Miss Bright is making a long pause. Her large, rough face is heavy and sorrowful. She has quite forgotten her good news for the moment, has forgotten her friend kneeling beside her, has forgotten all save the memory of the sorrow which seemed to have terminated all of joy the world held for her. Hazel steals a gentle arm round the bowed neck, and kisses the worn, absent face as softly and soothingly as though it were some beautiful child's. The touch recalls the wandering thoughts, Brightie clasps the hand that she is holding in her own more tightly, and goes on:—
"Well, to be sure, and I haven't told you the news after all, dearie! It is that Tom has come back. He has made a great deal of money, and got quite reformed and come back. And he has bought back the old house, and now has just found out my address and wants me to go down and live with him; wants me to forgive him, he says, and let him be a comfort to me. I have, of course, nothing to forgive, except for Janie's sake."
"Oh, Brightie, what good, good news it is! I am so very glad. You will at last have some rest, and not be obliged to try your eyes over that fine sewing, and be taken proper care of, and have all sorts of nice things. I am so glad! How soon can you go, dear?—to-morrow? I should like you to go to-morrow."
Hazel began very bravely, went on unsteadily, and finally ended by laying her head down on Brightie's broad shoulder, fairly sobbing.
"I should like you to go to-morrow! Why, Hazel, Hazel, my tender-hearted little pet, are you crying, then? Because you are sure I am not going to-morrow? Neither to-morrow nor any other time. Don't you know I could not leave you without a friend in this great, careless world?"
Brightie's words are news to herself as she speaks them. She had not considered the possibility of such a thing before. Here was the longed-for home open to her, waiting to receive her again. Her one relation, her own nephew, the same merry-faced Tom of old, dear days, writing to her begging her to show her forgiveness and go to him to be cherished all the days of her life. And all this must be foregone—renounced. She must give it all up, and when Tom comes in two days, as he said he should, to fetch her, she must withstand his pleading and send him back alone, and never see the sweet garden and fresh sea again.
It is one of the cruellest days of bitter March weather. Yet early in the day after the talk with Brightie, Hazel goes out in spite of the cutting east wind. Wearily she drags herself about, making one more effort to dispose of the manuscript of a story she has written, which was ignominiously returned to her as useless this morning. Hour after hour she struggles on in a kind of desperation, trying every possible chance of getting rid of her laborious production. She is fully assured in her own mind that she will have no opportunity of getting out of doors, even to try and dispose of it, after to-day for many days to come. Her growing illness makes that certain. But all efforts are worse than useless. It is nearing seven o'clock, and growing quite dark, when she reaches Union-square and stumbles up those endless stairs at length. For the first two flights the stairs are comparatively broad and handsome, and they are thickly carpeted; but above they grow narrow and bare and steep. As she begins to ascend, Hazel meets a lady in a rich dress. There are preparations, too, in the lower rooms, which betoken the commencement of some festivity. Hazel is heartsick and footsore, and these slight matters intensify her loneliness and sadness, till as she enters her own dark, desolate room her swelling heart finds vent in a stifled sob. There has been no scarcity of trouble in the five-and-twenty years of Hazel Deane's life.
And now the trouble that weighs upon her this dreary night is the rejection all round of the treasured writing, offered everywhere with diffidence and hope, received back always with mortification and despair. It is now finally flung aside. Then there is the trouble of losing her friend—her one friend, Miss Bright—for Hazel's delicate little body holds a resolute mind and strong will, and she is determined her friend shall not forego the so long needed rest on her account.
The moon is looking in through the uncurtained window, looking into the cold, bare room, where only two or three cinders glow a dull red in the grate. Beside it Hazel leans back in her chair, musing bitterly on all the gladness gone out of her life. "I am one of those who have none to love them," she thinks, and the tears gather in her eyes again.
She is quoting from Mr. Ruskin's "Queen's Gardens," the book which enabled her to bear patiently a long delay at one of the publishers she had tried that day. She had found it lying upon the table beside her as she waited, and picking it up, had become engrossed in it.