CHAPTER VIII.
STATEN ISLAND

Mr. Digby had a great many thoughts during the next few days; some of which almost went to make Mrs. Carpenter in the wrong. The Mrs. Busby he knew was so very unexceptionable a lady; how could she be the black sheep of the story he had heard? Mrs. Carpenter might labour under a mistake, might she not? Yet facts are said to be stubborn things, and some facts were hard for the truth of the story. Mr. Digby was puzzled. He would perhaps have gone promptly to Mrs. Busby's home, to make observations with a keenness he had never thought worth while when there; but Mrs. Busby and all her family were out of town, spending the hot months at a watering place, or at several watering places. Meanwhile Mr. Digby had his unfulfilled commission to attend to.

Mrs. Carpenter went driving to the Park now every pleasant day; to the great admiration of Mrs. Marble, the wonderful refreshment of the sick woman herself, and the extravagant delight and pride of Rotha. She said she was sure her mother would get well now. But her mother's eye, as she said it, went to Mr. Digby's, with a warning admonition that he must neither be deceived nor lose time. He understood.

"I am going down to Staten Island to-morrow," he remarked. "Would you like to go with me, Rotha?"

"Staten Island?" she repeated.

"Yes. It is about an hour's sail from New York, or nearly; across the bay. You can become acquainted with the famous bay of New York."

"Is it famous?"

"For its beauty."

"Oh I should like to go very much, Mr. Digby, if it was as ugly as it could be!"

"Then when your mother comes from the Park in the morning, we will go."

Rotha was full of delight. But her mother, she thought, was very sober during that morning's drive; she tried in vain to brighten her up. Again and again Mrs. Carpenter's eyes rested on her with a lingering, tender sorrowfulness, which was not their wont.

"Mother, is anything the matter?" she asked at length.

"I am thinking of you, my child."

"Then don't think of me! What about me?"

"I am grieved that a shadow should ever come over your gay spirits. Yet I am foolish."

"What makes you think of shadows? I am going to be always as gay as I am to-day."

"That is impossible."

"Why?"

"It is not the way of this world."

"Does trouble come to everybody?"

"Yes. At some time."

"Well, mother dear, you can just wait till it comes. There is no shadow over me now, at any rate. If you were only well, I should be happy enough."

"I shall never be well, my child."

"O you say that just because a shadow has come over you. I wish I knew where it comes from; I would scare it away. Mother, mother, look, look! – see that little carriage with the little horses, and the children driving! Oh – !"

Rotha's expression of intense admiration is not to be given on paper.

"Shetland ponies, those are," said her mother.

"What are Shetland ponies?"

"Ponies that come from Shetland."

"And do they never grow any bigger?"

"No."

"How jolly!"

"Rotha, that is a boy's word, I think."

"If it is good for a boy, why isn't it good for me?"

"I do not know that it is good for a boy. But a lady is bound to be more particular in what she says and does."

"More than a gentleman?"

"In some ways, yes."

"I don't understand in what ways. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, whether one is a boy or a girl."

Mrs. Carpenter sighed. What would bring just notions, who would teach proper ways, to her inquisitive child when she should be left motherless? Rotha perceived the deep concern which gathered in her mother's eyes again; and anew endeavoured by lively talk to chase it away. In vain. Mrs. Carpenter came home tired and exhausted.

"I think she was worrying about something," Rotha said, when soon after she and her friend were on their way to Whitehall. "She does, now and then."

Mr. Digby made no answer; and Rotha's next keen question was, "You look as if you knew what she was worrying about, Mr. Digby?"

"I think I do."

"Couldn't I know what it was?"

"Perhaps. But you must wait."

