over her. It was now nearly two years
since that letter from Mr. Roy of Shanghai, and no more tidings had
reached her. She began to think none ever would reach her now. She
ceased to hope or to fear, but let herself drift on, accepting the small
pale pleasures of every day, and never omitting one of its duties. One
only thought remained; which, contrasted with the darkness of all else,
often gleamed out as an actual joy.
If the lost letter really was Robert Roy's--and though she had no
positive proof, she had the strongest conviction, remembering the thick
fog of that Tuesday morning, how easily Archy might have dropped it out
of his hand, and how, during those days of soaking rain, it might have
lain, unobserved by any one, under the laurel branches, till the child
picked it up and hid it as he said--if Robert Roy lad written to her,
written in any way, he was at least not faithless. And he might have
loved her then. Afterward, he might have married, or died; she might
never find him again in this world, or if she found him, he might be
totally changed: still, whatever happened, he had loved her. The fact
remained. No power in earth or heaven could alter it.
And sometimes, even yet, a half-superstitious feeling came over her that
all this was not for nothing--the impulse which had impelled her to write
to Shanghai, the other impulse, or concatenation of circumstances, which
had floated her, after so many changes, back to the old place, the old
life. It looked like chance, but was it? Is any thing chance? Does not
our own will, soon or late, accomplish for us what we desire? That is,
when we try to reconcile it to the will of God.
She had accepted His will all these years, seeing no reason for it; often
feeling it very hard and cruel, but still accepting it. And now?
I am writing no sensational story. In it are no grand dramatic points;
no _Deus ex machina_ appears to make all smooth; every event--if it can
boast of aught so large as an event--follows the other in perfectly
natural succession. For I have always noticed that in life there are
rarely any startling "effects," but gradual evolutions. Nothing happens
by accident; and, the premises once granted, nothing happens but what was
quite sure to happen, following those premises. We novelists do not
"make up" our stories; they make themselves. Nor do human beings invent
their own lives; they do but use up the materials given to them--some
well, some ill; some wisely, some foolishly; but, in the main, the dictum
of the Preacher is not far from the truth, "All things come alike to
all."
A whole winter had passed by, and the spring twilights were beginning to
lengthen, tempting Miss Williams and her girls to linger another half
hour before they lit the lamp for the evening. They were doing so,
cozily chatting over the fire, after the fashion of a purely feminine
household, when there was a sudden announcement that a gentleman, with
two little boys, wanted to see Miss Williams. He declined to give his
name, and said he would not detain her more than a few minutes.
"Let him come in here," Fortune was just about to say, when she reflected
that it might be some law business which concerned her girls, whom she
had grown so tenderly anxious to save from any trouble and protect from
every care. "No, I will go and speak to him myself."
She rose and walked quietly into the parlor, already shadowed into
twilight: a neat, compact little person, dressed in soft gray homespun,
with a pale pink bow on her throat, and another in her cap--a pretty
little fabric of lace and cambric, which, being now the fashion, her
girls had at last condescended to let her wear. She had on a black silk
apron, with pockets, into one of which she had hastily thrust her work,
and her thimble was yet on her finger. This was the figure on which the
eyes of the gentleman rested as he turned around.
Miss Williams lifted her eyes inquiringly to his face--a bearded face,
thin and dark.
"I beg your pardon, I have not the pleasure of knowing you; I--"
She suddenly stopped. Something in the height, the turn of the head, the
crisp dark hair, in which were not more than a few threads of gray, while
hers had so many now, reminded her of--someone, the bare thought of whom
made her feel dizzy and blind.
"No," he said, "I did not expect you would know me; and indeed, until I
saw you, I was not sure you were the right Miss Williams. Possibly you
may remember my name--Roy, Robert Roy."
Faces alter, manners, gestures; but the one thing which never changes is
a voice. Had Fortune heard this one--ay, at her last dying hour, when
all worldly sounds were fading away--she would have recognized it at
once.
