Part 28 (1/2)

Then Maria burst into pa.s.sionate weeping. ”You know nothing Agnes! You know nothing!” she cried. ”I can never see Harry again! Never, never!

Not even if he was in this house, _now_. How do you suppose he was saved?”

”Father has a great deal of influence, and he used it.” Her calm, sad face, with its settled conviction of her father's power, irritated Maria almost beyond endurance. For a moment she thought she would tell her the truth, and then that proud, ”not-caring,” never far away from a n.o.ble nature stayed such a petty retaliation. She dried her eyes, wrapped her cloak around her, and said she ”must not stop longer; there was trouble and sorrow at home and she was needed.”

Agnes did not urge her to remain, yet she could not bear her to leave in a mood so unfriendly, and so despairing. ”Forgive me, dear Maria,” she whispered. ”I have been wrong and perhaps unkind. I fear you are right in blaming me. Forgive me! I cannot part in such misunderstanding. If you knew all----”

”Oh, yes! And if you knew all.”

”But forgive me! G.o.d knows I have suffered for my fault.”

”And I also.”

”Put your arms around my neck and kiss me. I cannot let you go feeling so unkindly to me. Do you hear, little one? I am sorry, indeed I am.

Maria! Maria!”

Then they wept a little in each other's arms, and Maria, tear stained and heavy hearted, left her friend. Was she happier? More satisfied?

More hopeful, for the interview? No. There had been no real confidence.

And what is forgiveness under any circ.u.mstances? Only incomplete understanding; a resolution to be satisfied with the wrong acknowledged and the pain suffered, and to let things go.

Certainly, nothing was changed by the apparent reconciliation; for as Maria sat by the fire that night she said to herself, ”It is her fault.

If she had given Harry five minutes, only five minutes, that night he never would have written that shameful note. It came of her delay and his hurry. I do not forgive her, and I will not forgive her! Besides, in her heart I know she blames me; I, who am perfectly innocent! She has ruined my life, and she looked as injured as if it was I who had ruined her life. I was not to blame at all, and I will not take any blame, and I will not forgive her!”

Maria's divination in the matter was clearly right. Agnes did blame her.

She was sure Harry would not have written the note he did write unless he had received previous encouragement. ”There must have been meetings in the Semples's garden before,” she mused. ”Oh, there must have been, or else Harry's note was inexcusable, it was impertinence, it was vulgarity. All the same, she need not have said these words to me.”

So the reconciliation was only a truce; the heart-wound in both girls was unhealed; and if it were healed would not the scar remain forever?

Three or four days after this unsatisfactory meeting Neil came home in the afternoon just as the family were sitting down to the tea-table. ”It is cruelly cold, mother,” he said. ”I will be grateful for a cup. I am s.h.i.+vering at my very heart.” Then he gave his father a business-like paper, saying, ”I found it at my office this morning, sir.”

”What is it Neil? What is it? More trouble?”

”No, sir. It is a deed making over to you the property in which Mr.

Bradley has his shop and workrooms. He says in a letter to me that 'he feels this deed to be your right and his duty.' You are to hold the property as security until he pays you three hundred pounds with interest; and if you are not paid within three years you are to sell the property and satisfy yourself.”

”You can give Mr. Bradley his deed back again, my lad. I can pay my own fines; or if I can't, I can go to prison. I'll not be indebted to him.”

”You mistake, sir. This is a moral obligation, and quite as binding as a legal one to Mr. Bradley.”

”Take the paper, Alexander,” said Madame, ”and be thankfu' to save so much out o' the wreck o' things. We havena the means nor the right, these days, to fling awa' siller in order to flatter our pride. In my opinion, it was as little as Bradley could do.”

”I went at once to his shop to see him,” continued Neil, ”but he was not there. In the afternoon I called again, and found he had been absent all day. Fearing he was sick, I stopped at his house on my way home. A strange woman opened the door. She said Mr. Bradley and his daughter had gone away.”

”Gone away!” cried Maria. ”Where have they gone? Agnes said nothing to me about going away.”

”The woman, Mrs. Hurd, she called herself, told me Agnes did not know she was to leave New York until fifteen minutes before she started.”

”When will they return?” asked Madame.

”G.o.d knows,” answered Neil, going to the fire and stooping over it. ”I am cold and sick, mother,” he said. ”It was such a shock. No one at the shop expected such an event; everything was as busy as possible there, but the house! the house is desolate.”