REKA DOM. (continued 2)

"Circumstances did not altogether favour my resolution. I scrupulously avoided so much as a look at Mr. Smith, though in some mysterious way I became conscious that he and my father were having a long tête-à-tête conversation in a corner. I devoted myself exclusively to the rector's wife till supper, and then I carefully chose the opposite side of the table to that to which the merchant seemed to be going. But when I was fairly seated, for some reason he gave up his place to someone else, and when it was impossible for me to change my seat, he took the one next to it. It was provoking, but I steadily resisted his attempts to talk, and kept my face as much averted as possible. Once or twice he helped me to something on the table, but I barely thanked him, and never lifted my eyes to his face. I could not, however, avoid seeing the hand that helped me, and idly noticing a ring that I had remarked before, when he was playing. It was a fine blue stone, a lapis lazuli, curiously and artistically set. 'Rich merchants can afford such baubles!' I thought. It was very tasteful, however, and did not look like English work. There was something engraven upon it, which did not look like English either. Was it Greek? I glanced at it with some curiosity, for it reminded me of—but that was nonsense, a fancy that came because the subject was in my mind. At this moment the hand and ring were moved close to me and I looked again.

"It was not a fancy. There was no mistaking the inscription this time. I had learnt it too thoroughly—written it too often—loved it too well—it was Reka Dom.

"For a moment I sat in blind astonishment. Then the truth suddenly flashed upon me. The merchant's name was the name of our predecessors at Reka Dom. True, it was such a common one that I had met more than one family of Smiths since then without dreaming of any connection between them and the River House. And yet, of course, it was there that the Misses Brooke had known him. Before our time. Which could he be? He was too young to be the father, and there was no John among the little Russians—unless, yes, it was the English version of one of the Russian names—and this was Ivan.

"It crowned my misfortunes. What would Miss Martha say if she knew what had been the subject of our conversation? Would that that excellent rule which had been the guide of her young ladyhood had curtailed the conversational propensities of mine! I thought of the three degrees of intimacy with a shudder. Why had we not been satisfied with discussing the merits of the song?

"We had gone on to talk of him and his homes, and as if that were not enough, had proceeded further to me and mine. I got red as I sat listening to some civil chat from Mr. Ward the curate (eminently in the most innocent stage of the first degree), and trying to recall what we had not spoken of in connection with that Home which had been so beloved of both of us, and that Ivan whose lilies I had tended for years.

"I grew nearly frantic as I thought that he must think that I had known who he was, and wildly indignant with the fancy for small mysteries which had kept Miss Brooke from telling us whom we were going to meet.

"At last the evening came to an end. I was cloaking myself in the hall when the merchant came up and offered his help, which I declined. But he did not go, and stood so that I could not help seeing a distressed look in his eyes, and the nervous way in which he was turning the blue ring upon his finger.

"'I have so wanted to speak to you again,' he said. 'I wanted to say—'

"But at this moment I caught Miss Martha's eye in the parlour doorway, and, dropping a hasty curtsey, I ran to my father.

"'A very nice young fellow,' my father observed, as I took his arm outside; 'a superior, sensible, well informed gentleman, such as you don't meet with every day.'

"I felt quite unequal to answering the remark, and he went on:

"'What funny little ways your old friends have, my dear, to be sure. Considering how few strangers come to the place, it would have been natural for them to tell us all about the one they asked us to meet; and as they had known both him and us, as tenants of Reka Dom, it was doubly natural that they should speak of him to us, and of us to him. But he told me that we were just the people present of whom he had not heard a word. He seems both fond of them and to appreciate their little oddities. He told me he remembers, as a boy, that they never would call him Ivan, which is as much his name as any by which a man was ever baptized. They thought it might give him a tendency to affectation to bear so singular a name in England. They always called him John, and keep up the discipline still. When he arrived yesterday they expressed themselves highly satisfied with the general improvement in him, and he said he could hardly help laughing as Miss Martha added, 'And you seem to have quite shaken off that little habit of affectation which—you'll excuse me, dear John—you had as a boy.' He says that, to the best of his belief, his only approach to affectation consisted in his being rather absent and ungainly, and in a strong aversion from Mr. Brooke.'

