CHAPTER III.

DIEU DISPOSE.

The early morning of Mr. Rowan's burial had been heavy and dark; but as they left the island a shower of golden light broke through the clouds, the water sparkled on all sides, and the sighing air became a frolic breeze. Dick and the captain brightened, and exchanged a few words in seamen's phrase complimenting the weather. Mrs. Rowan also roused herself, brushed the sand from her clothes, arranged the folds of her veil, and even smoothed her hair. The poor creature's vanity was dead, but at the prospect of meeting strangers it gave a slight post-mortem flicker. Out it went, though, the next instant, on the breath of a sigh. What did it matter how she looked? But she glanced anxiously at Edith.

The child had put on her mother's red cape and drawn it up over her head, and she still held it there, one slim hand pulling the folds close together under her chin. That she might appear outlandish did not trouble Edith. Indeed, she claimed the right to be so on account of her foreign blood. But when she noticed Mrs. Rowan's attention to her own toilet, and met her glance, she pushed the cape off her head, and, putting her arms up, began to smooth her hair and plait it into a long braid. It was rich, long hair, not given to wilful ringlets, but would curl when in the mood. Now the wind blew little curls out about her face, and the risen sun steeped the tresses in a pale flame.

The braid finished, she tossed it back, and caught it lightly into a loop, the motion revealing a pair of round white arms, to which the hands and wrists looked like colored gauntlets. Then she unfolded her precious Indian relic of tarnished red and gold, and bound it straightly about her head, half-covering the forehead, so that the long, fringed ends hung behind, and a loose fold fell over each ear.

Beholding her in that guise, Captain Cary thought that she looked fitter for some oriental scene than for this crude corner of a crude land. "She might be a stolen child stained with gypsy-wort," he said to himself.

But she was Gypsy only in color. No wild fires burned in her face; her cool eyes looked out calm and observant; her mouth was gently closed. The very shape of her features expressed tranquillity.

The sailor found himself much interested in this little girl. Besides that her appearance pleased him, his good-will had been bespoken; for on one of those days when their ship had lain becalmed in southern waters, Dick had told him all her story. Listening to it, half-asleep, as to something that might be fact and might be fancy, all the scene about him had entwined itself with the history and with the heroine's character. The solid golden day, shut down over a sea whose soft pulses told of perfect repose; the wide-eyed, radiant night, which seemed every moment on the point of breaking into music far and near, a fine, clear music of countless sweet bells with almost human tongues--they formed the background on which her image floated. Seeing her did not dispel but rather strengthened the illusion. Something golden in her hair, something tranquil in her face, something expectant in her eyes--all were like.

The rough giant of a sailor mused tenderly over this as he sent their boat forward with powerful strokes, and watched Edith Yorke bind on her Egyptian _coiffure_.

They did not row to the wharf, where the steamer had already arrived, but to a place a few rods above, where the sea had taken a good semicircular bite out of the land. Here a straggling bit of dilapidated woods had been allowed to remain by the vandals who had turned all the rest to grass and pasture, and a mossy ledge broke the teeth of the soft, gnawing waves.

Edith stepped lightly on shore. She was young, healthy, brave, and ignorant, and pain, though it called forth her tears, was stimulating to her. That pang had not yet come which could cut her heart in twain and let all the courage out.

"You are spry," Captain Cary said, smiling down upon her.

She smiled faintly in return, but said nothing.

Mrs. Rowan needed assistance at either hand. She had been broken by pain.

They stood awhile in the grove, Dick and the captain making some business arrangements. The _Halcyon_ was to remain four weeks at Seaton, and it was agreed that Dick should have that time to get his mother settled. Then the ship would touch at New York, where he would embark for the East again.

While they lingered, a large yellow coach, loaded with passengers, rattled past amid clouds of dust.

"There is no hurry," Dick said. "It will take an hour to get the freight off and on. But you needn't wait, captain. They'll be looking for you at the village."

The others drew near to Captain Cary at that, holding his hands and trying to utter their thanks.

"Oh! it's nothing," he said, much abashed. "I haven't done anything to be thanked for. Good-by! Keep up your courage, and you will come out first-rate. There's nothing like grit."

A subsiding ripple tossed his boat against the shore. At that hint he stepped in, dallied with the rope, then said, with a perfectly transparent affectation of having only just thought of it: "Oh! I've got a ring here that Edith is welcome to, if she will wear it. I brought it home for my niece; but the child is dead. It won't fit anybody else I know."

Mrs. Rowan immediately thanked him, and Edith smiled with childish pleasure. "You are very kind, Captain Cary," she said. "I always thought I would like to have a ring."

