A Letter of Credit Part 100

"Over and over; till I was tired."

"Have you written to no one else?"

"Why of course! I wrote to Mrs. Mowbray, again and again; and to one or two of the girls; but I never got an answer. The whole world has seemed dead, and been dead, for me."

They slowly paced by the house, and began to go down the sweep towards the other gate.

"Alone with these two servants for five months!" Mr. Southwode said.

"Rotha, what sort of a life have you been living all this while?"

"I do not know," said the girl catching her breath. "Rather queer. I suppose it has been good for me."

"What makes you suppose that?"

"I think I can feel that it has."--But Rotha added no more.

"Is confidence between us not fully reestablished?" he asked with a smile.

"O yes--if you care to know," Rotha answered hesitatingly, at the same time finding herself ready to slide back into the old habit of being very open with him.

"I care to know--if you like to tell me."

"It has been a queer life," she repeated. "I have been living between two things, my Bible, and the garden. There was an interval of some weeks not long ago, when Mrs. Purcell was sick; and then I lived largely in the kitchen."

"Go on, and tell me--But how can you go on!" Mr. Southwode found himself approaching the gate and road again, and suddenly broke off. "I cannot keep you standing here by the hour, and a little time will not do for us.

Pray, if you have no place to take me to, where do you yourself live?"

The laughing glance that came to him now was precisely another of the child's looks that he remembered; a look that recognized his sympathy, and answered it out of a fund of heart treasure.

"I live between my corner at the top of the house, and Mrs. Purcell's corner at the bottom. I have no place but my room and her kitchen."

"Where can I see you? We have a great deal to talk about. Rotha, suppose you go for a drive with me?"

Rotha's eyes sparkled. "It would not be the first time," she said.

"No. Then the next question is, when can we go?" He looked at his watch.

"It is too late for this afternoon," Rotha opined.

"I am afraid it is. I do not think we can manage it. Then--Rotha, will you be ready to-morrow morning? How early can you be ready?"

"We have breakfast about half past six."

"_We?_"

"Yes," said Rotha half laughing. "We. That is, Mr. Purcell, and his wife, and myself."

"Do you take your meals with these people?"

Rotha nodded. "And in their kitchen. It is the only place."

"But they are not--What are they?"

"Not what you would call refined persons," said Rotha, while again the laugh of amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure in her eyes shone through an iris of sudden tears. "No--they have been kind to me, though, in their way."

"As kind as their allegiance to Mrs. Busby permitted," said Mr. Southwode drily, recognizing at the same time the full beauty of this look I have tried to describe. "Well! That is over. How early to-morrow will you be ready to come away?"

"To come away?" repeated Rotha. "For a drive, you mean?"

"For a drive from this place. It is not my purpose ever to bring you back again."

The colour darted vividly into Rotha's cheeks, and a corresponding flash came to her eye. Yet she stood still and silent, while the colour went and came. Never here again? Then whither? and under what guardians.h.i.+p?

His own? There came a great heart leap of joy at this suggestion, but with it came also a vague pull-back of doubt; the origin of which probably lay in words she had heard long ago and never forgotten, the tendency of which was to throw scruples in the way of such an arrangement or to cast some slur upon it. Was there an echo of them in Rotha's young consciousness? She did feel that she was a child no longer; that there was a difference since the old time. Yet she was still as simple, nearly, as a child; and of that sort of truth in her own heart which readily believes truth in others. Mr. Digby's truth she knew. Altogether there was a confusion of thoughts within her, which he saw, though he did not read.

"Do you owe anything to these people here?" he asked, a sudden question rising in his mind.

"Owe? To Mr. Purcell and his wife? No. I owe them for a good deal of kindness. O! you mean--Yes, in one sense I owe them. I have never paid them anything."

"For your board, and their care of you?"

"No.--I do not owe them for much _care_," said Rotha smiling. "I have taken care of myself since I have been here."

"Do I understand you? Has n.o.body paid them anything for your stay here?"

"n.o.body."

"Upon what footing were you here, then?"

"It has no name," said Rotha contentedly. She could be gay now over this anomalous past. "I do not know what to call it."

"Has your aunt allowed you to depend upon these people?"

"Yes. I have not really depended upon them, Mr. Southwode. I promised myself, and I promised Mrs. Purcell, that some day, if I ever could do it, I would live to pay her. If I could have got any work to do, I would have taken it, and paid her before now; but I had no chance. I could see n.o.body."

"How literally is that to be taken?"

"With absolute literalness. I have seen n.o.body but Mr. and Mrs. Purcell since I came here. Began almost to think I never should."

"But Sundays?"

"What of Sundays?"

"Did you not go to church somewhere?"

"Yes," said Rotha smiling; "in my pleasant corner room at the top of the house. Nowhere else."

"Why not?"

"It is not the habit of the people. And their habit, I found, I could not change."