72. CHAPTER LXXII.
GOOD-BY.
The happy hours of Hope Wayne's life were the visits of
Lawrence Newt. The sound of his voice in the hall, of his
step on the stair, gave her a sense of profound peace. Often,
as she sat at table with Mrs. Simcoe, in her light morning-dress,
and with the dew of sleep yet fresh upon her cheeks,
she heard the sound, and her heart seemed to stop and listen.
Often, as time wore on, and the interviews were longer and
more delayed, she was conscious that the gaze of her old
friend became curiously fixed upon her whenever Lawrence
Newt came. Often, in the tranquil evenings, when they sat
together in the pleasant room, Hope Wayne cheerfully chatting,
or sewing, or reading aloud, Mrs. Simcoe looked at her
so wistfully—so as if upon the point of telling some strange
story—that Hope could not help saying, brightly, “Out with
it, aunty!” But as the younger woman spoke, the resolution
glimmered away in the eyes of her companion, and was succeeded
by a yearning, tender pity.
Still Lawrence Newt came to the house, to consult, to inspect,
to bring bills that he had paid, to hear of a new utensil
for the kitchen, to see about coal, about wood, about iron, to
look at a dipper, at a faucet—he knew every thing in the house
by heart, and yet he did not know how or why. He wanted
to come—he thought he came too often. What could he do?
Hope sang as she sat in her chamber, as she read in the
parlor, as she went about the house, doing her nameless, innumerable
household duties. Her voice was rich, and full, and
womanly; and the singing was not the fragmentary, sparkling
gush of good spirits, and the mere overflow of a happy temperament—it
was a deep, sweet, inward music, as if a woman's
soul were intoning a woman's thoughts, and as if the woman
were at peace.
But the face of Mrs. Simcoe grew sadder and sadder as
Hope's singing was sweeter and sweeter, and significant of
utter rest. The look in her eyes of something imminent, of
something that even trembled on her tongue, grew more and
more marked. Hope Wayne brightly said, “Out with it,
aunty!” and sang on.
Amy Waring came often to the house. She was older than
Hope, and it was natural that she should be a little graver.
They had a hundred plans in concert for helping a hundred
people. Amy and Hope were a charitable society.
“Fiddle diddle!” said Aunt Dagon, when she was speaking
of his two friends to her nephew Lawrence. “Does this brace
of angels think that virtue consists in making shirts for poor
people?”
Lawrence looked at his aunt with the inscrutable eyes, and
answered slowly,
“I don't know that they do, Aunt Dagon; but I suppose
they don't think it consists in not making them.”
“Phew!” said Mrs. Dagon, tossing her cap-strings back pettishly.
“I suppose they expect to make a kind of rope-ladder
of all their charity garments, and climb up into heaven that
way!”
“Perhaps they do,” replied Lawrence, in the same tone.
“They have not made me their confidant. But I suppose that
even if the ladder doesn't reach, it's better to go a little way
up than not to start at all.”
“There! Lawrence, such a speech as that comes of your
not going to church. If you would just try to be a little better
man, and go to hear Dr. Maundy preach, say once a year,”
said Mrs. Dagon, sarcastically, “you would learn that it isn't
good works that are the necessary thing.”
“I hope, Aunt Dagon,” returned Lawrence, laughing—“I
do really hope that it's good words, then, for your sake. My
dear aunt, you ought to be satisfied with showing that you
don't believe in good works, and let other people enjoy their
own faith. If charity be a sin, Miss Amy Waring and Miss
Hope Wayne are dreadful sinners. But then, Aunt Dagon,
what a saint you must be!”
Gradually Mrs. Simcoe was persuaded that she ought to
speak plainly to Lawrence Newt upon a subject which profoundly
troubled her. Having resolved to do it, she sat one
morning waiting patiently for the door of the library—in which
Lawrence Newt was sitting with Hope Wayne, discussing the
details of her household—to open. There was a placid air of
resolution in her sad and anxious face, as if she were only
awaiting the moment when she should disburden her heart of
the weight it had so long secretly carried. There was entire
silence in the house. The rich curtains, the soft carpet, the
sumptuous furniture—every object on which the eye fell,
seemed made to steal the shock from noise; and the rattle of
the street—the jarring of carts—the distant shriek of the belated
milkman—the long, wavering, melancholy cry of the
chimney-sweep—came hushed and indistinct into the parlor
where the sad-eyed woman sat silently waiting.
At length the door opened and Lawrence Newt came out.
He was going toward the front door, when Mrs. Simcoe rose
and went into the hall, and said, “Stop a moment!”
He turned, half smiled, but saw her face, and his own settled
into its armor.
Mrs. Simcoe beckoned him toward the parlor; and as he
went in she stepped to the library door and said, to avoid interruption,
“Hope, Mr. Newt and I are talking together in the parlor.”
Hope bowed, and made no reply. Mrs. Simcoe entered the
other room and closed the door.
“Mr. Newt,” she said, in a low voice, “you can not wonder
that I am anxious.”
He looked at her, and did not answer.
“I know, perhaps, more than you know,” said she; “not,
I am sure, more than you suspect.”
Lawrence Newt was a little troubled, but it was only evident
in the quiet closing and unclosing of his hand.
