Part 52 (1/2)
”Polite--” said Antoinette.
”Eh?” said Mr. Busby looking up from a letter, ”what's that? Sit down, my dear, you are late. Hold your plate--”
As n.o.body interfered, Rotha did so and sat down to her meal. Mrs. Busby said nothing whatever. Perhaps she felt she had pushed matters pretty far; perhaps she avoided calling her husband's attention any further to the subject. She made no remark about anything, till Mr. Busby had left the room; nor then immediately. When she did speak, it was in her hard, measured way.
”As you present yourself before me this morning, Rotha, I may hope that you are prepared to make me a proper apology.”
”What have I done, aunt Serena?”
”Do you ask me? You have forgotten strangely the behaviour due from you to me.”
”I did not forget it--” said Rotha slowly.
”Will you give me an excuse for your conduct, then?”
”Yes,” said Rotha. ”Because, aunt Serena, you had forgotten so utterly the treatment due from you to me.”
Mrs. Busby flushed a little. Still she commanded herself She always did.
”Mamma, she's pretty impudent!” said Antoinette.
”I always make allowances, and you must learn to do so, Antoinette, for people who have never learned any manners.”
Rotha was stung, but she confessed to herself that pa.s.sion had made her overleap the bounds which she had purposed, and Mr. Digby had counselled, her behaviour should observe. So she was now silent.
”However,” Mrs. Busby went on, ”it is quite necessary that any one living in my family and sheltered by my roof, should pay me the respect which they owe to me.”
”I will always pay all I owe,” said Rotha deliberately, ”so far as I have anything to pay it with.”
”And in case the supply fails,” said Mrs. Busby, her voice trembling a little, ”don't you think you had better avoid going deeper into debt?”
”What do I owe you, aunt Serena?” asked the girl.
Mrs. Busby saw the gathering fire in the dark eyes, and did not desire to bring on another explosion. She a.s.sumed an impa.s.sive air, looked away from Rotha, rose and began to put her cups together on the tea-board, and rang for the tub of hot water.
”I leave that to your own sense to answer,” she said. ”But if you are to stay in my house, I beg you to understand, you must behave yourself to me with all proper civility and good manners. Else I will turn you into the street.”
Rotha recognized the necessity for a certain decency of exterior form at least, if she and her aunt were to continue under one roof; and so, though her tongue was ready with an answer, she did not at once make it.
She rose, and was about quitting the room, when the fire in her blazed up again.
”It is where mother would have been, if it had not been for other friends,” she said.
She opened the door as she spoke, and toiled up the long stairs to her room; for when the heart is heavy somehow one's feet are not light. She went to her cold little room and sat down. The suns.h.i.+ne was very bright outside, and church bells were ringing. No going to church for her, nor would there have been in any case; she had no garments fit to go out in.
Would she ever have them? Rotha queried. The church bells hurt her heart; she wished they would stop ringing; they sounded clear and joyous notes, and reminded her of happy times past. Medwayville, her father, her mother, peace and honour, and latterly Mr. Southwode, and all his kindness and teaching and his affection. It was too much. The early Sunday morning was spent by Rotha in an agony of weeping and lamentation; silent, however; she made no noise that could be heard down stairs where Mrs. Busby and Antoinette were dressing to go to church. The intensity of her pa.s.sion again by and by wore itself out; and when the last bells had done ringing, and the patter of feet was silenced in the streets, Rotha crept down to the empty dressing room, feeling blue and cold, to warm herself. She s.h.i.+vered, she stretched her arms to the warmth of the fire, she was chilled to the core, with a chill that was yet more mental than physical Alone, and stripped of everything, and everybody gone that she loved. What was she to do? how was she to live? She was struggling with a burden of realities and trying to make them seem unreal, trying for an outlook of hope or comfort in the darkness of her prospects. In vain; Mr.
Digby was gone, and with him all her strength and her reliance. He was gone; n.o.body could tell when he would come back; perhaps never; and she could not write to him, and his letters would never get to her. Never; she was sure of it. Mrs. Busby would never let them get further than her own hands. So everything was worse than she had ever feared it could be.
Sitting there on the rug before the fire, and with her teeth chattering, partly from real cold and partly from the nervous exhaustion, there came to her suddenly something Mr. Digby had once said to her. If she should come to see a time when she would have n.o.body to depend on; when her world would be wholly a desert; _all_ gone that she had loved or trusted.
It has come now!--she thought to herself; even he, who I thought would never fail me, he has failed. He said he would not fail me, but he has failed. I am alone; I have n.o.body any more. Then he told me----
She went back and gathered it up in her memory, what he had told her to do then. Then if she would seek the Lord, seek him with her whole heart, she would find him; and finding him, she would find good again. The poor, sore heart caught at the promise. I will seek him, she suddenly said; I will seek till I find; I have nothing else now.