IT was all over,—all over at last. Dolly's first words had said this much when she opened her eyes, and found Aimée bending over her.
“Has he gone?” she had asked. “Did he go away and leave me?”
“Do you mean Grif?” said Aimée.
She made a weak gesture of assent.
“Yes,” Aimée answered. “He must have gone. I heard the bell ring, and found you lying here when I came to see what it meant.”
“Then,” said Dolly, “all is over,—all is over at last.” And she turned her face upon the cushion and lay so still that she scarcely seemed to breathe.
“Take another drink of water, Dolly,” said Aimée, keeping back her questions with her usual discretion. “You must, dear.”
But Dolly did not stir.
“I don't want any more,” she said. “I am not going to faint again. You have no need to be afraid. I don't easily faint, you know, and I should not have fainted just now only—that the day has been a very hard one for me, and somehow I lost strength all at once. I am not ill,—only worn out.”
“You must be very much worn out, then,” said Aimée; “more worn out than I ever saw you before. You had better let me help you up-stairs to bed.”
“I don't want to go to bed yet!” in a strange, choked voice, and the next moment Aimée saw her hands clench themselves and her whole frame begin to shake. “Shut the door and lock it,” she said, wildly. “I can't stop myself. Give me some sal volatile. I can't breathe.” And such a fit of suffocating sobbing came upon her that she writhed and battled for air.
Aimée flung herself upon her knees by her side, shedding tears herself.
“Oh, Dolly,” she pleaded, “Dolly, darling, don't. Try to help yourself against it. I know what the trouble is. He went away angry and disappointed, and it has frightened you. Oh, please don't, darling. He will come back to-morrow; he will, indeed. He always does, you know, and he will be so sorry.”
“He has gone forever,” Dolly panted, when she could speak. “He will never come back. To-night has been different from any other time. No,” gasping and sobbing, “it is fate. Fate is against us,—it always was against us. I think God is against us; and oh, how can He be? He might pity us,—we tried so hard and loved each other so much. We did n't ask for anything but each other,—we did n't want anything but that we might be allowed to cling together all our lives and work and help each other. Oh, Grif, my darling,—oh, Grif, my dear, my dear!” And the sobs rising again and conquering her were such an agony that Aimée caught her in her arms.
“Dolly,” she said, “you must not, you must not, indeed. You will die, you can't bear it.”
“No,” she wailed, “I can't bear it,—that is what it is. I can't bear it. It is too hard to bear. But there is no one to help me,—God won't. He does not care for us, or He would have given us just one little crumb out of all He has to give. What can a poor helpless girl be to Him? He is too high and great to care for our poor little powerless griefs. Oh, how wicked I am!” in a fresh burst. “See how I rebel at the first real blow. It is because I am so wicked, perhaps, that all has been taken from me,—all I had in the world. It is because I loved Grif best. I have read in books that it was always so. Oh, why is it? I can't understand it. It seems cruel,—yes, it does seem cruel,—as cruel as death, to give him to me only that I might suffer when he was taken away. Oh, Grif, my darling! Grif, my love, my dear!”
This over again and again, with wild, heart-broken weeping, until she was so worn out that she could cry no more, and lay upon Aimée's arm upon the cushion, white and exhausted, with heavy purple rings about her wearied, sunken eyes. It was not until then that Aimée heard the whole truth. She had only been able to guess at it before, and now, hearing the particulars, she could not help fearing the worst.
It was just as she had feared it would be; another blow had come upon him at the very time when he was least able to bear it, and it had been too much for him. But she could not reveal her forebodings to Dolly. She must comfort her and persuade her to hope for the best.
“You must go to bed, Dolly,” she said, “and try to sleep, and in the morning everything will look different. He may come, you know,—it would be just like him to come before breakfast. But if he does not come—suppose,” hesitatingly,—"suppose I was to write to him, or—suppose you were to?”
She was half afraid that pride would rise against this plan, but she was mistaken. Seven years of love had mastered pride. Somehow or other, pride had never seemed to come between them in their little quarrels, each had always been too passionately eager to concede, and too sure of being met with tenderest penitence. Dolly had always known too confidently that her first relenting word would touch Grifs heart, and Grif had always been sure that his first half-softened reproach would bring the girl to his arms in an impetuous burst of loving repentance. No, it was scarcely likely that other people's scruples would keep them apart. So Dolly caught at the proposal almost eagerly.
“Yes,” she said, “I will write and tell him how it was. It was not his fault, was it, Aimée? How could I have borne such a thing myself? It would have driven me wild, as it did him. It was not unreasonable at all that he should refuse to listen, in his first excitement, after he had waited all those hours and suffered such a disappointment. And then to see what he did. My poor boy! he was not to blame at all. Yes, yes,” feverishly, “I will write to him and tell him. Suppose I write now—don't you think I had better do it now, and then he will get the letter in the morning, and he will be sure to come before dinner,—he will be sure to come, won't he?”
