CHAPTER XIII.

"I KNEW YOU WOULD BE SORRY FOR US."

"When they see her their tears will cease to flow, Lest they should fall on this pure pale brow, Or the lilies the child is holding. With symbol flowers in stainless hand, She goes by the great white throne to stand, Where Jesus His lambs is folding." _Helen Marion Burnside._

As the door closed upon the bereaved parents, Queenie heard a low "Thank God" behind her, and immediately afterwards Langley crept softly away. When Queenie went back to her, she found her lying on her bed shedding tears quietly. The strained and fixed expression of her face had relaxed; the worn nerves and brain had at last found relief.

"Let me cry, it will do me good," she said, when the girl would have hushed her. "If you only knew how long it is since I have been able to shed a tear. I felt as though I were turning into stone. But now--ah, if she will only be good to him I think I could bear anything."

Queenie was obliged to modify her opinion of Mrs. Chester as she watched her during the trying hours that followed. Whatever sins Gertrude had committed against her husband and child during their brief married life she felt must be partially condoned by her present self-forgetfulness.

It may be doubted perhaps whether she had loved her child while it lived with a mother's strong passion. Certain words that little Nan had uttered in her baby language had given a contrary impression. "Mammie did say, 'Go away, Nan,'" she had observed more than once. "Mammie always so tired when Nan looks at her." Might it not have been that, absorbed in her own selfish repinings and discontent, she had refused to gather up the sweetness of that infant life into hers until it was too late? That she was suffering now, no one could doubt who looked at her. The father's heart might be broken within him, but his was the agony of bereavement. No self-reproach festered his wound; no bitterness of remorse was his. But who could measure the anguish of that unhappy mother?

Queenie watched her half fascinated as she glided softly from place to place, a graceful, dark-eyed woman. The tall figure, once so full and commanding, was attenuated and bowed as though with weakness. Bright patches of color burnt on the thin cheeks: soft streaks of gray showed in the thick coils of hair; and how low and suffering were the once sharp, querulous tones.

It was a mournful little household in Brierwood Cottage. Mr. Chester had refused to leave the place where his child was. Little Nan still lay in Emmie's room. Queenie had given up hers, and had betaken herself to Patience's little chamber. Emmie was still at Church-Stile House.

Queenie used to go out to her work, and leave Gertrude alone with her husband. On her return she would see them sitting hand in hand talking softly of their child. Nothing but his wife's presence seemed to console the unhappy father. Only she or Langley could rouse him or induce him to take food. Once when they thought they were alone Queenie saw Gertrude take her husband's head between her hands and kiss it softly, and lay it on her breast. "Harry, my poor Harry," she whispered over him, with a perfect passion of pity. Did the warning voice within her admonish her that she too must soon leave him and join her child?

Langley came and went on brief ministering errands, but she never remained long. Now and then, when all was quiet in the little room above, she would go in and kneel down beside the baby coffin. What sort of prayers ascended from that lonely heart that had missed its way so early in life? "Little Nan, I would have laid down my life to have saved yours," she whispered, pressing her lips to the wood.

One day Captain Fawcett stood there with Emmie beside him. Emmie's great blue eyes dilated and widened with awe and wonder at the sight of the tiny white face. The little coffin, the bed, the room were perfectly strewn with flowers. Great boxes of rare hot-house flowers sent from Carlisle, and directed in an unknown hand, had arrived that morning at the cottage. Gertrude was sitting weaving a cross in the room down-stairs, while her husband watched her.

"Is that Nan? it looks like a stone angel lying under a quilt of roses and lilies. It is just like a little angel that I used to see in the cathedral," whispered Emmie.

"Aye, it is Nan; it is just as my girl looked when her mother dressed her up for the last time in her flowers," returned Captain Fawcett, tremulously. A tear rolled down his grizzled moustache; but Emmie's eyes only widened and grew solemn.

"It is a pity, such pretty flowers; and they will have so many there," she continued, reflectively. "Aren't you glad that Alice has all those roses? Do you know, I often dream about your girl. She was like me, you know, only she had long hair. Last night I thought she and Nan came running to meet me; they were laughing so, and their hands were full of roses."