Dick alone darkened; but no one noticed it. He had meant to do everything for her; and here was a wish which she had never expressed to him, and he had not known enough to anticipate.

The captain drew a tiny box from his pocket, and displayed a small circlet in which was set a single spark of diamond. Edith extended her left hand, and the sailor, leaning over the boatside, slipped the ring on to her forefinger.

"Good-by, again!" he said then hastily, and gave each of them a grasp of the hand. Dick could take care of himself; but the other two, putting out their tender hands impulsively, grew red in the face with pain at the grip of his iron fingers. The next instant his boat shot out into the bay. They looked after him till he glanced back and saluted them with a nod, and two arches of spray tossed from his oars; then turned and climbed the shore, Dick assisting his mother, Edith following.

"Good-by, trees!" said the child, glancing up. "Good-by, moss!" stooping to gather a silken green flake and a cluster of red-topped gray. The prettiest cup had a spider in it, and she would not disturb it. "Good-by, spider!" she whispered, "I'm never coming back again."

She had friends to take leave of, after all--not human friends, but God's little creatures, who had never hurt her save in self-defence.

When they reached the wharf, there was no one in sight but the men who trundled the freight off and on. At the upper end of the wharf there was a small building used as office and waiting-room. The passage to the boat being obstructed, Dick sent his mother and Edith there, while he went on board to get tickets. They went to the door of the waiting-room, hesitated a moment on seeing it occupied, then went in, and seated themselves in a retired corner.

The party who were already in possession glanced at the new-comers, and immediately became oblivious of them. This party were evidently the members of one family. Some indefinable resemblance, as well as their air of intimacy, showed that. An elderly gentleman walked up and down the floor, his hands clasped behind his back, and a lady not much over forty sat near, surrounded by her three daughters. At a window, to which the mother's back was turned, looking up toward the village, stood a young man whose age could not be over twenty-three. The ages of the daughters might vary from sixteen to twenty. They formed rather a remarkable group, and were attractive, though the faces of all expressed more or less dissatisfaction. That of the young man indicated profound disgust. The elder lady had a sweet and melancholy expression, and appeared like an invalid. The youngest daughter, who sat beside her, was as like her mother as the waxing moon is like the waning. She was pretty, had clinging, caressing ways, a faint dimple in her left cheek, splendid auburn hair, and gray eyes. They called her Hester. On the other hand sat the eldest daughter, a rather stately, self-satisfied young woman, whose attentions to her mother had an air of patronage. This was Melicent. She was rather fair, neutral in color, and excessively near-sighted. The second daughter stood behind her mother, and was very attentive to her, but in an absent way, often doing more harm than good by her assistance. "My dear Clara, you are bundling the shawl all about my neck! My love, you pull my bonnet off in arranging my veil! Why, Clara, what are you doing to my scarf?" Such remarks as these were constantly being addressed to her. Clara was a dark brunette, with small features, a superb but not tall figure, and large gray eyes that looked black. Her coal-black hair grew rather low on the forehead, straight black brows overshadowed her eyes and nearly met over the nose, and an exquisitely delicate mouth gave softness to this face which would otherwise have been severe. She seemed to be a girl of immense but undisciplined energy, and full of enthusiasm.

The gentleman who paced the floor was slightly under-sized and thin in figure, thin in face, too, dark, and sallow. The very look of him suggested bile and sarcasm. But let him speak for himself, since he is just now on this subject. "Bile, my dear," he said to his wife--"bile came into the world with original sin. I am not sure that bile is not sin. It is Marah in a pleasant land. It is a fountain of gall in the garden of paradise. It poisons life. Doctors know nothing whatever about bile, and liver-medicines are a superstition. He who shall discover a way to eradicate bile from the system will be a great moral reformer. Every sin I ever committed in my life took its rise in my liver. I believe the liver to be an interpolation in the original man. We should be better without it."

The gentleman who spoke had a wide, thin mouth, very much drawn down at the corners and nowise hidden, the gray moustache he spared in shaving being curled up at the ends. His manner was that of a person who would scarcely brook contradiction. His speech was clear and emphatic, and he pronounced his words as if he knew how they were spelt. A long, delicate aquiline nose had a good deal to do with his profile, as had also a pair of overhanging eyebrows. From beneath these brows looked forth a pair of keen gray eyes, with countless complex wrinkles about them. The chin was handsome, well-rounded, and, fortunately, not projecting. A projecting chin with an aquiline nose is one of the greatest of facial misfortunes. Caricature can do no more. The forehead was intellectual, and weighty enough to make it no wonder if the slight frame grew nervous and irritable in carrying out the behests of the brain hidden there. The head was crowned by a not inartistic confusion of gray hair which seemed to have been stirred by electricity.