“He always did,” said Aimée.
“Always,” said Dolly. “Indeed, I never had to write to him before to bring him. He always came without being written to. There never was any one like him for being tender and penitent. You always said so, Aimée. And just think how often I have tried his patience! I sometimes wish I could help doing things,—flirting, you know, and making a joke of it. He never flirted in his life, poor darling, and what right had I to do it? When he comes to-morrow I will tell him how sorry I am for everything, and I will promise to be better. I have not been half so good as he has. I wish I had. I should not have hurt him so often if I had.”
“You have been a little thoughtless sometimes,” said Aimée. “Perhaps itwouldhave been better if you could have helped it.”
“A little thoughtless,” said Dolly, restlessly. “I have been wickedly thoughtless sometimes. And I have made so many resolutions and broken them all. And I ought to have been doubly thoughtful, because he had so much to bear. If he had been prosperous and happy it would not have mattered half so much. But it was all my vanity. You don't know how vain I am, Aimée. I quite hate myself when I think of it. It is the wanting people to admire me,—everybody, men and women, and even children,—particularly among Lady Augusta's set, where there is a sort of fun in it. And then I flirt before I know; and then, of course, Grif cannot help seeing it. I wonder that he has borne with me so long.”
She was quite feverish in her anxiety to condemn herself and exculpate her lover. She did not droop her face against the pillow, but roused herself, turning toward Aimée, and talking fast and eagerly. A bright spot of color came out on either cheek, though for the rest she was pale enough. But to Aimée's far-seeing eyes there was something so forced and unnaturally strung in her sudden change of mood that she felt a touch of dread Suppose something should crush her newly formed hopes,—something terrible and unforeseen! She felt a chill strike her to the heart at the mere thought of such a possibility. She knew Dolly better than the rest of them did,—knew her highly strung temperament, and feared it, too. She might be spirited and audacious and thoughtless, but a blow coming through Grif would crush her to the earth.
“You—you mustn't set your heart too much upon his getting the letter in the morning, Dolly,” she said. “He might be away when it came, or—or twenty things, and he might not see it until night, but—”
“Well,” said Dolly, “I will write it at once if you will give me the pen and ink. The earlier it is posted the earlier he will get it.”
She tried to rise then; but when she stood up her strength seemed to fail her, and she staggered and caught at Aimee's arm. But the next minute she laughed.
“How queer that one little faint should make me so weak!” she said. “I am weak,—actually. I shall feel right enough when I sit down, though.”
She sat down at the table with her writing materials, and Aimée remained upon the sofa watching her. Her hand trembled when she wrote the first few lines, but she seemed to become steadier afterward, and her pen dashed over the paper without a pause for a few minutes. The spot of color on her cheeks faded and burned by turns,—sometimes it was gone, and again it was scarlet, and before the second page was finished tears were falling soft and fast. Once she even stopped to wipe them away, because they blinded her; but when she closed the envelope she did not look exactly unhappy, though her whole face was tremulous.
“He will come back,” she said, softly. “He will come back when he reads this, I know. I wish it was to-morrow. To-morrow night he will be here, and we shall have our happy evening after all. I can excuse myself to Miss MacDowlas for another day.”
“Yes,” said Aimée, a trifle slowly, as she tookitfrom her hand. “I will send Belinda out with it now.” And she carried it out of the room.
In a few minutes she returned. “She has taken it,” she said. “And now you had better go to bed, Dolly.”
But Dolly's color had faded again, and she was resting her forehead upon her hands, with a heavy, anxious, worn look, which spoke of sudden reaction. She lifted her face with a half-absent air.
“I hope it will be in time for to-night's post,” she said. “Do you think it will?”
“I am not quite sure, but I hope so. You must come to bed, Dolly.”
She got up without saying more, and followed her out into the hall, but at the foot of the staircase she stopped. “I have not seen Tod,” she said. “Let us go into 'Toinette's room and ask her to let us have him to-night. We can carry him up-stairs without wakening him. I have done it many a time. I should like to have him in my arms to-night.”
So they turned into Mrs. Phil's room, and found that handsome young matron sitting in her dressing-gown before the fire, brushing out her great dark mantle of hair.
“Don't waken Tod,” she cried out, as usual; and then when she saw Dolly she broke into a whispered volley of wondering questions. Where in the world had she been? What had she been doing with herself until such an hour? Where was Grif? Was n't he awfully vexed? What had he said when she came in? All of which inquiries the two parried as best they might.