"Bless your pretty fancies, my darling. Well, I dream of my little maid often myself, and she always comes to me and says, 'Father.' I can feel her little hand slipping into mine. And then when I wake I am lonesome somehow. Poor little Ailie."

"You must not say poor," returned Emmie, pressing heavily against his knee; "she is not poor at all; she was very tired, you know, and now she is rested. Perhaps Nan would have been tired too if she had stayed longer."

"Ah, so she might, poor lammie," with a heavy sigh.

"The world is such a tiring place," continued Emmie, moralizing in her quaint childish way. "Some one is always crying in it. If it were not for leaving Queenie alone, I think I should like to go too, and walk about the golden streets with Alice and Nan; there are such lots of children there, and it is all bright, and nobody cries and looks sad and miserable."

"Let us go and look for blackberries: the Missus is so fond of blackberries," interposed the Captain, hurriedly, for Emmie's dilated eyes filled him with alarm. The child's sensitive nature was depressed by the sadness that surrounded her; a whole world of pathos, a strange involved meaning, lay behind those simple words.

"The world is such a tiring place; some one is always crying in it." Alas! yes, little Emmie. Out of His bright heaven God looks down on the upturned wet faces of myriads of His creatures. What seas of tears roll between the earth and His mercy! If the concentrated pain of humanity could be condensed into a single groan, the whole universe could not bear the terror of that sound, reverberating beyond the bound of the uttermost stars, silencing the very music of heaven.

Such a tiring place! True, most true, little Emmie. A place where mistakes are made and never rectified; a place where a joyous meeting is too often replaced by a sad good-bye; where hearts that cleave together are sundered; where the best loved is the soonest taken; where under the sunshine lie the shadows, and the shadows lengthen the farther we walk.

Such a tiring place! since we must work and weep, and live out the life that seems to us so imperfect; since sweet blossoms fail to bring fruit, and thorns lurk underneath the roses. Yet are the letters written up, graven and indelible, on every mutilated life: "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter."

So one bright summer's morning, loving hands lifted little Nan and laid her in her resting-place by the lime-tree walk, and the childless parents followed hand in hand.

The churchyard was crowded with sympathizing faces. Queenie was there at the head of her scholars, and Langley stood near her, leaning heavily on her brother's arm. When the service was over the children stepped up two and two, and dropped their simple offerings of rustic wreaths and flowers into the open grave. One child had fashioned a rude cross of poppies and corn, and flung it red and gleaming at the mother's feet. Gertrude took it up and kissed it, and placed it tenderly with the rest. The child, a chubby-faced creature scarcely more than an infant, looked up at her with great black eyes.

"Oo' little gell will like my fowers," she lisped, as Gertrude burst into tears.

Queenie felt very heavy-hearted when, the next day, the Chesters left her and went back to their lonely home. Gertrude kissed her, and tried to say a few words of thanks.

"You have been a good Samaritan to me and Harry, Miss Marriott," she said, in a broken voice; "you have taken us in, and tried to bind up our wounds with oil and wine, and yet you were almost a stranger to us."

"I shall come again. I cannot keep away from there," added Mr. Chester, with a yearning look towards the place where the mortal remains of his darling were laid. "No, I cannot thank you, Miss Marriott, I never can do so."

"Oh, hush! go away, please. Would not any one have done it in my place?" cried the girl, with a little sob. She leant against the little gate, watching them until the phaeton was out of sight. Garth, who was coming down the lane, crossed over the road and joined her.

"So you have your little home to yourself again," he said, looking down at her kindly. "Ah, well, it has been a miserable week to you and to all of us. No one can help feeling for poor Chester; and as for that wife of his--"

"Well!" interrupted Queenie, fixing her strange, fathomless eyes on the young man, as he left his sentence unfinished. Every now and then they startled people with their strange haunting beauty; they startled Garth now, for he became suddenly confused.

"All I meant was, that one can plainly see that Mrs. Chester is not long for this world. Stewart says so plainly, and she must be conscious of it herself. One can tell that there is trouble in store for that poor fellow."

"Yes, and she has begun to love him too late," replied Queenie. "All these years lost, and only to understand each other at the last; there does seem such a mystery in things, Mr. Clayton."