The room being full of shadow, no one could see any thing distinctly; and
it was as well.
In another minute, she had risen, and held out her hand.
"I am very glad to see you, Mr. Roy. How long have you been in England?
Are these your little boys?"
Without answering, he took her hand--a quiet friendly grasp, just as it
used to be. And so, without another word, the gulf of fifteen--seventeen
years was overleaped, and Robert Roy and Fortune Williams had met once
more.
If anybody had told her when she rose that morning what would happen
before night, and happen so naturally, too, she would have said it was
impossible. That, after a very few minutes, she could have sat there,
talking to him as to any ordinary acquaintance, seemed incredible, yet it
was truly so.
"I was in great doubts whether the Miss Williams who, they told me, lived
here was yourself or some other lady; but I thought I would take the
chance. Because, were it yourself, I thought, for the sake of old times,
you might be willing to advise me concerning my two little boys, whom I
have brought to St. Andrews for their education."
"Your sons, are they?"
"No. I am not married."
There was a pause, and then he told the little fellows to go and look out
of the window, while he talked with Miss Williams. He spoke to them in a
fatherly tone; there was nothing whatever of the young man left in him
now. His voice was sweet, his manner grave, his whole appearance
unquestionably "middle-aged."
"They are orphans. Their name is Roy, though they are not my relatives,
or so distant that it matters nothing. But their father was a very good
friend of mine, which matters a great deal. He died suddenly, and his
wife soon after, leaving their affairs in great confusion. Hearing this,
far up in the Australian bush, where I have been a sheep-farmer for some
years, I came round by Shanghai, but too late to do more than take these
younger boys and bring them home. The rest of the family are disposed
of. These two will be henceforward mine. That is all."
A very little "all", and wholly about other people; scarcely a word about
himself. Yet he seemed to think it sufficient, and as if she had no
possible interest in hearing more.
Cursorily he mentioned having received her letter, which was "friendly
and kind;" that it had followed him to Australia, and then back to
Shanghai. But his return home seemed to have been entirely without
reference to it--or to her.
So she let all pass, and accepted things as they were. It was enough.
When a ship-wrecked man sees land--ever so barren a land, ever so
desolate a shore--he does not argue within himself, "Is this my haven?"
he simply puts into it, and lets himself be drifted ashore.
It took but a few minutes more to explain further what Mr. Roy wanted--a
home for his two "poor little fellows."
"They are so young still--and they have lost their mother. They would do
very well in their classes here, if some kind woman would take them and
look after them. I felt, if the Miss Williams I heard of were really the
Miss Williams I used to know, I could trust them to her, more than to any
woman I ever knew."
"Thank you." And then she explained that she had already two girls in
charge. She could say nothing till she had consulted them. In the mean
time--
Just then the bell sounded. The world was going on just as usual--this
strange, commonplace, busy, regardless world!
"I beg your pardon for intruding on your time so long," said Mr. Roy,
rising. "I will leave you to consider the question, and you will let me
know as soon as you can. I am staying at the hotel here, and shall
remain until I can leave my boys settled. Good evening."
Again she felt the grasp of the hand: that ghostly touch, so vivid in
dreams for these years, and now a warm living reality. It was too much.
She could not bear it.
"If you would care to stay," she said--and though it was too dark to see
her, he must have heard the faint tremble in her voice--"our tea is
ready. Let me introduce you to my girls, and they can make friends with
your little boys."
The matter was soon settled, and the little party ushered into the
bright warm parlor, glittering with all the appendages of that pleasant
meal--essentially feminine--a "hungry" tea. Robert Roy put his hand over
his eyes as if the light dazzled him, and then sat down in the arm-chair
which Miss Williams brought forward, turning as he did so to look up at
her--right in her face--with his grave, soft, earnest eyes.
"Thank you. How like that was to your old ways! How very little you are
changed!"
