Mrs. Morton and Bunchie were still in Bronson, but Theo was supplying a vacant pulpit in Boston, and only saw his wife once in two or three weeks. There was room in the parsonage now for homesick Trixey, for the sickly baby had died suddenly with cholera infantum, and the same letter which carried the news to Beatrice asked that Trixey might be sent to Vermont.
“Send her by express,” Mrs. Morton wrote, “or will you bring her yourself? We shall be so glad to see you, though we cannot offer you a bed here, we are so full, but there is a good country hotel near us, and Cousin Julia Hayden, whom you met in New York, wishes me to say that she will be very glad to entertain you at her own house. I hope you will come, for though our acquaintance is so recent, you seem to me like a friend of years, and I feel that the sight of you may do me good, now that my heart is so sore with the loss of my baby.”
“I’ll go,” Bee said, as she finished reading the letter, deciding all the more readily on account of a little incident which had occurred the night before, and which filled her with alarm for both Everard and Rosamond.
They had walked together to Elm Park, and sat with her for an hour or more on the piazza, where the full moon was shining brightly. This time there had been no shawl to adjust, for the early June night was warm and balmy, but there was a slight dampness in the air, and Everard’s solicitude lest Rosamond should take cold or contract a sore throat was noticeable in the extreme. Two or three times he pulled the fleecy cloud of Berlin wool about her neck, and asked if she were quite comfortable, and once he let his hand rest on her shoulder for some minutes, while he sat looking at her with an expression on his face which Josephine might have resented had she seen it. And Bee, with her strong sense of right and wrong, resented it for her, or rather for Rosamond, whom she would not see sacrificed without a protest. So when they arose to go home, she led Everard away from Rossie, and when sure she could not be heard, said to him, earnestly:
“Pardon me, Everard, but you are altogether too solicitous about Rosamond’s health. Let her take care of herself. She is capable of doing it, and, remember, there are bounds you must not pass, or suffer her to approach. It would be very cruel to her.”
“Yes, I know,” he answered, coloring deeply as he spoke. “You need not fear for Rossie. She is my sister, nothing more; and even if I were disposed to make her something else, do you suppose I can ever forget the past?”
He spoke bitterly, and showed plainly how gladly he would free himself, if possible, from the bond which held him, and which was growing daily more and more hateful to him.
As far as she could see them in the moonlight Beatrice watched Everard and Rossie as they walked slowly down the avenue which led to the street, and when they were out of sight she said to herself: “He ought to acknowledge his marriage, and he must, even if he does not take his wife, which might be the better thing to do. There must be good in her,—something to build upon, if under the right influence, with somebody to encourage and stimulate her to do her best. I wish I knew her,—wish I dared face her in her own home, and judge what kind of person she is.”
This was Bee’s thought the night before she read Mrs. Morton’s letter inviting her to Bronson, and when she read it the thought resolved itself into a fixed purpose, the first step of which was to take Trixey to her mother. Poor little Trixey, who turned so white, but did not at first shed a tear, when told of her baby brother’s death. Half an hour later, however, Beatrice found her in the garden, with her face in the grass, sobbing as if her heart would break for the dead brother, of whom she said to Bee, “I wouldn’t feel so bad to have him with Jesus, only I shaked him once hard, when he was so cross and heavy, and I was so tired, and he wouldn’t go to sleep. I’se so sorry. Will God let me go to Heaven some day and see him, and tell him I’se sorry?”
As well as she could, Beatrice comforted and reassured the weeping child, whose conscientiousness and sweet faith and trust in God were leading her into ways she had only known in theory, but which were beginning to be very pleasant to her feet, as she learned each day some new lesson from the trusting child.