Chapter 4

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_ The fly was already at the door, and Miss Williams, with her small luggage, would in five minutes have departed, followed by the good wishes of all the household, from Miss Maclachlan's school to her new situation, when the postman passed and left a letter for her.

"I will put it in my pocket and read it in the train," she said, with a slight change of color. For she recognized the handwriting of that good man who had loved her, and whom she could not love.

"Better read it now. No time like the present," observed Miss Maclachlan.

Miss Williams did so. As soon as she was fairly started and alone in the fly, she opened it, with hands slightly trembling, for she was touched by the persistence of the good rector, and his faithfulness to her, a poor governess, when he might have married, as they said in his neighborhood, "anybody." He would never marry any body now--he was dying.

"I have come to feel how wrong I was," he wrote, "in ever trying to change our happy relations together. I have suffered for this--so have we all. But it is now too late for regret. My time has come. Do not grieve yourself by imagining it has come the faster through any decision of yours, but by slow, inevitable disease, which the doctors have only lately discovered. Nothing could have saved me. Be satisfied that there is no cause for you to give yourself one moment's pain." (How she sobbed over those shaky lines, more even than over the newspaper lines which she had read that sun-shiny morning on the shore!) "Remember only that you made me very happy--me and all mine--for years; that I loved you, as even at my age a man can love; as I shall love you to the end, which can not be very far off now. Would you dislike coming to see me just once again? My girls will so very glad, and nobody knows any thing. Besides, what matter? I am dying. Come, if you can within a week or so; they tell me I may last thus long. And I want to consult with you about my children. Therefore I will not say good-by now, only good-night, and God bless you."

But it was good-by, after all. Though she did not wait the week; indeed, she waited for nothing, considered nothing, except her gratitude to this good man--the only man who had loved her--and her affection for the two girls, who would soon be fatherless; though she sent a telegram from Brighton to say she was coming, and arrived within twenty-four hours, still--she came too late.

When she reached the village she heard that his sufferings were all over; and a few yards from his garden wall, in the shade of the church-yard lime-tree, the old sexton was busy re-opening, after fourteen years, the family grave, where he was to be laid beside his wife the day after to-morrow. His two daughters, sitting alone together in the melancholy house, heard Miss Williams enter, and ran to meet her. With a feeling of nearness and tenderness such as she had scarcely ever felt for any human being, she clasped them close, and let them weep their hearts out in her motherly arms.

Thus the current of her whole life was changed; for when Mr. Moseley's will was opened, it was found that, besides leaving Miss Williams a handsome legacy, carefully explained as being given "in gratitude for her care of his children," he had chosen her as their guardian, until they came of age or married, entreating her to reside with them, and desiring them to pay her all the respect due to "a near and dear relative." The tenderness with which he had arranged every thing, down to the minutest points, for them and herself, even amidst all his bodily sufferings, and in face of the supreme hour--which he had met, his daughters said, with a marvelous calmness, even joy--touched Fortune as perhaps nothing had ever touched her in all her life before. When she stood with her two poor orphans beside their father's grave, and returned with them to the desolate house, vowing within herself to be too them, all but in name, the mother he had wished her to be, this sense of duty--the strange new duty which had suddenly come to fill her empty life--was so strong, that she forgot every thing else--even Robert Roy.

And for months afterward--months of anxious business, involving the leaving of the Rectory, and the taking of a temporary house in the village, until they could decide where finally to settle--Miss Williams had scarcely a moment or a thought to spare for any beyond the vivid present. Past and future faded away together, except so far as concerned her girls.

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," were words which had helped her through many a dark time. Now, with all her might, she did her motherly duty to the orphan girls; and as she did so, by-and-by she began strangely to enjoy it, and to find also not a little of motherly pride and pleasure in them. She had not time to think of herself at all, or of the great blow which had fallen, the great change which had come, rendering it impossible for her to let herself feel as she had used to feel, dream as she used to dream, for years and years past. That one pathetic line

"I darena think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin," burned itself into her heart, and needed nothing more.