They stood for a few moments without speaking. Then
she opened the miniature, and when she saw that he observed
it she said, very slowly,
“Is it quite fair, Mr. Newt?”
“Mrs. Simcoe,” he replied, inquiringly.
His firm, low voice reassured her.
“Why do you come here so often?” asked she.
“To help Miss Hope.”
“Is it necessary that you should come?”
“She wishes it.”
“Why?”
He paused a moment. Mrs. Simcoe continued:
“Lawrence Newt, at least let us be candid with each other.
By the memory of the dead—by the common sorrow we have
known, there should be no cloud between us about Hope
Wayne. I use your own words. Tell me what you feel as
frankly as you feel it.”
There was simple truth in the earnest face before him.
While she was speaking she raised her hand involuntarily to
her breast, and gasped as if she were suffocating. Her words
were calm, and he answered,
“I waited, for I did not know how to answer—nor do I
now.”
“And yet you have had some impression—some feeling—
some conviction. You know whether it is necessary that you
should come—whether she wants you for an hour's chat, as an
old friend—or—or”—she waited a moment, and added—“or
as something else.”
As Lawrence Newt stood before her he remembered curiously
his interview with Aunt Martha, but he could not say
to Mrs. Simcoe what he had said to her.
“What can I say?” he asked at length, in a troubled voice.
“Lawrence Newt, say if you think she loves you, and tell
me,” she said, drawing herself erect and back from him, as in
the twilight of the old library at Pinewood, while her thin
finger was pointed upward—“tell me, as you will be judged
hereafter—me, to whom her mother gave her as she died,
knowing that she loved you.”
Her voice died away, overpowered by emotion. She still
looked at him, and suspicion, incredulity, and scorn were mingled
in her look, while her uplifted finger still shook, as if appealing
to Heaven. Then she asked abruptly, and fiercely,
“To which, in the name of God, are you false—the mother
or the daughter?”
“Stop!” replied Lawrence Newt, in a tone so imperious
that the hand of his companion fell at her side, and the scorn
and suspicion faded from her eyes. “Mrs. Simcoe, there are
things that even you must not say. You have lived alone
with a great sorrow; you are too swift; you are unjust.
Even if I had known what you ask about Miss Hope, I am not
sure that I should have done differently. Certainly, while I
did not know—while, at most, I could only suspect, I could
do nothing else. I have feared rather than believed—nor that,
until very lately. Would it have been kind, or wise, or right
to have staid away altogether, when, as you know, I constantly
meet her at our little Club? Was I to say, `Miss Hope, I
see you love me, but I do not love you?' And what right
had I to hint the same thing by my actions, at the cost of utter
misapprehension and pain to her? Mrs. Simcoe, I do love
Hope Wayne too tenderly, and respect her too truly, not to
try to protect her against the sting of her own womanly pride.
And so I have not staid away. I have not avoided a woman
in whom I must always have so deep and peculiar an interest.
I have been friend and almost father, and never by a whisper
even, by a look, by a possible hint, have I implied any thing
more.”
His voice trembled as he spoke. He had no right to be silent
any longer, and as he finished Mrs. Simcoe took his hand.
“Forgive me! I love her so dearly—and I too am a woman.”
She sank upon the sofa as she spoke, and covered her face
for a little while. The tears stole quietly down her cheeks.
Lawrence Newt stood by her sadly, for his mind was deeply
perplexed. They both remained for some time without speaking,
until Mrs. Simcoe asked,
“What can we do?”
Lawrence Newt shook his head doubtfully.
They were silent again. At length Mrs. Simcoe said:
“I will do it.”
“What?” asked Lawrence.
“What I have been meaning to do for a long, long time,”
replied the other. “I will tell her the story.”
An indefinable expression settled upon Lawrence Newt's
face as she spoke.
“Has she never asked?” he inquired.
“Often; but I have always avoided telling.”
“It had better be done. It is the only way. But I hoped
it would never be necessary. God bless us all!”
He moved toward the door when he had finished, but not
until he had shaken her warmly by the hand.
“You will come as before?” she said.
“Of course, there will not be the slightest change on my
part. And, Mrs. Simcoe, remember that next week, certainly,
I shall meet Miss Hope at Miss Amy Waring's. Our first
meeting had better be there, so before then please—”
He bowed and went out. As he passed the library door
[ILLUSTRATION]
"Good-by, Mr. Newt, Good-by!"
[Description: 538EAF. Page 412. In-line Illustration. Image of a woman sitting reclined in a chair with a book in her lap. She and the little dog at her feet are both looking at a man who has poked his head into the room.]
he involuntarily looked in. There sat Hope Wayne, reading;
but as she heard him she raised the head of golden hair, the
dewy cheeks, the thoughtful brow, and as she bowed to him
the clear blue eyes smiled the words her tongue uttered—
“Good-by, Mr. Newt, good-by!”
The words followed him out of the door and down the
street. The air rang with them every where. The people he
passed seemed to look at him as if they were repeating them.
Distant echoes caught them up and whispered them. He
heard no noise of carriages, no loud city hum; he only heard,
fainter and fainter, softer and softer, sadder and sadder, and
ever following on, “Good-by, Mr. Newt, good-by!”