As to Tod—well, Tod turned her thoughts in another direction. He was a beauty, and a king, and a darling, and he was growing sweeter and brighter every day,—which comments, by the way, were always the first made upon the subject of the immortal Tod. He was so amiable, too, and so clever and so little trouble. He went to sleep in his crib every night at seven, and never awakened until morning. Aunt Dolly might look at him now with those two precious middle fingers in his little mouth. And Aunt Dolly did look at him, lifting the cover slightly, and bending over him as he lay there making a deep dent in his small, plump pillow,—a very king of babies, soft and round and warm, the white lids drooped and fast closed over his dark eyes, their long fringes making a faint shadow on his fair, smooth baby cheeks, the two fingers in his sweet mouth, the round, cleft chin turned up, the firm, tiny white pillar of a throat bare.
“Oh, my bonny baby!” cried Dolly, the words rising from the bottom of her heart, “how fair and sweet you are!”
They managed to persuade Mrs. Phil to allow them to take possession of him for the night; and when they went up-stairs Dolly carried him, folded warmly in his downy blanket, and held close and tenderly in her arms.
“Aunt Dolly's precious!” Aimée heard her whispering to him as she gave him a last soft good-night kiss before they fell asleep. “Aunt Dolly's comfort! Everything is not gone so long as he is left.”
But she evidently passed a restless night. When Aimée awakened in the morning she found her standing by the bedside, dressed and looking colorless and heavy-eyed.
“I never was so glad to see morning in my life,” she said. “I thought the day would never break. I—I wonder how long it will be before Grif will be reading his letter?”
“He may get it before nine o'clock,” answered Aimée; “but don't trouble about it, or the day will seem twice as long. Take Tod down-stairs and wash and dress him. It will give you something else to think of.”
The wise one herself had not slept well. Truth to say, she was troubled about more matters than one. She was troubled to account for the meaning of Dolly's absence with Gowan. Even in her excitement, Dolly had not felt the secret quite her own, and had only given a skeleton explanation of the true state of affairs.
“It was something about Mollie and Gerald Chan-dos,” she had said; “and if I had not gone it would have been worse than death to Mollie. Don't ask me to tell you exactly what it was, because I can't. Perhaps Mollie will explain herself before many days are over. She always tells you everything, you know. But it was no real fault of here; she was silly, but not wicked, and she is safe from Gerald Chandos now forever. AndIsaved her, Aimée.”
And so the wise one had lain awake and thought of all sorts of possible and impossible escapades. But as she was dressing herself this morning, the truth flashed upon her, though it was scarcely the whole truth.
“She was going to elope with him,” she exclaimed all at once; “thatwas what she was going to do. Oh, Mollie, Mollie, what a romantic goose you are!”
And having reached this solution, she closed her small, determined mouth in discreet silence, resolving to wait for Mollie's confession, which she knew was sure to come sooner or later. As to Mollie herself, she came down subdued and silent. She had slept off the effects of her first shock, but had by no means forgotten it. She would never forget it, poor child, as long as she lived, and she was so grateful to find herself safe in the shabby rooms again, that she had very little to say; and since she was in so novel a mood, the members of the family who were not in the secret decided that her headache must have been a very severe one indeed.
“Don't say anything to her about Grif,” Dolly cautioned Aimée, “it would only trouble her.” And so the morning passed; but even at twelve o'clock there was no Grif, and Dolly began to grow restless and walk to and fro from the window to the hearth at very short intervals. Dinner-hour arrived, too, but still no arrival; and Dolly sat at the table, among them, eating nothing and saying little enough. How could she talk when every step upon the pavement set her heart bounding? When dinner was over and Phil had gone back to the studio, she looked so helpless and woe-begone that Aimée felt constrained to comfort her.
“It may have been delayed,” she whispered to her, “or he may have left the house earlier than usual, and so won't see it until to-night. He will be here to-night, Dolly, depend upon it.”
And so they waited. Ah, how that window was watched that afternoon! How often Dolly started from her chair and ran to look out, half suffocated by her heart-beatings! But it was of no avail. As twilight came on she took her station before it, and knelt upon the carpet for an hour watching; but in the end she turned away all at once, and, running to the fire again, caught Tod up in her arms, and startled Aimée by bursting into a passion of tears.
“Oh, Tod!” she sobbed, “he is not coming! He will never come again,—he has left us forever! Oh, Tod, love poor Aunt Dolly, darling.” And she hid her face on the little fellow's shoulder, crying piteously.
She did not go to the window again. When she was calmer, she remained on her chair, colorless and exhausted, but clinging to Tod still in a queer pathetic way, and letting him pull at her collar and her ribbons and her hair. The touch of his relentless baby hands and his pretty, tyrannical, restless ways seemed to help her a little and half distract her thoughts.
She became quieter and quieter as the evening waned; indeed, she was so quiet that Aimée wondered. She was strangely pale; but she did not start when footsteps were heard on the street, and she ceased turning toward the door when it opened.
“He—he may come in the morning,” Aimée faltered as they went up-stairs to bed.