"My children! I must only love my children now," was her continual thought, and she believed she did so.

It was not until spring came, healing the girls' grief as naturally as it covered their father's grave with violets and primroses, and making them cling a little less to home and her, a little more to the returning pleasures of their youth, for they were two pretty girls, well-born, with tolerable fortunes, and likely to be much sought after--not until the spring days left her much alone, did Fortune's mind recur to an idea which had struck her once, and then been set aside--to write to Robert Roy. Why should she not? Just a few friendly lines, telling him how, after long years, she had seen his name in the papers; how sorry she was, and yet glad--glad to think he was alive and well, and married; how she sent all kindly wishes to his wife and himself, and so on. In short the sort of letter that any body might write or receive, whatever had been the previous link between them. And she wrote it on an April day, one of those first days of spring which make young hearts throb with a vague delight, a nameless hope; and older ones--but is there any age when hope is quite dead? I think not, even to those who know that the only spring that will ever come to them will dawn in the world everlasting.

When her girls, entering, offered to post her letter, and Miss Williams answered gently that she would rather post it herself, as it required a foreign stamp, how little they guessed all that lay underneath, and how, over the first few lines, her hand had shaken so that she had to copy it three times. But the address, "Robert Roy, Shanghai"--all she could put, but she had little doubt it would find him--was written with that firm, clear hand which he had so often admired, saying he wished she could teach his boys to write as well. Would he recognize it? Would he be glad or sorry, or only indifferent? Had the world changed him? or, if she could look at him now, would he be the same Robert Roy--simple, true, sincere, and brave--every inch a man and a gentleman?

For the instant the old misery came back; the sharp, sharp pain; but she smothered it down. His dead child, his living, unknown wife, came between, with their soft ghostly hands. He was still himself; she hoped absolutely unchanged; but he was hers no more. Yet that strange yearning, the same which had impelled Mr. Moseley to write and say, "Come and see me before I die," seemed impelling her to stretch a hand out across the seas--"Have you forgotten me: I have never forgotten you." As she passed through the church-yard on her way to the village, and saw the rector's grave lie smiling in the evening sunshine, Fortune thought what a strange lot hers had been. The man who had loved her, the man whom she had loved, were equally lost to her; equally dead and buried. And yet she lived still--her busy, active, and not unhappy life. It was God's will, all; and it was best.

Another six months went by, and she still remained in the same place, though talking daily of leaving. They began to go into society again, she and her girls, and to receive visitors now and then: among the rest, David Dalziel, who had preserved his affectionate fidelity even when he went back to college, and had begun to discover somehow that the direct road from Oxford to every where was through this secluded village. I am afraid Miss Williams was not as alive as she ought to have been to this fact, and to the other fact that Helen and Janetta were not quite children now, but she let the young people be happy, and was happy with them, after her fashion. Still, hers was less happiness than peace; the deep peace which a storm-tossed vessel finds when kindly fate has towed it into harbor; with torn sails and broken masts, maybe, but still safe, never needing to go to sea any more.

She had come to that point in life when we cease to be "afraid of evil tidings," since nothing is likely to happen to us beyond what has happened. She told herself that she did not look forward to the answer from Shanghai, if indeed any came; nevertheless, she had ascertained what time the return mail would be likely to bring it. And, almost punctual to the day, a letter arrived with the postmark, "Shanghai." Not his letter, nor his handwriting at all. And, besides, it was addressed to "_Mrs._ Williams."

A shudder of fear, the only fear which could strike her now--that he might be dead--made Fortune stand irresolute a moment, then go up to her own room before she opened it.

"Madam,--I beg to apologize for having read nearly through your letter before comprehending that it was not meant for me, but probably for another Mr. Robert Roy, who left this place not long after I came here, and between whom and myself some confusion arose, till we became intimate, and discovered that we were most likely distant, very distant cousins. He came from St. Andrews, and was head clerk in a firm here, doing a very good business in tea and silk, until they mixed themselves up in the opium trade, which Mr. Roy, with one or two more of our community here, thought so objectionable that at last he threw up his situation and determined to seek his fortunes in Australia. It was a pity, for he was in a good way to get on rapidly, but everybody who knew him agreed it was just the sort of thing he was sure to do, and some respected him highly for doing it. He was indeed what we Scotch call 'weel respeckit' wherever he went. But he was a reserved man; made few intimate friends, though those he did make were warmly attached to him. My family were; and though it is now five years since we have heard anything of or from him, we remember him still."

