CHAPTER XIII.

SAD CONFIDENCES.

Winter was gone, spring had come, and if the song of the turtle dove was not heard in the land, the wood-pigeons made noise enough about the Mortomleys' house to almost deafen its occupants.

Spring had come, spring in its garments of vivid green, decked and studded with primrose stars; spring, bringing the perfume of up-springing sap, of tender violets, of early hyacinths to refresh the sense; spring with its promise of daisies and buttercups, of fragrant hawthorn, of budding wild roses.

With everything beautiful decking the earth in honour of her advent, spring came smiling that year across the fair English landscape. Sunshine and blue sky everywhere overhead; underfoot springing grass and luxuriant wheat and flowers, and bud and leaf; and at the first, and when the first spring bird's twitter announced that the loveliest season of all the English year was close at hand, Dolly's spirits rose like the heart of a giant refreshed to give the sweet visitor greeting.

She had been ailing and languid all through the tedious winter, but at sight of the sunshine, at sound of the songs of birds, somewhat of her former brightness returned.

"I know now," she said, "how glad that poor dove must have been to get out of the ark. I never used to be tired of winter, but latterly the winters have seemed so long and cold and dreary."

"And yet we have kept up glorious fires this winter," remarked Mortomley, to whom health and comparative youth seemed to have been restored as by a miracle.

"Yes," agreed his wife, "what should we have done without the great logs of woodand you--aunt?" and she held out a grateful hand to Miss Gerace, who never intended to go back to Dassell any more, who had given up her house, her maid, her furniture to 'the ladies,' as they were styled in that far-away region, Mesdames Trebasson and Werner; who never intended to leave Dolly again, and who had with tears in her eyes entreated her niece's forgiveness because she had, thinking Mrs. Mortomley could never come to want, sunk the principal of her money in an annuity.

"You dear old thing," said Dolly trying to laugh away her own tears, "when you are lost to me and mine, we shall not cry the less because you could not leave us enough to buy mourning," and it was then Miss Gerace and Dolly agreed they were not to part company again.

In good truth, how Dolly would have got through that winter without her aunt's presence and her aunt's money she did not know.

Life had been a hard enough struggle when she was strong to battle, but not long after Mrs. Werner left the little cottage, Dolly felt a weakness come upon her against which she was impotent to struggle, which made it easy to persuade her to take her morning cup of tea in bed, and do little save sit near the grateful warmth of that pleasant wood-fire through the day.

The doctor came; a pleasant chatty country doctor, who was accustomed to patients who liked to dwell on their ailments, and who, though Mrs. Mortomley puzzled him, never imagined she could be so stupid as to tell him fibs.

According to all known rules Dolly ought to have had one or two very sufficient pains, one or two very decided symptoms, but Dolly had no pains and no symptoms. She was only tired she declared, exhausted mentally and bodily if he preferred that form of expression, and she should be well in the spring.

That was all any one could make out of Mrs. Mortomley, and when the spring came it seemed to justify her prediction.

With the bright weather Dolly revived. She sat in the sunshine, she donned her brightest apparel, she ate with a relish the simple country fare, and she requested the kindly rector to say one day from the reading-desk that Dollabella Mortomley desired to return thanks for "mercies vouchsafed."

"For what mercies, my dear?" asked the good rector, who could not look at her wistful, eager face quite unmoved.

"God has vouchsafed me another spring," she answered; "one of almost unalloyed happiness."

And so the sunshine of old returned and stayed with her to the end.

With the spring came Mrs. Werner. Her friend had requested her visit long before; but she delayed complying with that request till an almost imperative message brought her South.

Then Dolly gave her that packet, the secret of which she had kept so faithfully, and when Mrs. Werner opened it, she found notes to the amount of two thousand pounds and a letter, her dead husband's confession and fare-well.

"I cannot retain this money," said Mrs. Werner.

"Do so for a week and then we will talk about it," Mrs. Mortomley answered, and for a week the widow maintained silence, walking alone through those Hertfordshire woods, and for the first time keeping her vigil with the dead.

"Do not send that money to lawyer, trustee, or creditor, Lenny," said Mrs. Mortomley when they came to talk the matter over. "Remember your marriage vows and obey your husband. He risked much to save that for you; do not frustrate his intentions. When the expenses come out of that, it would be a penny in the pound to the creditors; and if you could send it direct to the creditors, they would not thank you for it. Poor Lang--oh how sorry I am Archie and Lang could not get on together, for he was one in a thousand--said to me once,

"'Look here, ma'am, creditors are this sort of folks. If you had paid them nineteen and elevenpence in the pound, and stripped yourself of everything to pay them that, and they saw your clean shirt lying on the bed ready for you to put on, they would want the shirt on the bed to pay the odd penny.' Keep that two thousand pounds, my dear. I, who have been through it all, tell you any human being who allows sentiment to influence business pays for his folly with his life."

"Dolly!"

"I mean what I say, Lenny; but you need not employ a crier to circulate the news. It will not be yet; but it must be some time. Had we laid aside two thousand pounds, I might have lived to be as old as your friend the Countess of Desmond."

To Mrs. Werner the way in which those who were with Dolly continually, refused to believe in anything very serious being the matter with her, seemed at first incredible, but after a time she too found the fact of danger hard to realise. Death and Dolly appeared as far removed from each other as light and darkness, and yet she was going, surely, if slowly out of the day into the night.

"I am thankful to see her so much better," remarked Miss Gerace, in answer to some observation of Mrs. Werner's. "She did look shockingly ill through the winter. I was quite uneasy about her, but now she has recovered her spirits and her appetite, and is getting quite a colour in her cheeks."