“No, he will not,” she answered her, quite steadily. “It will be as I said it would,—he will never come again.”
But when they reached their room, the unnatural, strained quiet gave way, and she flung herself upon the bed, sobbing and fighting against just the hysterical suffering which had conquered her the night before.
It was the very ghost of the old indomitable Dolly who rose the next morning. Her hands shook as she dressed her hair, and there were shadows under her eyes. But she must go back to Brabazon Lodge, notwithstanding.
“I can say I have a nervous headache,” she said to Aimée. “Nervous headaches are useful things.”
“If a letter comes,” said Aimée, “I will bring it to you myself.”
The girl turned toward her suddenly, her eyes hard and bright and her mouth working.
“I have had my last letter,” she said. “My last letters came to me when Grif laid that package upon the table. He has done with me.”
“Done with you?” cried Aimée, frightened by her manner. “Withyou, Dolly?”
Then for the first time Dolly flushed scarlet to the very roots of her hair.
“Yes,” she said, “he has done with me. If there had been half a chance that he would ever come near me again, the letter I wrote to him that night would have brought him. A word of it would have brought him,—the first word. But he is having his revenge by treating it with contempt. He is showing me that it is too late, and that no humility on my part can touch him. I scarcely could have thought that of him,” dropping into a chair by the toilet-table and hiding her face in her hands.
“It is not like Grif to let me humble myself for nothing. And I did humble myself,—ah, how I did humble myself! That letter,—if you could have seen it, Aimée,—it was all on fire with love for him. I laid myself under his feet,—and he has trodden me down! Grif—Grif, it was n't like you,—it was n't worthy of you,—it was n't indeed!”
Her worst enemy would have felt herself avenged if she had heard the anguish in her voice. She was crushed to the earth under this last great blow of feeling that he had altered so far. Grif,—her whilom greatest help and comfort,—the best gift God had given her! Dear, old, tender, patient fellow! as she had been wont to call him in her fits of penitence.
Grif, whose arms had always been open to her at her best and at her worst, who had loved her and borne with her, and waited upon her and done her bidding since they were both little more than children. When had Grif ever turned from her before? Never. When had Grif ever been cold or unfaithful in word or deed? Never. When had he ever failed her? Never—never—never—until now! And now that he had failed her at last, she felt that the bitter end had come. The end to everything,—to all the old hopes and dreams, to all the old sweet lovers' quarrels and meetings and partings, to all their clinging together, to all the volumes and volumes of love and trust that lay in the past, to all the world of simple bliss that lay still unrevealed in their lost future, to all the blessed old days when they had pictured to each other what that future was to be. It had all gone for nothing in the end. It must all have gone for nothing, when Grif—a new Grif—not her own true, stanch, patient darling—not her own old lover—could read her burning, tender, suffering words and pass them by without a word of answer. And with this weight of despair and pain upon her heart, she went back to the wearisome routine of Brabazon Lodge,—went back heavy with humiliation and misery which she scarcely realized,—went back suffering as no one who knew her—not even Grif himself—could ever have understood that it was possible for her to suffer. No innocent coquetries now, no spirit, no jests; for the present at least she had done with them, too.
“You are not in your usual spirits, my dear,” said Miss MacDowlas.
“No,” she answered, quietly, “I am not.”
This state of affairs continued for four days, and then one morning, sitting at her sewing in the breakfast-room, she was startled almost beyond self-control by a servant's announcement that a visitor had arrived.
“One of your sisters, ma'am,” said the parlor-maid. “Not the youngest, I think.”
She was in the room in two seconds, and flew to Aimée, trembling all over with excitement.
“Not a letter!” she cried, hysterically. “It is n't a letter,—it can't be!” And she put her hand to her side and fairly panted.
The poor little wise one confronted her with something like fear. She could not bear to tell her the ill news she had come to break.
“Dolly, dear!” she said, “please sit down; and—please don't look at me so. It isn't good news. I must tell you the truth; it is bad news, cruel news. Oh, don't look so!”
They were standing near the sofa, and Dolly gave one little moan, and sank down beside it.
“Cruel news!” she cried, throwing up her hand. “Yes, I might have known that,—I might have known that it would be cruel, if it was news at all Every one is cruel,—the whole world is cruel; even Grif,—even Grif!”
Aimée burst into tears.
“Oh, Dolly, I did my best for you!” she said. “I did, indeed; but you must try to bear it, dear,—it is your own letter back again.”
Then the kneeling figure seemed to stiffen and grow rigid in a second. Dolly turned her deathly face, with her eyes aflame and dilated.
“Didhesend it back to me?” she asked, in a slow, fearful whisper.
Her expression was so hard and dreadful a one that Aimée sprang to her side and caught hold of her.
“No,—no!” she said; “not so bad as that! He would never have done that. He has never had it. He has gone away; we don't know where. It came from the dead-letter office.”
