The Letter of Credit. Warner Susan
could not interrupt her. He threw himself down 011 a dry piece of sand, and waited; watching her, and watching with a sad sort of pleasure the everlasting rise and breaking of those curling billows. Things spiritual and material get very mixed up in such a mood; and anon the ocean became to Mr. Digby somehow identified with the sea of trouble the tides of which do overflow all this world. The breaking waves were but the constantly occurring and recurring bursts of misfortune and disaster which overtake everybody. Here it is, there it is, it is here again, it is always somewhere; ay, far as the eye can reach. Here is this child, now, —
"Mr. Digby, you are tired – you don't like it – you are just waiting for me," Rotha said suddenly, with delicate good feeling, coming to his side.
"I do like it, always. I am not tired, thank you, Rotha."
"But you are not taking pleasure in it now," she said gently.
"No. I was thinking, how full the world is of trouble."
"Why should you think that just now? You had better think, how full it is of pleasure. It's as full – it seems to me as full – as the very sea itself."
"Does your life have so much pleasure?"
"To-day – " said the girl, with a rapt look out to sea.
"And yet Rotha, it is for you I am troubled."
"For me!" she said with a surprised look at him.
"Yes. Suppose you sit down here for a few minutes, and let me talk to you."
"I don't want to talk about trouble just now," she said; sitting down however as he bade her.
"I am very sorry to talk about it now, or at any time; but I must. Can you bear trouble, Rotha?"
There was something tender and grave and sympathizing in his look and tone, which somehow made the girl's heart beat quicker. That there was real gravity of tidings beneath such a manner, she felt intuitively; though she strove not to believe it.
"I don't know, – " she said in answer to his question. "I have borne it."
"This is more than you have borne yet."
"I had a father, once, Mr. Digby, – " she said with a curious self- restraint that did not lack dignity.
How could he answer her? He did not find words. And instead, there came over him such a rush of tenderness in view of what was surely to fall upon the girl, in the present and in the future, that for a moment he was unmanned. To hide the corresponding rush of water to his eyes, Mr. Digby was fain to bow his face in the hand which rested on his knees. Neither the action nor the cause of it escaped Rotha's shrewdness and awakened sense of fear, but it silenced her at the same time; and it was not till a little interval had passed, though before Mr. Digby had lifted up his head, that the silence became intolerable to her. She heard the sea and saw the breakers no more, or only with a feeling of impatience.
"Well," she said at last, in a changed voice, hard, and dry, – "why don't you tell me what it is?" If she was impolite, she did not mean it, and her friend knew she did not mean it.
"I hardly can, Rotha," he answered sorrowfully.
"I know what you mean," she said, "but it isn't true. You think so, but it isn't true."
"What are you speaking of?"
"You know. I know what you mean; you are speaking of – mother!" The word came out with difficulty and only by stern determination. "It is not true, Mr. Digby."
"What is not true, Rotha?"
"You know. It is not true!" she repeated vehemently.
"But Rotha, my child, what if it were true?"
"You know it couldn't be true," she said, fixing on him a pair of eyes almost wild in their intensity. "It couldn't be true. What would become of me?"
"I will take care of you, always."
"You!" she retorted, with a scorn supreme and only matched by the pain with which she spoke. "What are you? It couldn't be, Mr. Digby."
"Listen to me, child. Rotha, I have come here to talk to you about it." He saw how full the girl's eyes were growing, of tears just swelling and ready to burst forth; and he stopped. But she impatiently dashed them right and left.
"I don't want to talk about it. It's no use, here or anywhere else. I would like to go home."
"Not yet. Before you go home I want you to be quite composed, and to have good command of yourself, so that you may not distress your mother. She cannot bear it. Therefore she asked me to tell you, because she dreaded to see your suffering. Can you bear it and hide it, Rotha, bravely, for her sake?"
"She asked you to tell me?" cried the girl; and Mr. Digby never forgot the face of wild agony with which she looked at him. He answered quietly, "Yes;" though his heart was bleeding for her.
"She thinks – "
"She knows how it must be. It is nothing new, or strange, or sorrowful, to her, – except only for you. But in her love for you, she greatly dreads to see your sorrow. Do you think, Rotha, for her sake, you can bear up bravely, and be quiet, and not shew what you feel? For her sake?"
He doubted if the girl rightly heard him. She looked at him, indeed, while he spoke, as if listening; but her face was white, or rather livid, and her eyes seemed to be gazing into despair.
"I do not think it can be, Mr. Digby," she said. "She don't look like it.
And what would become of me?
"I will take faithful care of you, Rotha, as long as you live, and I live."
"You are nothing!" she said contemptuously. But then followed a cry which curdled Mr. Digby's blood. It was not a piercing shriek, yet it was a prolonged cry, pointed and sharpened with pain and heavy with despair. One such wail, and the girl dropped her face in her hands and sat motionless. Her companion would rather have seen sobs and tears; he did not know what to do with her. The soft beat and wash of the waves sounded drearily in the silence. Mr. Digby waited. Nothing but time, he knew, can cover the roughness of life's rough places with its moss and lichen of patience and memory. Comfort was not to be spoken of, not here. He comprehended now why Mrs. Carpenter had shrank from telling the tidings herself. But the day was wearing away; they must go home; the burden, however heavy, must be lifted and carried. —
"Rotha – my child – " he said after a long interval.
No answer.
"Rotha, my child, cannot you look up and speak to me? Rotha – my poor little Rotha – it is very heavy for you! But won't you make it as light as you can for your mother?"
The child writhed away from under the hand he had gently laid on her shoulder; but uttered no sound.
"Rotha – we must go home presently. Do you know, your mother will be very anxious to see you. She is expecting us now, I dare say."
It came then, the burst of tears which he had dreaded and yet half longed for. The girl turned a little more from him and flung herself down on the sand, and there wept as he had never seen anybody weep before. With all the passion of an intense nature, and all the self abandonment of an ungoverned nature, sobbing such sobs as shook her whole frame, and with loud weeping which could not be restrained into silence. Better it should not be, Mr. Digby thought; better she should be allowed to exhaust herself so that very fatigue should induce quiet. But to the sitter-by it was unspeakably painful; a scene never to be recalled without a profound prayer, like Noah's, I fancy, after the deluge, that the like might never come again.
And happily, nature did exhaust herself; and just because the passion of sobs and tears was so violent, it did yield after a time, as strength gave way. But it lasted fearfully long. However, at last Rotha grew quieter, and then still; and not till then Mr. Digby spoke again. He spoke as if all this had been an interlude not noticed by him.
"Rotha, my child, can you gather up your courage and be quiet and be brave now?"
She hesitated, and then in a smothered voice said, "I'm not brave."
"I think you can be."
"I wish –