This was the only reference he made, in the slightest degree, to former
times.
And she?
She went out of the room, ostensibly to get a pot of guava jelly for the
boys--found it after some search, and then sat down.
Only in her store closet, with her house-keeping things all about her.
But it was a quiet place, and the door was shut.
There is, in one of those infinitely pathetic Old Testament stories, a
sentence--"And he sought where to weep: and he entered into his chamber
and wept there."
She did not weep, this woman, not a young woman now: she only tried
during her few minutes of solitude to gather up her thoughts, to realize
what had happened to her, and who it was that sat in the next room--under
her roof--at her very fireside. Then she clasped her hands with a sudden
sob, wild as any of the emotions of her girlhood.
"Oh, my love, my love, the love of all my life! Thank God!"
The evening passed, not very merrily, but peacefully; the girls, who had
heard a good deal of Mr. Roy from David Dalziel, doing their best to be
courteous to him, and to amuse his shy little boys. He did not stay
long, evidently having a morbid dread of "intruding," and his manner was
exceedingly reserved, almost awkward sometimes, of which he seemed
painfully conscious, apologizing for being "unaccustomed to civilization
and to ladies' society," having during his life in the bush sometimes
passed months at a time without ever seeing a woman's face.
"And women are your only civilizers," said he. "That is why I wish my
motherless lads to be taken into this household of yours, Miss Williams,
which looks so--so comfortable," and he glanced round the pretty parlor
with something very like a sigh. "I hope you will consider the matter,
and let me know as soon as you have made up your mind."
"Which I will do very soon," she answered.
"Yes, I know you will. And your decision once made, you never change."
"Very seldom. I am not one of those who are 'given to change.'"
"Nor I."
He stood a moment, lingering in the pleasant, lightsome warmth, as if
loath to quit it, then took his little boys in either hand and went away.
There was a grand consultation that night, for Miss Williams never did
any thing without speaking to her girls; but still it was merely nominal.
They always left the decision to her. And her heart yearned over the two
little Roys, orphans, yet children still; while Helen and Janetta were
growing up and needing very little from her except a general motherly
supervision. Besides, _he_ asked it. He had said distinctly that she was
the only woman to whom he could thoroughly trust his boys. So--she took
them.
After a few days the new state of things grew so familiar that it seemed
as if it had lasted for months, the young Roys going to and fro to their
classes and their golf-playing, just as the young Dalziels had done; and
Mr. Roy coming about the house, almost daily, exactly as Robert Roy had
used to do of old. Sometimes it was to Fortune Williams the strangest
reflex of former times; only--with a difference.
Unquestionably he was very much changed. In outward appearance more even
than the time accounted for. No man can knock about the world, in
different lands and climates, for seventeen years, without bearing
the marks of it. Though still under fifty, he had all the air of an
"elderly" man, and had grown a little "peculiar" in his ways, his modes
of thought and speech--except that he spoke so very little. He
accounted for this by his long lonely life in Australia, which had
produced, he said, an almost unconquerable habit of silence. Altogether,
he was far more of an old bachelor than she was of an old maid, and
Fortune felt this: felt, too, that in spite of her gray hairs she was in
reality quite as young as he--nay, sometimes younger; for her innocent,
simple, shut-up life had kept her young.
And he, what had his life been, in so far as he gradually betrayed it?
Restless, struggling; a perpetual battle with the world; having to hold
his own, and fight his way inch by inch--he who was naturally a born
student, to whom the whirl of a business career was especially obnoxious.
What had made him choose it? Once chosen, probably he could not help
himself; besides, he was not one to put his shoulder to the wheel and
then draw back. Evidently, with the grain or against the grain, he had
gone on with it; this sad, strange, wandering life, until he had "made
his fortune," for he told her so. But he said no more; whether he meant
to stay at home and spend it, or go out again to the antipodes (and he
spoke of those far lands without any distaste, even with a lingering
kindliness, for indeed he seemed to have no unkindly thought of any place
or person in all the world), his friend did not know.