Dolly took the letter from her and opened it slowly, and there, as she knelt, read it, word for word, as if it had been something she had never seen before. Then she put it back into the envelope and laid it down.
“A dead letter!” she said. “A dead letter! Ifhehad sent it back to me, I think it would have cured me; butnowthere is no cure for me at all. If he had read it, he would have come,—if he hadonlyread it; but it is a dead letter, and he is gone.”
There were no tears, the blow had been too heavy. It was only Aimée who had tears to shed, and it was Dolly who tried to console her in a strained, weary sort of way.
“Don't cry,” she said, “it is all over now. Perhaps the worst part of the pain is past. There will be no house at Putney, and the solitary rose-bush will bloom for some one else; they may sell the green sofa, now, as cheap as they will, we shall never buy it. Our seven years of waiting have all ended in a dead letter.”
AND so Grif disappeared from the haunts of Vagabondia, and was seen no more. And to Aimée was left the delicate task of explaining the cause of his absence, which, it must be said, she did in a manner at once creditable to her tact and affection for both Dolly and the unconscious cause of all her misery.
“There has been a misunderstanding,” she said, “which was no fault of Dolly's, and scarcely a fault of Grif's; and it has ended very unhappily, and Grif has gone away, and just at present it seems as if everything was over,—but I can't help hoping it is not so bad as that.”
“Oh, he will come back again—safe enough,” commented Phil, philosophically, holding paint-brush No. 1 in his mouth, while he manipulated with No. 2. “He will come back in sackcloth and ashes; he is just that sort, you know,—thunder and lightning, fire and tow. And they will make it up ecstatically in secret, and pretend that nothing has been the matter, and there will be no going into the parlor for weeks without whistling all the way across the hall.”
“I always go in backward after they have had a quarrel,” said Mollie, looking up from a half-made pinafore of Tod's, which, in the zeal of her repentance, she had decided on finishing.
“Not a bad plan, either,” said Phil “We all know howtheirdifferences of opinion terminate. As to matters being at an end between them, that is all nonsense; they could n't live without each other six months. Dolly would take to unbecoming bonnets, and begin to neglect her back hair, and Grif would take to prussic acid or absinthe.”
“Well, I hope hewillcome back,” said Aimée; “but, in the meantime, I want to ask you to let the affair rest altogether, and not say a word to Dolly when she comes. It will be the kindest thing you can do. Just let things go on as they have always done, and ignore every thing new you may see.”
Phil looked up from his easel in sudden surprise; something in her voice startled him, serenely as he was apt to view all unexpected intelligence.
“I say,” he broke out, “you don't mean that Dolly is very much cut up about it?”
The fair little oracle hesitated; remembering Dolly's passionate despair and grief over that “dead letter,” she could scarcely trust herself to speak.
“Yes,” she answered at last, feeling it would be best only to commit herself in Phil's own words, “she is very much cut up.”
“Whew!” whistled Phil; “that is worse than I thought!” And the matter ended in his going back to his picture and painting furiously for a few minutes, with an almost reflective air.
They did not see anything of Dolly for weeks. She wrote to them now and then, but she did not pay another visit to Bloomsbury Place. It was not the old home to her now, and she dreaded seeing it in its new aspect,—the aspect which was desolate of Grif. Most of her letters came to Aimée; but she rarely referred to her trouble, rather seeming to avoid it than otherwise. And the letters themselves were bright enough, seeming, too. She had plenty to say about Miss MacDowlas and their visitors and her own duties; indeed, any one but Aimée would have been puzzled by her courage and apparent good spirits. But Aimée saw below the surface, and understood, and, understanding, was fonder of her than ever.
As both Dolly and herself had expected, Mollie did not keep her secret from the oracle many weeks. It was too much for her to bear alone, and one night, in a fit of candor and remorse, she poured out everything from first to last, all her simple and unsophisticated dreams of grandeur, all her gullibility, all her danger,—everything, indeed, but the story of her pitiful little fancy for Ralph Gowan. She could not give that up, even to Aimée, though at the close of her confidence she was unable to help referring to him.
“And as to Mr. Gowan,” she said, “how can I ever speak to him again! but, perhaps, he would not speak to me. He must think I am wicked and bold and hardened—and bad,” with a fresh sob at every adjective. “Oh, dear! oh, dear!” burying her face in Aimée's lap, “if I had only stayed at home and been good, like you. He could have respected me, at least, couldn't he? And now—oh, what am I to do!”
Aimée could not help sighing. If she onlyhadstayed at home, how much happier they all might have been! But she had promised Dolly not to add to her unhappiness by hinting at the truth, so she kept her own counsel.
It was fully three months before they saw Ralph Gowan again. He had gone on the Continent, they heard. A feeling of delicacy had prompted the journey. As long as he remained in London, he could scarcely drop out of his old friendly position at Bloomsbury Place, and he felt that for a while at least Mollie would scarcely find it easy to face him. So he went away and rambled about until he thought she would have time to get over her first embarrassment.
