Rathfelder's Hotel

by Annie E. Bosworth

"Dear me, Mechie! do not be so silly; you know I do not mean to be ill-natured."

"I know you do not mean to be unkind in any way, dear Lotty, and it vexes me the more to hear you repeat as if you were in earnest such selfish words as you sang just now."

"Oh, now you are giving me credit for too much or too little, whichever it is," answered Charlotte in a more serious tone than she had yet spoken and again resuming her hair dressing. "I am not at all sure that I did not quite sympathize with the feeling of the author—indeed, that I do not do so now; at any rate, a sensation closely akin to the sentiment so beautifully expressed in that poetic verse filled my heart and thereupon overflowed my lips," she said, laughing a little.

"Oh, Lotty!"

"Now you just look here, Mechie, and say honestly whether I am not perfectly excusable." In her unreflecting vehemence Charlotte evidently quite overlooked the fact of there being any one else in the same boat with herself. "Look here. I am brought away, without any will of mine being consulted, from a home full of comforts and luxuries—which ours certainly is; from attendance abundant and varied according to every requirement; from agreeable society, suited to my tastes—Hester Martin, Jane Burgess, Lucy Morgan, and the rest; from other pleasures and advantages which I need not enumerate,—to a place destitute of every attraction under the sun—a wild, dreary, frightful country, a great and desolate hotel without a soul in it but ourselves; no companions, no servants even, except the St. Helena girl and her sister who cook and do the rooms and are as ugly and stupid and uncivilized as everything else here. I declare, I would as soon ask one of them to dress me or get out my clothes as I would one of those mountain monkeys of which uncle spoke. Then, to bring matters to their worst, Susan, knowing well the delectabilities of this place and what was in store for her, wisely provides against the evil and strikes work in time to save herself—"

"Her mother is ill, Lotty!"

"Yes, of course she is, and always will be when occasion requires. And so, now, here I am, as I say, without any choice of my own, as uncomfortable as I can possibly be, every act of others from first to last proving that they care nothing for me; consequently and of necessity I must, as the objectionable rhyme has it, 'look after myself.' In what way I am to do it, however, in this wilderness, passes all my powers of devising. But now, Miss Mechie, you must see that thinking these thoughts is the natural result of such disagreeable circumstances, and naturally led to my singing that verse which so instantly set your inflammable temper in a blaze, and that so far from being to blame in anything I am exceedingly to be pitied, in everything."

"But, Charlotte, is it possible that you have so forgotten or are indifferent to what I told you of poor aunt? Do you not remember that it is on her account that we are staying here?—that the change is doing her good? Oh, Lotty, surely you would feel any sacrifice you could make compensated for by even the slightest improvement in dear auntie's state of health?"

"Oh, of course I should! I wonder you consider it necessary to ask such a question, Mechie!" exclaimed Charlotte in a tone of warm indignation that sent a comforting glow into my chilled heart. "But that is, in my opinion, the silliest part of the business. Just think, seriously, Mechie, and you must see as plainly as I do that she can get no good by staying in a place like this. Remember the distance we are from Dr. Manfred. Uncle must of course drive in every day to the bank, and fancy the distressing position you and I would be in if during his absence aunt were to fall dangerously ill, requiring instant medical advice, perhaps, and the doctor seven miles away!"

Oh, if Charlotte had known what a thrill of pain her words would awaken in my heart as they brought before my imagination with sudden vividness the picture of her whom I loved better than all the world beside lying white and still, patient and suffering, perhaps dying, on her pillow—had Charlotte known it, she would not have spoken so carelessly.