"'Did the old gentleman wear that frightful shade in his time?' I asked.

"'Not always,' he says, 'but he looked worse without it. He told me a good deal about him that I had never heard. He remembered hearing it spoken of as a boy. It appears that the brother was very wild and extravagant in his youth; drank, too, I fancy, and gave his poor sisters a world of trouble, after breaking the heart of the widowed mother who had spoiled him. When she died the sisters lived together, and never faltered in their efforts to save him—never shut their doors against him when he would return—and paid his debts over and over again. He spent all his own fortune, and most of theirs, besides being the means of breaking off comfortable marriages for both. Mr. Smith thinks that a long illness checked his career, and eventually he reformed.'

"'I hope he was grateful to his poor sisters,' I said.

"'One naturally thinks that he must have been so, but Smith's remark was very just. He said, "I fancy he was both penitent and grateful as far as he was able, but I believe he had been too long accustomed to their unqualified self-sacrifice to feel it very sensitively!" And I believe he is right. Such men not seldom reform in conduct if they live long enough, but few eyes that have been blinded by years of selfishness are opened to see clearly in this world.'

"'It ought to make one very tender with the good ladies' little weaknesses,' I said, self-reproachfully; and I walked home in a more peaceful state of mind. I forgave poor Miss Martha; also I was secretly satisfied that my father had found the merchant's conversation attractive. It seemed to give me some excuse for my breach of Miss Peckham's golden rule. Moreover, little troubles and offences which seemed mountains at Bellevue Cottage were apt to dwindle into very surmountable molehills with my larger-minded parents. I was comparatively at ease again. My father had evidently seen nothing unusual in my conduct, so I hoped that it had not been conspicuous. Possibly I might never meet Mr. Smith any more. I rather hoped not. Life is long, and the world wide, and it is sometimes possible to lose sight of people with whom one has disagreeable associations. And then it was a wholesome lesson for the future.

"'And what was the old gentleman like?' was Fatima's first question, when I came upstairs. I had just been talking of Mr. Brooke, and no other old gentleman occurred to my memory at that moment.

"'What old gentleman?' I asked dreamily.

"'Miss Martha's old gentleman, the merchant—wasn't he there, after all?'

"I blushed at my stupidity, and at a certain feeling of guiltiness in connection with the person alluded to.

"'Oh, yes, he was there,' I answered; 'but he is not an old gentleman.'

"'What is he, then?' Fatima asked, curiously.

"It is undoubtedly a luxury to be the bearer of a piece of startling intelligence, and it is well not to spoil the enjoyment of it by over haste. I finished unsnapping my necklace, and said, very deliberately—

"'He is one of the little Russians.'

"Fatima's wit jumped more quickly than mine had done. It was she who added—

"'Then he is Ivan.'

"My hopes in reference to Mr. Smith were disappointed. I had not seen the last of him. My mother was at this time from home, and I was housekeeper in her absence. It was on the morning following the Bellevue tea-party that my father said to me—

"'Mr. Smith is coming up to refer to a book of mine to-day, my dear; and I asked him to stay to dinner. I suppose it will be convenient?'

"I said, 'Certainly, sir.'

"I could plead no domestic inconvenience; but I thought that Mr. Smith might have gone quietly back to London by the early coach, and spared me the agitation which the prospect of seeing him again undoubtedly excited. He came, however. It was the first visit, but by no means the last; and he lingered in the town, greatly to my father's satisfaction (who had taken a strong fancy for him), but not, apparently, to that of the Misses Brooke.

"As I afterwards found the clue to the somewhat strange conduct of our old friends at this time, I may as well briefly state how it was.

"When the merchant first announced to them his proposed business visit to the town, and his intention of calling on them, the good ladies (in their affection for me, and having a high opinion of him) planned a kindly little romance of which he and I were to be the hero and heroine, and which was to end in our happy marriage. With this view they arranged for our meeting at the tea-party, and avoided all mention of each to the other, that we might meet in the (so to speak) incidental way characteristic of real love stories. With that suspiciousness of people in general, and of young people in particular, which haunted Miss Martha, she attributed my ready acceptance of the invitation to my having heard of Mr. Smith's arrival, and to the unusual attraction of an eligible gentleman at the tea-party. Little did she guess the benevolent plans which on my part I had formed for her, and which the merchant's youthful appearance had dashed to the ground.