But at the end of the three months he came back, and one afternoon surprised them all by appearing amongst them again. Mollie, sitting perseveringly at work over her penitential sewing, shrank a little, and dropped her eyelids when he came in, but she managed to behave with creditable evenness of manner after all, and the rest welcomed him warmly.
“I have been to Brabazon Lodge,” he said at length to Aimée. “I spent Monday evening there, and was startled at the change I found in your sister. I did not know she was ill.”
Aimée started herself, and looked up at him with a frightened face.
“Ill!” she said. “Did you say ill?”
It was his turn to be surprised then.
“I thought her looking ill,” he answered. “She seemed to me to be both paler and thinner. But you must not let me alarm you,—I thought, of course, that you would know.”
“She has never mentioned it in her letters,” Aimée said. “And she has not been home for three months, so we have not seen her.”
“Don't let me give you a false impression,” returned Gowan, eagerly. “She seemed in excellent spirits, and was quite her old self; indeed, I scarcely should imagine that she herself placed sufficient stress upon the state of her health. She insisted that she was well when I spoke to her about it.”
“I am very glad you told me,” answered Aimée. “She is too indifferent sometimes. I am afraid she would not have let us know. I thank you, very much.”
He had other thanks before he left the house. As he was going out, Mollie, in her character of porteress, opened the hall door for him, and, having opened it, stood there with Tod's new garment half concealed, a pair of timid eyes uplifted to his face, a small, trembling, feverish hand held out.
“Mr. Gowan,” she said, in a low, fluttering voice. “Oh, if you please—”
He took the little hot hand, feeling some tender remorse for not having tried to draw her out more and help her out of her painful shyness and restraint.
“What is it, Mollie?” he asked.
“I want—I want,” fluttering all over,—"I want to thank you better than I did that—that dreadful night. I was so frightened I could scarcely understand. I understand more—now—and I want to tell you how grateful I am—and how grateful I shall be until I die—and I want to ask you to try not to think I was very wicked. I did not mean to be wicked—I was only vain and silly, and I thought it would be such a grand thing to—to have plenty of new dresses,” hanging her sweet, humble face, “and to wear diamonds, and be Lady Chandos, if—if Mr. Chandos came into the title. Of course that was wicked, but it was n't—I was n't as bad as I seemed. I was so vain that—that I was quite sure he loved me, and would be very glad if I married him. He always said he would.” And the tears rolled fast down her cheeks.
“Poor Mollie!” said Gowan, patting the trembling hand as if it had been a baby's. “Poor child!”
“But,” Mollie struggled on, penitently, “I shall never be so foolish again. And I am going to try to be good—like Aimée. I am learning to mend things; and I am beginning to make things for Tod. This,” holding up her work as proof, “is a dress for him. It is n't very well done,” with innocent dubiousness; “but Aimée says I am improving. And so, if you please, would you be so kind as not to think quite so badly of me?”
It was all so humble and pretty and remorseful that he was quite touched by it. That old temptation to kiss and console her made it quite dangerous for him to linger. She was such a lovable sight with her tear-wet cheeks, and that dubious but faithfully worked-at garment of Tod's in her hand.
“Mollie,” he said, “will you believe what I say to you?”
“Oh, yes!” eagerly.
“Then I say to you that I never believed you wicked for an instant,—not for one instant; and now I believe it less than ever; on the contrary, I believe you are a good, honest little creature. Let us forget Gerald Chandos,—he is not worth remembering. And go on with Tod's pinafores and dresses, my dear, and don't be discouraged if they are a failure at first,—though to my eyes that dress is a most sumptuous affair. And as to being like Aimée, you cannot be like any one better and wiser and sweeter than that same little maiden. There! I mean every word I have said.”
“Are you sure?” faltered Mollie.
“Yes,” he replied, “quite sure.”
He shook hands with her, and, bidding her goodnight, left her standing in the narrow hall all aglow with joy. And he, outside, was communing with himself as he walked away.
“She is as sweet in her way as—as the other,” he was saying. “And as well worth loving. And what a face she has, if one only saw it with a lover's eyes! What a face she has, even seeing it with such impartial eyes as mine!”
“My dear Dolly!” said Aimée.
“My dear Aimée!” said Dolly.
These were the first words the two exchanged when, the evening after Ralph Gowan's visit, the anxious young oracle presented herself at Brabazon Lodge, and was handed into Dolly's bedroom.
Visitors were expected, and Dolly had been dressing, and was just putting the finishing touches to her toilet when Aimée came in, and, seeing her as she turned from the glass to greet her, the wise one could scarcely speak, and, even after she had been kissed most heartily, could only hold the girl's hand and stand looking up into her changed face, feeling almost shocked.
