Richard Vandermarck Part 29

"There wasn't anybody yesterday."

"But there will be to-morrow. No, Pauline," he said, lifting his head and speaking in a firmer voice, "What I thought I was doing, till this showed me my heart, and how I had deceived myself, I will do now, even if it kills me. I thought I was acting for your good, and from a sense of duty: now that I know what is for your good, and what is my duty, I will go on in that, and nothing shall turn me from it, so help me Heaven."

"At least you will forgive me," I said, with tears, "for all the things that I have made you suffer."

"Yes," he said, with some emotion, "I shall forgive you sooner than I shall forgive myself. I cannot see that you have been to blame."

"Ah," I cried, hiding my face with shame, when I thought of all my selfishness and indifference, and the return I had made him for his devoted love. "I know how I have been to blame; and I am going to pay you for your goodness and care by breaking your heart for you--by upsetting all your plans. Oh, Richard! You had better let it all go on!

Think how everybody knows about it!"

He shook his head. "I don't care a straw for that," he said. And I am sure he did not.

"No," he said firmly, getting up, and walking up and down the room; "it is all over, and we must make the best of it. I shall still have everything to do for you under the will; and while you mustn't expect me to see you often, just for the present time, at least, you know I shall do everything as faithfully as if nothing had occurred. You must write to me whenever you think my judgment or advice would do you any good.

And I shall be always looking after things that you don't understand, and taking care of your interests, whether you hear from me or not.

You'll always be sure of that, whatever may occur."

"Oh," I faltered, with a sudden frightened feeling of loneliness and loss, in the midst of my new freedom, "I can't feel as if it were all over."

"I don't know how this terrible mistake about the will occurred," he went on, without noticing what I said: "it was only a--mercy that I found it when I did. It was between the leaves of a book, an old volume of Tacitus; I took it down to look at the t.i.tle for the inventory, and it fell out."

"That was the book he had in his hand when I saw him last, that night before he died."

"Yes? Then after you went up-stairs I suppose he was thinking of you, and he took out the will to read it over, and maybe left it out, meaning to lock it up again in the morning."

"And in the morning he was not well," I said, "and perhaps went away leaving it lying on the book; I remember, Ann said there were several papers lying on the table, when she arranged the room."

"No doubt," said Richard, "she shut it up in the book it laid on, and put it on the shelf. But it is all one how it came about. The will is all correct and duly executed. One of the witnesses was a clerk, who returned yesterday from South America, where he had been gone for several months. The other is lying ill at his home in Westchester, but I have sent to-day and had his deposition taken. It is all in order, and there can be no dispute."

I think at that moment I should have been glad if it had been found invalid. There was something so inevitable and final in Richard's plain and practical words.

Evidently a great change had come in my life, and I could not help it if I would. I could not but feel the separation from the person upon whom I had leaned so long, and who had done everything for me, and I knew this separation was to be a final one; Richard's words left no doubt of that.

"What you'd better do," he said, leaning by the mantelpiece, "is to tell the servants about this--this--change in your plans, to-morrow; unpack, and settle the house to stay here for the present. In the course of a couple of months it will be time enough to make up your mind about where you will live. I think, till the will is admitted and all that, you had better keep things as they are, and make no change."

He had been so used to thinking for me, that he could not give it up at once. "I will tell Sophie to-morrow," he went on. "It will not be necessary for you to see her if she should come before she hears of it from me." (Sophie had an engagement with me to go out on the following morning. He seemed to to have forgotten nothing.)

"What will Sophie think of me?" I said, with my eyes on the floor.

"Richard, it looks very bad for me; when I was poor, I was going to marry you, and now that I have money left me, I am going to break it off."

"What difference does it make how it looks," he said, "when you know you have done right? I will tell Sophie the truth, that it was my doing both times, and that you only yielded to my judgment in the matter. Besides, if she judges you harshly, it need not make much matter to you. You will never again be thrown intimately with her, I suppose."

"No, I suppose not," I said faintly. I was being turned out of my world very fast, and it was not very clear what I was going to get in exchange for it (except freedom).

"I will send you up money to-morrow morning," he went on, "to pay the servants, and all that. The clerk I shall send it by, is the one that I shall put in charge of your matters. You can always draw on him for money, or ask him any questions, or call on him for any service, in case I should be away, or ill, or anything."

"You are going away?" I said interrogatively.

"It is possible, for a while--I don't know. I haven't made up my mind definitely about what I am going to do. But in case I _should_ be away, I mean, you are to call on him."

"I understand."

"Anything he tells you, about signing papers, and such things, you may be sure is all right."

"Yes."

"But don't do anything, without consulting me, for anybody else, remember."

"I'll remember," I said absently and humbly. It was no wonder Richard felt I needed somebody to take care of me!

"I believe there's nothing else I wanted to say to you," he said at last, moving from the mantelpiece where he had been standing; "at least, nothing that I can't write about, when it occurs to me."

"Oh, Richard!" I said, beginning to cry again, as I knew that the moment of parting had come, "I don't understand you at all. I think you take it very calm."

"Isn't that the way to take it?" he said, in a voice that was, certainly, very calm indeed.

I looked up in his face: he was ten years older. I really was frightened at the change in him.

"Oh!" I exclaimed, putting my face down in my hands, "I wasn't worth all I've made you suffer."

"Maybe you weren't," he said simply, "But it wasn't either your fault or mine--and you couldn't help it--that I wanted you."

He made a quick movement as he pa.s.sed the table, and my work-basket fell at his feet, and a little jewel-box rolled across the floor. It was a ring he had brought me, only three days before.

He stooped to pick it up, and I saw his features contract as if in pain, as he laid it back upon the table. And his voice was unsteady, as he said, not looking at me while he spoke, "I hope you won't send any of these things back. If there's anything you're willing to keep, because I gave it to you, I'd like it very much. The rest send to your church, or somewhere. I don't want to have to look at them again."

By this time I was sobbing, and, sitting down by the table, had buried my face on my arms.

"I'm sorry that it makes you feel so," he said, "but it can't be helped.

Don't cry, I can't bear to see you cry. Good-bye, Pauline; G.o.d bless you."

And he was gone. I did not realize it, and did not lift my head, till I heard the heavy sound of the outer door closing after him.

Then I knew it was all over, and that things were changed for me indeed.

"I cannot cry and get over it as you can," he had said.

And if tears would have got me over it, I should have been cured that night.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MY NEW WORLD.

Few are the fragments left of follies past; For worthless things are transient. Those that last Have in them germs of an eternal spirit, And out of good their permanence inherit.

_Bowring_.