The Letter of Credit
"It is the best you can do. It brings you there by daylight. The night train is as pleasant as any."
"If you have company"--said Rotha.
"And if the cars don't run off nor anything," added Antoinette. "All the awful accidents happen in the night."
"I would not have Rotha go alone," said Mrs. Busby grimly; "but she don't want my companionship."
Rotha would have been glad of it; however, she did not say so. She stood confounded. What possible need of this haste?
"Put your things away, Rotha," said Mrs. Busby glancing up,--"and come down to dinner. You must leave at seven o'clock, and I have had dinner early for you."
The dinner being early, Mr. Busby was not there; which Rotha regretted. From him she hoped for at least one of his dry, sensible remarks, and possibly a hint of sympathy. She must go without it. Dinner had no taste, and the talk that went on no meaning. Very poor as this home was, it was better than an unknown country, and uncongenial as were her companions, she preferred them to nobody. Gradually there grew a lump in her throat which almost choked her.
Meantime she was silent, seemed to eat, and did quietly whatever she was told She put up sandwiches in a paper; accepted an apple and some figs; looked curiously at the old basement dining room, which she had never liked, but which had never seemed to her so comfortable as now; and at last left it to get herself ready. Taking her Russia bag in her hand, she seemed to grasp Mrs. Mowbray's love; and it comforted her.
Her aunt and she had a silent drive through the streets, already dark and lamp-lit. All necessary directions were given her by the way, and a little money to pay for her drive out from Tanfield. Then came the confusion of the Station--not the Grand Central by any means; the bustle of getting her seat in the cars; her aunt's cold kiss. And then she was alone, and the engine sounded its whistle, and the train slowly moved away into the darkness.
For a while Rotha's mind was in a tumult of confusion. If Mrs. Mowbray knew where she was at that minute! She had had no chance to write to her. If she only knew! What then? she could not help matters. O but she could! Mrs. Mowbray could always find help. Love that would not rest, energy that would not tire, a power of will that would not be denied, and a knowledge and command of men and things which enabled her always to lay her hand on the right means and apply them; all this belonged to Mrs. Mowbray, and made her the most efficient of helpers. But just now, doubtless, the affairs of her own house laid full claim to all her energies; and then, she did not know about Rotha's circumstances. How strange, thought Rotha, that she does not--that things should have come together so that she cannot! I seem to be cut off designedly from her, and from everybody.
There crept slowly into her heart the recollection that there was One who did know the whole; and if there were design in the peculiar collocation of events, as who could doubt, it was _His_ design. This gave a new view of things. Rotha looked round on the dingy car, dingy because so dimly lighted; filled, partly filled, with dusky figures; and wondered if one there were so utterly alone as she, and marvelled greatly why she had been brought into such a strange position. Separated from everything! Then her Russia bag rebuked her, for her Bible was in it. Not separated from God, whose message was there; perhaps, who knows? she was to come closer to him, in the default of all other friends. She remembered the words of a particular psalm which not long ago had been read at morning prayers and commented on by Mrs. Mowbray; it came home to her now.
"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."
If he made heaven and earth, he surely can manage them. And Mrs. Mowbray had said, that whoever could honestly adopt and say those first words of the psalm, might take to himself also all the following. Then how it went on!--
"He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."
The tears rushed into Rotha's eyes. So he would watch the night train in which she journeyed, and let no harm come to it without his pleasure. The words followed,--
"The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand; the sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil, he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth, and even for evermore."
It was to Rotha as if she had suddenly seen a guard of angels about her. Nay, better than that. She was a young disciple yet, she had not learned all the ins and outs of faith; but this night her journey was sweet to her. The train rumbled along through the darkness; but "darkness and the light are alike to him," she remembered. Now and then the cars stopped at a village or wayside station; and a few lights shone upon boards and platforms and bits of wall; sometimes shone from within a saloon where refreshments were set out; there were switches to be turned on or off; there was a turn-out place where the train waited three quarters of an hour for the down train. All the same! Rotha remembered that switches and turnouts made no manner of difference, no more than the darkness, if the Lord was keeping her. It was somehow a sweet kind of a night that she had; not alone nor unhappy; faith, for the moment at least, laying its grasp on the whole wide realm of promise and resting satisfied and quiet in its possessions. After a while she slept and dozed, waking up occasionally to feel the rush and hear the rumble of the cars, to remember in whose hand she was, and then quietly to doze off again.
CHAPTER XXIII.
TANFIELD.
The last time she awoke, the rush and the roar had ceased; the train was standing still in the darkness. Not utterly in the dark, for one or two miserable lamps were giving a feeble illumination; and there was a stir and a hum of voices. Another station, evidently. "What is it?" she asked somebody passing her.
"Tanfield."
Tanfield! and this darkness still. "What o'clock is it, please?" she asked the conductor, who just then appeared.
"Three o'clock in the morning. You stop here, don't you?"
"Yes; but how can I get to the hotel?"
"It's just by; not a dozen steps off. Here, give me your bag--I'll see you there. We don't go on; change cars, for whoever wants to go further. You don't go further?"
"No."
"Then come on."
Half awake, and dazed, Rotha gratefully followed her companion; who piloted the way for her out of the train and through the station house and across a street, or road rather, for it was not paved. A hotel of some pretension faced them on the other side of the street. The kind conductor marched in like one at home, sent for the sleepy chambermaid, and consigned Rotha to her care.
"You would like a room and a bed, ma'am?"
"A room, yes, and water to wash the dust off; but I do not want a bed. How early can you give me breakfast?"
"Breakfast? there's always breakfast full early, ma'am, for the train that goes out at half past six. You'll get breakfast then. Going by the half past six train, ma'am?"
"No. I shall want some sort of a carriage by and by, to drive me out to Mrs. Busby's place; do you know where that is? And can I get a carriage here?"
"You can get carriages enough. I don't know about no places. Then you'll take breakfast at six, ma'am? You'll be called."
With which she shewed Rotha into a bare little hotel room, lit a lamp, and left her.
Rotha refreshed herself with cold water and put her hair in order. It must be half past three then. She went to the window, pulled up the shade and opened the sash and sat down. At half past three in the morning, when the season is no further advanced than May, the world is still nearly dark. Yet two cocks were answering each other from different roosts in the neighbourhood, and announcing that morning was on its way. The sky gave little token yet, however; and the stars sparkled silently out of its dark depths. The rush and the roar of the train, and of life itself, seemed to be left behind; the air had the fresh sweetness which it neve
r can have where human beings do greatly congregate; there was a spice in it which Rotha had not tasted for a long while. That sort of spice is enlivening and refreshing; there is a good tonic in it, which Rotha felt and enjoyed; at the same time it warned her she was in new circumstances. She had an uneasy suspicion, or intuition rather, that these new circumstances were not intended, so far as her aunt's intentions affected them, to be of transient duration. It was all very well to talk of July or the beginning of August; truth has a way of making itself known independent of words and even athwart them; and so it had been now; and while Mrs. Busby talked of the middle of summer, some subtle sense in Rotha's nature translated the words and made them signify an indefinite and distant future, almost as uncertain as