The Letter of Credit

Rotha lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Nothing, to-day; by and by, perhaps many things. My question was general."

"Whether I will trust that what you say is the best?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Digby, mightn't you be mistaken?"

"Rotha, might not you? And would it not be more likely?"

Rotha began to reflect that in her past life she had not been wont to give such unbounded trust to anybody; not even to her father, and not certainly to her mother. She had sometimes thought them mistaken; how could she help that? and how could she help it in any other case, if circumstances warranted it? But with the thought of her mother, tears rose again, and she did not speak. Just then Mrs. Cord came in.

"O I am glad you are there, sir!" she began. "I wanted to speak to you, if you please."

Mr. Digby unclosed his arm from about Rotha, and she withdrew quietly to her former station by the window. The other two went into the adjoining room, and there Mrs. Cord received instruction and information as to various points of the arrangements for the next few days.

"And what will I do with Rotha, sir?" she asked finally.

"Do with her? In what respect?"

"She won't eat, sir."

"She will, I fancy, the next time it is proposed to her."

"She's very hard to manage," said Mrs. Cord, shaking her head. "She will have her own way, always."

"Wel – let her have it."

"But other people won't, sir; and I think it's bad for her. She's had it, pretty much, all along; but now – she don't care for what I say, no more'n if I was a post! Nor Mrs. Marble, nor anybody. And is Mrs. Marble going to take her, sir?"

"Not at all. Her mother left her in my care."

"Oh! – " said the good woman, with a rather prolonged accent of mystification and disapprobation; wondering, no doubt, what disposal Mr. Digby could make of her, better than with Mrs. Marble; but not venturing to ask.

"Nothing can be done, till after the funeral," the young man went on.

"Take all the care of her you can until then. By the way, if you can give me something to eat, I will lunch here. If you have nothing in the house, I can get something in a few minutes."

Mrs. Cord was very much surprised; however, she assured Mr. Digby that there was ample supply in the house, and went on, still with a mystified and dissatisfied feeling, to prepare and produce it. She knew how, and very nicely an impromptu meal was spread in a few minutes. Mr. Digby meanwhile went out and got some fruit; and then he and Rotha sat down together. Rotha was utterly gentle and docile; did what he bade her and took what he gave her; indeed it was plain the poor child was in sore need of food, which she had had thus far no heart to eat. Mr. Digby prolonged the meal as much as he could, that he might spend the more time with her; and when he went away, asked her to lie down and go to sleep.

Those must be heavy days, he knew, till the funeral was over. What then? It was a question. Mrs. Busby would not be in town perhaps before the end of September; and here it was the middle of August. Near two months of hot weather to intervene. What should he do? He would willingly be out of the city himself; and for Rotha, the spending all these weeks in her mother's old rooms, in August weather, and with Mrs. Cord and Mrs. Marble for companions, did not seem expedient. It would be good for neither body nor mind. But he could not take her to any place of public resort; that would not be expedient either. He pondered and pondered, and was very busy for the next two or three days.

The result of which activity was, that he took rooms in a pleasant house at Washington Heights, overlooking the river, and removed Rotha there, with Mrs. Cord to look after her. But as he himself also took up his abode in the house, Mrs. Cord's supervision was confined to strictly secondary matters. He had his meals in company with Rotha, and was with her most of the time, and was the sole authority to which she was obliged to refer.

It was an infinite blessing to the child, whose heart was very sore, and who stood in need of very judicious handling. And somewhat to Mr. Digby's surprise, it was not a bore to himself. The pleasure of ministering is always a pleasure, especially when the need is very great; it is also a pleasure to excite and to receive affection; and he presently saw, with some astonishment, that he was doing this also. Certainly it was not a thing in the circumstances to be astonished at; and it moved Mr. Digby so, simply because he was so far from thinking of himself in his present plan of action. All the pleasanter perhaps it was, when he saw that the forlorn girl was hanging upon him all the dependence of a very trusting nature, and giving to him all the wealth of a passionate power of loving. This came by degrees.