Five years! The letter dropped from her hands. Lost and found, yet found and lost. What might not have happened to him in five years? But she read on, dry-eyed: women do not weep very much or very easily at her age.

"I will do my utmost, madam, that your letter shall reach the hands for which I am sure it was intended; but that may take some time, my only clue to Mr. Roy's whereabouts being the branch house at Melbourne. I can not think he is dead, because such tidings pass rapidly from one to another in our colonial communities, and he was too much beloved for his death to excite no concern.

"I make this long explanation because it strikes me you may be a lady, a friend or relative of Mr. Roy's, concerning whom he employed me to make some inquiries, only you say so very little--absolutely nothing--of yourself in your letter, that I can not be at all certain if you are the same person. She was a governess in a family named Dalziel, living at St. Andrews. He said he had written to that family repeatedly, but got no answer, and then asked me, if any thing resulted from my inquiries, to write to him to the care of our Melbourne house. But no news ever came, and I never wrote to him, for which my wife still blames me exceedingly. She thanks you, dear madam, for the kind things you say about our poor child, though meant for another person. We have seven boys, but little Bell was our youngest, and our hearts' delight. She died after six hours' illness.

"Again begging you to pardon my unconscious offense in reading a stranger's letter, and the length of this one, I remain your very obedient servant, R. Roy

"P.S.--I ought to say that this Mr. Robert Roy seemed between thirty-five and forty, tall, dark-haired, walked with a slight stoop. He had, I believe, no near relatives whatever, and I never heard of his having been married."

Unquestionably Miss Williams did well in retiring to her chamber and locking the door before she opened the letter. It is a mistake to suppose that at thirty-five or forty--or what age?--women cease to feel. I once was walking with an old maiden lady, talking of a character in a book. "He reminded me," she said, "of the very best man I ever knew, whom I saw a good deal of when I was a girl." And to the natural question, was he alive, she answered, "No; he died while he was still young." Her voice kept its ordinary tone, but there came a slight flush on the cheek, a sudden quiver over the whole withered face--she was some years past seventy--and I felt I could not say another word.

Nor shall I say a word now of Fortune Williams, when she had read through and wholly taken in the contents of this letter.

Life began for her again--life on a new and yet on the old basis; for it was still waiting, waiting--she seemed to be among those whose lot it is to "stand and wait" all their days. But it was not now in the absolute darkness and silence which it used to be. She knew that in all human probability Robert Roy was alive still some where, and hope never could wholly die out of the world so long as he was in it. His career, too, if not prosperous in worldly things, had been one to make any heart that loved him content--content and proud. For if he had failed in his fortunes, was it not from doing what she would most have wished him to do--the right, at all costs? Nor had he quite forgotten her, since even so late as five years back he had been making inquiries about her. Also, he was then unmarried.

But human nature is weak, and human hearts are so hungry sometimes.

"Oh, if he had only loved me, and told me so!" she said, sometimes, as piteously as fifteen years ago. But the tears which followed were not, as then, a storm of passionate despair--only a quiet sorrowful rain.

For what could she do? Nothing. Now as ever, her part seemed just to fold her hands and endure. If alive, he might be found some day; but now she could not find him--oh, if she could! Had she been the man and he the woman--nay, had she been still herself, a poor lonely governess, having to earn every crumb of her own bitter bread, yet knowing that he loved her, might not things have been different? Had she belonged to him, they would never have lost one another. She would have sought him, as Evangeline sought Gabriel, half the world over.