His friend. That was the word. No other. After her first outburst of
uncontrollable emotion, to call Robert Roy her "love," even in fancy, or
to expect that he would deport himself in any lover-like way, became
ridiculous, pathetically ridiculous. She was sure of that. Evidently no
idea of the kind entered his mind. She was Miss Williams, and he was Mr.
Roy--two middle-aged people, each with their different responsibilities,
their altogether separate lives; and, hard as her own had been, it seemed
as if his had been the harder of the two--ay, though he was now a rich
man, and she still little better than a poor governess.
She did not think very much of worldly things, but still she was aware of
this fact--that he was rich and she was poor. She did not suffer herself
to dwell upon it, but the consciousness was there, sustained with a
certain feeling called "proper pride." The conviction was forced upon
her in the very first days of Mr. Roy's return--that to go back to the
days of their youth was as impossible as to find primroses in September.
If, indeed, there were any thing to go back to. Sometimes she felt, if
she could only have found out that, all the rest would be easy, painless.
If she could only have said to him, "Did you write me the letter you
promised? Did you _ever_ love me"? But that one question was, of course,
utterly impossible. He made no reference whatever to old things, but
seemed resolved to take up the present a very peaceful and happy present
it soon grew to be--just as if there were no past at all. So perforce
did she.
But, as I think I have said once before, human nature is weak, and there
were days when the leaves were budding, and the birds singing in the
trees, when the sun was shining and the waves rolling in upon the sands,
just as they rolled in that morning over those two lines of foot-marks,
which might have walked together through life; and who knows what mutual
strength, help, and comfort this might have proved to both?--then it was,
for one at least, rather hard.
Especially when, bit by bit, strange ghostly fragments of his old self
began to re-appear in Robert Roy: his keen delight in nature, his love
of botanical or geological excursions. Often he would go wandering down
the familiar shore for hours in search of marine animals for the girls'
aquarium, and then would come and sit down at their tea-table, reading or
talking, so like the Robert Roy of old that one of the little group, who
always crept in the background, felt dizzy and strange, as if all her
later years had been a dream, and she were living her youth over again,
only with the difference aforesaid: a difference sharp as that between
death and life--yet with something of the peace of death in it.
Sometimes, when they met at the innocent little tea parties which St.
Andrews began to give--for of course in that small community every body
knew every body, and all their affairs to boot, often a good deal better
than they did themselves, so that there was great excitement and no end
of speculation over Mr. Roy--sometimes meeting, as they were sure to do,
and walking home together, with the moonlight shining down the empty
streets, and the stars out by myriads over the silent distant sea, while
the nearer tide came washing in upon the sands--all was so like, so
frightfully like, old times that it was very sore to bear.
But, as I have said, Miss Williams was Miss Williams, and Mr. Roy Mr.
Roy, and there were her two girls always besides them; also his two boys,
who soon took to "Auntie" as naturally as if they were really hers, or
she theirs.
"I think they had better call you so, as the others do," said Mr. Roy one
day. "Are these young ladies really related to you?"
"No; but I promised their father on his death-bed to take charge of them.
That is all."
"He is dead, then. Was he a great friend of yours?"
She felt the blood flashing all over her face, but she answered,
steadily: "Not a very intimate friend, but I respected him exceedingly.
He was a good man. His daughters had a heavy loss when he died, and I
am glad to be a comfort to them so long as they need me."
"I have no doubt of it."
This was the only question he ever asked her concerning her past life,
though, by slow degrees, he told her a good deal of his own. Enough to
make her quite certain, even if her keen feminine instinct had not
already divined the fact, that whatever there might have been in it of
suffering, there was nothing in the smallest degree either to be ashamed
of or to hide. What Robert Roy of Shanghai had written about him had
continued true. As he said one day to her, "We never stand still. We
either grow better or worse. You have not grown worse."