At first, in a strange place and with new surroundings and utterly changed life, the girl was exceedingly forlorn. The days passed in alternations of violent outbreaks of grief and fits of seeming apathy, which I suppose were simply nature's reaction from overstrain and exhaustion. The violence she rarely shewed in Mr. Digby's presence; Rotha was taking her first lessons in self-command; nevertheless he saw the work that was going on, knew it must be, for a time, and wisely abstained from interference with it. "There is a time to weep"; and he knew it was now; comfort would be mockery. He was satisfied that Rotha should have so much diversion from her sorrow as his presence occasioned; that she should be obliged to meet him at meals, and to behave then with a certain degree of outward calm, and the necessary attention to little matters; all useful in a sort of slow, unnoticed way. Otherwise for a few days he let her alone. But then he began to give her things to do. Lessons were taken up again, by degrees multiplied, until Rotha's time was well filled with occupation. It went very hard at first. Rotha even ventured on a little passive rebellion; even declared she could not study. Mr. Digby shewed her that she could; helped her, led her on, and let her see finally that he expected certain things of her, which she could not neglect without coming to an open rupture with him. That was impossible. Rotha bent her will to do what was required of her; and from that time the difficulty of Mr. Digby's task was over. She began soon to be interested again in what she was about and to make excellent progress. Then Mr. Digby would put himself in a hammock on the piazza or out under a great walnut-tree, and make Rotha read to him, and incite her to talk of what she read; or he would give her lessons in drawing; both occasions of the utmost gratification to Rotha; and when the scorching sun had got low down over the Palisades, he would take her in an easy little vehicle and go for a long drive. So one way and another they came to be together all the time. And after the first miserable days were past, and Rotha had been constrained to busy herself with something besides herself; her mental powers called into vigorous exertion and furnished with an abundant supply of new food; by degrees a sort of enjoyment began to creep into her life again, and grew, and grew. It was a help, that everything was so strange about her. Even her own dress.

"Mrs. Cord," Mr. Digby had said in the first week of this new life, – "how is Rotha off for clothes?"

"Well, sir," said the nurse, "of course they were people not likely to have much of that sort of thing; but Rotha has what will do her through the warm season."

"But is she supplied as a young lady ought to be, with everything needful?"

"As a young lady! – no, sir. It's what she never set up for, and don't need, and knows nothing about. Her mother was a very good woman, and didn't pretend to dress her as a young lady. But she's comfortable."

Mr. Digby half smiled at the collocation of things, however he went on with full seriousness.

"She will go to school by and by, and she will go there as a young lady. I wish, Mrs. Cord, you would see to it, as far as you know, that she has a full supply of everything. Go to one of the best shops for outfits and get plenty of every thing and of good quality, and send the bills to me. And get Mrs. Marble to make her some dresses."

"Mourning, sir?"

"No. Simple things, but no black."

"I asked, because it's customary, sir."

"It's a bad custom; better broken."

"Then what shall I get, sir?" asked Mrs. Cord with unwonted stolidity.

"You need not get anything. I will see to it myself. Only the linen and all that, Mrs. Cord, which I should not know how to get. The rest I will take care of."

And he took such good care, that the good woman was filled with a displeased surprise which was inexplicable. Why should she be displeased? Yet Mrs. Cord was quite "put about," as she said, when the things came home. They were simple things, indeed; a few muslins and ginghams and the like. But the ginghams were fine and beautiful, and the muslins of delicate patterns and excellent quality; and with them came a set of fine cambrick handkerchiefs, and ruffles, and lace, and a little parasol, and a light summer wrap; for Rotha had nothing to put on that made her fit to go to drive with her guardian. He had taken her, all the same, dressed as she was, but it seems he thought there must be a change in this state of things. Mrs. Cord was full of dissatisfaction; and when she took the dresses to Mrs. Marble to be made up, the two good women held a regular pow wow over them.

"Muslin like that!" cried the little mantua-maker with an expression of strong distaste. "Why that never cost less than fifty cents, Mrs. Cord! My word, it didn't."

"Just think of it! And for that girl, who never wore anything but sixpenny calico if she could get it. Men are the stupidest! – "

"That ashes-of-roses lawn is the prettiest thing I've seen yet. Mrs.