It was easy to wait. Even the omnibus ride to Whitehall was charming to Rotha's inexperienced eyes; and when she was on board the ferry boat and away from the quays and the city, and the lively waters of the bay were rolling up all around her, the girl's enjoyment grew intense. She had never seen such an extent of water before, she had no idea of the real look of the waves; a hundred thousand questions came crowding and surging up in her mind, like the broken billows down below her. In her mind; they got no further; merely to have them rise was a delight; she would find the answer to them some day. For the present it was enough to watch the changing forms and varying colours of the water, and to drink in the fresh breeze which brought life and strength with it from the sea. Yet now and then a question was too urgent and must be satisfied.

"Mr. Digby, nobody could paint water, could they?"

"Yes."

"How could they? It is all changing, every instant; it won't stand still to be drawn."

"Most things can be done, if one is only in earnest enough."

"But how can this?"

"Not without a great deal of study and pains. A man must watch the play of the waves and the shapes they take, and the colours of the different parts in any given sort of weather, until he has got them by heart; and then he can put the lines and the colours on the canvas. If he has the gift to do it, that is."

"What has the weather to do with it? Different colours?"

"Certainly. The lights and shadows vary with every change of the sky; and the colours vary."

"Then a person must be very much in earnest," said Rotha, "ever to get it all."

"There is no doing great things in any line without being very much in earnest. The start isn't the thing; it is the steady pull that tries."

"Can you draw, Mr. Digby?"

"Yes, a little."

Again Rotha was all absorbed in what lay before and around her; getting unconscious education through her eyes, as they received for the first time the images of so many new things. To the people on board she gave scarcely any heed at all.

Arrived at Brighton, Mr. Digby's first care was to give his charge and himself some refreshment. He took Rotha to a hotel and ordered a simple dinner. Then he desired to have a little wagon harnessed up, and putting the delighted girl into it, he drove to the sea shore and let her feast her eyes on the incoming waves and breaking surf. He himself was full of one thought, waiting for the moment when he could say to her what he had to say; but he was forced to wait a good while. He had made a mistake, he found, in choosing this precise direction for their drive. Rotha's overwhelming pleasure and entranced absorption for some time could not be broken in upon. She was too utterly happy to notice how different was her friend's absorption from her own; unless with a vague, passing perception, which she could not dwell upon.

At last her friend asked her if she would like a run upon the sand, the tide being then out. He drove up to a straggling bit of fence, tied his horse, and lifted Rotha out; who immediately ran down to the narrow beach and as near to the water as she dared; there stood still and looked. There was but a gentle surf that day, with the ebb tide; but to Rotha it was a scene of unparalleled might and majesty. She was drinking in pleasure, as one can at fourteen, with all the young susceptibilities fully alive and strong. Mr. Digby could not interrupt her. He threw himself down 011 a dry piece of sand, and waited; watching her, and watching with a sad sort of pleasure the everlasting rise and breaking of those curling billows. Things spiritual and material get very mixed up in such a mood; and anon the ocean became to Mr. Digby somehow identified with the sea of trouble the tides of which do overflow all this world. The breaking waves were but the constantly occurring and recurring bursts of misfortune and disaster which overtake everybody. Here it is, there it is, it is here again, it is always somewhere; ay, far as the eye can reach. Here is this child, now, —

"Mr. Digby, you are tired – you don't like it – you are just waiting for me," Rotha said suddenly, with delicate good feeling, coming to his side.

"I do like it, always. I am not tired, thank you, Rotha."

"But you are not taking pleasure in it now," she said gently.

"No. I was thinking, how full the world is of trouble."

"Why should you think that just now? You had better think, how full it is of pleasure. It's as full – it seems to me as full – as the very sea itself."

"Does your life have so much pleasure?"

"To-day – " said the girl, with a rapt look out to sea.

"And yet Rotha, it is for you I am troubled."

"For me!" she said with a surprised look at him.

"Yes. Suppose you sit down here for a few minutes, and let me talk to you."

"I don't want to talk about trouble just now," she said; sitting down however as he bade her.

"I am very sorry to talk about it now, or at any time; but I must. Can you bear trouble, Rotha?"

