A Letter of Credit Part 30

"In some ways, yes."

"I don't understand in what ways. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, whether one is a boy or a girl."

Mrs. Carpenter sighed. What would bring just notions, who would teach proper ways, to her inquisitive child when she should be left motherless?

Rotha perceived the deep concern which gathered in her mother's eyes again; and anew endeavoured by lively talk to chase it away. In vain.

Mrs. Carpenter came home tired and exhausted.

"I think she was worrying about something," Rotha said, when soon after she and her friend were on their way to Whitehall. "She does, now and then."

Mr. Digby made no answer; and Rotha's next keen question was,

"You look as if you knew what she was worrying about, Mr. Digby?"

"I think I do."

"Couldn't I know what it was?"

"Perhaps. But you must wait."

It was easy to wait. Even the omnibus ride to Whitehall was charming to Rotha's inexperienced eyes; and when she was on board the ferry boat and away from the quays and the city, and the lively waters of the bay were rolling up all around her, the girl's enjoyment grew intense. She had never seen such an extent of water before, she had no idea of the real look of the waves; a hundred thousand questions came crowding and surging up in her mind, like the broken billows down below her. In her mind; they got no further; merely to have them rise was a delight; she would find the answer to them some day. For the present it was enough to watch the changing forms and varying colours of the water, and to drink in the fresh breeze which brought life and strength with it from the sea. Yet now and then a question was too urgent and must be satisfied.

"Mr. Digby, n.o.body could paint water, could they?"

"Yes."

"How could they? It is all changing, every instant; it won't stand still to be drawn."

"Most things can be done, if one is only in earnest enough."

"But how can this?"

"Not without a great deal of study and pains. A man must watch the play of the waves and the shapes they take, and the colours of the different parts in any given sort of weather, until he has got them by heart; and then he can put the lines and the colours on the canvas. If he has the gift to do it, that is."

"What has the weather to do with it? Different colours?"

"Certainly. The lights and shadows vary with every change of the sky; and the colours vary."

"Then a person must be very much in earnest," said Rotha, "ever to get it all."

"There is no doing great things in any line without being very much in earnest. The start isn't the thing; it is the steady pull that tries."

"Can you draw, Mr. Digby?"

"Yes, a little."

Again Rotha was all absorbed in what lay before and around her; getting unconscious education through her eyes, as they received for the first time the images of so many new things. To the people on board she gave scarcely any heed at all.

Arrived at Brighton, Mr. Digby's first care was to give his charge and himself some refreshment. He took Rotha to a hotel and ordered a simple dinner. Then he desired to have a little wagon harnessed up, and putting the delighted girl into it, he drove to the sea sh.o.r.e and let her feast her eyes on the incoming waves and breaking surf. He himself was full of one thought, waiting for the moment when he could say to her what he had to say; but he was forced to wait a good while. He had made a mistake, he found, in choosing this precise direction for their drive. Rotha's overwhelming pleasure and entranced absorption for some time could not be broken in upon. She was too utterly happy to notice how different was her friend's absorption from her own; unless with a vague, pa.s.sing perception, which she could not dwell upon.

At last her friend asked her if she would like a run upon the sand, the tide being then out. He drove up to a straggling bit of fence, tied his horse, and lifted Rotha out; who immediately ran down to the narrow beach and as near to the water as she dared; there stood still and looked.

There was but a gentle surf that day, with the ebb tide; but to Rotha it was a scene of unparalleled might and majesty. She was drinking in pleasure, as one can at fourteen, with all the young susceptibilities fully alive and strong. Mr. Digby 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 pa.s.sed, 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?"