"It is sometimes the case, my dear Ida, that people who make these kind plans for their friends, become dissatisfied with the success of their arrangements if they themselves cease to be the good genii of the plot. If, that is, matters seem likely to fall out as they wish, but without their assistance. It was so with the Misses Brooke, and especially with Miss Martha. Fully aware of the end which she in her own mind proposed to our acquaintance, my long conversation with the merchant struck her as an indelicate readiness to accept attentions which had matrimony in her perspective, and which she had designed to be the gradual result of sundry well-chaperoned and studiously incidental interviews at the Cottage. And when, so far from thankfully accepting these incidental meetings, the merchant took upon himself to become an almost daily visitor at our house, and delayed his return to London far beyond the time proposed for his departure, the good lady's view underwent a decided change. It was 'a pity' that a young man like John Smith should neglect his business. It was also 'a pity' that dear Mary's mother was not at home. And when I took occasion casually to allude to the fact that Mr. Smith's visits were paid to my father, and (with the exception of an occasional meal) were passed in the study amongst German pamphlets, my statement was met by kind, incredulous smiles, and supplemented with general and somewhat irritating observations on the proper line of conduct for young ladies at certain crises of life. Nothing could be kinder than Miss Martha's intentions, and her advice might have been a still greater kindness if she would have spoken straight-forwardly, and believed what I said. As it was, I left off going to Bellevue Cottage, and ardently wished that the merchant would go back to his merchandise, and leave our quiet little town to its own dull peace.

"Sometimes I thought of the full-grown man whose intelligent face, and the faintly foreign accent of whose voice were now familiar in our home—the busy merchant, the polite and agreeable gentleman. And then I thought of the Ivan I seemed to have known so much better so long ago! The pale boy wandering by the water—reading in the swing—dead by that other river—buried beneath the lilies. Oh! why had he lived to come back in this new form to trouble me?

"One day he came to my father as usual, and I took the opportunity to call on my old friends. I felt ashamed of having neglected them, and as I knew that Mr. Smith was at our house, I could not be suspected of having hoped to meet him at theirs. But I called at an unfortunate moment. Miss Martha had just made up her mind that in the absence of my mother, and the absentness of my father, it was the duty of old friends like herself to give me a little friendly counsel. As she took a great deal of credit for being 'quite candid, my dear,' and quietly, but persistently refused to give me credit for the same virtue, I was too much irritated to appreciate the kindness which led her to undertake the task of interference in so delicate a matter; and found her remarks far from palatable. In the midst of them the merchant was announced.

"If I could have looked innocent it would have done me no good. As it was, I believe I looked very guilty. After sitting for a few minutes longer I got up to go, when to my horror the merchant rose also. The old ladies made no effort to detain him, but Miss Martha's face spoke volumes as we left the house. Half mad with vexation, I could hardly help asking him why he was stupid enough to come away just at the moment I had chosen for leaving; but he forestalled the inquiry by a voluntary explanation. He wished to speak to me. He had something to say.

"When he had said it, and had asked me to marry him, my cup was full. I refused him with a vehemence which must have surprised him, modest as he was, and rushed wildly home.

"For the next few days I led a life of anything but comfort. First as to Ivan. My impetuous refusal did not satisfy him, and he wrote me a letter over which I shed bitter tears of indescribable feeling.

"Then as to my father. The whole affair took him by surprise. He was astonished, and very much put out, especially as my mother was away. So far from its having been, as with the Misses Brooke, the first thing to occur to him, he repeatedly and emphatically declared that it was the very last thing he should have expected. He could neither imagine what had made the merchant think of proposing to me, nor what had made me so ready to refuse him. Then they were in the very middle of a crabbed pamphlet, in which Ivan's superior knowledge of German had been invaluable. It was most inconvenient.

"'Why didn't I like poor Ivan?'

"Ah, my child, did I not like him!