"Not at all; he has only married the wrong woman," returned Garth, coolly; "hundreds of men do that, and have to rue their mistake. You are only a girl, you do not know the world as we do," continued the young man, a little loftily. "There are all sorts of temptations and influences. One needs all one's wisdom and strength of mind to steer clear among all the shoals and quicksands one finds in life."

"It was Mr. Chester's own fault marrying the wrong woman," persisted Queenie, with a little heat.

Garth's loftiness and burst of eloquence did not move her in the least. His cool statement of facts was rank heresy in her eyes. What was it to her that hundreds of men had made matrimonial mistakes? In her woman's creed, that code of purity and innocence, it was a simple question of right and wrong. To love one woman and marry another, however expedient in a worldly point of view, was a sin for which there was no grace of forgiveness.

"Men make their own fate; it is for them to choose. No one need make mistakes with their eyes open," continued the girl, with a little impatience and scorn of this matter-of-fact philosophy. "If they make a poor thing of their own life it is not for them to complain."

"Ah, you are hard on us. You are only a girl; you do not know," returned the young man, looking down from the altitude of his superior wisdom into Queenie's wide-open indignant eyes with exasperating calmness. "Your life compared to ours is like a mill-stream beside a rushing river: one is all movement; the strong currents draw hither and thither."

"The mill-stream is often the deeper," was the petulant answer.

Garth laughed; he was not at all discomposed by Queenie's impatient argument. He would have enjoyed having it out with her if he had had time, but, as he told himself, he had more important business in hand.

"By-the-bye, you are making me waste my precious moments as usual," he observed, good-humoredly; "and I have never given you Langley's message. She and Cathy want you to come up to our place this evening; they think the cottage must be so dull now your guests have gone."

"How kind and thoughtful of Langley!" returned Queenie; and now the brown eyes had a happy sparkle in them. There was no place so dear to her as Church-Stile House. If Garth could only have known it!

"You will be doing them a kindness by cheering them up a little, as both Ted and I will be away. Have you heard," he continued, gravely, "that they are rather in trouble at Crossgill Vicarage. I had a letter this morning from Dora, I mean Miss Cunningham," went on Garth, coloring a little bashfully over his mistake.

"Are you going there? I hope there is not much the matter," asked Queenie, in a measured voice. There was no sparkle now in her eyes. The evening was to be spent without him; and then Miss Cunningham had written to him at the first hint of trouble. She had sought him, and not Langley.

"Oh, as to that, she does not say much in her letter. Miss Cunningham is not one to make a fuss about anything. It is Florence who is ill, and she and her father mean to go over to Brussels. Stay, I have her note here," producing it from his breast-pocket. "You can judge for yourself there is not much in it; but then Miss Cunningham is one of the quiet sort."

Queenie took the note "a little reluctantly. Dora wrote a large, business-like hand. Those firm, well-formed characters had nothing irresolute in them. It was curt and concise.

"Dear Mr. Clayton," it began, "my father wishes you to know that we have had bad news from Brussels. Darling Flo is very ill. Madame Shleïfer says it is typhoid fever; but as there are no unfavorable symptoms, there is nothing serious to be apprehended. One must make allowances for Beattie's nervousness; girls of seventeen are apt to exaggerate. Still papa and I cannot help feeling anxious, and we shall start by the early train to-morrow. If you could come over this evening we shall be glad, as papa wants to consult you about a little business. The porch-room shall be got ready for you, as I know you will make an effort to come to us in our trouble."

"She does not say very much, but one can read between the lines. Florence is the youngest sister, and her favorite. I know she is terribly anxious," observed Garth, as Queenie returned the note in silence. "Well, I must be off; my trap will be round directly. You three girls will have a cosy evening without me I expect. Good-bye till to-morrow," and Garth touched his felt hat and ran down the lane.

"He might have shaken hands," thought Queenie, as she walked slowly back into the cottage.

The empty room felt very dull, but still it would have been better there than in Church-Stile House without him. On the whole, the evening was a failure. Cathy was in one of her quiet moods, and could not be roused into interest about anything. Langley looked paler than usual, and complained of head-ache, and Emmie was listless and restless. As for Queenie, she took herself to task severely for all manner of miserable fancies as she walked back to the cottage in the darkness.