Nor had he. All that was good in him had developed, all his little
faults had toned down. The Robert Roy of today was slightly different
from, but in no wise inferior to, the Robert Roy of her youth. She saw
it, and rejoiced in the seeing.
What he saw in her she could not tell. He seemed determined to rest
wholly in the present, and take out of it all the peace and pleasantness
that he could. In the old days, when the Dalziel boys were naughty, and
Mrs. Dalziel tiresome; and work was hard, and holidays were few, and life
was altogether the rough road that it often seems to the young, he had
once called her "Pleasantness and Peace." He never said so now; but
sometimes he looked it.
Many an evening he came and sat by her fireside, in the arm-chair, which
seemed by right to have devolved upon him; never staying very long, for
he was still nervously sensitive about being "in the way," but making
himself and them all very cheerful and happy while he did stay. Only
sometimes, when Fortune's eyes stole to his face--not a young man's
face now--she fancied she could trace, besides the wrinkles, a sadness,
approaching to hardness, that never used to be. But again, when
interested in some book or other (he said it was delicious to take to
reading again, after the long fast of years), he would look around to her
for sympathy, or utter one of his dry drolleries, the old likeness, the
old manner and tone would come back so vividly that she started, hardly
knowing whether the feeling it gave her was pleasure or pain.
But beneath both, lying so deep down that neither he nor any one could
ever suspect its presence, was something else. Can many waters quench
love? Can the deep sea drown it? What years of silence can wither it?
What frost of age can freeze it down? God only knows.
Hers was not like a girl's love. Those two girls sitting by her day
after day would have smiled at it, and at its object. Between themselves
they considered Mr. Roy somewhat of an "old fogy;" were very glad to make
use of him now and then, in the great dearth of gentlemen at St. Andrews,
and equally glad afterward to turn him over to Auntie, who was always
kind to him. Auntie was so kind to every body.
Kind? Of course she was, and above all when he looked worn and tired.
He did so sometimes: as if life had ceased to be all pleasure, and the
constant mirth of these young folks was just a little too much for him.
Then she ingeniously used to save him from it and them for a while. They
never knew--there was no need for them to know--how tenfold deeper than
all the passion of youth is the tenderness with which a woman cleaves to
the man she loves when she sees him growing old.
Thus the days went by till Easter came, announced by the sudden
apparition, one evening, of David Dalziel.
That young man, when, the very first day of his holidays, he walked in
upon his friends at St. Andrews, and found sitting at their tea-table a
strange gentleman, did not like it at all--scarcely even when he found
out that the intruder was his old friend, Mr. Roy.
"And you never told me a word about this," said he, reproachfully, to
Miss Williams. "Indeed, you have not written to me for weeks; you have
forgotten all about me."
She winced at the accusation, for it was true. Beyond her daily domestic
life, which she still carefully fulfilled, she had in truth forgotten
every thing. Outside people were ceasing to affect her at all. What _he_
liked, what _he_ wanted to do, day by day--whether he looked ill or well,
happy or unhappy, only he rarely looked either--this was slowly growing
to be once more her whole world. With a sting of compunction, and
another, half of fear, save that there was nothing to dread, nothing that
could affect any body beyond herself--Miss Williams roused herself to
give young Dalziel an especially hearty welcome, and to make his little
visit as happy as possible.
Small need of that; he was bent on taking all things pleasantly. Coming
now near the end of a very creditable college career, being of age and
independent, with the cozy little fortune that his old grandmother had
left him, the young fellow was disposed to see every thing _couleur de
rose_, and this feeling communicated itself to all his friends.
It was a pleasant time. Often in years to come did that little knot of
friends, old and young, look back upon it as upon one of those rare
bright bits in life when the outside current of things moves smoothly on,
while underneath it there may or may not be, but generally there is, a
secret or two which turns the most trivial events into sweet and dear
remembrances forever.
