Part 43 (2/2)

There was a lock of faded gray hair in a yellow old envelope, on which was written, in the lawyer's precise hand, ”My mother's hair,” and a date which seemed to Gifford very far back. There were one or two relics of the little sister: a small green morocco shoe, which had b.u.t.toned about her ankle, and a pair of gold shoulder-straps, and a narrow pink ribbon sash that had grown yellow on the outside fold.

There was a pile of neatly kept diaries, with faithful accounts of the weather, and his fis.h.i.+ng excursions, and the whist parties; scarcely more than this, except a brief mention of a marriage or a death. Of course there were letters; not very many, but all neatly labeled with the writer's name and the date of their arrival. These Gifford burned, and the blackened ashes were in the wide fireplace, behind a jug of flowers, on which he could hear, down the chimney, the occasional splash of a raindrop. There was one package of letters where the name was ”Gertrude;”

there were but few of these, and, had Gifford looked, he would have seen that the last one, blistered with tears, said that her father had forbidden further correspondence, and bade him, with the old epistolary formality from which not even love could escape, ”an eternal farewell.”

But the tear-stains told more than the words, at least of Mr. Denner's heart, if not of pretty sixteen-year-old Gertrude's. These were among the first to be burned; yet how Mr. Denner had loved them, even though Gertrude, running away with her dancing-master, and becoming the mother of a family of boys, had been dead these twenty years, and the proverb had pointed to Miss Deborah Woodhouse!

Some papers had to be sealed, and the few pieces of silver packed, ready to be sent to the bank in Mercer, and then Gifford had done.

He was in the library, from which the bed had been moved, and which was in trim and dreary order. The rain still beat fitfully upon the windows, and the room was quite dark. Gifford had pushed the writing-desk up to the window for the last ray of light, and now he sat there, the papers all arranged and nothing more to do, yet a vague, tender loyalty to the little dead gentleman keeping him. And sitting, leaning his elbows on the almost unspotted sheet of blue blotting-paper which covered the open flap of the desk, he fell into troubled thinking.

”Of course,” he said to himself, ”she's awfully distressed about Mr.

Denner, but there's something more than that. She seems to be watching for something all the time; expecting that fellow, beyond a doubt. And why he is not there oftener Heaven only knows! And to think of his going off on his confounded business at such a time, when she is in such trouble! If only for a week, he has no right to go and leave her. His business is to stay and comfort her. Then, when he is at the rectory, what makes him pay her so little attention? If he wasn't a born cad, somebody ought to thrash him for his rudeness. If Lois had a brother!--But I suppose he does not know any better, and then Lois loves him. Where's Helen's theory now, I wonder? Oh, I suppose she thinks he is all right. I'd like to ask her, if I hadn't promised aunt Deborah.”

Just here, Gifford heard the garden gate close with a bang, and some one came down the path, holding an umbrella against the pelting rain, so that his face was hidden. But Gifford knew who it was, even before Mary, shuffling asthmatically through the hall, opened the door to say, ”Mr.

Forsythe's here to see you.”

”Ask him to come in,” he said, pus.h.i.+ng his chair back from the secretary, and lifting the flap to lock it as he spoke.

d.i.c.k Forsythe came in, shaking his dripping umbrella, and saying with a good-natured laugh, ”Jove! what a wet day! You need a boat to get through the garden. Your aunt--the old one, I think it was--asked me, if I was pa.s.sing, to bring you these overshoes. She was afraid you had none, and would take cold.”

He laughed again, as though he knew how amusing such nonsense was, and then had a gleam of surprise at Gifford's gravity.

”I'd gone to her house with a message from my mother,” he continued; ”you know we get off to-morrow. Mother's decided to go, too, so of course there are a good many things to do, and the old lady is so strict about Ashurst customs I've had to go round and 'return thanks' to everybody.”

Gifford had taken the parcel from d.i.c.k's hand, and thanked him briefly.

The young man, however, seemed in no haste to go.

”I don't know which is damper, this room or out-of-doors,” he said, seating himself in Mr. Denner's big chair,--though Gifford was standing--and looking about in an interested way; ”must have been a gloomy house to live in. Wonder he never got married. Perhaps he couldn't find anybody willing to stay in such a hole,--it's so confoundedly damp.

He died in here, didn't he?” This was in a lower voice.

”Yes,” Gifford answered.

”Shouldn't think you'd stay alone,” d.i.c.k went on; ”it is awfully dismal.

I see he cheered himself once in a while.” He pointed to a tray, which held a varied collection of pipes and a dingy tobacco pouch of buckskin with a border of colored porcupine quills.

”Yes, Mr. Denner smoked,” Gifford was constrained to say.

”I think,” said d.i.c.k, clapping his hand upon his breast-pocket, ”I'll have a cigar myself. It braces one up this weather.” He struck a match on the sole of his boot, forgetting it was wet, and vowing good-naturedly that he was an a.s.s. ”No objection, I suppose?” he added, carefully biting off the end of his cigar.

”I should prefer,” Gifford replied slowly, ”that you did not smoke. There is an impropriety about it, which surely you must appreciate.”

d.i.c.k looked at him, with the lighted match flaring bluely between his fingers. ”Lord!” he said, ”how many things are improper in Ashurst! But just as you say, of course.” He put his cigar back in an elaborate case, and blew out the match, throwing it into the fireplace, among the flowers. ”The old gentleman smoked himself, though.”

Gifford's face flushed slowly, and he spoke with even more deliberation than usual. ”Since you have decided not to smoke, you must not let me detain you. I am very much obliged for the package.”

”You're welcome, I'm sure,” d.i.c.k said. ”Yes, I suppose I'd better be getting along. Well, I'll say good-by, Mr. Woodhouse. I suppose I sha'n't see you before I go? And Heaven knows when I'll be in Ashurst again!”

<script>