_ CHAPTER LIV. CLOUDS AND DARKNESS
"At least, Miss Amy--at least, we shall be friends."
Amy Waring sat in her chamber on the evening of the day that Lawrence Newt had said these words. Her long rich brown hair clustered upon her shoulders, and the womanly brown eyes were fixed upon a handful of withered flowers. They were the blossoms she had laid away at various times--gifts of Lawrence Newt, or consecrated by his touch.
She sat musing for a long time. The womanly brown eyes were soft with a look of aching regret rather than of sharp disappointment. Then she rose--still holding the withered remains--and paced thoughtfully up and down the room. The night hours passed, and still she softly paced, or tranquilly seated herself, without the falling of a tear, and only now and then a long deep breath rather than a sigh.
At last she took all the flowers--dry, yellow, lustreless--and opened a sheet of white paper. She laid them in it, and the brown womanly eyes looked at them with yearning fondness. She sat motionless, as if she could not prevail upon herself to fold the paper. But at length she sank gradually to her knees--a sinless Magdalen; her brown hair fell about her bending face, and she said, although her lips did not move, "To each, in his degree, the cup is given. Oh, Father! strengthen each to drain it and believe!"
She rose quietly and folded the paper, with the loving care and lingering delay with which a mother smooths the shroud that wraps her baby. She tied it with a pure white ribbon, so that it looked not unlike a bridal gift; and pressing her lips to it long and silently, she laid it in the old drawer. There it still remained. The paper was as white, the ribbon was as pure as ever. Only the flowers were withered. But her heart was not a flower.
"Well, Aunt Martha," said she, several months after the death of old Christopher Burt, "I really think you are coming back to this world again."
The young woman smiled, while the older one busily drove her needle.
"Why," continued Amy, "here is a white collar; and you have actually smiled at least six times in as many months!"
The older woman still said nothing. The old sadness was in her eyes, but it certainly had become more natural--more human, as it were--and the melodramatic gloom in which she had hitherto appeared was certainly less obvious.
"Amy," she said at length, "God leads his erring children through the dark valley, but he does lead them--he does not leave them. I did not know how deeply I had sinned until I heard the young man Summerfield, who came to see me even in this room."
She looked up and about, as if to catch some lingering light upon the wall.
"And it was Lawrence Newt's preacher who made me feel that there was hope even for me."
She sewed on quietly.
"I thank God for those two men; and for one other," she added, after a little pause.
Amy only looked, she did not ask who.
"Lawrence Newt," said Aunt Martha, calmly looking at Amy--"Lawrence Newt, who came to me as a brother comes to a sister, and said, 'Be of good cheer!' Amy, what is the matter with you and Lawrence Newt?"
"How, aunty?"
"How many months since you met here?"
"It was several months ago, aunty."
Aunt Martha sat quietly sewing, and after some time said,
"He is no longer a young man."
"But, Aunt Martha, he is not old."
Still sewing, the grave woman looked at the burning cheeks of her younger companion. Amy did not speak.
The older woman continued: "When you and he went from this room months ago I supposed you would be his wife before now."
Still Amy did not speak. It was not because she was unwilling to confide entirely in Aunt Martha, but there was something she did not wish to say to herself. Yet suddenly, as if lifted upon a calm, irresistible purpose--as a leaf is lifted upon the long swell of the sea--she said, with her heart as quiet as her eyes,
"I do not think Lawrence Newt loves me."
The next moment the poor leaf is lost in the trough of the sea. The next moment Amy Waring's heart beat tumultuously; she felt as if she should fall from her seat. Her eyes were blind with hot tears. Aunt Martha did not look up--did not start or exclaim--but deliberately threaded her needle carefully, and creased her work with her thumb-nail. After a little while, during which the sea was calming itself, she said, slowly, repeating Amy's words syllable by syllable,
"You do not believe Lawrence Newt loves you?"
"No," was the low, firm whisper of reply.
"Whom do you think he loves?"
There was an instant of almost deathly stillness in that turbulent heart. For a moment the very sea of feeling seemed to be frozen.
Then, and very slowly, a terrible doubt arose in Amy Waring's mind. Before this conversation every perplexity had resolved itself in the consciousness that somehow it must all come right by-and-by. It had never occurred to her to ask, Does he love any one else? But she saw now at once that if he did, then the meaning of his words was plain enough; and so, of course, he did.
Who was it?
Amy knew there was but one person in the world whose name could possibly answer that question.
But had Lawrence not watched with her--and with delight--the progress of Arthur Merlin's feeling for that other?
Yes; but if, as he watched so closely, he saw and felt how lovely that other was, was it so wonderful that he should love her?
These things flashed through her mind as she sat motionless by Aunt Martha; and she said, with profound tranquillity,
"Very possibly, Hope Wayne."
Aunt Martha did not look up. She seemed to feel that she should see something too sad if she did so; but she asked,
"Is she worthy of him?"
