Chapter XX: Through Deep Waters

Mr. Turner was the first to speak. "Sit down," he said kindly. "You must not stand."

Miss Blake sank into her place upon the divan, but she did not lean back. She sat stiffly upright, nervously locking and unlocking her fingers in her lap and compressing her lips tightly, but asking no questions--saying no word.

The lawyer drew a chair beside her and slowly, deliberately seated himself in it.

"You remember," he began at length, in a hesitating sort of way, "that I told you some time ago that I had some reason to fear that affairs were not prospering at Bombay. I wish to come to the point at once; to spare you all suspense. I am afraid Mr. Cutler is in some serious difficulty, and--"

He paused. The governess leaned forward, and her breath came quickly.

"Go on," she whispered.

"For some time past his letters have been most unsatisfactory. He has seemed depressed and discouraged. What word I have received from him during the past few months has been of such a character as to lead one to form the gravest suspicions. His letters have been short and hurried--written, evidently, under great mental strain. And latterly they have ceased altogether. For the last two months, ever since you have been ill, I have heard literally nothing from him. His plan was to leave Bombay in September. That he kept to his original purpose I have no reason to doubt. He was on the steamer, or, at least, his name was on its passenger list. Of course while you were so ill I could say nothing to you of this--besides I had only my suspicions then. But as time passed, and no communication from him reached me I grew apprehensive. Within the last two weeks I have sent numberless dispatches to him to his London address, but not one of them has received a reply--in fact, no one of them has been delivered to him. The people there do not know where he is. I have cabled to Bombay, thinking he might have been detained there unexpectedly, but that, too, has proved of no avail. The Bombay house know nothing of his whereabouts. He left them as he intended to do in September, and since then they have heard from him as little as I."

Miss Blake's eager eyes seemed to search the lawyer through and through. He shifted uneasily in his place.

"It is very difficult to go on," he said, with a nervous, constrained cough.

"Quick! Quick!" whispered the governess. "Tell me everything now--this minute. Tell me! Tell me!"

"There is little more to tell," said Mr. Turner sadly. "This afternoon I received a wire from his London banker, and it seems--that--he, William Cutler, is--is--dead."

There was a low cry. Miss Blake had leaped to her feet at his words, and now she was swaying forward as though too faint to stand. The lawyer sprang forward to save her from falling, but she pushed him away with both hands almost savagely.

"No, no!" she gasped. "I am strong. I am strong. But--God pity us! My poor little Nan--and--oh, my poor little Nan!"

She sank back upon the divan and buried her face in her outstretched arms.

The lawyer rose and went to the window.

Outside the wind blew drearily. The bare trees showed but dimly through the gathering dusk. It was a bleak, cold outlook. Presently down the street came a man with a lighted torch and set the gas-flames to flickering in every lamp along his way.

Mr. Turner watched him until he had passed out of sight--then he turned about and came back to the sofa once more.

Miss Blake had raised her head and sat staring blankly before her, dry-eyed, but with an expression far sadder than tears; the dull, lifeless look of helpless misery that has not yet been touched with submission.

"Shall I leave you now?" asked the lawyer softly. "Perhaps you would rather be alone. I can come again--whenever you wish. Perhaps it would be better for me to come again when you are stronger--better able to bear it."

She turned her large eyes upon him in a sort of mute supplication. All the light had gone out of them now. Mr. Turner reseated himself and continued:

"He died in a hospital in London of a malignant fever. No one saw him. He was buried within twenty-four hours, I presume according to the law in such cases. Of course, I have no particulars, only the barest outline of facts. Undoubtedly I shall receive a letter by the next steamer, giving details. It is all desperately sad--heart-breakingly sad. Poor fellow! So young and to die alone among strangers."

Miss Blake stretched out her hands supplicatingly.

"Don't," she pleaded.

"Shall I tell Nan?" Mr. Turner asked after a moment. "Perhaps it would be better if I should. You have undergone enough."

