His voice trembled, he grasped Falcon"s cold hand till the latter winced again, and so they parted, and Falcon rode off muttering, "Dr. Staines!
so then YOU are Dr. Staines."
CHAPTER XXII.
Rosa Staines had youth on her side, and it is an old saying that youth will not be denied. Youth struggled with death for her, and won the battle.
But she came out of that terrible fight weak as a child. The sweet pale face, the widow"s cap, the suit of deep black--it was long ere these came down from the sickroom. And when they did, oh, the dead blank!
The weary, listless life! The days spent in sighs, and tears, and desolation. Solitude! solitude! Her husband was gone, and a strange woman played the mother to her child before her eyes.
Uncle Philip was devotedly kind to her, and so was her father; but they could do nothing for her.
Months rolled on, and skinned the wound over. Months could not heal. Her boy became dearer and dearer, and it was from him came the first real drops of comfort, however feeble.
She used to read her lost one"s diary every day, and worship, in deep sorrow, the mind she had scarcely respected until it was too late. She searched in his diary to find his will, and often she mourned that he had written on it so few things she could obey. Her desire to obey the dead, whom, living, she had often disobeyed, was really simple and touching. She would mourn to her father that there were so few commands to her in his diary. "But," said she, "memory brings me back his will in many things, and to obey is now the only sad comfort I have."
It was in this spirit she now forced herself to keep accounts. No fear of her wearing stays now; no powder; no tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs; no waste.
After the usual delay, her father told her she should instruct a solicitor to apply to the insurance company for the six thousand pounds. She refused with a burst of agony. "The price of his life," she screamed. "Never! I"d live on bread and water sooner than touch that vile money."
Her father remonstrated gently. But she was immovable. "No. It would be like consenting to his death."
Then Uncle Philip was sent for.
He set her child on her knee; and gave her a pen. "Come," said he, sternly, "be a woman, and do your duty to little Christie."
She kissed the boy, cried, and did her duty meekly. But when the money was brought her, she flew to Uncle Philip, and said, "There! there!"
and threw it all before him, and cried as if her heart would break. He waited patiently, and asked her what he was to do with all that: invest it?
"Yes, yes; for my little Christie."
"And pay you the interest quarterly."
"Oh, no, no. Dribble us out a little as we want it. That is the way to be truly kind to a simpleton. I hate that word."
"And suppose I run off with it? Such confiding geese as you corrupt a man."
"I shall never corrupt you. Crusty people are the soul of honor."
"Crusty people!" cried Philip, affecting amazement. "What are they?"
She bit her lip and colored a little; but answered adroitly, "They are people that pretend not to have good hearts, but have the best in the world; far better ones than your smooth ones: that"s crusty people."
"Very well," said Philip; "and I"ll tell you what simpletons are. They are little transparent-looking creatures that look shallow, but are as deep as Old Nick, and make you love them in spite of your judgment.
They are the most artful of their s.e.x; for they always achieve its great object, to be loved--the very thing that clever women sometimes fail in."
"Well, and if we are not to be loved, why live at all--such useless things as I am?" said Rosa simply.
So Philip took charge of her money, and agreed to help her save money for her little Christopher. Poverty should never destroy him, as it had his father.
As months rolled on, she crept out into public a little; but always on foot, and a very little way from home.
Youth and sober life gradually restored her strength, but not her color, nor her buoyancy.
Yet she was perhaps more beautiful than ever; for a holy sorrow chastened and sublimed her features: it was now a sweet, angelic, pensive beauty, that interested every feeling person at a glance.
She would visit no one; but a twelvemonth after her bereavement, she received a few chosen visitors.
One day a young gentleman called, and sent up his card, "Lord Tadcaster," with a note from Lady Cicely Treherne, full of kindly feeling. Uncle Philip had reconciled her to Lady Cicely; but they had never met.
Mrs. Staines was much agitated at the very name of Lord Tadcaster; but she would not have missed seeing him for the world.
She received him with her beautiful eyes wide open, to drink in every lineament of one who had seen the last of her Christopher.
Tadcaster was wonderfully improved: he had grown six inches out at sea, and though still short, was not diminutive; he was a small Apollo, a model of symmetry, and had an engaging, girlish beauty, redeemed from downright effeminacy by a golden mustache like silk, and a tanned cheek that became him wonderfully.
He seemed dazzled at first by Mrs. Staines, but murmured that Lady Cicely had told him to come, or he would not have ventured.
"Who can be so welcome to me as you?" said she, and the tears came thick in her eyes directly.
Soon, he hardly knew how, he found himself talking of Staines, and telling her what a favorite he was, and all the clever things he had done.
The tears streamed down her cheeks, but she begged him to go on telling her, and omit nothing.
He complied heartily, and was even so moved by the telling of his friend"s virtues, and her tears and sobs, that he mingled his tears with hers. She rewarded him by giving him her hand as she turned away her tearful face to indulge the fresh burst of grief his sympathy evoked.
When he was leaving, she said, in her simple way, "Bless you"--"Come again," she said: "you have done a poor widow good."
Lord Tadcaster was so interested and charmed, he would gladly have come back next day to see her; but he restrained that extravagance, and waited a week.
Then he visited her again. He had observed the villa was not rich in flowers, and he took her down a magnificent bouquet, cut from his father"s hot-houses. At sight of him, or at sight of it, or both, the color rose for once in her pale cheek, and her pensive face wore a sweet expression of satisfaction. She took his flowers, and thanked him for them, and for coming to see her.
Soon they got on the only topic she cared for, and, in the course of this second conversation, he took her into his confidence, and told her he owed everything to Dr. Staines. "I was on the wrong road altogether, and he put me right. To tell you the truth, I used to disobey him now and then, while he was alive, and I was always the worse for it; now he is gone, I never disobey him. I have written down a lot of wise, kind things he said to me, and I never go against any one of them. I call it my book of oracles. Dear me, I might have brought it with me."
"Oh, yes! why didn"t you?" rather reproachfully.
"I will bring it next time."
"Pray do."
Then she looked at him with her lovely swimming eyes, and said tenderly, "And so here is another that disobeyed him living, but obeys him dead.
What will you think when I tell you that I, his wife, who now worship him when it is too late, often thwarted and vexed him when he was alive?"
"No, no. He told me you were an angel, and I believe it."