"I am sorry, madam, that I cannot compliment the climate of your native state," he remarked after a pause. "The spring is a month or six weeks behind that of Massachusetts, and the fall as much earlier. The travelling here is simply intolerable. It is either clouds of dust, bogs of mud, or drifts of snow. I quite agree with the person who said that Maine is a good state to come _from_."

"We all know, Charles, that the climate of Massachusetts, and particularly of Boston, surpasses that of any other part of the world," the lady replied with great composure.

The gentleman winced very slightly. He was one of those who constantly make sarcastic observations to others, but are peculiarly sensitive when such are addressed to themselves. In his society, one was frequently reminded of the little boy's complaint: "Mother, make Tommy be still. He keeps crying every time I strike him on the head with the hammer."

"Here will be a chance to practise your famous English walks, Melicent," the father said. "I presume the old chaise is dissolved. I remember it twenty years ago nodding along the road in the most polite manner. By the way, Amy, did you ever observe that in genuine country places people leave their defunct vehicles to decay by the roadside? I am not sure that there is no poetry in the custom. The weary wheels crumble to dust in view of the track over which they have rolled in life, and are a _memento mori_ to living carriages. It is not unlike the monument of Themistocles 'on the watery strand.'"

"Papa," exclaimed Hester, "why didn't you say tired wheels? You started to."

"Because I detest a pun."

Melicent, who had been waiting for a chance, now spoke. "You don't mean to say, papa, that we shall have no carriage?"

A shrug of the shoulders was the only reply.

The young woman's face wore a look of dismay. "But, papa!" she exclaimed.

"Wait till the pumpkins grow," he said with a mocking smile. "I will give you the largest one, and your mother will furnish the mice. I don't doubt there are mice, and to spare."

"You don't mean that we must walk everywhere?" his daughter cried.

"Dear me, Melicent, how persistent you are!" interrupted Clara impatiently. "One would think there was no need of borrowing trouble."

The elder sister gazed with an air of superiority at the younger. "I was speaking to papa," she remarked with dignity.

The father frowned, the mother raised a deprecating hand, and the imminent retort was hushed. Clara went to her brother, and, leaning on his arm, whispered that, if Mel were not her own sister, she should really get to dislike her.

"How silent you are, Owen," said Hester, looking around at him. "All you have done to entertain us so far has been to make faces when you were sick. To be sure, that made us laugh."

"A sea-sick person may be the cause of wit in others, but is seldom himself witty," was the laconic reply.

The speaker was a slim, elegant youth, with golden tints in his light hair, with rather drooping and very bright blue eyes, and a beautiful, sensuous mouth.

Edith Yorke watched this party with interest, and the longer she looked at the elder gentleman the better she liked him. His manner of addressing the ladies suited her inborn sense of what a gentleman's manner should be. There was no contemptuous waiting before answering them, no flinging the reply over his shoulder, nor growling it out like a bear. Besides, she half-believed--only half, for her eyes were heavy with weeping and loss of sleep--that he had looked kindly at her. Once she was sure that he spoke of her to his wife, but she did not know what he said. It was this: "My dear, do you observe that child? She has an uncommon face."

The lady glanced across the room and nodded. She was too much preoccupied to think of anything but their own affairs. But her husband, on whom these affairs had the contrary effect of driving him to seek distraction, approached Edith.

"Little girl," he said, "you remind me so much of some one I have seen that I would like to know your name, if you please to tell it."

"My name is Edith Eugénie Yorke," she replied, with perfect self-possession.

He had bent slightly toward her in speaking, but at sound of the name he stood suddenly upright, his sallow face turned very red, and he looked at her with a gaze so piercing that she shrank from it. "Who were your father and mother?" he demanded.

"My mother was Eugénie Lubormirski, a Polish exile, and my father was Mr. Robert Yorke, of Boston," said Edith. Her eyes were fixed intently on the gentleman's face, and her heart began to beat quickly.

He turned away from her and resumed his walk, but, after a minute, came back again. "Your father and mother are both dead?" he asked in a gentler tone.

"Yes, sir."

"You have no brothers nor sisters?"

"No, sir."

"Who takes care of you?"

"Mrs. Jane Rowan," Edith replied, laying her hand on the widow's lap.

He bowed, taking this for an introduction, a cold but courteous bow.

"May I ask, madam," he inquired, "what claim you have on this child?"