There was something tender and grave and sympathizing in his look and tone, which somehow made the girl's heart beat quicker. That there was real gravity of tidings beneath such a manner, she felt intuitively; though she strove not to believe it.

"I don't know, – " she said in answer to his question. "I have borne it."

"This is more than you have borne yet."

"I had a father, once, Mr. Digby, – " she said with a curious self- restraint that did not lack dignity.

How could he answer her? He did not find words. And instead, there came over him such a rush of tenderness in view of what was surely to fall upon the girl, in the present and in the future, that for a moment he was unmanned. To hide the corresponding rush of water to his eyes, Mr. Digby was fain to bow his face in the hand which rested on his knees. Neither the action nor the cause of it escaped Rotha's shrewdness and awakened sense of fear, but it silenced her at the same time; and it was not till a little interval had passed, though before Mr. Digby had lifted up his head, that the silence became intolerable to her. She heard the sea and saw the breakers no more, or only with a feeling of impatience.

"Well," she said at last, in a changed voice, hard, and dry, – "why don't you tell me what it is?" If she was impolite, she did not mean it, and her friend knew she did not mean it.

"I hardly can, Rotha," he answered sorrowfully.

"I know what you mean," she said, "but it isn't true. You think so, but it isn't true."

"What are you speaking of?"

"You know. I know what you mean; you are speaking of – mother!" The word came out with difficulty and only by stern determination. "It is not true, Mr. Digby."

"What is not true, Rotha?"

"You know. It is not true!" she repeated vehemently.

"But Rotha, my child, what if it were true?"

"You know it couldn't be true," she said, fixing on him a pair of eyes almost wild in their intensity. "It couldn't be true. What would become of me?"

"I will take care of you, always."

"You!" she retorted, with a scorn supreme and only matched by the pain with which she spoke. "What are you? It couldn't be, Mr. Digby."

"Listen to me, child. Rotha, I have come here to talk to you about it." He saw how full the girl's eyes were growing, of tears just swelling and ready to burst forth; and he stopped. But she impatiently dashed them right and left.

"I don't want to talk about it. It's no use, here or anywhere else. I would like to go home."

"Not yet. Before you go home I want you to be quite composed, and to have good command of yourself, so that you may not distress your mother. She cannot bear it. Therefore she asked me to tell you, because she dreaded to see your suffering. Can you bear it and hide it, Rotha, bravely, for her sake?"

"She asked you to tell me?" cried the girl; and Mr. Digby never forgot the face of wild agony with which she looked at him. He answered quietly, "Yes;" though his heart was bleeding for her.

"She thinks – "

"She knows how it must be. It is nothing new, or strange, or sorrowful, to her, – except only for you. But in her love for you, she greatly dreads to see your sorrow. Do you think, Rotha, for her sake, you can bear up bravely, and be quiet, and not shew what you feel? For her sake?"

He doubted if the girl rightly heard him. She looked at him, indeed, while he spoke, as if listening; but her face was white, or rather livid, and her eyes seemed to be gazing into despair.

"I do not think it can be, Mr. Digby," she said. "She don't look like it.

And what would become of me?

"I will take faithful care of you, Rotha, as long as you live, and I live."

"You are nothing!" she said contemptuously. But then followed a cry which curdled Mr. Digby's blood. It was not a piercing shriek, yet it was a prolonged cry, pointed and sharpened with pain and heavy with despair. One such wail, and the girl dropped her face in her hands and sat motionless. Her companion would rather have seen sobs and tears; he did not know what to do with her. The soft beat and wash of the waves sounded drearily in the silence. Mr. Digby waited. Nothing but time, he knew, can cover the roughness of life's rough places with its moss and lichen of patience and memory. Comfort was not to be spoken of, not here. He comprehended now why Mrs. Carpenter had shrank from telling the tidings herself. But the day was wearing away; they must go home; the burden, however heavy, must be lifted and carried. —

"Rotha – my child – " he said after a long interval.