“Oh, dear me, Dolly!” she said again. “Oh, my dear, what have you been doing to yourself?”
“Doing!” echoed Dolly, just as she would have spoken three or four months ago. “I have been doing nothing, and rather enjoying it. What is the matter with me?” glancing into the mirror. “Pale? That is the result of Miss MacDowlas's beneficence, you see. She has presented me with this grand black silk gown, and it makes me look pale. Black always did, you know.”
But notwithstanding her readiness of speech, it did not need another glance to understand what Ralph Gowan had meant when he said that she was altered. The lustreless heavy folds of her black silk might contrast sharply with her white skin, but they could not bring about that subtle, almost incomprehensible change in her whole appearance. It was such a subtle change that it was difficult to comprehend. The round, lissome figure she had always been so pardonably vain about, and Grif had so admired, had fallen a little, giving just a hint at a greater change which might show itself sooner or later; her face seemed a trifle more clearly cut than it ought to have been, and the slender throat, set in its surrounding Elizabethan frill of white, seemed more slender than it had used to be. Each change was slight enough in itself, but all together gave a shadowy suggestion of alteration to affectionately quick eyes.
“You are ill,” said Aimée. “And you never told me. It was wrong of you. Don't tell me it is your black dress; your eyes are too big and bright for any one who is well, and your hand is thinner than it ever was before. Why, I can feel the difference as I hold it, and it is as feverish as it can be.”
“You good, silly little thing!” said Dolly, laughing. “I am not ill at all. I have caught a cold, perhaps, but that is all.”
“No you have not,” contradicted Aimée, with pitiful sharpness. “You have not caught cold, and you must not tell me so. You are ill, and you have been ill for weeks. The worst of colds could never make you look like this. Mr. Gowan might well be startled and wonder—”
“Mr. Gowan!” Dolly interrupted her. “Didhesay that he was startled?”
“Yes, he did,” Aimée answered. “And that was what brought me here. He was at Bloomsbury Place last night and told me all about you, and I made up my mind that minute that I would come and judge for myself.”
Then the girl gave in. She sat down on a chair by the dressing-table and rested her forehead on her hand, laughing faintly, as if in protest against her own subjugation.
“Then I shall have to submit,” she said. “The fact is, I sometimes fancy I do feel weaker than I ought to. It is n't like me to be weak. I was always so strong, you know,—stronger than all the rest of you, I thought. Miss MacDowlas says I do not look well. I suppose,” with a half-sigh, “that every one will see it soon. Aimée,” hesitating, “don't tell them at home.”
Aimée slipped an arm around her, and drew her head—dressed in all the old elaborateness of pretty coils and braids—upon her own shoulder.
“Darling,” she whispered, trying to restrain her tears, “I must tell them at home, because I must take you home to be nursed.”
“No, no!” said Dolly, starting, “that would never do. It would never do even to think of it. I am not so ill as that,—not ill enough to be nursed. Besides,” her voice sinking all at once, “I could n't go home, Aimée,—I could not bear to go home now. That is why I have stayed away so long. I believe it wouldkillme!”
It was impossible for Aimée to hear this and be silent longer. She had, indeed, only been waiting for some reference to the past.
“I knew it was that,” she cried. “I knew it the moment Mr. Gowan told me. And I have feared it from the first. Nothing but that could have broken you down like this. Dolly, if Grif could see you now, he would give his heart's blood to undo what he has done.”
The pale little hands lying upon the black dress began to tremble in a strange, piteous weakness.
“One cannot forget so much in so short a time,” Dolly pleaded. “And it is so much,—more than even you think. One cannot forget seven years in three months,—give me seven months, Aimée. I shall be better in time, when I have forgotten.”
Forgotten! Even those far duller of perception than Aimée could have seen that she would not soon forget. She had not begun in the right way to forget. The pain which had made the pretty figure and the soft, round face look faintly worn, was sharper to-day than it had been even three months before, and it was gaining in sharpness every day, nay, every hour.
“The days are so long,” she said, plaiting the silk of her dress on-the restless hands. “We are so quiet, except when we have visitors, and somehow visitors begin to tire me. I scarcely ever knew what it was to be tired before. I don't care even to scatter the Philistines now,” trying to smile. “I am not even roused by the prospect of meeting Lady Augusta tonight. I forgot to tell you she was coming, did n't I? How she would triumph if she knew how I have fallen and—and how miserable I am! She used to say I had not a thought above the cut of my dresses. She never knew about—him, poor fellow!”
It was curious to see how she still clung to that tender old pitying way of speaking of Grif.
Aimee began to cry over her again.
“You must come home, Dolly,” she said. “You must, indeed. You will get worse and worse if you stay here. I will speak to Miss MacDowlas myself. You say she is kind to you.”
