“Well,” said Mrs. Buzzell, kindly, “we’ll make this baby welcome in spite of everything. We can’t understand all God’s ways; and who knows but this may be a trial that will lead you nearer to Him who judges hearts not as men judge, but as one who made them, and knows all their secret springs?”
This little experience, which to Mrs. Buzzell seemed a most important confidence, tended to develop all the dormant softness and tenderness of her nature; and one day the little, old baby-wardrobe was brought down, and her own wrinkled hands washed out the odor of camphor and the yellow of forty years.
As Susie’s fate had been so well provided for, and especially as Miss Marston’s visit was drawing to its close, Dan again appeared on the scene. In fact he could no longer keep away from this woman who had captured him, body and soul. He thought of her all the time, and the fear that she might not return his love, made his days and nights wretched. It was a new experience for Dan. Grief did not sit gracefully upon him at all. It was an enemy whose blows his “science” could not parry, and it made him furious, without leading him to reflect that he had caused a thousand-fold keener heart-aches to poor Susie (even apart from the special wrong he had done her by deserting her at a time when no man of sensibility ever shows that his heart is growing cold), for we can never suffer from failing to win love, as from the loss of it when it has become necessary, not only to our happiness, but even to the rendering of life tolerable. In his selfishness, Dan thought no suffering could equal his, and he determined to know his fate before Miss Marston left Oakdale.
One evening, therefore, he dressed himself with extraordinary care, and sallied forth in the direction of his father’s house. As he drew near, he heard Miss Marston’s adorable voice in the parlor, and instead of ringing at the front door, he went around to the veranda, and waited until the song ceased. Even then he had not the courage to approach her—she might come out, he thought, and be pleased by finding him there. Meanwhile he drank in greedily the sweet half-melodies, half-harmonies, evoked by her beautiful fingers, as they strayed over the key-board of the piano without any special aim, for she was evidently alone and “fancy free.” Pretty soon he recognized a kind of phantasy upon an old Scotch ballad, and then her voice swelled out in the first two lines of “Comin’ thro’ the Rye,” and then stopped. Again she commenced:
“Amang the train there is a swain,
I dearly love mysel’;
But what’s his name and where’s his hame,
I dinna choose to tell.”
This verse she sang entire. “Why this special verse?” asked Dan’s heart, for it was in the state when clinging to straws is perfectly natural. At this juncture he made bold to enter by the French window, which was open, and stood beside her. She attempted to rise, but he prevented it, begging her to keep on playing—he had something to say to her, which could be fittest said to music.