No answer.

"Rotha, my child, cannot you look up and speak to me? Rotha – my poor little Rotha – it is very heavy for you! But won't you make it as light as you can for your mother?"

The child writhed away from under the hand he had gently laid on her shoulder; but uttered no sound.

"Rotha – we must go home presently. Do you know, your mother will be very anxious to see you. She is expecting us now, I dare say."

It came then, the burst of tears which he had dreaded and yet half longed for. The girl turned a little more from him and flung herself down on the sand, and there wept as he had never seen anybody weep before. With all the passion of an intense nature, and all the self abandonment of an ungoverned nature, sobbing such sobs as shook her whole frame, and with loud weeping which could not be restrained into silence. Better it should not be, Mr. Digby thought; better she should be allowed to exhaust herself so that very fatigue should induce quiet. But to the sitter-by it was unspeakably painful; a scene never to be recalled without a profound prayer, like Noah's, I fancy, after the deluge, that the like might never come again.

And happily, nature did exhaust herself; and just because the passion of sobs and tears was so violent, it did yield after a time, as strength gave way. But it lasted fearfully long. However, at last Rotha grew quieter, and then still; and not till then Mr. Digby spoke again. He spoke as if all this had been an interlude not noticed by him.

"Rotha, my child, can you gather up your courage and be quiet and be brave now?"

She hesitated, and then in a smothered voice said, "I'm not brave."

"I think you can be."

"I wish – I could die," she said slowly.

"But what we have to do, is to live and act for others. Yes, it would often seem a great deal easier to die; but we have something to do in the world. You have something to do. Your mother's comfort, and even the prolonging of her stay with us, may depend on your quietness and self- command. For love of her, can you be strong and do it?"

"I am not strong – " said Rotha, as she had spoken before.

"Love makes people strong. And Jesus will help the weak, if they trust him, to do anything they have to do."

"You know I am not a Christian," Rotha answered in the same matter-of- fact way.

"Suppose you do not let that be true after to-day."

There was another silence.

"I am ready to go, Mr. Digby," Rotha said.

"And you will be a woman, and wise, and quiet?"

"I don't know!"

Mr. Digby thought it was not best to press matters further. He put Rotha into the wagon again and drove back to the hotel. Quiet she was, at any rate, now; he did not even see any more tears; but alas, of all the things in the world which she had been so glad to look at on the way down, she saw nothing on the way back. Driving or sailing, it was all the same; only when Mr. Digby put her into the omnibus at Whitehall he saw a flash of something like terror which crossed her face and left it blanched. But that was all.

He went into the invalid's room at Mrs. Marble's with trepidation. Rotha however was merely less effusive and more hasty than usual in her greetings to her mother, and after a kiss or two turned away "to get her things off," as she said. And when Mrs. Cord unluckily asked her in passing, if she had had a pleasant day? Rotha choked, but managed to get out that it had been "as good as it could be." What she went through in the little hall room which served for closet and wardrobe, no one knew; but Mr. Digby, who stayed purposely till she came back again, was reassured to see that she was perfectly quiet, and that she set about her wonted duties in a grave, collected way, more grave than usual, but quite as methodical. He went away sighing, at the same time with a relieved heart. One of the hard things he had had to do in his life, was over.

Mr. Digby however, as he walked homeward to his hotel, saw the difficulties yet in store for him. How in the world was he to perform his promise of taking care of this wildfire girl? Her aunt surely, would be the fittest person to be intrusted with her. If he only knew what sort of person Mrs. Busby really was, and how much of Mrs. Carpenter's story might have two sides to it? The lady was not in the city, or he would have been tempted to go and see her at once, for the purpose of studying her and gathering information. Nothing of the kind was possible at present; and he could only hope that Mrs. Carpenter's frail life would be prolonged until her sister's return to New York would lift, or might lift, one difficulty out of his path.