"'Then why was I so cross to him?'

"Indeed, Ida, I think the old ladies' 'ways' were chiefly to blame for this. Their well-meant but disastrous ways of making you feel that you were doing wrong, or in the wrong, over matters the most straight-forward and natural. But I was safe under the wing of my mother, before I saw Ivan again; and—many as were the years he and I were permitted to spend together—I think I may truthfully say that I was never cross to him any more.

"'What did he say in that letter that made me cry?'

"He asked to be allowed to make himself better known to me, before I sent him quite away. And this developed an ingenious notion in my father's brain, that no better opportunity could, from every point of view, be found for this, than that I should be allowed to sit with them in the study whilst he and Ivan went on with the German pamphlet.

"The next call I paid at Bellevue Cottage was to announce my engagement, and I had some doubt of the reception my news might meet with. But I had no kinder or more loving congratulations than those of the two sisters. Small allusion was made to bygones. But when Miss Martha murmured in my ear—

"'You'll forgive my little fussiness and over-anxiety, dear Mary. One would be glad to guard one's young friends from some of the difficulties and disappointments one has known oneself—' I thought of the past life of the sisters, and returned her kiss with tenderness. Doubtless she had feared that the merchant might be trifling with my feelings, and that a thousand other ills might happen when the little love affair was no longer under her careful management. But all ending well, was well; and not even the Bellevue cats were more petted by the old ladies than we two were in our brief and sunny betrothal.

"Sunny, although for the most part it was winter time. When we would sit by the fireside in the privileged idleness of lovers, sometimes at home, sometimes in the Cottage parlour; and Ivan would tell of the Russian Reka Dom, and of all the winter beauties and pleasures of that other river which was for months a frozen highway, with gay sleighs flying, jingling over the snow roads, and peasants wrapped in sheepskin crossing from the country to market in the town. How dogs and children rolled together in snow so dry from intense cold that it hardly wet them more than sand. And how the river closed, and when it opened, with all the local traditions connected with these events; and of the stratagems resorted to to keep Jack Frost out of the houses, and of the stores laid up against the siege of the Winter King.

"But through the most interesting of his narratives Fatima's hands were never idle. She seemed to have concentrated all her love for me into those beautiful taper fingers, which laboured ceaselessly in exquisite needlework on my wedding clothes.

"And when the lilies of the valley were next in blossom, Ivan and I were married.

"The blue-stoned ring was cut down to fit my finger, and was, by my desire, my betrothal ring, and I gave Ivan another instead of it. Inside his was engraven the inscription we had cut upon his tombstone at Reka Dom,—

"'TO IVAN.'"

It was a long story, and Nurse had been waiting some little time in the old lady's kitchen when it came to an end.

"And is Ivan—?" Ida hesitatingly began.

"Dead. Many years since, my child," said the little old lady; "you need not be afraid to speak of him, my dear. All that is past. We used to hope that we should neither of us long outlive the other, but God willed it otherwise. It was very bitter at first, but it is different now. The days and hours that once seemed to widen our separation are now fast bringing us together again."

"Was he about papa's age when he died?" Ida gently asked.

"He was older than your father can have been, my love, I think. He was a more than middle-aged man. He died of fever. It was in London, but in his delirium he fancied that the river was running by the windows, and when I bathed his head he believed that the cooling drops were from the waters of his old home.'

"Didn't he know you?" Ida asked, with sudden sympathy.

"He knew the touch of my hands always, my dear. It was my greatest comfort. That, and the short time of perfect reason before he sank to rest. We had been married thirty years, and I had worn my silver wedding-ring with even more pride than the golden one. There have been lilies on the grave of the true Ivan for half that time, and will be, perhaps, for yet a little while, till I also am laid beneath them.

"So ends the story, my dear," the little old lady added, after a pause.

"I should like to know what became of the old landlord, please," Ida said.