And little did her two girls imagine, as they called her down stairs that night, secretly wondering what important business could make "Auntie" keep tea waiting fully five minutes, and set her after tea to read some "pretty poetry," especially Longfellow's, which they had a fancy for--little did they think, those two happy creatures, listening to their middle-aged governess, who read so well that sometimes her voice actually faltered over the line, how there was being transacted under their very eyes a story which in its "constant anguish of patience" was scarcely less pathetic than that of Acadia.

For nearly a year after that letter came the little family of which Miss Williams was the head went on in its innocent quiet way, always planning, yet never making a change, until at last fate drove them to it.

Neither Helen nor Janetta were very healthy girls, and at last a London doctor gave as his absolute fiat that they must cease to live in their warm inland village, and migrate, for some years at any rate, to a bracing sea-side place.

Whereupon David Dalziel, who had somehow established himself as the one masculine adviser of the family, suggested St. Andrews. Bracing enough it was, at any rate: he remembered the winds used almost cut his nose off. And it was such a nice place too, so pretty, with such excellent society. He was sure the young ladies would find it delightful. Did Miss Williams remember the walk by the shore, and the golfing across the Links?

"Quite as well as you could have done, at the early age of seven," she suggested, smiling. "Why are you so very anxious we should go to live at St. Andrews?"

The young fellow blushed all over his kindly eager face, and then frankly owned he had a motive. His grandmother's cottage, which she had left him, the youngest and her pet always, was now unlet. He meant, perhaps, to go and live at it himself when--he was of age and could afford it; but in the mean time he was a poor solitary bachelor, and--and--

"And you would like me to keep your nest warm for you till you can claim it? You want us for your tenants, eh, Davie?"

"Just that. You've hit it. Couldn't wish better. In fact, I have already written to my trustees to drive the hardest bargain possible."

Which was an ingenious modification of the truth, as she afterward found; but evidently the lad had set his heart upon the thing. And she?

At first she shrank back from the plan with a shiver almost of fear. It was like having to meet face to face something--some one--long dead. To walk among the old familiar places, to see the old familiar sea and shore, nay, to live in the very same house, haunted, as houses are sometimes, every room and every nook, with ghosts--yet with such innocent ghosts--Could she bear it?

There are some people who have an actual terror of the past--who the moment a thing ceases to be pleasurable fly from it, would willingly bury it out of sight forever. But others have no fear of their harmless dead--dead hopes, memories, loves--can sit by a grave-side, or look behind them at a dim spectral shape, without grief, without dread, only with tenderness. This woman could.

After a long wakeful night, spent in very serious thought for every one's good, not excluding her own--since there is a certain point beyond which one has no right to forget one's self, and perpetual martyrs rarely make very pleasant heads of families--she said to her girls next morning that she thought David Dalziel's brilliant idea had a great deal of sense in it; St. Andrews was a very nice place, and the cottage there would exactly suit their finances, while the tenure upon which he proposed they should hold it (from term to term) would also fit in with their undecided future; because, as all knew, wherever Helen or Janetta married, each would take her fortune and go, leaving Miss Williams with her little legacy, above want certainly, but not exactly a millionaire.

These and other points she set before them in her practical fashion, just as if her heart did not leap--sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with pain--at the very thought of St. Andrews, and as if to see herself sit daily and hourly face to face with her old self, the ghost of her own youth, would be a quite easy thing.

The girls were delighted. They left all to Auntie, as was their habit to do. Burdens naturally fall upon the shoulders fitted for them, and which seem even to have a faculty for drawing them down there. Miss Williams's new duties had developed in her a whole range of new qualities, dormant during her governess life. Nobody knew better than she how to manage a house and guide a family. The girls soon felt that Auntie might have been a mother all her days, she was so thoroughly motherly and they gave up every thing into her hands.

So the whole matter was settled, David rejoicing exceedingly, and considering it "jolly fun," and quite like a bit out of a play, that his former governess should come back as his tenant, and inhabit the old familiar cottage.

"And I'll take a run over to see you as soon as the long vacation begins, just to teach the young ladies golfing. Mr. Roy taught all us boys, you know; and we'll take that very walk he used to take us, across the Links and along the sands to the Eden. Wasn't it the river Eden, Miss Williams? I am sure I remember it. I think I am very good at remembering."