Cord, she don't want all these?"

"So I say," returned the nurse; "but I wasn't consulted. That aint all; you should have seen the ruffles, and the ribbands, and the pockethandkerchiefs; and then he took her somewhere, Stewart's, I shouldn't wonder, and got her gloves and gloves; and then a lovely Leghorn hat, with a brim wide enough to swallow her up. And now you must make up these muslins, and let us have one soon; for my master is in a hurry."

The little mantua-maker contemplated the muslins, and things generally.

"There's not the first sign o' black among 'em all! Not a line, nor a sprig, nor a dot."

"Maybe that's English ways," returned the nurse; "but if it is, I never heerd so before."

"Well I like to see mournin' put on, if it's only respect," went on the dress-maker; "and a girl hadn't ought to be learnt to forget her own mother, before she's well out of sight. I'd ha' dressed her in black, poor as I am, and not a sign o white about her, for one year at least. I think it looks sort o' rebellious, to do without it. Why I've known folks that would put on mourning if they hadn't enough to eat; and I admire that sort o' sperit."

The nurse nodded.

"Just look here, now! What's he thinkin' about, Mrs. Cord?"

"Just that question I've been askin' myself, Mrs. Marble; and I can't get no answer to it."

"What's he goin' to do with her?"

"He says, send her to school."

"These aint for school dresses."

"O no; these are to go ridin' about in, with him."

"Well I think, somebody ought to take charge of her. A young man like that, aint the person to do it Taint likely he's goin' to bring her up to marry her, I suppose."

"She's too young for such thoughts," said the nurse.

"She's young, but she aint far from bein' older," Mrs. Marble went on significantly. "When a girl's once got to fifteen, she's seventeen before you can turn round."

"There'll have to be somebody else to wait upon her, I know, besides me," returned the nurse. "That aint my business. And it's all I'm wanted for now. Nobody can say a word to my young lady if it isn't the gentleman hisself; and she's with him all the while, and not with me. I aint goin' to put up with it long, I can tell 'em."

Mr. Digby's pay was good however, and Mrs. Cord did not find it convenient to give notice immediately; and also the muslin dresses were made and well made, and sent home to the day.

All these her new possessions and equipments were regarded by Rotha herself with a mixture of pleasure and mortification. The pleasure was undeniable; the girl had a nice sense of the fitness of things, inborn and natural and only needing cultivation. It was getting cultivation fast. She had a subtle perception that the new style of living into which she had come was superior to the old ways in which she had been brought up; not merely in the vulgar item of costliness, but in the far higher qualities of refinement and propriety and beauty. Her mother and father had been indeed essentially refined people, of good sense and good taste as far as their knowledge went. Rotha began to perceive that it had stopped short a good deal below the desirable point. Also she felt herself thoroughly in harmony with the new life, little as she had known of it hitherto; and was keen to discern and quick to adopt every fresh point of greater refinement in habits and manners. Mr. Digby now and then at table would say quietly, "This is the better way, Rotha," – or, "Suppose you try it so." – He never had to give such a hint a second time. He never had to tell her anything twice. What he did, Rotha held to be "wisest, discreetest, best," the supreme model in everything; and she longed with a kind of passion to be like him in these, and in all matters. So it was with a gush of great satisfaction that the girl for the first time saw herself well and nicely dressed. She knew the difference between her old and her new garments, knew it correctly; did not place the advantage of the latter in their colour or fineness; but recognized quite well that now she looked as if she belonged to Mr. Digby, while before, nobody could have thought so for a moment. The pleasure was keen. Yet it mingled, as I said, with a sting of mortification. Not simply that her new things were his gift and came to her out of his bounty, though she felt that part of the whole business; but it pained her to feel that her own father and mother had stood below anybody in knowledge of the world and use of its elegant proprieties. Rotha was perfectly clear-sighted, and knew it, from the very keen delight with which she herself accepted and welcomed this new initiation.

