_ CHAPTER LXXII. GOOD-BY
The happy hours of Hope Wayne's life were the visits of Lawrence Newt. The sound of his voice in the hall, of his step on the stair, gave her a sense of profound peace. Often, as she sat at table with Mrs. Simcoe, in her light morning-dress, and with the dew of sleep yet fresh upon her cheeks, she heard the sound, and her heart seemed to stop and listen. Often, as time wore on, and the interviews were longer and more delayed, she was conscious that the gaze of her old friend became curiously fixed upon her whenever Lawrence Newt came. Often, in the tranquil evenings, when they sat together in the pleasant room, Hope Wayne cheerfully chatting, or sewing, or reading aloud, Mrs. Simcoe looked at her so wistfully--so as if upon the point of telling some strange story--that Hope could not help saying, brightly, "Out with it, aunty!" But as the younger woman spoke, the resolution glimmered away in the eyes of her companion, and was succeeded by a yearning, tender pity.
Still Lawrence Newt came to the house, to consult, to inspect, to bring bills that he had paid, to hear of a new utensil for the kitchen, to see about coal, about wood, about iron, to look at a dipper, at a faucet--he knew every thing in the house by heart, and yet he did not know how or why. He wanted to come--he thought he came too often. What could he do?
Hope sang as she sat in her chamber, as she read in the parlor, as she went about the house, doing her nameless, innumerable household duties. Her voice was rich, and full, and womanly; and the singing was not the fragmentary, sparkling gush of good spirits, and the mere overflow of a happy temperament--it was a deep, sweet, inward music, as if a woman's soul were intoning a woman's thoughts, and as if the woman were at peace.
But the face of Mrs. Simcoe grew sadder and sadder as Hope's singing was sweeter and sweeter, and significant of utter rest. The look in her eyes of something imminent, of something that even trembled on her tongue, grew more and more marked. Hope Wayne brightly said, "Out with it, aunty!" and sang on.
Amy Waring came often to the house. She was older than Hope, and it was natural that she should be a little graver. They had a hundred plans in concert for helping a hundred people. Amy and Hope were a charitable society.
"Fiddle diddle!" said Aunt Dagon, when she was speaking of his two friends to her nephew Lawrence. "Does this brace of angels think that virtue consists in making shirts for poor people?"
Lawrence looked at his aunt with the inscrutable eyes, and answered slowly,
"I don't know that they do, Aunt Dagon; but I suppose they don't think it consists in
not making them."
"Phew!" said Mrs. Dagon, tossing her cap-strings back pettishly. "I suppose they expect to make a kind of rope-ladder of all their charity garments, and climb up into heaven that way!"
"Perhaps they do," replied Lawrence, in the same tone. "They have not made me their confidant. But I suppose that even if the ladder doesn't reach, it's better to go a little way up than not to start at all."
"There! Lawrence, such a speech as that comes of your not going to church. If you would just try to be a little better man, and go to hear Dr. Maundy preach, say once a year," said Mrs. Dagon, sarcastically, "you would learn that it isn't good works that are the necessary thing."
"I hope, Aunt Dagon," returned Lawrence, laughing--"I do really hope that it's good words, then, for your sake. My dear aunt, you ought to be satisfied with showing that you don't believe in good works, and let other people enjoy their own faith. If charity be a sin, Miss Amy Waring and Miss Hope Wayne are dreadful sinners. But then, Aunt Dagon, what a saint you must be!"
Gradually Mrs. Simcoe was persuaded that she ought to speak plainly to Lawrence Newt upon a subject which profoundly troubled her. Having resolved to do it, she sat one morning waiting patiently for the door of the library--in which Lawrence Newt was sitting with Hope Wayne, discussing the details of her household--to open. There was a placid air of resolution in her sad and anxious face, as if she were only awaiting the moment when she should disburden her heart of the weight it had so long secretly carried. There was entire silence in the house. The rich curtains, the soft carpet, the sumptuous furniture--every object on which the eye fell, seemed made to steal the shock from noise; and the rattle of the street--the jarring of carts--the distant shriek of the belated milkman--the long, wavering, melancholy cry of the chimney-sweep--came hushed and indistinct into the parlor where the sad-eyed woman sat silently waiting.
At length the door opened and Lawrence Newt came out. He was going toward the front door, when Mrs. Simcoe rose and went into the hall, and said, "Stop a moment!"
He turned, half smiled, but saw her face, and his own settled into its armor.
Mrs. Simcoe beckoned him toward the parlor; and as he went in she stepped to the library door and said, to avoid interruption,
"Hope, Mr. Newt and I are talking together in the parlor."
Hope bowed, and made no reply. Mrs. Simcoe entered the other room and closed the door.
"Mr. Newt," she said, in a low voice, "you can not wonder that I am anxious."
He looked at her, and did not answer.
"I know, perhaps, more than you know," said she; "not, I am sure, more than you suspect."