Mrs. Werner remained silent for a moment, then with an effort she said, "Dear Miss Gerace, can not you see what that colour is--don't you know Dolly paints?"

If she had declared Dolly to be a pickpocket, Miss Gerace could not have been more shocked. Forthwith she took her niece to task about this iniquity, which Mrs. Mortomley did not deny, though she tried to laugh off the accusation.

"What is the harm of sometimes painting the lily?" she observed. "If Leonora had either been as stupid or as wise as she ought to have been, I should eventually have worked up that colour to one of robust health, but as you all appear to object to my looking beautiful, I think I shall take out my frizettes, let down my hair, wear a dressing-wrapper all day long, and adopt the appearance and manners of an untidy ghost."

"My dear, you should not talk in that light way," expostulated Miss Gerace; "though you may not know it, illness is a very serious thing."

Not know it! There was a little quiver about Dolly's mouth which might have told a tale to the woman who had lived so long, if her understanding of her niece's nature had been as thorough as that possessed by Mrs. Werner.

Not know it! Had she lain awake through the long, long winter nights, and the scarcely less dreary spring mornings, reconciling herself to the idea of that long, lonely journey, thinking thoughts that lay between herself and her God, without coming to a full comprehension of the fact that not even sorrow is more solemn and awful than mortal sickness.

She knew all about it.

"But I never could bear the sight of sad faces," she said to Mrs. Werner, "and if you frighten aunt and make Archie think there is something very much amiss with me, you will render all our lives miserable."

Mrs. Werner sighed. It was against her preconceived ideas that a woman should smile and laugh and be still the very sunshine of her home all the time a fatal disease was working its will upon her, and yet she felt in her heart Dolly's was the soundest philosophy, if only she could be induced to take care of herself to lengthen out the time before----

No, she could not even mentally finish the sentence. If Dolly would not make an effort to save her own life, some one should fight against death in her behalf.

"It is wrong of you," she said, "knowing how precious you are to us all; you should use every effort to get well again. You ought to have first-rate advice. You ought to have change of air. You ought to have everything nourishing and tempting in the way of food. I shall take charge of you myself now. You belong to me as much as to your husband. I am sure no man ever loved a woman more than I have loved you."

"Come here, Lenny," was the answer. "Come close beside me, dear--here in the sunshine, and let us settle all this at once, never to speak of it again. For myself, for my own very individual self's sake," she went on, taking Mrs. Werner's hand in hers, and stroking it absently, "I am not certain that if I could, I should care to live, unless, indeed, I were able to find some waters of Lethe in which I might plunge and forget all the misery, all the humiliation of the past. There are some people who cannot forget. I am one of them. There are some who cannot remember and be quite happy; that is my case. There are some who think life not much worth having unless they can be very happy in it; I fear I hold some such heretical doctrine."

She stopped and kissed Mrs. Werner, smiling all the time the bright smile of old.

"So much for myself," she said, "but for Archie's sake, for Lenore's, for yours, not least for the sake of my poor aunt who has grown so to love me, just when it would have been well for her to have done nothing of the kind, I would stay if I could--I would spend money and time and thought, to get strong again.

"I have consulted doctors, I have told great physicians every symptom of my complaint, though I do not choose to be quite frank with a medical man, who, knowing Archie, might make the poor fellow wretched before there is any necessity for him to be told the truth.

"I have followed every scrap of advice so far as I possibly could, I have taken care of myself, and the result is I am here still; and it may be, if affairs continue to go well with us, that I may remain for a long time yet, as time counts in such cases. And now, Lenny, do not let us speak of this ever again."

"But cannot you get away from this place?" asked Mrs. Werner.

"I am as well here as I should be anywhere else," was the reply; "and it would be folly to move to a fresh neighbourhood just when the works are really beginning to return a good income. Besides, though the house is small, I love it; and those woods are, to my mind, the very realization of peace."

"How did it happen Lang left you?"

"I can scarcely tell you, such a variety of reasons went to make up the sum total of his discontent. Of course, till Archie took the reins, he had everything almost his own way; he bought and he sold and he kept the books and he employed whom he liked, and finally he lost his head as all people of his class do. I dare say you never had a cook able to grill a chop, who did not fancy you never could get on without her. Well, of course, Archie found this unpleasant. Lang got discontented and jealous and very troublesome, and made things uncomfortable for himself and every one else.

"At last matters came to a crisis about a clerk who had such good testimonials, we thought he would prove a treasure. We shortly found he was anything rather than a treasure however, and Archie would have got rid of him at once if Lang had not come up one evening and given us the choice of parting with him or Roberts--that was the clerk's name.

"He said, he Lang, need not remain long out of a situation; that Hart, Mayfield, and Company had offered him a good salary, and that if he was not put on some different footing with us, he would go to those able to appreciate his services.

"So Archie answered he had better go to them, and he went and we were all very sorry, Lang included,--he repented, and would have stayed at the last, but I don't see how Archie could have kept him."

"Neither do I," said Mrs. Werner; and then she asked, "Now that Mr. Mortomley is making money, is he not afraid of Mr. Swanland demanding a share of the profits?"

Dolly laughed. "Everything is in the name of Miss Gerace, and you cannot think how pleased the old darling is when we joke about her colour-works and ask how orders are coming in for her new blue and her famous yellow. She is learning to write a plain commercial hand so as to take the whole of the correspondence. I cannot tell you the comfort she is to me. I do not know what Archie and I and the child would have done without her all through the dull, dark winter days."

Mrs. Werner did not answer; she was wondering at that moment how Archie and Miss Gerace and the child would do without Dolly through the days of the sorrowful summers and winters yet to come.