The prevailing feeling however was the pleasure; though in Rotha's face and manner I may say there was no trace of it, the first day she was what Mr. Digby would have called "properly dressed," and met him in their little sitting room. She came in gravely, (she was already trying to imitate his quietness of manner) and came straight up to Mr. Digby where he was standing in the window. Rotha waited a minute, and then looked up at him, blushing.

"Do you like it?" she asked frankly.

His eye caught the new muslin, and he stepped back a step to take a view.

"Yes," he said smiling. "That's very well. Is it comfortable?"

"O yes."

"That's well," he said. "I always think it the prime question in a coat, whether it is comfortable."

He came back to his place in the window, so making an end of the subject; but Rotha had not said all that she wished to say.

"Mrs. Cord wanted me to put this on to-day, though it was not Sunday; was she right?"

"Eight? certainly. Why should one be better dressed Sunday than any other day?"

"I thought people did – " said Rotha, much confused in her ideas.

"And right enough," said Mr. Digby, recollecting himself, "in the cases where the work to be done in the week would injure or soil a good dress. But in other cases? – "

"On Sunday one goes to church," said Rotha.

"Well, – what then?"

"Oughtn't one to be better dressed to go to church?"

"Why should you?"

Rotha was so much confounded that she had nothing to say. This was overturning all her traditions.

"What do you go to church for, Rotha?"

"I ought to go – to think about God, I suppose."

"Well, and would much dressing help you?"

Rotha considered. "I don't think it helps much," she confessed.

"You say, you ought to go for such a reason; – what is your real reason?"

"For going? Because mother took me; or made me go without her."

"You are honest," said Mr. Digby smiling. "You will agree with me that that is a poor reason; but I am glad you understand yourself, and are not deceived about it."

"I don't think I understand myself, Mr. Digby."

"Why not?"

"Because, sometimes I am in great confusion, and can not understand myself."

"Let me help you when those times come."

"One of the times is to-day," said Rotha in a low tone.

"Ah? What's the matter?" said he looking down kindly at her. Rotha had laid her forehead against the edge of the window frame, and was looking out with an intent grave eye which amused him, and made him curious too.

"Because I want to tell you something of how feel, Mr. Digby, and I cannot." – (He had told her not to say can't, and now she never did.)

"It's all mixed up, and I don't know what comes first; and you will think I am – ungrateful."

"Never in the world!" said he heartily. "I shall never think that. I think I know you pretty well, Rotha."

Yet he was hardly prepared for the look she gave him; a glance only, but so intent, so warm, so laden with gratitude, ay, and so burdened with a yet deeper feeling, that Mr. Digby was well nigh startled. It was not the flash of brilliancy of which Rotha's eyes were quite capable; it was a rarer thing, the dark glow of a hidden fire, true, and deep, and pure, and unconscious of itself. It gave the young man something to think of.

CHAPTER X.

L'HOMME PROPOSE

Mr. Digby thought of it a good deal. He was obliged to recognize the fact, that this friendless child was pouring upon him all the affection of a very passionate nature. Child, he called her in his thoughts, and yet he knew quite well that the time was not distant when Rotha would be a child no longer. And already she loved him with the intensity of a concentrated power of loving. Certainly this was not what Mr. Digby wished, or had in any wise contemplated as possible, and it seemed to him both undesirable and inconvenient; and yet, it is sweet to be loved; and he could not recall that intense look of devotion without a certain thrill. Because of its beauty, he said to himself; but it was also because of its significance. He read Rotha; he knew that she was one of those natures which have a great tendency to concentration of affection; with whom the flow of feeling is apt to be closed in to a narrow channel, and in that channel to be proportionately sweeping and powerful. What training could best be applied to correct this tendency, not happy for the possessor, nor beneficent in its effects upon others? These are the sort of natures that when untrained and ungoverned, use upon occasion the dagger and the poison cup; or which even when not untrained are in danger, in certain cases of shipwreck, of going to pieces altogether. In danger at all times of unwise, inconsiderate acting; as when such a stream meets with resistance and breaks its bounds, spreading waste and desolation where it comes. Truly, he trusted that this little girl's future might be so sheltered and cared for, that no such peril might overtake her; but how could he know? What could he do? and what anyhow was to be the outcome of all this? It was very pleasant to have her love him, but he did not want her to love him too well. At any rate, he could not be her tutor permanently; he had something else to do, and if he had not, the arrangement would be inadmissible. Mrs. Busby would return to town in a few weeks, and then – Yes, there was nothing else to do. Rotha must go under her aunt's care, for the present. How would they agree? Mr. Digby did not feel sure; he had an anticipation that the change would be a sore trial to Rotha. But – it must be made.

