A Song of a Single Note Part 28

Then Maria burst into pa.s.sionate weeping. "You know nothing Agnes! You know nothing!" she cried. "I can never see Harry again! Never, never!

Not even if he was in this house, _now_. How do you suppose he was saved?"

"Father has a great deal of influence, and he used it." Her calm, sad face, with its settled conviction of her father's power, irritated Maria almost beyond endurance. For a moment she thought she would tell her the truth, and then that proud, "not-caring," never far away from a n.o.ble nature stayed such a petty retaliation. She dried her eyes, wrapped her cloak around her, and said she "must not stop longer; there was trouble and sorrow at home and she was needed."

Agnes did not urge her to remain, yet she could not bear her to leave in a mood so unfriendly, and so despairing. "Forgive me, dear Maria," she whispered. "I have been wrong and perhaps unkind. I fear you are right in blaming me. Forgive me! I cannot part in such misunderstanding. If you knew all----"

"Oh, yes! And if you knew all."

"But forgive me! G.o.d knows I have suffered for my fault."

"And I also."

"Put your arms around my neck and kiss me. I cannot let you go feeling so unkindly to me. Do you hear, little one? I am sorry, indeed I am.

Maria! Maria!"

Then they wept a little in each other's arms, and Maria, tear stained and heavy hearted, left her friend. Was she happier? More satisfied?

More hopeful, for the interview? No. There had been no real confidence.

And what is forgiveness under any circ.u.mstances? Only incomplete understanding; a resolution to be satisfied with the wrong acknowledged and the pain suffered, and to let things go.

Certainly, nothing was changed by the apparent reconciliation; for as Maria sat by the fire that night she said to herself, "It is her fault.

If she had given Harry five minutes, only five minutes, that night he never would have written that shameful note. It came of her delay and his hurry. I do not forgive her, and I will not forgive her! Besides, in her heart I know she blames me; I, who am perfectly innocent! She has ruined my life, and she looked as injured as if it was I who had ruined her life. I was not to blame at all, and I will not take any blame, and I will not forgive her!"

Maria's divination in the matter was clearly right. Agnes did blame her.

She was sure Harry would not have written the note he did write unless he had received previous encouragement. "There must have been meetings in the Semples's garden before," she mused. "Oh, there must have been, or else Harry's note was inexcusable, it was impertinence, it was vulgarity. All the same, she need not have said these words to me."

So the reconciliation was only a truce; the heart-wound in both girls was unhealed; and if it were healed would not the scar remain forever?

Three or four days after this unsatisfactory meeting Neil came home in the afternoon just as the family were sitting down to the tea-table. "It is cruelly cold, mother," he said. "I will be grateful for a cup. I am s.h.i.+vering at my very heart." Then he gave his father a business-like paper, saying, "I found it at my office this morning, sir."

"What is it Neil? What is it? More trouble?"

"No, sir. It is a deed making over to you the property in which Mr.

Bradley has his shop and workrooms. He says in a letter to me that 'he feels this deed to be your right and his duty.' You are to hold the property as security until he pays you three hundred pounds with interest; and if you are not paid within three years you are to sell the property and satisfy yourself."

"You can give Mr. Bradley his deed back again, my lad. I can pay my own fines; or if I can't, I can go to prison. I'll not be indebted to him."

"You mistake, sir. This is a moral obligation, and quite as binding as a legal one to Mr. Bradley."

"Take the paper, Alexander," said Madame, "and be thankfu' to save so much out o' the wreck o' things. We havena the means nor the right, these days, to fling awa' siller in order to flatter our pride. In my opinion, it was as little as Bradley could do."

"I went at once to his shop to see him," continued Neil, "but he was not there. In the afternoon I called again, and found he had been absent all day. Fearing he was sick, I stopped at his house on my way home. A strange woman opened the door. She said Mr. Bradley and his daughter had gone away."

"Gone away!" cried Maria. "Where have they gone? Agnes said nothing to me about going away."

"The woman, Mrs. Hurd, she called herself, told me Agnes did not know she was to leave New York until fifteen minutes before she started."

"When will they return?" asked Madame.

"G.o.d knows," answered Neil, going to the fire and stooping over it. "I am cold and sick, mother," he said. "It was such a shock. No one at the shop expected such an event; everything was as busy as possible there, but the house! the house is desolate."