Other people were also "good at remembering." During the first few weeks after they settled down at St. Andrews the girls noticed that Auntie became excessively pale, and was sometimes quite "distrait" and bewildered-looking, which was little wonder, considering all she had to do and arrange. But she got better in time. The cottage was so sweet, the sea so fresh, the whole place so charming. Slowly, Miss Williams's ordinary looks returned--the "good" looks which her girls so energetically protested she had now, if never before. They never allowed her to confess herself old by caps or shawls, or any of those pretty temporary hindrances to the march of Time. She resisted not; she let them dress her as they please, in a reasonable way, for she felt they loved her; and as to her age, why, _she_ knew it, and knew that nothing could alter it, so what did it matter? She smiled, and tried to look as nice and as young as she could for her girls' sake.

I suppose there are such things as broken or breaking hearts, even at St. Andrews, but it is certainly not a likely place for them. They have little chance against the fresh, exhilarating air, strong as new wine; the wild sea waves, the soothing sands, giving with health of body wholesomeness of mind. By-and-by the busy world recovered its old face to Fortune Williams--not the world as she once dreamed of it, but the real world, as she had fought it through it all these years.

"I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!" as she read sometimes in the "pretty" poetry her girls were always asking for--read steadily, even when she came to the last verse in that passionate "Prospice:"

"Till, sudden, the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end:
And the elements rage, the fiend voices that rave
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a joy,
Then a light--then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!"

To that life to come, during all the burden and heat of the day (no, the afternoon, a time, faded, yet hot and busy still, which is often a very trying bit of woman's life) she now began yearningly to look. To meet him again, even in old age, or with death between, was her only desire. Yet she did her duty still, and enjoyed all she could, knowing that one by one the years were hurrying onward, and the night coming, "in which no man can work."

Faithful to his promise, about the middle of July David Dalziel appeared, in overflowing spirits, having done very well at college. He was such a boy still, in character and behavior; though--as he carefully informed the family--now twenty-one and a man, expecting to be treated as such. He was their landlord too, and drew up the agreement in his own name, meaning to be a lawyer, and having enough to live on--something better than bread and salt--"till I can earn a fortune, as I certainly mean to do some day."

And he looked at Janetta, who looked down on the parlor carpet--as young people will. Alas! I fear that the eyes of her anxious friend and governess were not half wide enough open to the fact that these young folk were no longer boy and girls, and that things might happen--in fact, were almost certain to happen--which had happened to herself in her youth--making life not quite easy to her, as it seemed to be to these two bright girls.

Yet they were so bright, and their relations with David Dalziel were so frank and free--in fact, the young fellow himself was such a thoroughly good fellow, so very difficult to shut her door against, even if she had thought of so doing. But she did not. She let him come and go, "miserable bachelor" as he proclaimed himself, with all his kith and kin across the seas, and cast not a thought to the future, or to the sad necessity which sometimes occurs to parents and guardians--of shutting the stable door _after_ the steed is stolen.

Especially, as not long after David appeared, there happened a certain thing to all but her, and yet to her it was, for the time being, utterly overwhelming. It absorbed all her thoughts into one maddened channel, where they writhed and raved and dashed themselves blindly against inevitable fate. For the first time in her life this patient woman felt as if endurance were _not_ the right thing; as if wild shrieks of pain, bitter outcries against Providence, would be somehow easier, better: might reach His throne, so that even now He might listen and hear.

The thing was this. One day, waiting for some one beside the laurel bush at her gate--the old familiar bush, though it had grown and grown till its branches, which used to drag on the gravel, now covered the path entirely--she overheard David explaining to Janetta how he and his brothers and Mr. Roy had made the wooden letter-box, which actually existed still, though in very ruinous condition.

"And no wonder, after fifteen years and more. It is fully that old, isn't it Miss Williams? You will have to superannuate it shortly, and return to the old original letter-box--my letter-box, which I remember so well. I do believe I could find it still."