He lay in his hammock one day, thinking all this over. Rotha was sitting near him drawing. She was always near him when she could be so, though a spaniel is not more unobtrusive. Nor indeed half as much so; for a pet dog will sometimes try to attract attention, which Rotha never did. She was content and happy if she could be near her one friend and glance at him from time to time. And lately Rotha had become extremely fond of her pencil; I might say, of all the studies Mr. Digby put before her. Whatever he wished her to do, she did with a will. But drawing had grown to be a passion with her, and naturally she was making capital progress. She sat absorbed in her work, her eyes intently going from her model to her paper and back again; nevertheless, every now and then one swift glance went in Mr. Digby's direction. No model, living or dead, equalled in her eyes the pleasantness of his face and figure. He caught one of those glances; quick, wistful, watchful, and meeting his eye this time, it softened with an inexplicable sort of content. The young man could have smiled, but that the look somehow gave him a touch of pain. He noticed Rotha more particularly, as she sat at her drawing. He noticed how she had changed for the better, even in the few weeks since they came to Fort Washington; how her face had refined, grown gentle and quiet, and her manners correspondingly. He noticed what a good face it was, full of intelligence and latent power, and present sensitiveness; and furthermore, a rare thing anywhere, how free from self-consciousness. Full of life and of eager susceptibility as Rotha was always, she seemed to have the least recollection of herself and her own appearance. She did not forget her new dresses, for instance, but she looked at them from her own standpoint and not from that of an imaginary spectator. Mr. Digby drew an involuntary sigh, and Rotha looked up again.

"You like that work, Rotha," he said.

"Very much, Mr. Digby!" He had once told her to be moderate in her expressions, and to say always less than she felt, rather than more. Rotha never forgot, and was sedulously reserved in her manner of making known what she felt.

"But Mr. Digby, it is very difficult," she went on.

"What?"

"To make anything perfect."

He smiled. "Very difficult indeed. People that aim so high are never satisfied with what they do."

"Then is it better to aim lower?"

"By no means! He that is satisfied with himself has come to a dead stand- still; and will get no further."

"But must one be always dissatisfied with oneself?"

"Yes; if one is ever to grow to a richer growth and bring forth better fruit. And anything that stops growing, begins to die."

Rotha gave him a peculiar, thoughtful look, and then went on with her drawing.

"Understand me, Rotha," he said, catching the look. "I am talking of the dissatisfaction of a person who is doing his best. The fact that one is dissatisfied when not doing his best, proves simply that feeling is not dead yet. There is no comfort to be drawn from that."

Rotha went on drawing and did not look up, this time. Mr. Digby considered how he should say what he wanted to say.

"Rotha – " he began, "how is it with that question you were once concerned about? Are you any nearer being a Christian?"

"I don't know, sir. I do not think I am."

"What hinders?"

"I suppose," said Rotha, playing with her pencil absently, – "the old hindrance."

"You do not wish to be a Christian."

"Yes, sometimes I do. Sometimes I do. But I – cannot."

"I should feel happier about you, if that question were well settled."

"Why, Mr. Digby?" said Rotha, answering rather something in his tone than in his words, and looking up to get the reply.

"Because, Rotha, you take hold hard, where you take hold at all; and you may take hold of something that will fail you."

Her eyes, and even a sudden change of colour, put a startled question to him. He smiled as he answered, though again with a reminder of pain which he did not stop to analyse. "No," he said, "I will never fail you, Rotha; never voluntarily; but I have no command over my own life. I would like you to have a trust that could never disappoint you; and there is only One on whom such a trust can be lodged. He who is resting on Christ, is resting on a rock."