The Laurel Bush | Page 9

by Liverpool instead of Southampton, because it
costs less; and he leaves St. Andrews on Monday morning."
"Are you sure he said Monday morning?" For that was Saturday night.
"Certain, because he has to get his outfit still. Oh, what fun it must be!"
And the boys went on, greatly excited, and repeating everything Mr.
Roy had told them--for he had made them fond of him, even in those
few months--expatiating with delight on his future career, as a
merchant or something, they did not quite know what; but no doubt it
would be far nicer and more amusing than stopping at home and
grinding forever on horrid books. Didn't Miss Williams think so?
Miss Williams only smiled. She knew how all his life he had loved
"those horrid books," preferring them to pleasure, recreation, almost to
daily bread; how he had lived on the hope that one day he--born only a
farmer's son--might do something, write something. "I also am of
Arcadia." He might have done it or not--the genius may or may not
have been there; but the ambition certainly was. Could he have thrown
it all aside? And Why?
Not for mere love of money; she knew him too well for that. He was a
thorough book-worm, simple in all his tastes and habits--simple almost
to penuriousness; but it was a penuriousness born of hard fortunes, and
he never allowed it to affect any body but himself. Still, there was no

doubt he did not care for money, or luxury, or worldly position--any of
the things that lesser men count large enough to work and struggle and
die for. To give up the pursuits he loved, deliberately to choose others,
to change his whole life thus, and expatriate himself, as it were, for
years--perhaps for always--why did he do it, or for whom?
Was it for a woman? Was it for her? If ever, in those long empty days
and wakeful nights, this last thought entered Fortune's mind, she stifled
it as something which, once to have fully believed and then disbelieved
would have killed her.
That she should have done the like for him--that or any thing else
involving any amount of heroism or self-sacrifice--well, it was natural,
right; but that he should do it for her? That he should change his whole
purpose of life that he might be able to marry quickly, to shelter in his
bosom a poor girl who was not able to fight the world as a man could,
the thing--not so very impossible, after all--seemed to her almost
incredible! And yet (I am telling a mere love story, remember--a
foolish, innocent love story, without apologizing for either the folly or
the innocence) sometimes she was so far "left to herself," as the Scotch
say, that she did believe it: in the still twilights, in the wakeful nights,
in the one solitary half hour of intense relief, when, all her boys being
safe in bed, she rushed out into the garden under the silent stars to sob,
to moan, to speak out loud words which nobody could possibly hear.
"He is going away, and I shall never see him again. And I love him
better than any thing in all this world. I couldn't help it--he couldn't
help it. But, oh! It's hard--hard!"
And then, altogether breaking down, she would begin to cry like a child.
She missed him so, even this week, after having for weeks and months
been with him every day; but it was less like a girl missing her
lover--who was, after all, not her lover--than a child mourning
helplessly for the familiar voice, the guiding, helpful hand. With all the
rest of the world Fortune Williams was an independent, energetic
woman, self-contained, brave, and strong, as a solitary governess had
need to be; but beside Robert Roy she felt like a child, and she cried for
him like a child,

"And with no language but a cry."
So the week ended and Sunday came, kept at Mrs. Dalziel's like the
Scotch Sundays of twenty years ago. No visitor ever entered the house,
wherein all the meals were cold and the blinds drawn down, as if for a
funeral. The family went to church for the entire day, St. Andrews
being too far off for any return home "between sermons." Usually one
servant was left in charge, turn and turn about; but this Sunday Mrs.
Dalziel, having put the governess in the nurse's place beside the ailing
child, thought shrewdly she might as well put her in the servant's place
too, and let her take charge of the kitchen fire as well as of little David.
Being English, Miss Williams was not so exact about "ordinances" as a
Scotch woman would have been; so Mrs. Dalziel had no hesitation