"Perfectly!" answered Amy, promptly.
At this word Aunt Martha did look up, and her eyes met Amy's. Amy Waring burst into tears. Her aunt laid aside her work, and gently put her arms about her niece. She waited until the first gush of feeling had passed, and then said, tenderly,
"Amy, it is by the heart that God leads us women to himself. Through love I fell; but through love, in another way, I hope to be restored. Do you really believe he loves Hope Wayne?"
"I don't know," was the low reply.
"I know, Amy."
The two women had risen, and were walking, with their arms clasped around each other, up and down the room. They stopped at the window and looked out. As they did so, their eyes fell simultaneously upon the man of whom they were speaking, who was standing at the back of his lofts, looking up at the window, which was a shrine to him.
"There she stood and smiled at me," he said to himself whenever he looked at it.
As their eyes met, he smiled and waved his hand. With his eyes and head he asked, as when he had first seen her there,
"May I come up?" and he waved his handkerchief.
The two women looked at him. As Amy did so, she felt as if there had been a long and gloomy war; and now, in his eager eyes and waving hand, she saw the illumination and waving flags of victory and peace.
She smiled as she looked, and nodded No to him with her head.
But Aunt Martha nodded Yes so vehemently that Lawrence Newt immediately disappeared from his window.
Alarmed at his coming, doubtful of Aunt Martha's intention, Amy Waring suddenly cried, "Oh! Aunt Martha!" and was gone in a moment. Lawrence Newt dashed round, and knocked at the door.
"Come in!"
He rushed into the room. Some sweet suspicion had winged his feet and lightened his heart; but he was not quick enough. He looked eagerly about him.
"She is gone!" said Aunt Martha.
His eager eyes drooped, as if light had gone out of his life also.
"Mr. Newt," said Aunt Martha, "sit down. You have been of the greatest service to me. How can I repay you?"
Lawrence Newt, who had felt during the moment in which he saw Amy at the window, and the other in which he had been hastening to her, that the cloud was about rolling from his life, was confounded by finding that it was an account between Aunt Martha, instead of Amy, and himself that was to be settled.
He bowed in some confusion, but recovering in a moment, he said, courteously,
"I am aware of nothing that you owe me in any way."
"Lawrence Newt," returned the other, solemnly, "you have known my story; you knew the man to whom I supposed myself married; you have known of my child; you have known how long I have been dead to the world and to all my family and friends, and when, by chance, you discovered me, you became as my brother. How many an hour we have sat talking in this room, and how constantly your sympathy has been my support and your wisdom my guide!"
Lawrence Newt, whose face had grown very grave, waved his hand deprecatingly.
"I know, I know," she continued. "Let that remain unsaid. It can not be unforgotten. But I know your secrets too."
They looked at each other.
"You love Amy Waring."
His face became inscrutable, and his eyes were fixed quietly upon hers. She betrayed no embarrassment, but continued,
"Amy Waring loves you."
A sudden light shot into that inscrutable face. The clear eyes were veiled for an instant by an exquisite emotion.
"What separates you?"
There was an authority in the tone of the question which Lawrence Newt found hard to resist. It was an authority natural to such intimate knowledge of the relation of the two persons. But he was so entirely unaccustomed to confide in any body, or to speak of his feelings, that he could not utter a word. He merely looked at Aunt Martha as if he expected her to answer all her own questions, and solve every difficulty and doubt.
Meanwhile she had resumed her sewing, and was rocking quietly in her chair. Lawrence Newt arose and found his tongue. He bowed in that quaint way which seemed to involve him more closely in himself, and to warn off every body else.
"I prefer to hear that a woman loves me from her own lips."
The tone was perfectly kind and respectful; but Aunt Martha felt that she had been struck dumb.
"I thank you from my heart," Lawrence Newt said to her. And taking her hand, he bent over it and kissed it. She sat looking at him, and at length said,
"Mayn't I do any thing to show my gratitude?"
"You have already done more than I deserve," replied Lawrence Newt. "I must go now. Good-by! God bless you!"
She heard his quick footfalls as he descended the stairs. For a long time the sombre woman sat rocking idly to and fro, holding her work in her hand, and with her eyes fixed upon the floor. She did not seem to see clearly, whatever it might be she was looking at. She shook out her work and straightened it, and folded it regularly, and looked at it as if the secret would pop out of the proper angle if she could only find it. Then she creased it and crimped it--still she could not see. Then she took a few stitches slowly, regarding fixedly a corner of the room as if the thought she was in search of was a mouse, and might at any moment run out of his hole and over the floor.
And after all the looking, she shook her head intelligently and fell quietly to work, as if the mystery were plain enough, saying to herself,
"Why didn't I trust a girl's instinct who loves as Amy does? Of course she is right. Dear! dear! Of course he loves Hope Wayne." _