Kneeling down, he thrust his hand through the thick barricade of leaves into the very heart of the tree.

"I've found it; I declare I've found it; the identical hole in the trunk where I used to put all my treasures--my 'magpie's nest,' as they called it, where I hid every thing I could find. What a mischievous young scamp I was!"

"Very," said Miss Williams, affectionately, laying a gentle hand on his curls--"pretty" still, though cropped down to the frightful modern fashion. Secretly she was rather proud of him, this tall young fellow, whom she had had on her lap many a time.

"Curious! It all comes back to me--even to the very last thing I hid here, the day before we left, which was a letter."

"A letter!"--Miss Williams slightly started--"what letter?"

"One I found lying under the laurel bush, quite hidden by its leaves. It was all soaked with rain. I dried it in the sun, and then put it in my letter-box, telling nobody, for I meant to deliver it myself at the hall door with a loud ring--an English postman's ring. Our Scotch one used to blow his horn, you remember?"

"Yes," said Miss Williams. She was leaning against the fatal bush, pale to the very lips, but her veil was down--nobody saw. "What sort of a letter was it, David? Who was it to? Did you notice the handwriting?"

"Why, I was such a little fellow," and he looked up in wonder and slight concern, "how could I remember? Some letter that somebody had dropped, perhaps, in taking the rest out of the box. It could not matter--certainly not now. You would not bring my youthful misdeeds up against me, would you?" And he turned up a half-comical, half-pitiful face.

Fortune's first impulse--what was it? She hardly knew. But her second was that safest, easiest thing--now grown into the habit and refuge of her whole life--silence. "No, it certainly does not matter now."

A deadly sickness came over her. What if this letter were Robert Roy's, asking her that question which he said no man ought ever to ask a woman twice? And she had never seen it--never answered it. So, of course, he went away. Her whole life--nay, two whole lives--had been destroyed, and by a mere accident, the aimless mischief of a child's innocent hand. She could never prove it, but it might have been so. And, alas! alas! God, the merciful God, had allowed it to be so.

Which is the worst, to wake up suddenly and find that our life has been wrecked by our own folly, mistake, or sin, or that it has been done for us either directly by the hand of Providence, or indirectly through some innocent--nay, possibly not innocent, but intentional--hand? In both cases the agony is equally sharp--the sharper because irremediable.

All these thoughts, vivid as lightning, and as rapid, darted through poor Fortune's brain during the few moments that she stood with her hand on David's shoulder, while he drew from his magpie's nest a heterogeneous mass of rubbish--pebbles, snail shells, bits of glass and china, fragments even of broken toys.

"Just look there. What ghosts of my childhood, as people would say! Dead and buried, though." And he laughed merrily--he in the full tide and glory of his youth.

Fortune Williams looked down on his happy face. This lad that really loved her would not have hurt her for the world, and her determination was made. He should never know any thing. Nobody should ever know any thing. The "dead and buried" of fifteen years ago must be dead and buried forever.

"David," she said, "just out of curiosity, put your hand down to the very bottom of that hole, and see if you can fish up the mysterious letter."

Then she waited, just as one would wait at the edge of some long-closed grave to see if the dead could possibly be claimed as our dead, even if but a handful of unhonored bones.

No, it was not possible. Nobody could expect it after such a lapse of time. Something David pulled out--it might be paper, it might be rags. It was too dry to be moss or earth, but no one could have recognized it as a letter.

"Give it me," said Miss Williams, holding out her hand.

David put the little heap of "rubbish" therein. She regarded it a moment, and then scattered it on the gravel--"dust to dust," as we say in our funeral service. But she said nothing.

At the moment the young people they were waiting for came, to the other side of the gate, clubs in hand. David and the two Miss Moseleys had by this time become perfectly mad for golf, as is the fashion of the place. The proceeded across the Links, Miss Williams accompanying them, as in duty bound. But she said she was "rather tired," and leaving them in charge of another chaperon--if chaperons are ever wanted or needed in those merry Links of St. Andrews--came home alone. _

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