Mrs. Rowan had shown some agitation while this conversation was going on, and when Edith put out her hand, she grasped it as if meaning to hold on to the child. Her reply was made in a somewhat defiant tone. "When Mrs. Robert Yorke died, she asked me to have pity on her daughter, and keep her out of the poor-house. I have taken care of her ever since. The Yorkes had turned them off."

The gentleman drew himself up, and put out his under lip. "Thank you for the information," he said bitterly. Then to Edith, "Come, child," and took her hand.

She allowed him to lead her across the room to his wife.

"Mrs. Yorke," he said, "this is my brother Robert's orphan child!"

There was a slight sensation and a momentary pause; but the lady recovered immediately. "I am glad to see you, dear," she said in a kind voice. "Who is that person?" she added to her husband, glancing at Mrs. Rowan.

The widow was staring at them angrily, and seemed on the point of coming to take Edith away by force.

"One who has taken care of the child since her mother's death, Amy," he answered. "She has no claim on my niece, and will, of course, give her up to us. The little girl is named for my mother. Robert was always fond of mother."

There was a pause of embarrassed silence.

"You must perceive that there is no other way," Mr. Yorke continued with some state. "Aside from natural affection and pity for the child's friendless condition, an Edith Yorke must not be allowed to go about the country like a Gypsy with a shawl over her head."

"It is just as papa says," Melicent interposed, and immediately took Edith by the hand and kissed her cheek. "You are my little cousin, and you will go home and live with us," she said sweetly.

Miss Yorke's manner was very conciliating; but her suavity proceeded less from real sweetness than from self-complacency. She prided herself on knowing and always doing what was _comme il faut_, and took great pleasure in being the mould of form.

"I shall go with Dick! I am going to live with Dick!" Edith cried, snatching her hand away. A blush of alarm overspread her face, and she looked round in search of her protector. At that moment he appeared in the door, paused in surprise at seeing where Edith was, then went to his mother.

"The Yorkes have got her," Mrs. Rowan said to him, breathless with excitement. "That is Mr. Charles Yorke. I knew him the moment I set eyes on him."

Dick wheeled about and faced them. Edith, too proud to run away, looked at him imploringly.

Then Miss Melicent Yorke arose, like the goddess of peace, adjusted her most impregnable smile, and sailed across the room. "I am Miss Yorke," she said brightly, as though such an announcement would be sure to delight them. "Of course, the dear little Edith is my cousin. Is it not the strangest thing in the world that we should have met in such a way? I am sure we shall all feel deeply indebted to you for having protected the child while we knew nothing of her necessities. Of course, we should have sent for her directly if we had known. But, as it is, we have the pleasure of meeting you."

Pausing, Miss Yorke looked at the two as if they were the dearest friends she had on earth and it gave her heartfelt joy to behold their countenances.

Dick choked with the words he would have uttered. He felt keenly the insolence of her perfectly confident and smiling address, yet knew not how to defend himself. If a man had been in her place, he could have met his airy assumption with a sufficiently blunt rebuff; but the young sailor was chivalric, and could not look a woman in the face and utter rude words. His mother's emotion did not prevent her replying, and, fortunately, to the point.

"Do you mean to say," Mrs. Rowan exclaimed, "that you are going to take Edith away from us without leave or license, after we have supported her four years without your troubling yourselves whether she starved in the street or not?"

For a moment, Miss Yorke's social poniard wavered before this broad thrust, but only for a moment. "Every family has its own private affairs, which no one else has either the power or the right to decide upon," she said smilingly. "All I need say of ours is that, if Mr. Yorke, my father, had known that his brother left a child unprovided for, he would have adopted her without delay. He did not know it till this minute, and his first thought is that there is only one proper course for him. His niece must be under his care, as her natural protector, and must have the advantages of education and society to which she is entitled. I am sure you would both be friendly enough to her to wish her to occupy her rightful position. As for any expense you may have gone to on her account, papa--"

"Stop there, madam!" Dick interrupted haughtily. "We will say no more about that, if you please. As to Edith's going with you, she shall choose for herself. I don't deny that it seems to be the proper thing; but allow me to say that it was my intention to give her a good home and a good education, such as no girl need be ashamed of. I will speak to Edith, and see what she thinks about it."

He turned unceremoniously away from Miss Yorke's protestations, and went to the door, beckoning Edith to follow him. As he looked back, waiting for her, he saw that the whole family had gone over in a body to talk to his mother.

Edith clasped the hand he held out to her, and looked up into his face with large tears flashing in her eyes.

"I wouldn't leave you if they would give me all the world!" she exclaimed.

