“I can’t brace up, and I haven’t much mind to put on,” she answered with a smile.
“That’s so,” Miss Hansford thought. “The Potters never had any mind to spare.”
But she was very kind to the invalid, and as she grew thinner and paler and finally kept her bed altogether the Potter blood was forgotten, and it was Roger’s wife whom she nursed so tenderly and to whom she gave her promise to care for Roger and the boys. All through the summer and autumn Lucy lingered, but when the winter’s snows were piled upon the ground and the cold wind swept down the deep gorges she died, and they buried her on a knoll behind the church where the light from the chancel window erected for her husband could fall upon her grave. Then Miss Hansford took matters into her own hand. The whole family should go East with her in the spring. There was a vacancy in St. Luke’s parish. She would apply for the place for Roger and give something herself towards his salary. He could stay with her a while. She wasn’t overfond of boys, but she could stand Roger’s a spell. She called them little bears to herself, but had a genuine liking for them, especially for Rob, who knew how to manage her. He was to go to college and be a minister,—Methodist, she hoped. Thede, who was always drawing pictures and had made a very fair one of her with her far-see-ers on the end of her nose, and her shoulders squared as they usually were when she was giving him what he called “Hail Columbia,” was to be an artist. George was to be a lawyer, though she didn’t think much of that craft after her experience with them, while Artie,—well, she didn’t know what he’d be. He only cared for horses. Maybe he’d keep a livery stable, or be a circus rider. Artie decided for the latter, which Miss Hansford took as an indication that the Potter blood, as represented by the actress, predominated in Artie’s veins. Elithe’s marriage must take place in Oak City, and if they wanted a splurge such as Clarice was to have had, they should have it, and a bigger one, too. She could afford it better than Mrs. Percy, and it would give her a chance to wear her gray silk, the making of which had cost so much and which was lying useless in her bureau drawer.
“Not for the world will we be married in Oak City,” both Paul and Elithe said, when the proposition was made to them.
They would be married quietly in Samona, among Elithe’s people and the miners, the latter of whom had lamented loudly when they heard they were to lose their rector, who had shared their joys and sorrows and been to them like a brother.
“But if we must, we must, and we won’t whimper like children, but give him a good send-off,” they said.
They kept their word, and came to the wedding, a hundred or more, with a lump of gold valued at $200, for the bride, and another of equal value for Roger. At the station they screamed themselves hoarse with their good-byes, and when the train was gone, sat down upon the platform and wondered what they should do without the parson and what he would do without them, and if that Massachusetts Temperance Society, as they called Miss Hansford, who had several times lectured them for drinking, wouldn’t make it lively for Roger and the kids.
This was in April, and early in May Paul and Elithe sailed for Europe, going directly to Paris, where they staid week after week until it was now the last of June, and they were still occupying their handsome suite of rooms at the Grand Hotel, with Tom and a French maid in attendance. Elithe was delighted with everything in Paris, and it seemed to Paul that she grew lovelier every day. Possibly dress had something to do with this. Her mother had made a request that she should not wear black, and Elithe had respected the request, but avoided whatever was gay and conspicuous. Paul would like to have heaped upon her everything he saw in the show windows, but her good sense kept him in check, while her good taste, aided by the best modistes in Paris, made her one of the most becomingly dressed ladies at the table d’hôte, where so much fashion was displayed. Doucet’s last effort, though plain, was a great success, and never had Elithe been more beautiful than when she was waiting for Paul’s return from Munroe’s and wondering if he would bring any letters. He had found several, one of which made him for a time forget all the rest.
It was from Clarice, mailed at Rome and directed to Boston, and covered with postmarks, having crossed the ocean twice in quest of him and finding him at last in Paris with his bride, of whose existence Clarice had no knowledge. If she had ever thought to secure Ralph Fenner she had failed. After supposing her married to Paul, he had heard with surprise that the marriage was given up and why, and that Mrs. Percy and Clarice were coming to London. Wishing to return some of their attentions to him when he was in America, he had invited them to Elm Park, his brother’s residence and for the time being his home. Everything which could be done to make their stay agreeable was done. Clarice was so much pleased with life, as she saw it in a first-class English home, and the people she met there, that she would most likely have accepted Ralph had he offered himself to her and taken the chance of his brother’s keeping them at Elm Park. But Ralph was too wise to do that. He admired Clarice, and was very attentive to her, but could not afford to marry her, and she left England a disappointed woman. As she had but few correspondents and was constantly moving from place to place, she did not hear of Paul’s acquittal until she reached Florence, some time in February. There she found a letter from a friend in Washington and a paper containing full particulars of the second trial and acquittal and the attention heaped upon Paul by way of atonement for the injustice done him. He was in Southern California with his father and mother, the paper said, adding that the family talked of going to Japan and from there home through Europe the following summer. Now that she knew Paul was innocent of killing her brother, the disgrace of his having been tried for it did not seem an insurmountable obstacle to an alliance with him, and as time went on she found herself longing for a reestablishment of their old relations and wishing he would write to her. That he would do so eventually she had no doubt. Men like him never love but once, she reasoned, and he had loved her, and by and by he would write to her, or she would meet him somewhere in Europe on his way from Japan. But he did not write, nor did she meet him, nor see his name in the American Register, or on the books of any hotel where she stopped, and she began to long more and more for some news of him and to think she had never loved him as much as she did now, when he might be lost to her. Their stay abroad was prolonged into the second year, and she heard nothing of him except that he was still in California, and that the Ralston House in Oak City and the Boston house on Commonwealth Avenue were closed. At last, when she could bear it no longer, she wrote him a letter, which, had he loved her still, would have thrilled him with ecstasy. But between the past and present there was a gulf in which he had buried all she ever had been to him so deep that it could not be resurrected had there been no Elithe.
“Poor Clarice. I hope she will never know I received this,” he said, tearing the letter in strips and burning them with a lighted match over the cuspidor.