Lawrence Newt was a little troubled, but it was only evident in the quiet closing and unclosing of his hand.
They stood for a few moments without speaking. Then she opened the miniature, and when she saw that he observed it she said, very slowly,
"Is it quite fair, Mr. Newt?"
"Mrs. Simcoe," he replied, inquiringly.
His firm, low voice reassured her.
"Why do you come here so often?" asked she.
"To help Miss Hope."
"Is it necessary that you should come?"
"She wishes it."
"Why?"
He paused a moment. Mrs. Simcoe continued:
"Lawrence Newt, at least let us be candid with each other. By the memory of the dead--by the common sorrow we have known, there should be no cloud between us about Hope Wayne. I use your own words. Tell me what you feel as frankly as you feel it."
There was simple truth in the earnest face before him. While she was speaking she raised her hand involuntarily to her breast, and gasped as if she were suffocating. Her words were calm, and he answered,
"I waited, for I did not know how to answer--nor do I now."
"And yet you have had some impression--some feeling--some conviction. Yon know whether it is necessary that you should come--whether she wants you for an hour's chat, as an old friend--or--or"--she waited a moment, and added--"or as something else."
As Lawrence Newt stood before her he remembered curiously his interview with Aunt Martha, but he could not say to Mrs. Simcoe what he had said to her.
"What can I say?" he asked at length, in a troubled voice.
"Lawrence Newt, say if you think she loves you, and tell me," she said, drawing herself erect and back from him, as in the twilight of the old library at Pinewood, while her thin finger was pointed upward--"tell me, as you will be judged hereafter--me, to whom her mother gave her as she died, knowing that she loved you."
Her voice died away, overpowered by emotion. She still looked at him, and suspicion, incredulity, and scorn were mingled in her look, while her uplifted finger still shook, as if appealing to Heaven. Then she asked abruptly, and fiercely,
"To which, in the name of God, are you false--the mother or the daughter?"
"Stop!" replied Lawrence Newt, in a tone so imperious that the hand of his companion fell at her side, and the scorn and suspicion faded from her eyes. "Mrs. Simcoe, there are things that even you must not say. You have lived alone with a great sorrow; you are too swift; you are unjust. Even if I had known what you ask about Miss Hope, I am not sure that I should have done differently. Certainly, while I did not know--while, at most, I could only suspect, I could do nothing else. I have feared rather than believed--nor that, until very lately. Would it have been kind, or wise, or right to have staid away altogether, when, as you know, I constantly meet her at our little Club? Was I to say, 'Miss Hope, I see you love me, but I do not love you?' And what right had I to hint the same thing by my actions, at the cost of utter misapprehension and pain to her? Mrs. Simcoe, I do love Hope Wayne too tenderly, and respect her too truly, not to try to protect her against the sting of her own womanly pride. And so I have not staid away. I have not avoided a woman in whom I must always have so deep and peculiar an interest, I have been friend and almost father, and never by a whisper even, by a look, by a possible hint, have I implied any thing more."
His voice trembled as he spoke. He had no right to be silent any longer, and as he finished Mrs. Simcoe took his hand.
"Forgive me! I love her so dearly--and I too am a woman."
She sank upon the sofa as she spoke, and covered her face for a little while. The tears stole quietly down her cheeks. Lawrence Newt stood by her sadly, for his mind was deeply perplexed. They both remained for some time without speaking, until Mrs. Simcoe asked,
"What can we do?"
Lawrence Newt shook his head doubtfully.
They were silent again. At length Mrs. Simcoe said:
"I will do it."
"What?" asked Lawrence.
"What I have been meaning to do for a long, long time," replied the other. "I will tell her the story."
An indefinable expression settled upon Lawrence Newt's face as she spoke.
"Has she never asked?" he inquired.
"Often; but I have always avoided telling."
"It had better be done. It is the only way. But I hoped it would never be necessary. God bless us all!"
He moved toward the door when he had finished, but not until he had shaken her warmly by the hand.
"You will come as before?" she said.
"Of course, there will not be the slightest change on my part. And, Mrs. Simcoe, remember that next week, certainly, I shall meet Miss Hope at Miss Amy Waring's. Our first meeting had better be there, so before then please--"
He bowed and went out. As he passed the library door he involuntarily looked in. There sat Hope Wayne, reading; but as she heard him she raised the head of golden hair, the dewy cheeks, the thoughtful brow, and as she bowed to him the clear blue eyes smiled the words her tongue uttered--
"Good-by, Mr. Newt, good-by!"
The words followed him out of the door and down the street. The air rang with them every where. The people he passed seemed to look at him as if they were repeating them. Distant echoes caught them up and whispered them. He heard no noise of carriages, no loud city hum; he only heard, fainter and fainter, softer and softer, sadder and sadder, and ever following on, "Good-by, Mr. Newt, good-by!" _