"What is the use of your perpetually crying for the moon?" she said indignantly to herself. "Are you going to spoil your life and other people's with such nonsense? It is not for you to say that he is marrying the wrong woman. She is a hundred times superior to you, and I suppose he thinks so. Why is he to be blamed because he sees no beauty in your little brown face? You are nothing to him but Miss Marriott, the village school-mistress."

But that would not do, so she began again, looking at herself in the glass and crying softly. "Yes, you are a poor thing, and I pity you, but I am disappointed in you as well. You are not a bit better or more to be trusted than other girls. You know you are jealous of this Dora Cunningham; that you hate the very sound of her name, as though she had not a better right to him than you. Has she not known him all her life? and could she know him without loving him? Why," with a little sob, that sounded very pathetic in the silence, "as though any one could help it. Even Emmie loves him, and follows him about like a dog everywhere. I am not a bit ashamed of my affection for him. I would rather live lonely, as I shall live, and care about him in the way I do, receiving little daily kindnesses at his hand, than marry any other man. It is not much of a life perhaps," went on the girl, with a broken breath or two; "it does not hold as much as other people's; but such as it is, I would rather live it than go away elsewhere, and forget, and perhaps be forgotten."

Queenie was preaching a desolate little sermon to herself, but it edified and comforted her. It was only the eddying of the mill-stream when a stone had been flung into it, she told herself by-and-bye. She would be reasonable, and cease to rebel against an inevitable fate.

Garth's evening promised to be more successful. He had driven himself up to the Vicarage in the red sunset light that he loved, and Dora had come out into the porch to welcome him with her sweetest smile.

"How good of you to come! papa and I both wanted you so," putting up a white little hand to stroke the mare's glossy coat. "Poor old Bess, how hot she looks, and how fast you must have driven her; you are quite twenty minutes before the time we expected you."

"Have you been looking out for me? I am glad I was wanted," returned Garth, leaning down to take possession of the little hand. "I suppose Bess and I were both in a hurry to be here," he continued, as he looked down with kindly scrutiny at the dainty figure beside him.

Dora was a little paler than usual, and the blue eyes were a trifle heavy, but somehow her appearance had never pleased him better. She had dressed herself with even greater care than was customary with her. The soft cream-colored dress, with its graceful folds, rested the eye with a sense of fitness. One tiny rosebud gave a mere hint of color.

"I am glad you wanted me," he went on, with a little stress on the personal pronoun. "I must have been engaged indeed to have remained away at such a time."

"Yes, indeed. Poor papa, and poor dear Flo!" returned Dora, earnestly, leading him into the hall. "How could we help being very anxious and unhappy, and after Beattie's miserable letter too? But that is the worst of girls; they cannot help exaggerating things."

"I was afraid from what you said that poor Florence is very ill."

"She is ill, of course; one is always afraid of typhoid fever for a growing girl; and then papa has such a horror of German doctors. I must confess myself that I have every faith in Madame Shleïfer--such a judicious, temperate letter, and so different to poor Beattie's, who is crying herself to sleep every night, and making herself ill."

"But Madame Shleïfer does not love Florence as Beatrix does; she is liable to take alarm less easily," returned Garth, moved at this picture of the warm-hearted, impetuous girl he remembered so well.

"Beatrix's affection is not greater than ours," replied Dora, calmly. "Florence is the youngest, and I have brought her up from such a child. It is inconsiderate and a pity to write like that, and has upset papa dreadfully; but, as I told him, it was only Beatrix's way. I am afraid you will not find us very cheerful company to-night," looking up with a certain bright dewiness in her eyes--not exactly tears, but a suspicion of them.

Dora never cried, as he knew he had once heard her say that it never mended matters, and only spoiled the complexion; but as she looked up at him now with a certain unbending of the lip, and a shining mist in her blue eyes, he felt himself touched and softened.

"I cannot bear to see you in such trouble," he said, with involuntary tenderness in his tone.

"I knew you would be sorry for us," she returned simply, not moving away from him, but taking the sympathy as though it belonged to her of right. "It was so good of you to come all this distance just for papa and me."