When the snow went, operations began, and the stock rose higher, with inquiries for it from distant places, which sent the price bounding still higher and higher still.
CHAPTER VIII.
[THE TIE OF KINDRED].
In those days--the days of Judith's visit--George Selby and his wife were always punctual in coming down to breakfast. It was their hour for undisturbed conversation and intercourse. The guests, unaccustomed to city gaiety and late hours, were still in their soundest sleep, when the clang of the breakfast bell would wake them to the knowledge that another day had begun, and they must drag themselves from between the blankets. As for Susan, owing to neuralgia or laziness, she always breakfasted in bed.
"Mary!" cried George eagerly, when they met one morning, about a week after Betsey's first ball. "It is needless to ask you if you have slept well. You look refreshed and revived as I have not seen you look for years and years. I have noticed a change for the better going on for these last two weeks, and this morning it almost seems as if the Mary of long ago were coming back again. The clouds are lifting, dearest, I do believe, and we shall know peace and quiet happiness yet again. It is wearing on to afternoon with us both now, and ours has been a sad, black, rainy day; but at least we have been together through it all, and that has been more than sunshine. And now if the rain but cease and the clouds break up, we may be blessed with a peaceful sunset and the serene twilight of old age, with the clear, pure brightness far off behind the hills waiting for us till we enter the eternal day."
George was a worthy, gentle soul, with yearnings true, if not powerful, towards the spiritual and poetic. Who, condemned to hammer scales into stupid little girls without ear or fingers, through all the years, could be expected to carry more of the golden but unpractical gift into hum-drum middle life?
Mary laid her hand upon his shoulder, leant her head upon his cheek, and her eyes grew moist. They were grey-haired people both, those two, but people do not cease to be foolish, my dear young friends--if it is foolish, which I deny--when they cease to be young and handsome; that is, if they have not ceased to be good. Goodness is the salt, the preserver, the eternal spring, which can keep a heart from ever growing old. Egotism in youth, when all is fair, may shine and glitter like a dainty varnish, but it dulls and hardens and cracks as the years go on, and becomes but the sorriest item in the general break-up and decay, when that sets in. Love only is immortal, a giver of life to the failing forces, like the olive tree in the prophet's vision, which supplied in continuous flow the oil to furnish the perpetual lamp.
Mary leaned up against her husband in a mute caress, and then drawing a long breath, sat down at the table to pour out his coffee. She was not accustomed to put her feelings into words. She had suffered far too long and too terribly for that. Had she been a woman of emotional utterance, she must have exhausted her sorrow or her life, whichever of the two were the weaker, long ago; but voice was wanting. She had held her peace, had borne and lived and suffered, till those about her had trembled for her reason; trembled, and yet in pity, at times, had almost hoped for her the fearful anodyne of madness; but she was strong of body as well as mind, she agonized in silence and lived on.
She poured out her husband's coffee, and, handing it, met his eyes still fastened on her face in earnest, happy love. "Yes," she said, replying to his still unanswered observation, "I have had a long delicious sleep, without a dream, or only one short sweet fancy before I woke, as if our baby were lying in my arms, as she lay that very last morning before we lost her. Oh, George! The delightfulness of the sound oblivious sleep I have enjoyed of late! No one can conceive it who has not gone through all these weary years. I had forgotten what refreshing sleep was like. It was dreadful to me to lie down at night and give myself up to cruel horrible dreams. You know how constantly I have wakened with a cry--always the same bad dream, yet always with a cruel difference in the horrors. Always the child in danger or in pain, destruction in every fearful shape impending, and I unable to reach, incapable of protecting her. I have always felt that she was alive and needed my care, and how I have yearned and prayed to get to her, God only knows. And now, George, it seems to me that God must have heard, and taken pity on me. It is well with her now. I seem to feel it. She is with God I do believe, and perhaps He lets her spirit come down and comfort me. At least I am very sure now that she is happy, and I feel resigned as a Christian woman should, in a way I have never been able to feel before."
"The company of your sister Judith has done you good, Mary. I have been wrong, and judged her harshly, I am afraid. She is a good woman I believe now, for all her queerness, and I should have thought of having her to stay with you long ere now. A fellow is so unthinkingly selfish, and I suppose I judged of your feelings by my own. You are my all, you see, and I fear I grudge sharing you with others. But it was selfish in me to forget that you and she are sisters, and must have many feelings in common. In any case I owe her a debt now, and I shall never think a thought against her again as long as I live."