“Forget you! Oh, Ben, I never can forget how much you have done for me, denying yourself everything for my sake,” said Marian, while Ben continued, “Nor won’t you be ashamed of me neither, if I should come sometimes to see you? I should die if I could not once in a while look into your eyes; and you’ll let me come, won’t you, Marian?”
“Of course I will,” she replied, continuing after a moment, “It is not certain yet that I go to Mrs. Sheldon’s. I have not answered her last letter because—You know what we talked about before your mother died!”
“Yes, yes, I know,” returned Ben, “but I had forgot it—my heart was so full other things. I’ll go out there to-morrow. I’d rather you should teach at Riverside, even if you’d never heard of Frederic, than go to that grand lady, who might think, because you was a governess, that you wan’t fit to live in the same house.”
“I have no fears of that,” said Marian. “Mrs. Harcourt says she is an estimable woman; but still, I too, would rather go to Riverside, if I were sure Frederic would not know me. Do you think there is any danger?”
“No,” was Ben’s decided answer, and in this opinion Marian herself concurred, for she knew that she had changed so much that none who saw her when first she came to Mrs. Burt’s would recognize her now.
About three months before the night of which we are writing, she had been graduated at Mrs. Harcourt’s school with every possible honor, both as a musician and a scholar. There had never been her equal there before, Mrs. Harcourt said, and when her friend, Mrs. Sheldon, who lived in Springfield, Mass., applied to her for a family pupil, she warmly recommended her favorite pupil, Marian Grey, frankly stating, however, that she was of humble origin—that her adopted mother or aunt was a poor sewing woman, and her adopted brother a peddler. This, however, made no difference with Mrs. Sheldon, and several letters had passed between herself and Marian, who would have accepted the liberal offer at once, but for a lingering hope that Ben would carry out his favorite plan, and procure her a situation as teacher at Riverside. She had forgotten what she once said about learning to hate Frederic, and the possibility of living again beneath the same roof with him made her heart beat faster than its wont. She had occasionally met him in the street, and once she was sure his eye had rested upon her in passing, but she knew by its expression that she was not recognized, and when Ben suggested offering her services as Alice’s governess she readily consented.
During these years Ben had not lost sight of Frederic’s movements, though it so chanced that they had met but twice, once just after the receipt of Alice’s picture, which had been greeted by Marian with a shower of kisses and tears, and once the previous Autumn, when Frederic was about returning to Kentucky, for, with his changed feelings toward Marian, Mr. Raymond felt less delicacy in using her money—less aversion to Redstone Hall, where his presence was really needed, for a portion of the year at least, and which he intended making his Winter residence.
But he was at Riverside now, and Ben was about going there to see what arrangements could be made, when his mother’s sudden death caused both himself and Marian to forget the subject until the night after the burial, when, without a moment forgetting the dead or the dreary blank her absence made, they talked together of the future, and decided that on the morrow Ben should go to Riverside and see if there were room in Frederic’s house for Marian Grey. The morning came, and at an early hour Ben started, bidding Marian keep up her spirits as he was sure of bringing her good tidings.
Frederic was sitting in his arm-chair, which stood near the window, just where Marian had placed it three years and a half ago. Not that it had never been moved since that April morning, for, freed from old Dinah’s surveillance, Mrs. Huntington, who was still at Riverside, proved herself a pattern housekeeper, and the chair had probably been moved a thousand times to make room for the broom and brush, but it was in its old place now, and Frederic was sitting in it, thinking of Marian and his hitherto fruitless efforts at finding her. He was beginning to get discouraged, and still each time he went to the city he thought “perhaps I may meet her to-day,” and each night, as the hour for his return drew near, Alice waited upon the piazza when the weather was fine, and by the window when it was cold, listening intently for another step than Frederic’s—a step which never came, and then Alice grew less hopeful, while Marian seemed farther and farther away as month after month went by bringing no tidings of her. Frederic knew that she must necessarily have changed somewhat from the Marian of old, for she was a woman now, but he should readily recognise her, he said. He should know her by her peculiar hair, if by no other token. So when his eye once rested on a face of surpassing sweetness, shaded by curls of soft chesnut hair, which in the sunlight wore a rich red tinge, he felt a glow like that which one experiences in gazing for a single instant on some picture of rare loveliness; then the picture faded, the graceful figure glided by, and there was nothing left to tell how, by stretching forth his hand, he might have grasped his long lost Marian. Moments there were when she seemed near to him, almost within his reach, and such a moment was the one when Mrs. Huntington announced Ben Butterworth, whom he had not seen for a long time.
Involuntarily he started up, half expecting his visitor had come to tell him something of her. But when he saw the crape upon Ben’s hat, and the sorrow on his face, he forgot Marian in his anxiety to know what had happened.