“You have no occasion to borrow money, Mrs. Tresham,” said Mr. Lanhearne. “There is a sum due your husband which will be quite sufficient to meet all your expenses home. I will send a man to secure you a good berth. Shall it be for Saturday next?”
“I can go to-morrow very well.”
“No, you cannot go to-morrow, Mrs. Tresham,” answered Ada. “You must have proper clothing to travel in. If you will permit me, I will attend to this matter for you at once.”
And though the proper clothing was a very prosaic comfort, it was a tangible one to Denas. She was grateful to find herself clothed in that modest, sombre decency which her condition claimed; to have all the small proprieties of the season and the circumstances, all the toilet necessities which are part of the expression of a refined nature. For the poor 276 lady who pitifully lamented the calamity which had “reduced her to elegance” indicated no slight deprivation; proper clothing for the occasions of life being both to men and women one of those great decencies demanded by an austere and suitable self-respect.
Faithfully did this good father and daughter fulfil to the last tittle the demands of their almost super-sensitive hearts and consciences, and if they sighed with relief when the duty was over, the sigh only proved the duty to have been beyond the line of self-satisfaction and a real sacrifice to the claims of a common humanity. Mr. Lanhearne then turned his thoughts gladly toward Florida. He felt that the invasion of so much strange sorrow into his home had altered its atmosphere, and that he was human enough to be a little weary in well-doing. Ada was also glad to escape the precincts haunted by the form and the voice which it pained her conscience to remember and pained her heart to forget. So in a few more days the large brown house was closed and dark, and “the tender grace of a day that was dead” was gone for evermore. The land of sunshine was before them, and many of their friends were already there to give them welcome; yet Ada’s soul kept repeating, with a ceaseless, uncontrollable monotony, one sad lament––
| “Ah, but alas! for the smile that never but one face wore! Ah, for the voice that has flown away like a bird to an unknown shore! Ah, for the face––the flower of flowers––that blossoms on earth no more!” |
She tried to hush this inner voice, to reason it into silence, to dull its aching echo with song or speech or notes of loftier tones; but it would not be quieted. And when she was left alone, when there was no one near to comfort or strengthen, a great silence fell upon her. For she indulged no stormy sorrow; her grief was a still rain that fertilised and made fragrant her higher self. In her maiden heart she had had a dream of being crowned with bride-flowers, and lo! it was rue, and thyme gone to seed, and dead primroses that garlanded her sad, unspoken love. But she wore them with a sweet, brave submission, not affecting to disbelieve that time would surely heal love’s aching pain. For she knew that goodness was omnipotent to save and to comfort.
In the mean time, as the Lanhearnes sailed southward Denas sailed eastward, and in less than a couple of weeks half the circumference of the world was between the lives so strangely and sorrowfully brought together. Denas landed in Liverpool early in the morning, and without delay went to London. She had business with Elizabeth, and she felt constrained and restless until it should be accomplished. She hesitated about going to the house in which she had spent with Roland so many happy and sorrowful days, but when she entered the cab the direction to it sprang naturally from her lips.
And there was already in her heart that tender fear that she might forget, the fear that all who have loved and lost have trembled to recognise, the fact that her sorrow might have an end, that she 278 might learn to dispense with what was once her life, that a little vulgar existence with its stated meals and regular duties and petty pleasures would ever fill the void in her love and life made by Roland’s death.