"When did they go, Neil?"

"Last night, mother, at eleven o'clock. Mr. Bradley came in about twenty minutes before eleven, put Mr. and Mrs. Hurd in possession, and told Agnes to pack a change of clothing for herself in a leather saddlebag he gave her. There was a boat waiting for them, and they went away in the darkness without a word. _O Agnes!"_

"What did the Hurds say?"

"They know nothing."

"Did Agnes leave no letter?" asked Maria, looking with pitying eyes at her uncle.

"How could she? The poor child, how could she? She had no time. Some one had taken away her pens and pencils. She left a message with Mrs. Hurd.

That was all."

That was all. The next day New York City knew that John Bradley had left his business and his home and disappeared as completely as a stone dropped into the river. No one had suspected his intention; not his foreman, nor any of the fifteen men working in his shop; not his most intimate friends, not even his daughter. But it was at once surmised that he had gone to the rebel army. People began to murmur at the clemency shown to his son, and to comment on the almost offensive sympathy of the father for him. For a few days John Bradley was the absorbing topic of conversation; then he was forgotten by every one but Neil. His shop, indeed, was kept open by the foreman, under control of the government, but the name of Bradley was removed from above its entrance and the royal cipher G. R. put in its place. And in a few weeks his home was known as Hurd's place, and had lost all its little characteristics. Neil pa.s.sed it every day with a heavy heart. There was no sweet face at the window to smile him a greeting; no beautiful woman to stand with him at the gate, or, hand in his hand, lead him into the little parlor and with ten minutes' conversation make the whole day bright and possible. The house looked forlorn; fire or candlelight were never visible, and he could only think of Agnes as driven away in the dark night by Destiny and wandering, he knew not where.

Maria, too, was unhappy. Her last visit to Agnes had been such a mockery of their once loving companions.h.i.+p. Her last visit! That word "last"

took hold of her, reproached her, hurt her, made her sorry and anxious.

She felt also for her uncle, who looked old and gray in his silent sorrow. Poor Neil! he had suffered so many losses lately; loss of money, loss of business, loss of friends, and to crown all these bereavements, the loss of the woman on whom he had fixed the love and light and hopes of his life. No wonder he was so mournful and so quiet; he, who had just begun to be really happy, to smile and be gracious and pleasant to every one, yes, and even to sing! Madame could not help noticing the change.

"He is worse than ever he was before," she said with a weary pity. "Dear me! what lots of sorrow women do manage to make!"

This remark Maria did not approve of, and she answered it with some temper. "All this sorrow came from a man's hand, grandmother," she said, "and no woman is to blame."

"Not even yoursel', Maria?"

"I, least of all. Do you think that I would have met any man by the river side at nine o'clock at night?"

"I'll confess I have had my doubts."

"Then you ought to say, 'Maria, I am sorry I have had one doubt of you.'

When you were Janet Gordon, would you have done a thing like that?"

"Not a man in Scotland could have trysted me at an hour when all my folk were in their rooms and maybe sleeping."

"Not a man in America could make such a tryst with me. I am your granddaughter."

"But that letter, Maria."

"It was a shame! A wrong I cannot forgive. I called it an impertinence to Agnes, and I feel it so. He had no reason to suppose I would answer such a request, such an order, I may say. I am telling you the truth, grandmother."

"I believe you, Maria; but the pity of it is that you canna advertise that fact."

"I know that. I know that everyone will doubt me or shun me. I shall be made to suffer, of course. Well, I can suffer and smile as well as any woman,--we all have that experience at some time or other."

"Men have it, too. Look at your uncle."

"Men don't smile when they suffer; they don't even try to. Uncle suffers, any one can see that, but he does not dress up in velvet and silk, and laugh, and dance, and talk nonsense merrily over the grave where all his hopes are buried. No, indeed! He looks as if he had lost the world. And he shuts himself in his room and swears at something or somebody; he does not cry like a woman and get a headache, as well as a heartache; he swears at his trouble and at everything connected with it.

That is the way with men, grandmother, you know it is. I have heard both my grandfather and my uncle comforting themselves after this fas.h.i.+on.

Grandfather, I thought, even seemed to enjoy it."