"No, no!" she cried. "No one must tell her but myself. But first I must talk to you about--about--you know when I came here I had reasons for wishing her not to know who I was. Now I will tell her. There is no more need to withhold anything. Delia always knew--from the first--but she never told Nan and she never would have told. But that is all over now. There is no need for secrecy any more. And I will stay with her. I will keep her with me always. She has no one else now, and I--I--I am free to do as I please. If--if he has left her unprovided for, why, that shall make no difference to her. I have plenty and she shall share it with me. She shall never feel the care or want of anything that I can supply. Ah, Mr. Turner, I am glad I came. It has been hard, but I am glad I came."

She broke down completely. Her frail figure shook with shuddering sobs.

But she was not a woman to give way long, and in a moment she regained her self-control.

"I must have time to think," she said. "Everything seems so changed and strange. I scarcely know where I stand. The suddenness of it has been so horrible. I suppose he must have been ill for a long time--too ill to write. And by and by when they took him to the hospital he must have been unconscious, and so they could not communicate with his friends. That would account for it all, his not writing nor receiving the dispatches--and his friends not knowing where he was."

Mr. Turner nodded. Then he rose.

"I will leave you now," he said. "You are completely worn out. If you will take my advice you will defer telling Nan until tomorrow. I fear the strain will prove too great for you."

She smiled faintly.

"Oh, no," she replied. "I am stronger than you think. But the child shall not be told tonight. I will leave her in peace for one night longer. I will let her get one more good night's rest. Then to-morrow, when she is refreshed and strengthened by her sleep she can learn it all."

The lawyer held out his hand. "This has been one of the hardest trials of my life," he said. "But you have helped me by your bravery and fortitude. I thank you from my heart. Good night!" and in a moment he was gone.

That evening Miss Blake bade Delia take Nan to the Andrews'. She wrote a short note to Ruth's mother in which she begged her to keep the girl through the evening and make her as happy as she could. She briefly stated the reason for her request.

Nan knew that something was being kept from her but she never suspected what. She fancied it must be connected with Miss Blake's private affairs, and she asked no questions. When she reached the Andrews' her exuberant spirits reasserted themselves and she spent a gay evening with Ruth, Mrs. Andrews leading in the fun and seeing that no one passed a dull moment. They played all sorts of games, and then finally Bridget appeared with the crowning delight, a tray upon which a tempting array of good things was set forth. How Nan enjoyed it! She often thought afterward what a happy evening it was. At ten o'clock Delia called for her and she went home through the still night, thinking all sorts of merry thoughts. Miss Blake listened with apparent interest to her description of her evening's jollification, and when she had finished gave her an especially tender good-night kiss, saying:

"God bless you, my Nan. Sleep well, dear, and let us both pray for strength to bear God's will."

The next morning after breakfast Nan discovered why Miss Blake had bade her especially to pray for strength.

Poor child! She felt so utterly weak and helpless in her misery. At first she could scarcely realize what had befallen her and she kept insisting, "It isn't my father that has died. It is some one else. How can I feel that he isn't alive? He can't be dead! He isn't! He isn't! Why, only yesterday I was expecting he would soon be home. It's some other man who hasn't got a daughter that loves him so."

But by and by she grew desperate in her wretchedness and then it took all Miss Blake's influence to restrain her from really wearing herself out in the abandon of her grief.

But by evening the house was quiet. Nan's loud sobbing had ceased and she lay quite still and exhausted, stretched upon the divan in Miss Blake's room, with her throbbing head in the governess' lap. A tender hand stroked her disheveled hair, a tender voice spoke words of comfort to her, and she was soothed and solaced by both.

"Shall I tell you a story, Nan?" asked Miss Blake at length.

The girl gave a silent nod of assent.

"Well, once upon a time," began the governess in a gentle monotone, "there lived two girls and they were friends. They loved each other dearly. One was tall and fair and beautiful, and the other was small and dark, and if people ever thought her even pretty it was because love lighted their kind eyes and made it seem that what they looked upon was sweet.

