Bessies Fortune | Page 4

him. Suddenly he remembered that his aunt had also said:
"If there is a secret, never seek to discover it, lest it should bring
disgrace." And here he was, trying to find it out almost before she was
cold. A great fear took possession of Burton then, for he was the veriest
moral coward in the world, and before Hannah could say another word,
he continued:
"Yes, Aunt Wetherby was right. There is something; there has always
been something; but don't tell me, please, I'd rather not know."
He spoke very gently for him, for somehow, there had been awakened
within him a great pity for his sister, and by some sudden intuition he
seemed to understand all her loneliness and pain. If there had been a
wrongdoing it was not her fault; and as she still stood with her back to
him, and did not speak, he went up to her, and laying his hand upon her
shoulder, said to her:
"I regret that I asked a question which has so agitated you, and, believe
me, I am sorry for you, for whatever it is, you are innocent."
Then she turned toward him with a face as white as ashes and a look of
terror in her large black eyes, before which he quailed. Never in his life,
since he was a little child, had he seen her cry, but now, after regarding
him fixedly a moment, she broke into such a wild fit of sobbing that he
became alarmed, and passing his arm around her, lead her to a seat and
made her lean her head upon him, while he smoothed her heavy hair,
which was more than half gray, and she was only three years his senior.
At last she grew calm, and rising up, said to him:
"Excuse me, I am not often so upset--I have not cried in years--not
since Rover died," here her voice trembled again, but she went on quite
steadily. "He was all the companion I had, you know, and he was so
faithful, so true. Oh, it almost broke my heart when he died and left me
there alone!"
There was a world of pathos in her voice, as she uttered the last two
words, "There alone," and it flashed upon Burton that there was more

meaning in them than was at first indicated; that to live there alone was
something from which his sister recoiled. Standing before her, with his
hand still upon her head, he remembered, that she had not always been
as she was now, so quiet and impassive, with no smile upon her face,
no joy in her dark eyes. As a young girl, in the days when he, too, lived
at home, and slept under the rafters in the low-roofed house, she had
been full of life and frolic, and played with him all day long. She was
very pretty then, and her checks, now so colorless, were red as the
damask roses which grew by the kitchen door, while her wavy hair was
brown, like the chestnuts they used to gather from the trees, in the
rocky pasture land. It was wavy still, and soft and luxurient, but it was
iron grey, and she wore it plain, in a knot at the back of her head, and
only a few short hairs, which would curl about her forehead in spite of
her, softened the severity of her face. Just when the change began in his
sister. Burton could not remember, for, on the rare occasions when he
visited his home he had not been a close observer, and had only been
conscious of a desire to shorten his stay as much as possible, and return
to his aunt's house, which was much more to his taste. He should die if
he had to live in that lonely spot, he thought, and in his newly
awakened pity for his sister, he said to her, impulsively:
"Don't go back there to stay. Live with me. I am all alone, and must
have some one to keep my house. Von and I can get on nicely
together."
He made no mention of his father, and he did not half mean what he
said to his sister, and had she accepted his offer he would have
regretted that it had ever been made. But she did not accept it, and she
answered him at once:
"No, Burton, so long as father lives I must stay with him, and you will
be happier without than with me. We are not at all alike. But I thank
you for asking me all the same, and now it is time for me to go, if I take
the four o'clock train. Father will be expecting me."
Burton went with her to the train,