David's days being few enough, they took pains not to lose one, but
planned excursions here, there, and every where--to Dundee, to Perth, to
Elie, to Balcarras--all together, children, young folks, and elders: that
admirable _melange_ which generally makes such expeditions "go off" well.
Theirs did, especially the last one, to the old house of Balcarras, where
they got admission to the lovely quaint garden, and Janetta sang "Auld
Robin Gray" on the spot where it was written.
She had a sweet voice, and there seemed to have come into it a pathos
which Fortune had never remarked before. The touching, ever old, ever
new story made the young people quite quiet for a few minutes; and then
they all wandered away together, Helen promising to look after the
two wild young Roys, to see that they did not kill themselves in some
unforeseen way, as, aided and abetted by David and Janetta, they went on
a scramble up Balcarras Hill.
"Will you go too?" said Fortune to Robert Roy. "I have the provisions to
see to; besides, I can not scramble as well as the rest. I am not quite
so young as I used to be."
"Nor I," he answered, as, taking her basket, he walked silently on beside
her.
It was a curious feeling, and all to come out of a foolish song; but if
ever she felt thankful to God from the bottom of her heart that she had
said "No," at once and decisively, to the good man who slept at peace
beneath the church-yard elms, it was at that moment. But the feeling
and the moment passed by immediately. Mr. Roy took up the thread of
conversation where he had left it off--it was some bookish or ethical
argument, such as he would go on with for hours; so she listened to him
in silence. They walked on, the larks singing and the primroses blowing.
All the world was saying to itself, "I am young; I am happy;" but she
said nothing at all.
People grow used to pain; it dies down at intervals, and becomes quite
bearable, especially when no one see it or guesses at it.
They had a very merry picnic on the hilltop, enjoying those mundane
consolations of food and drink which Auntie was expected always to have
forth-coming, and which those young people did by no means despise, nor
Mr. Roy neither. He made himself so very pleasant with them all, looking
thoroughly happy, and baring his head to the spring breeze with the
eagerness of a boy.
"Oh, this is delicious! It makes me feel young again. There's nothing
like home. One thing I am determined upon: I will never quit bonnie
Scotland more."
It was the first clear intimation he had given of his intentions
regarding the future, but it thrilled her with measureless content. If
only he would not go abroad again, if she might have him within reach for
the rest of her days--able to see him, to talk to him, to know where he
was and what he was doing, instead of being cut off from him by those
terrible dividing seas--it was enough! Nothing could be so bitter as
what had been; and whatever was the mystery of their youth, which it was
impossible to unravel now--whether he had ever loved, or loved her and
crushed it down and forgotten it, or only felt very kindly and cordially
to her, as he did now, the past was--well, only the past!--and the
future lay still before her, not unsweet. When we are young, we insist
on having every thing or nothing; when we are older, we learn that "every
thing" is an impossible and "nothing" a somewhat bitter word. We are
able to stoop meekly and pick up the fragments of the children's bread,
without feeling ourselves to be altogether "dogs".
Fortune went home that night with a not unhappy, almost a satisfied,
heart. She sat back in the carriage, close beside that other heart which
she believed to be the truest in all the world, though it had never been
hers. There was a tremendous clatter of talking and laughing and fun of
all sorts, between David Dalziel and the little Roys on the box, and the
Misses Moseley sitting just below them, as they had insisted doing, no
doubt finding the other two members of the party a little "slow."
Nevertheless Mr. Roy and Miss Williams took their part in laughing with
their young people, and trying to keep them in order; though after a
while both relapsed into silence. One did at least, for it had been a
long day and she was tired, being, as she had said, "not so young as she
had been." But if any of these lively young people had asked her the
question whether she was happy, or at least contented, she would have
never hesitated about her reply. Young, gay, and prosperous as they
were, I doubt if Fortune Williams would have changed lots with any one of
them all.