I wrote to Jim yesterday to have Rab ready, as I would call for him this afternoon, and as I drove up Hattie came out with Rab's valise, and he followed with his arm in a sling, but looking much better. We drove rapidly to the train, just in time to get the tickets and get L. and her protégé on the train, before it was off.
I asked Rab as we drove down if he had seen Dab. He said he had very often, that he had got a place as butler, where he was getting $5 a week. I asked where it was, and after the train left, I drove to the house and asked to see Dab.
I told him I could not give him the recommendation I had expected to give him, because he had run away and left me as he had done; that I only wanted to see him to tell him to keep the place he had, and not to run from place to place. He seemed much moved, and so was I. I sat in the buckboard, and he stood by the hind wheel, so that I had to turn to look at him.
I gave him a little lecture, telling him that I had carried out my promise to his dying mother as far as I could, having taken much trouble with him, as well as being put to a good deal of expense, because of that promise, and that now he had taken the matter out of my hands by leaving me. All I demanded of him was that he should lead a respectable life and be industrious, honest, and upright, and I would be satisfied. When I turned to look at him the tears were rolling down his cheeks and he thanked me and said he would try.
I started on my lonely drive of fourteen miles about 6 o'clock.
My thoughts were ample company, for I have much to plan out.
All winter I have been looking forward with great pleasure to a visit from a charming English friend who stayed with me once a few years ago. She has made a trip around the world with her maid and physician and was coming here on her way from San Francisco to New York, but after a visit in Mexico, for some reason the physician thought it would be unwise for her to come to this remote plantation, so far from railroad, telegraph, and I suppose he thought from civilization. Mrs. R. wrote to tell me of her disappointment at this and to ask me to make her a visit in New York instead, and begging me to bring Chloe with me. This royally generous invitation I have accepted, and my mind is much occupied as how to arrange for the care of everything in the absence of two such important people as Chloe and myself.
CHAPTER X
April 9.
My wedding day thirty-six years ago! It does not seem possible that there can be one atom of the intensely pleasure loving, gay slip of a girl left in the philosopher who, battered and bruised by life's battle, looks with calm, serene eyes on the stormy path behind her and with absolute faith forward to the sunset hour. It does not seem as though the ego could possibly be the same. Had some magic mirror been possible, in which that girl could have been shown herself, and her solitary life at the end of forty years, she could not have faced life, she would have prayed passionately for death.