He smiled involuntarily, but would not take advantage of her affectionate impulse. He saw clearly that her true place was with her relatives. They could do for her at once what he could do only after years of weary labor. Perhaps they could do at once what he could never do. But it was hard to give her up. Down in the bottom of his heart was a thought which he had never fully acknowledged the presence of, but of which he was always conscious: he had meant to bring the child up to be his wife some day, if she should be willing; to load her with benefits; to be the one to whom she should owe everything. But with the pang it cost him to put this hope in peril came the glimpse of a possibility how far more triumphant! Following his own plan, he should be hedging her in; giving her up now would be making her free choice, if it should fall on him, an infinitely greater boon. Besides, and above all, it was right that she should go.

Dick leaned back against the wall of the building, and folded his arms while he talked to her. At first Edith broke into reproaches when she learned that he meant to give her up, but immediately an instinct of feminine pride and delicacy checked the words upon her lips. It was impossible for her to press her society on one who voluntarily relinquished it. She listened to her sentence in silence.

"So you see, Edith," he concluded, "we must make up our minds to part."

She perceived no such necessity, but did not tell him so. "Then I shall never see you any more!" she said in a whisper, without looking up.

Dick's eyes sparkled with resolution through the tears that filled them. "Yes, you will!" he exclaimed. "I mean to do the best I can for mother and myself, and you shall not be ashamed of us. And however high they may set you, Edith, I'll climb! I'll climb! I won't be so far off but I can reach you!"

The coach had taken its first load of passengers to the village, and now came down to bring those who were to take the steamer and carry the Yorkes back. It was time to go on board. Dick stepped to the door of the waiting-room. "Come, mother!" he said. "Edith and I will see you to your state-room, and then I will bring her back. She is to go with her uncle."

He was not surprised to see that his mother had been completely talked over by Edith's relations, and that, though tearful, no opposition was to be expected from her. They seemed to be the best of friends; and when the widow rose to take leave of them, Mr. Yorke himself escorted her to the boat. In fact, it was all very comfortably settled, as Miss Yorke observed to her mother when they had taken their seats in the coach.

When Edith and Dick appeared again, hand in hand, Mr. Yorke stood at the coach-door, waiting to assist his niece to her place.

"How picturesque!" Clara Yorke exclaimed, as the two stepped over the planks and came toward them. "It is like something out of the _Arabian Nights_. He is Sindbad, and she is one of those princesses who were always getting into such ridiculous situations and difficulties. The child is absurd, of course, but she is lovely; and the young man is really very fine--of his kind."

Sindbad and his princess were both very pale. "Sir," the sailor said, presenting the child to her uncle, "I hope she will be as happy with you as I and my mother would have tried to make her."

As he released her hand, Edith's face suddenly whitened. All her little world was slipping away from beneath her feet.

Mr. Yorke was touched and impressed. He liked the young man's dignity. "I must compliment you, sir, on your honorable conduct in this affair," he said. "Let us hear from you; and come to see us whenever you are in our neighborhood."

Dick Rowan, in his turn, would have been touched by this unexpected cordiality, had not a slight raising of Miss Melicent Yorke's eyebrows neutralized its effect. The young woman thought that her father was really condescending unnecessarily. That faint, supercilious surprise checked the young man's gratitude, and he was turning away with a cold word of thanks, when Mrs. Yorke called him back. She was leaning from the carriage, and held out her hand to him.

"Good-by, Mr. Rowan!" she said aloud. "You need not fear that we shall not cherish this orphan whom you have kindly protected so far, and you need not fear that we shall try to make her forget you. Ingratitude is the vice of slaves. I am sure she will never be ungrateful to you."

"Thank you!" Dick said fervently, melted by the kind smile and tremulous sweetness of tone. It was none of Miss Melicent's exasperating affability.

"And I have a favor to ask," she added, leaning still further out, and lowering her voice so that only he could hear. "I take for granted that you will write to my niece. Will you allow her to let me read your letters?"

Dick blushed deeply as he stammered out another "Thank you!" It was a delicately given warning and kindly given permission. It showed him, moreover, that the lady's soft eyes had looked to the bottom of his heart. At that moment he was glad that the ring on Edith's finger was Captain Cary's gift, not his.

"I would like to see the steamboat just as long as it is in sight," Edith said faintly.

Her uncle immediately gave orders to the driver to take them round to a place from which they could look down to the entrance of the bay.

The boat steamed out over the water, glided like a swan down the bay, and soon disappeared around a curve that led to the Narrows. Edith gazed immovably after it, unconscious that they were all watching her. When it was no longer visible, she closed her eyes, and sank back into Mrs. Yorke's arms.