University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
THE LETTER RECEIVED.

ARTHUR had been spending the evening at
prospect hill. The Hethertons were there
now, and would remain till after the 15th;
and since they came the rector had found it even pleasanter
calling there than it had been before with only his
bride-elect to entertain him. Sure of Mr. Bellamy,
Fanny had laid aside her sharpness and was exceedingly
witty and brilliant, while, now that it was settled, the
colonel was too thorough a gentleman to be otherwise
than gracious to his future nephew, and Mrs. Hetherton
was always polite and ladylike, so that the rector looked
forward with a good deal of interest to the evenings he
usually gave to Lucy, who, though satisfied to have him
in her sight, still preferred the olden time when she had
him all to herself, and was not disquieted with the fear
that she was not learned enough for him, as she often
was when she heard him talking with Fanny and her
uncle of things she did not understand. This evening,
however, the family were away and she received him
alone, trying so hard to come up to his capacity, talking

so intelligibly of the books she had been reading, and
looking so lovely in her crimson winter dress, besides
being so sweetly affectionate and confiding that for once
since his engagement Arthur was more than content, and
returned her modest caresses with a warmth he had not
felt before. He was learning to love her very much, he
thought, and when at last he took his leave and she went
with him to the door there was an unwonted tenderness
in his manner as he pushed her gently back, for the first
snow of the season was falling and the large flakes
dropped upon her hair, from which he brushed them carefully
away.

“I cannot let my darling take cold,” he said, and
Lucy felt a strange thrill of joy, for never before had he
called her his darling, and sometimes she had feared that
the love she received was not as great as the love she
gave.

But she did not think so now, and in an ecstasy of joy
she stood in the deep recess of the bay-window watching
him as he went away through the moonlight and the
feathery cloud of snow, wondering why, when she was so
happy, there should cling to her a haunting presentiment
that she and Arthur would never meet again just as they
had parted. Arthur, on the contrary, was troubled with
no such presentiment. Of Anna he hardly thought, or,
if he did, the vision was obscured by the fair picture he
had seen standing in the door with the snow-flakes resting

on its hair like pearls in a golden cabinet. And Arthur
thanked his God that he was beginning at last to feel
right, that the solemn vows he was so soon to utter
would not be a mockery. It was Arthur's wish to teach
to others how dark and mysterious are the ways of Providence,
but he had not himself half learned that lesson
in all its strange reality; but the lesson was coming on
apace; each stride of his swift-footed beast brought him
nearer and nearer to the great shock waiting for him
upon his study-table, where his man had put it. He saw
it the first thing on entering the room, but he did not
take it up until the snow was brushed from his garments
and he had seated himself by the cheerful fire blazing on
the hearth. Then sitting in his easy-chair and moving
the lamp nearer to him, he took Mrs. Meredith's letter
and broke the seal, starting as if a serpent had stung
him when in the note enclosed he recognized his own
handwriting, the same he had sent to Anna when his
heart was as full of hope as the brown stalks, now beating
against his windows with a dismal sound, were full
of fragrant blossoms. Both had died since then, the
roses and his hopes, and Arthur almost wished that he,
too, were dead when he read Mrs. Meredith's letter and
saw the gulf he was treading. Like the waves of the
sea his love for Anna came rolling back upon him, augmented
and intensified by all that he had suffered, and
by the terrible conviction that it could not be, although,
alas, “it might have been.” He repeated these words
over and over again, as, stupefied with pain, he sat gazing
at vacancy, thinking how true was the couplet:

He could not pray at first, his brain was so confused;
but when the white, quivering lips could move and the
poor aching heart could pray, he only whispered: “God
help me to do right,” and by that prayer he knew that
for a single instant there had crept across his mind the
possibility of sacrificing Lucy, the girl who loved and
trusted him so much; but only for an instant. He
would not cast her from him, though to take her now,
knowing what he did, was almost death itself. “But
God can help me, and he will,” he cried,—then falling
upon his knees, with his face bowed to the floor, the
rector of St. Mark's prayed as he had never prayed before,
first for himself, whose need was greatest, then for
Lucy, that she might never know what making her happy
had cost him, and then for Anna, whose name he could
not speak. “That other one,” he called her, and his
heart kept swelling in his throat and preventing his
utterance so that the words he would say never reached
his lips. But God heard them just the same, and knew
his child was asking that Anna might forget him, if to
remember him was pain,—that she might learn to love

another far worthier than he had ever been. He did
not think of Mrs. Meredith; he had no feeling of resentment
then; he was too wholly crushed to care how his
ruin had been brought about, and long after the wood-fire
on the hearth had turned to cold, gray ashes, he knelt
upon the floor and battled with his grief; and when the
morning broke it found him still in the cheerless room,
where he had passed the entire night and from which he
went forth strengthened as he hoped to do what he fully
believed to be his duty.

This was on Saturday, and the Sunday following there
was no service at St. Mark's. The rector was sick, the
sexton said, hard sick, too, he had heard, and the Hetherton
carriage with Lucy in it drove swiftly to the parsonage,
where the quiet and solitude awed and frightened
her as she entered the house and asked the housekeeper
how Mr. Leighton was.

“It is very sudden,” she said. “He was perfectly well
when he left me on Friday night. Please tell him I am
here.”

The housekeeper shook her head. Her master's orders
were that no one but the doctor should be admitted, she
said, repeating what Arthur had told her in anticipation
of just such an infliction as this. But Lucy was not to
be denied; Arthur was hers; his sickness was hers; his
suffering was hers, and see him she would.