“Dear little woman,” said Dolly, closing her eyes as she let her head rest upon the girl's shoulder. “Dear, kind little woman! indeed it will be best for me to stay here. It is as I said,—indeed it is. If I were to go home I shoulddie!Oh, don't youknowhow cruel it would be! To sit there in my chair and see his old place empty,—to sit and hear the people passing in the street and know I should never hear his footstep again,—to see the door open again and again, and know he would never, never pass through. It would break my heart,—it would break my heart!”
“It is broken now!” cried Aimée, in a burst of grief, and she could protest no more.
But she remained as long as she well could, petting and talking to her. She knew better than to offer her threadbare commonplace comfort, so she took refuge in talking of life at Bloomsbury Place,—about Tod and Mollie and Toinette, and the new picture Phil was at work upon. But it was a hard matter for her to control herself sufficiently to conceal that she was almost in an agony of anxiousness and foreboding. What was she to do with this sadly altered Dolly, the mainspring of whose bright, spirited life was gone? How was she to help her if she could not restore Grif,—it was only Grif she wanted,—and where was he? It was just as she had always said it would be,—without Grif, Dolly was Dolly no longer,—for Grif's sake her faithful, passionate girl's heart was breaking slowly.
Lady Augusta, encountering her ex-governess in the drawing-room that evening, raised her eyeglass to that noble feature, her nose, and condescended a questioning inspection, full of disapproval of the heavy, well-falling black silk and the Elizabethan frill.
“You are looking shockingly pale and thin,” she said.
Dolly glanced at her reflection in an adjacent mirror. She only smiled faintly, in silence.
“I was not aware that you were ill,” proceeded her ladyship.
“I cannot say that I am ill,” Dolly answered. “How is Phemie?”
“Euphemia,” announced Lady Augusta, “is well, and Itrust” as if she rather doubted her having so far overcome old influences of an evil nature,—"Itrustimproving, though I regret to hear from her preceptress that she is singularly deficient in application to her musical lessons.”
Dolly thought of the professor with the lumpy face, and smiled again. Phemie's despairing letters to herself sufficiently explained why her progress was so slow.
“I hope,” said her ladyship to Miss MacDowlas, afterward, “that you are satisfied with Dorothea's manner of filling her position in your household.”
“I never was so thoroughly satisfied in my life,” returned the old lady, stiffly. “She is a very quickwitted, pleasantly natured girl, and I am extremely fond of her.”
“Ah,” waving a majestic and unbending fan of carved ivory. “She has possibly improved then. I observe that she is going off very much,—in the matter of looks, I mean.”
“I heard a gentleman remark, a few minutes ago,” replied Miss MacDowlas, “that the girl looked like a white rose, and I quite agreed with him; but I am fond of her, as I said, and you are not.”
Her ladyship shuddered faintly, but she did not make any further comment, perhaps feeling that her hostess was too powerful to encounter.
At midnight the visitors went their several ways, and after they had dispersed and the rooms were quiet once again, Miss MacDowlas sent her companion to bed, or, at least, bade her good-night.
“You had better go at once,” she said. “I will remain to give orders to the servants. You look tired. The excitement has been too much for you.”
So Dolly thanked her and left the room; but Miss MacDowlas did not hear her ascend the stairs, and accordingly, after listening a moment or so, went to the room door and looked out into the hall. And right at the foot of the staircase lay Dolly Crewe, the lustreless, trailing black dress making her skin seem white as marble, her pretty face turned half downward upon her arm.
Half an hour later the girl returned to consciousness to find herself lying comfortably in bed, the chamber empty save for herself and Miss MacDowlas, who was standing at her side watching her.
“Better?” she said. “That is right, my dear. The evening was too much for you, as I was afraid it would be. You are not as strong as you should be.”
“No,” Dolly answered, quietly.
There was a silence of a few minutes, during which she closed her eyes again; but she heard Miss MacDowlas fidgeting a little, and at last she heard her speak.
“My dear,” she said, “I think I ought to tell you something. When you fell, I suppose you must somehow or other have pressed the spring of your locket, for it was open when I went to you, and—I saw the face inside it.”
“Grif,” said Dolly, in a tired voice, “Grif.”
And then she remembered how she had written to him about what this verydénouementwould be when it came. How strange, how wearily strange, it was to think that it should come about in such a way as this!
“My nephew,” said Miss MacDowlas. “Griffith Donne.”
“Yes,” said Dolly, briefly. “I was engaged to him.”
“Was!” echoed Miss MacDowlas. “Did he behave badly to you, my dear?”
“No, I behaved badly to him—and that is why I am ill.”
Miss MacDowlas blew her nose.
“How long?” she asked, at length. “May I ask how long you were engaged to each other, my dear? Don't answer me if you do not wish.”
“I was engaged to him,” faltered the girlish voice,—"we were all the world to each other for seven years—for seven long years.”