The Letter of Credit

Mrs. Busby?"

  "She is making a visit somewhere, Mrs. Busby tells me." And he hesitated. "Has Rotha's home been happy with her aunt?"

  "That is a question I never ask. Rotha does not complain."

  "I need not ask whether her abode has been happy _here_," said the gentleman smiling again; "but, has she been a satisfactory member of your school?"

  "Perfectly so! Of my school and family."

  "You are satisfied with her studies, her progress in them, I mean?"

  "Perfectly. I never taught any one with more pleasure or better results."

  "I am very glad to hear that," said Mr. Southwode. And he took his leave.

  The very next train for Tanfield carried him northward.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  DISCOVERIES.

  The next day, which was the 24th of October, passed as other days of less significance had done. At dinner Mrs. Purcell complained of Rotha's failure of appetite. Rotha had been down-hearted all the morning. Seven days more, and November would begin!

  "You don't eat worth a red cent!" said Mrs. Purcell. "Aint that a good pot pie?"

  "Excellent! The queen of England couldn't have a better."

  "If she hasn't a better appetite she won't be queen long. Why don't ye eat?"

  "Sometimes I can't, Prissy."

  "What ails you?"

  "Nothing. I get thinking; that's all."

  "Joe," said his wife, "what's Mis' Busby doin'?"

  "Couldn't say."

  "Where is she? Why don't she come after Miss Rotha?"

  "I s'pose she's busy with her own affairs. If she' had consulted me, I could ha' told you more."

  "If she ever consults you, I hope you'll give her some good advice. She wants it bad!"

  "I guess I will," said Mr. Purcell, lounging out. "If I don't, you kin."

  Rotha wished to escape further remark or enquiry, and went out too. She would divert herself with gathering a great bunch of the fall flowers and dress some dishes. She often refreshed herself and refined the tea-table with a nosegay dressed in the middle of it, especially as it seemed to give not less pleasure to her entertainers than to her. She went now slowly down the gravelled drive, filling her hands as she went with asters, chrysanthemums, late honeysuckles, and bits of green from box and cedar and feathery larches. She went slowly, thinking hard all the way, and feeling very blue indeed. She saw no opening out of her troubles, and she strongly suspected that her aunt meant there should be none. What was to become of her? True, it flashed into her mind, "The Lord is my Shepherd";--but the sheep was taking it into her head to think for herself, and could not see that the path she was following would end in anything but disaster and famishing. If she could but get out of this path----

  Ah, silly sheep!

  Rotha found herself at the gate leading into the high road; the gate by which she had been admitted so many months ago, and which she had never passed through since. She did not open it now; she stood still, resting one hand on the bars of it and gazing off along the road that led to Tanfield. It was quite empty; there was little passing along that road in the best of times, and very little at this season. It looked hopeless and desolate, the long straight lines of fences, and the gray, empty space between running off into nothing. Anything moving upon it would have been a relief to the eye and the mind; it looked like Rotha's own life at present, unchanging, Monotonous, solitary, barren, endless. Yet very precious flowers had been lately blossoming upon her path, and fragrant plants springing; but this, if she partly knew, at this moment she wholly ignored or forgot. She stood in a dream reverie, looking forward with her bodily eye, but with the eye of her mind back, and far back; to her mother, to her father, to Mr. Digby, and the times at Medwayville when she was a happy child. Nothing regular or consecutive; a maze of dream images in which she lost herself, and under the power of which her tears slowly gathered and began to run down her cheeks. Standing so, looking down the long empty road, and in the very depths of disheartened foreboding and dismay, a step startled her. Nobody was in sight on the road towards Tanfield; it was a quick business step coming in the other direction. Rotha turned her head hurriedly, and then was more in a maze than ever, though of a different kind. Close by the gate somebody was standing. A stranger? And why did he look so little strange? Rotha's eyes grew big unconsciously, while she likewise utterly forgot that they were framed in a setting of wet eyelashes; and then there came flashing changes in her face. I cannot describe how all the lines of it altered; and fire leapt to her eye, not without an alternating shadow however, a sort of shadow of doubt; her lips parted, but she could not bring out a word. The stranger stood still likewise, and looked, and I am not sure but his eyes opened a little; light came into them too, and a smile.

  "Have I found you?" he said. "Perhaps you will let me come in."

  And while Rotha remained in stupid bewilderment and uncertainty of everything except the identity of the person before her, he laid hold of the latch of the gate and made his own words good; Rotha giving way just enough to allow of it. I think the new-comer was a little uncertain as well; nevertheless he was not the sort of man to shew uncertainty.

  "Is this my little Rotha?" he said as he came up to her; and then, taking her hand, he began just where he left off, by stooping and kissing her. That roused Rotha, as much as ever the kiss of the prince in the fairy tale woke the sleeping beauty. The blood flushed all over her face, she pulled her hand away, and flung herself as it were upon the gate again; laying hold of the bars of it and bending down her face upon her arms. What did he do that for? and had he a right? After leaving her unthought of for so many years, was he entitled to speak to her and look at her and--kiss her, just as he could do once when she was a child? Rotha's mind was in terrible tumult, for notwithstanding this protest of reason, or of feeling, that touch of his lips upon her lips had waked up all the old past; it was just like the kiss with which he had bid her good bye three years ago; but whether to forgive him or not, and whether there was anything or not, Rotha did not yet know. Yet the old power of his presence was asserting itself already. All she could do was to keep silent, and the silence was of some little duration; for Mr. Digby, as his old fashion was, waited.

  "I see you have not forgotten me," he said at length. "Or--should I say--"

  "I thought you _had_ forgotten _me_, Mr. Southwode," said Rotha. She said it with some dignity, removing her arms from the gate and standing before him. Yet she could not raise her eyes to him. Her manner was entirely unexceptionable and graceful.

  "What made you think that?"

  "I had some reason. It is three years, just three years, since you went away; and I have never heard a word from you in all the time."

  "You have not heard from me? How comes that?"

  "I do not know how it comes. I have never heard."

  "And so, you thought I had never written?"

  "_Did_ you write?" said Rotha, flashing the question now at him with her eyes. It was exactly one of the old looks, that he remembered, bright, deep, eager. Yet how the girl had changed!

  "I wrote a number of times."

  "To me?"

  "Yea. I got no answer."

  "How could I answer letters that I never had?" cried Rotha.

  "Could you not, possibly, have written to me a letter that was not an answer?"

  "Yes, and I would; O how I wanted to write, many a time!--but I did not know where to send it. I had not your address."

  "I left it with your aunt for you; or rather, I believe I left it in a note for you, when I went away."

  "She never let me know as much," said Rotha a little bitterly.

  "You might have guessed she had my address. Did you ever ask her? You know, I promised to give it to you?"

  "There was no use in my asking her any such thing,"' said Rotha. "She never let me hear a word from you or about you. I only learned by chance, as it were, that you had gone back to England."

  "And so you thou
ght I had forgotten you?"

  "What could I think? I did not want to think that," said Rotha, feeling somewhat put in the wrong.

  "I did not want you to think that. The least you can do to a friend, if you have got him, is to trust him."

  "But then, I thought--they said--I thought, maybe, after you had put me in aunt Serena's care, you had done--or thought you had done--the best you could for me."

  "The best I could just at the moment. I never promised to leave you with Mrs. Busby always, did I?"

  "But you were in England, and busy," said Rotha.