“He surely did not mean me, when he asked that no

one should be admitted. Tell him it is I; it is Lucy,”
she said, with an air of authority, which in one so small,
so pretty, and so childish only amused Mrs. Brown, who
departed with the message, while Lucy sat down with her
feet upon the stove and looked around the sitting-room,
thinking that it was smaller and poorer than the one at
Prospect Hill, and how she would remodel it when she
was mistress there.

“He says you can come,” was the word Mrs. Brown
brought back, and with a gleam of triumph in her eye and
a toss of the head which said, “I told you so,” Lucy
went softly into the darkened room and shut the door behind
her.

Arthur had half expected this and had nerved himself to
meet it, but the cold sweat stood on his face and his heart
throbbed painfully as Lucy bent over him and said, “Poor,
dear Arthur, I am so sorry for you, and if I could I'd
bear the pain so willingly.”

He knew she would; she was just as loving and unselfish
as that, and he wound his arms around her and
drew her closer to him, while he whispered, “My poor
little Lucy, my poor little Lucy. I don't deserve this
from you.”

She did not know what he meant, and she only answered
him with kisses, while her hands moved caressingly
across his forehead, just as they had moved years ago in
Rome when she soothed the pain away. There certainly

was a mesmeric influence emanating from those hands,
and Arthur felt its power, growing very quiet and at last
falling away to sleep while the passes went on, and Lucy
held her breath lest she should waken him. She was a
famous nurse, the physician said, when he came, and he
constituted her his coadjutor and gave his patient's medicine
into her care.

It was hardly proper for her niece to stay at the rectory,
Mrs. Hetherton thought, but Lucy was one who
could trample down proprieties, and it was finally arranged
that, in order to avoid all comment, Fanny should
stay with her.

So, while Fanny went to bed and slept Lucy sat all
night in the sick-room with Mrs. Brown, and when the
next morning came she was looking very pale, and languid,
but very beautiful withal. At least such was the
mental compliment paid her by Thornton Hastings, who
was passing through Hanover and stopped over a train to
see his old college friend and perhaps tell him what he
began to feel it was his duty to tell him in spite of his
promise to Anna. She was nearly well now and had
driven with him twice to the park, but he could not be
insensible to what she suffered, or how she shrank from
hearing the proposed wedding discussed, and in his intense
pity for her he had half resolved to break his word
and tell Arthur what he knew. But he changed his mind
when he had been in Hanover a few hours and watched

the little fairy, who, like some ministering angel, glided
about the sick-room, showing herself every whit a woman,
and making him repent that he had ever called her frivolous
or silly. She was not either, he said, and with a
magnanimity for which he thought himself entitled to a
good deal of praise, he felt that it was very possible for
Arthur to love the gentle little girl who smoothed his pillowsso
tenderly, and whose fingers threaded so lovingly the
dark brown locks when she thought he—Thornton—was
not looking on. She was very coy of him, and very distant
towards him, for she had not forgotten his sin, and she
treated him at first with a reserve for which he could not
account. But as the days went on and Arthur grew so
sick that his parishioners began to tremble for their young
minister's life, and to think it perfectly right for Lucy to
stay with him even if she was assisted in her labor of love
by the stranger from New York, the reserve all disappeared,
and on the most perfect terms of amity she and
Thornton Hastings watched together by Arthur's side.

Thornton Hastings learned more lessons than one in
that sick-room where Arthur's faith in God triumphed
over the terrors of the grave which at one time seemed
so near, while the timid Lucy, whom he had only known
as a gay butterfly of fashion, dared before him to pray
that God would spare her promised husband, or give her
grace to say “Thy will be done.” Thornton could hardly
say that he was skeptical before, but any doubts he might

have had touching the great fundamental truths on which
a true religion rests were gone forever, and he left Hanover
a changed man in more respects than one.

Arthur did not die, and on the Sunday preceding the
week when the Christmas decorations were to commence
he came again before his people, his face very pale and
worn, and wearing upon it a look which told of a new
baptism,—an added amount of faith which had helped to
lift him above the fleeting cares of this present life. And
yet there was much of earth clinging to him still, and it
made itself felt in the rapid beatings of his heart when he
glanced towards the pew where Lucy knelt and knew that
she was giving thanks for him resotred again.

Once in the earlier stages of his convalescence he had
almost betrayed his secret by asking her which she would
rather do, bury him from her sight, feeling that he loved
her to the last, or give him to another now that she knew
he would recover.

There was a frightened look in Lucy's eyes as she replied:

“I would ten thousand times rather see you dead, and
know that even in death you were my own, than to lose
you that other way. O Arthur, you have no thought of
leaving me now?”

“No, darling, I have not. I am yours always,” he
said, feeling that the compact was sealed forever, and that
God blessed the sealing.

He had written to Mrs. Meredith, granting her his forgiveness,
and asking that if Anna did not already know
of the deception she might never be enlightened. And
Mrs. Meredith had answered that Anna had only heard
a rumor that an offer had been made her, but that she
regarded it as a mistake, and was fast recovering both her
health and spirits. Mrs. Meredith did not add her surprise
at Arthur's conscientiousness in adhering to his engagement,
nor hint that her attack of conscience was so
safely over; she was glad of it, for she still had hope of that
house on Madison Square; but Arthur guessed at it and
dismissed her from his mind, and waited with a trusting
heart for whatever the future might bring.