"The first girl had father and mother and a happy home. The second was an orphan, having nothing to remind her of the parents she had lost when she was a baby but the fortune they had left her. She never knew what love meant until she met her beautiful friend. Then she learned. Oh, how those two girls loved each other! When Florence, the beautiful one, found that Isabel had no home she pleaded with her parents to take her into theirs, and they not only took her to their home but to their hearts as well. And so she and her dear friend grew up together like sisters, and the little lonely girl was not lonely any more, but very, very happy among those she loved. Well, time went on, and by and by when the two girls had become quite young women, the first more beautiful than ever, the other a little less plain, maybe, something happened that, in the end, caused them to be separated forever.

"God sent into their lives the self-same experience and into their hearts the self-same thought. It was a beautiful experience and a beautiful thought, but if it was to mean happiness for one, it must be at the cost of grief to the other. Perhaps it was because they both knew this that neither of them told her secret. But presently it was decided which was to have the happiness. It came to the one who expected it least--who had the least right to expect it. It came to Isabel, and for a moment she thought she might accept it. But it was only for a moment. Then she knew that she must relinquish it. It would have been base, would it not, my Nan, to have defrauded the friend who had done so much for her? And so she, Isabel, left the house that had been her home for so many years, and quite solitary and alone sailed across the sea to the other side of the world, and there she stayed for--well, over a dozen years, my dear.

"It was soon after she went away that your mother--I mean Florence--was married. Isabel heard of it and was glad. And later, when she learned that a dear little daughter had been born to Florence, she was happier still. But then came sad news. Oh, such sad news! The beautiful young mother died, died and left her little baby girl behind her with only the poor father to take care of it.

"Then, after that, Isabel heard nothing more for a long, long time, for Florence's good parents were dead and her husband and Isabel were--well, not at enmity, Nan, but not at peace together. It was all owing to a misunderstanding, but that did not alter it. They were not friends and Isabel was too proud to write and ask him whether all went well with him and the little daughter or whether she might perhaps help to care for the child. And so years passed and then one day Isabel felt that she could remain away from America no longer. All the time there had been a great longing in her heart to return, but she had tried to smother it and tell herself that she had no Fatherland; that America was no more to her than any of the strange countries she had lived in; that her acquaintances abroad were as much to her as her friends at home. But, as I say, by and by she could resist her desire no longer, and so one day she set sail for America--I think it must have been after she had been absent for quite fourteen years--and oh! how her heart beat when she saw the dear land once more. Well, I must make my story short, Nan, so I will not tell you how it came about that she first heard that Florence's little daughter had grown into a tall girl; that she was living in the old house where Isabel had spent so many happy years; that her father had gone to some far Eastern country and left her in the charge of a faithful servant of her mother's who had loved them all in days gone by. But she learned all this and more beside and then something told her that it was her duty to go to Florence's child and care for her and show her as well as she might how to be a noble, true, and lovely woman, as her mother had been before her. So she went to the little girl as governess and at first the child was opposed to her, but by and by she--I really think she grew to love her almost as much as the governess loved the child. And all this time the father never knew who was caring for his girl because in the letters that went to him the governess was spoken of by but part of her name. She chose to live incognito, you know what that is, Nan, because she feared if he knew who was serving his child as governess he would write to her in his proud fashion and say:

"No; I need no one to care for my daughter for love. Whomever I employ I will pay. You are a wealthy woman. You need not work for money. My few poor dollars are nothing to you. Besides--"

"And then I think, Nan, he would have referred to the old disagreement and it would all have been very painful, and she would have had to go away and been lonely ever after and have left undone her duty to Florence's child. So she lived quietly in the old house with the little girl and the servant and all went well for a year and then--well, then, dear Nan, I think I need not tell what happened then. But, oh, my dear, you are my own little girl--Florence's child and I loved her, ah! I loved her so. For her sake you are mine now. Never say that you are 'all alone' again. I have taken you as a sacred trust. Come to me, Nan, for I am lonely too, I am lonely too."