Part 25 (1/2)

She stopped and her hand went to her heart, the reaction was so sudden.

”Yes,” she murmured, standing still with great heart-beats of joy, or was it pain?

The door slowly opened. ”Did you think I could let you go without a blessing, my Paula, my little one!” came in those deep heart-tones which always made her tears start. And Mr. Sylvester stepped out of the shadows beyond and stood in the shadows at her side.

”I did not know,” she murmured. ”I am so young, so feeble, such a mote in this great atmosphere of anguish. I longed to see you, to say good-bye, to thank you, but--” tears stopped her words; this was a parting that rent her leader heart.

Mr. Sylvester watched her and his deep chest rose spasmodically.

”Paula,” said he, and there was a depth in his tone even she had never heard before, ”are these tears for me?”

With a strong effort she controlled herself, looked up and faintly smiled. ”I am an orphan,” she gently murmured; ”you have been kind and tender to me beyond words; I have let myself love you as a father.”

A spasm crossed his features, the hand he had lifted to lay upon her head fell at his side, he surveyed her with eyes whose despairing fondness told her that her love had been more than met by this desolate childless man. But he did not reply as seemed natural, ”Be to me then as a child. I can offer you no mother to guide or watch over you, but one parent is better than none. Henceforth you shall be known as my daughter.” Instead of that he shook his head mournfully, yearningly but irrevocably, and said, ”To be your father would have been a dear position to occupy. I have sometimes hoped that I might be so blessed as to call it mine, but that is all past now. Your father I can never be.

But I can bless you,” he murmured brokenly, ”not as I did that day in your aunt's little cottage, but silently and from afar as G.o.d always meant you should be blessed by me. Good-bye, Paula.”

Then all the deeps in her great nature broke up. She did not weep, but she looked at him with her large dark eyes and the cry in them smote his heart. With a struggle that blanched his face, he kept his arms at his side, but his lips worked in agony, and he slowly murmured, ”If after a time your heart loves me like this, and you are willing to bear shadow as well as suns.h.i.+ne with me, come back with your aunt and sit at my hearthstone, not as my child but as a dear and honored guest. I will try and be worthy--” He paused, ”Will you come, Paula?”

”Yes, yes.”

”Not soon, not now,” he murmured, ”G.o.d will show you when.”

And with nothing but a look, without having touched her or so much as brushed her garments with his, he retired again into his room.

XXII.

HOPGOOD.

”Give it an understanding but no tongue.”

--HAMLET.

Hopgood was a man who could keep a secret, but who made so much ado in the process that he reminded one of the placard found posted up somewhere out west which reads, ”A treasure of gold concealed here; don't dig!” Or so his wife used to say, and she ought to know, for she had lived with him five years, three of which he had spent in the detective service.

”If he would only trust the wife of his bosom with whatever he's got on his mind, instead of ambling around the building with his eyes rolling about like peas in a caldron of boiling water, one might manage to take some comfort in life, and not hurt anybody either. For two days now, ever since the wife of Mr. Sylvester died and Mr. Sylvester has been away from the bank, he's acted just like a lunatic. Not that that has anything to do with his gettin up of nights and roamin down five pair of stairs to see if the watchman is up to his duty, or with his askin a dozen times a day if I remembers how Mr. Sylvester found him and me, well nigh starvin in Broad Street, and gave him the good word which got him into this place? O no! O no, of course not! But _something_ has, and while he persists in shutting out from his breast the woman he swore to love, honor, and cherish, that woman is not bound to bear the trials of life with patience. Every time he jumps out of his chair at the sound of Mr. Sylvester's name, and some one is always mentionin' it, I plumps me down on mine with an expression of my views regarding a kitchen stove that does all its drawin' when the oven's empty.”

So spake Mrs. Hopgood to her special crony and constant visitor, Mrs.

Kirkshaw of Water Street, pursing up a mouth that might have been good-natured if she had ever given it an opportunity. But Mrs. Kirkshaw who pa.s.sed for a gossip with her neighbors, was a philosopher in the retirement of the domestic circle and did not believe in the blow for blow system.

”La!” quoth she, with a smoothing out of her ap.r.o.n suggestive of her employment as laundress, ”show a dog that you want his bone and you'll never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you've been a slanderin of. Rattle on coal when the fire's low and you put it out entirely; but be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you'll have a hot stove afore you know it.”

Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror, lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little daughter, Constantia Maria--so named and so called from two grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious as regards their resources--was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he could roll his great eyes to his heart's content without fear of her descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart abounded.

On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored to his wife's arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a few minutes, however, he returned, and ambling restlessly up and down the room, stopped before his persistently smiling wife and said somewhat tremulously:

”If Mr. Sylvester takes a notion to come up and see Constantia Maria to-day, I hope you'll take the opportunity to finish your ironing or whatever else it is you may have to do. I've noticed he seems a little shy with the child when you are around.”

”Shy with the child when I am around! well I do declare!” exclaimed she, forgetting her late role in her somewhat natural indignation. ”And what have I ever done to frighten Mr. Sylvester? Nothing but putting on of a clean ap.r.o.n, when he comes in and a dustin' of the best chair for his use. It's a trick of yours to get a chance of speakin' to him alone, and I'll not put up with it. As if it wasn't bad enough to have a kettle with the nozzle dangling, without living with a man who has a secret he won't share with his own wife and the mother of his innocent babe.”

With a start the worthy man stared at her till he grew red in the face, probably with the effort of keeping his eyes steady for so long a time.