Aaron Trow | Page 7

love kept nobody warm if the pot
did not boil; and that, as for him, it was as much as he could do to keep
his own pot boiling at Crump Cottage. In answer to this Anastasia said
nothing. She asked him for no money, but still kept his accounts,
managed his household, and looked patiently forward for better days.
Old Mr. Bergen himself spent much of his time at Hamilton, where he
had a woodyard with a couple of rooms attached to it. It was his custom
to remain here three nights of the week, during which Anastasia was
left alone at the cottage; and it happened by no means seldom that she
was altogether alone, for the negro whom they called the gardener
would go to her father's place at Hamilton, and the two black girls
would crawl away up to the road, tired with the monotony of the sea at
the cottage. Caleb had more than once told her that she was too much
alone, but she had laughed at him, saying that solitude in Bermuda was
not dangerous. Nor, indeed, was it; for the people are quiet and
well-mannered, lacking much energy, but being, in the same degree,
free from any propensity to violence.
"So you are going," she said to her lover, one evening, as he rose from
the chair on which he had been swinging himself at the door of the
cottage which looks down over the creek of the sea. He had sat there
for an hour talking to her as she worked, or watching her as she moved
about the place. It was a beautiful evening, and the sun had been falling
to rest with almost tropical glory before his feet. The bright oleanders
were red with their blossoms all around him, and he had thoroughly
enjoyed his hour of easy rest. "So you are going," she said to him, not
putting her work out of her hand as he rose to depart.
"Yes; and it is time for me to go. I have still work to do before I can get
to bed. Ah, well; I suppose the day will come at last when I need not
leave you as soon as my hour of rest is over."

"Come; of course it will come. That is, if your reverence should choose
to wait for it another ten years or so."
"I believe you would not mind waiting twenty years."
"Not if a certain friend of mine would come down and see me of
evenings when I'm alone after the day. It seems to me that I shouldn't
mind waiting as long as I had that to look for."
"You are right not to be impatient," he said to her, after a pause, as he
held her hand before he went. "Quite right. I only wish I could school
myself to be as easy about it."
"I did not say I was easy," said Anastasia. "People are seldom easy in
this world, I take it. I said I could be patient. Do not look in that way,
as though you pretended that you were dissatisfied with me. You know
that I am true to you, and you ought to be very proud of me."
"I am proud of you, Anastasia--" on hearing which she got up and
courtesied to him. "I am proud of you; so proud of you that I feel you
should not be left here all alone, with no one to help you if you were in
trouble."
"Women don't get into trouble as men do, and do not want any one to
help them. If you were alone in the house you would have to go to bed
without your supper, because you could not make a basin of boiled
milk ready for your own meal. Now, when your reverence has gone, I
shall go to work and have my tea comfortably." And then he did go,
bidding God bless her as he left her. Three hours after that he was
disturbed in his own lodgings by one of the negro girls from the cottage
rushing to his door, and begging him in Heaven's name to come down
to the assistance of her mistress.
When Morton left her, Anastasia did not proceed to do as she had said,
and seemed to have forgotten her evening meal. She had been working
sedulously with her needle during all that last conversation; but when
her lover was gone, she allowed the work to fall from her hands, and
sat motionless for awhile, gazing at the last streak of colour left by the

setting sun; but there was no longer a sign of its glory to be traced in
the heavens around her. The twilight in Bermuda is not long and
enduring as it