XXV. COUSIN DON.
“If we are ever in doubt what to do, it is a good rule to ask
ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow we had done.”
—Sir John Lubbuck.
The first day of September, late in the afternoon, Judith stood over the kitchen stove making beef-tea for Aunt Rody. The weekly letters from Don had failed—failed for three weeks; but twice before in five years had she missed a letter. At the step behind her she did not raise her eyes; the beef-tea was ready to strain; at this moment she had no interest in the world but that beef-tea.
“Judith, are you ready for news?” asked Roger.
“Good news?” she asked, forgetting her beef-tea and turning towards him, radiant.
“That depends upon how you take it.”
“I’ll take it in the way to make it good, then. I’m not ready for anything unpleasant,” she said, with a vain attempt to keep her lips from quivering.
“Then I’ll tell you. Guess who is married. But you will never guess,” he replied with confident eagerness.
“Some one in Bensalem?”
“No.”
“Bensalem is all my world.”
“You forget somebody on the other side of the world.”
“Not Cousin Don,” in the most startled surprise.
“Cousin Don. It’s a stroke of genius, or something. He never did anything like other people. Just as he was on the point of starting for home, he decided to stay and marry an English girl he found out he was in love with; or found out she was in love with him; he seems rather surprised himself. They were married the day he expected to sail for home.”
“Then why didn’t he come and bring her?” asked Judith as soon as she could find her voice.
“The English girl would rather stay in England, or on the Continent; she has no fancy to live in America.”
“I’m afraid—he didn’t want to,” said Judith who could not believe that Cousin Don had failed her.
“He never did a thing he didn’t want to in his life.”
“But he has not been quite fair to keep it from us; I did not think he could do such a thing.”
“He did not keep it all from me,” Roger replied, seriously; “perhaps I should have prepared you for it. He has been interested in her for some time, visited her in England—whether he did not know his own mind, or she did not know hers does not appear; but now they both seem to be of the same mind. Judith, dear, it isn’t such a dreadful thing.”
“Not to you,” said Judith.
Now, he would never come and take her away. No one would ever take her away. She did not belong to him any longer.
“Judith,” began Aunt Affy, hurriedly in the kitchen doorway. “Oh, you are fixing the beef-tea.”
She strained the beef-tea, salted it, poured it into a cup, and went to Aunt Rody’s entry bed-room as if she were in a dream, not thinking, or feeling anything but that she was left alone in the world, her Cousin Don had cast her off, he had broken his word to her mother, he had not cared for her as if she were his little sister. He did not even care to write and tell her that he was married and not coming home.
“Poor child,” Aunt Affy was saying in the kitchen, “it will break her heart.”
“It shall not break her heart,” was the fierce answer. “I would rather have told her he was dead than married—for her own sake. I cannot understand his shameful neglect. No money has come for her for six months—but she will never know that. His letter to me gives only the news of his marriage—his first letter for a month—but he has never written to me regularly as he has to her. It would be a satisfaction to run over to England to have it out with him.”
“But he had a right to be married,” said Aunt Affy, doubtfully.
“I am not questioning that. He had no right to hurt this child so—she has believed in him as if he were an angel sent out of Heaven for her special protection.”
“He isn’t the only angel,” said Aunt Affy, composedly. “I have been counting on him. That’s why I have had no help—I didn’t bestir myself for I expected news of his coming every week. Mrs. Evans’s sister, a widow who goes out nursing, can come the middle of this month. I didn’t tell Judith. I thought she was happy in being a ministering angel herself. And then she was going away so soon, if her Cousin Don should come I wanted her here when he came.”
“You had better send for the nurse,” said Roger, dryly.
“I’ll go after supper and see Mrs. Evans. I suppose you and Miss Marion will want my little girl again.”
“We certainly shall,” replied Roger with emphasis, “more than ever, now.”
“But she mustn’t be an expense to you,” said Aunt Affy, with an anxious frown.
“Never you mind the expense. If I don’t burn Don Mackenzie up in a letter, it will be because there are no words hot enough. I wish I could send him her face as she came to the understanding of my news. It would rather mar his honeymoon. I’ve kept this news a week, and now I had to come and blurt it out.”