"If you will ask an old woman like me the further history of the people she knew in her youth," said Mrs. Overtheway, smiling, "you must expect to hear of deaths. Of course he is dead many a long year since. We became very intimate with him whilst we were his tenants, and, I believe, cheered the close of his life. He and my father were fast friends, but it was to my mother that he became especially devoted. He said she was an exception to her sex, which from his point of view was a high compliment. He had unbounded confidence in her judgment, and under her influence, eventually modified many of his peculiar habits. She persuaded him to allot a very moderate sum to housekeeping expenses, and to indulge in the economical luxury of a trustworthy servant. He consented to take into use a good suit of clothes which he possessed, and in these the old man was wont at last to accompany us to church, and to eat his Sunday dinner with us afterwards. I do not think he was an illiberal man at heart, but he had been very poor in his youth—('So poor, ma'am,' he said one day to my mother, 'that I could not live with honour and decency in the estate of a gentleman. I did not live. I starved—and bought books,')—and he seemed unable to shake off the pinching necessity of years. A wealthy uncle who had refused to help him whilst he lived, bequeathed all his money to him when he died. But when late in life the nephew became rich, habits of parsimony were a second nature, and seemed to have grown chronic and exaggerated under the novel anxieties of wealth. He still 'starved—and bought books.' During the last years of his life he consulted my mother (and, I fancy, other people also) on the merits of various public charities in the place and elsewhere; so that we were not astonished after his death to learn from his will that he had divided a large part of his fortune amongst charitable institutions. With the exception of a few trifling legacies to friends, the rest of his money was divided in equal and moderate bequests to relatives. He left some valuable books to my father, and the bulk of his library to the city where he was born."

"Was your mother with him when he died?" Ida asked.

"She was, my dear. But, sadly enough, only at the very last. We were at the seaside when he was seized by his last illness, and no one told us, for indeed it is probable that few people knew. At last a letter from the servant announced that he was dying, and had been most anxious to see my mother, and she hastened home. The servant seemed relieved by her arrival, for the old gentleman was not altogether an easy patient to nurse. He laughed at the doctor, she said, and wouldn't touch a drop of his medicine, but otherwise was as patient as a sick gentleman could be, and sat reading his Bible all the day long. It was on the bed when my mother found him, but his eyes were dimming fast. He held out his hands to my mother, and as she bent over him said something of which she could only catch three words—'the true riches.' He never spoke again."

"Poor man?" said Ida: "I think he was very nice. What became of his cat?"

"Dead—dead—dead!" said the little old lady; "Ida, my child, I will answer no more questions."

"One more, please," said Ida! "where is that dear, dear Fatima?"

"No, my child, no! Nothing more about her. Dear, dear Fatima, indeed! And yet I will just tell you that she married, and that her husband (older even than I am, and very deaf) is living still. He and I are very fond of each other, though, having been a handsome man he is sensitive about his personal appearance, and will not use a trumpet, which I consider weak. But we get on very well. He smells my flowers, and smiles and nods to me, and says something in a voice so low that I can't hear it; and I stick a posy in his buttonhole, and smile and nod to him, and say something in a voice so loud that he can't hear it; and so we go on. One day in each year we always spend together, and go to church. The first of November."

"That is—?" said Ida.

"The Feast of All Saints, my child."

"Won't you tell me any more?" Ida asked.

"No, my dear. Not now, at any rate. Remember I am old, and have outlived almost all of those I loved in my youth. It is right and natural that death should be sad in your eyes, my child, and I will not make a tragedy of the story of Reka Dom.

"Then your real name," said Ida, as she gave the old lady a farewell kiss, "is—"

"Mary Smith, my dear," said Mrs. Overtheway.

Next morning the little old lady went to church as usual, and Ida was at the window when she returned. When the child had seen her old friend into the house she still kept her place, for the postman was coming down the street, and it was amusing to watch him from door to door, and to see how large a bundle of letters he delivered at each. At Mrs. Overtheway's he delivered one, a big one, and an odd curiosity about this letter took possession of Ida. She wished she knew what it was about, and from whom it came, though, on the face of it, it was not likely she would be much the wiser if she did. She was still at the window when the door of the opposite house was opened, and the little old lady came hurriedly out. She had only her cap upon her head, and she held an open letter in her hand; the letter, it was evident. When she reached the little green gate she seemed to recollect herself, and, putting her hand to her head, went back into the house. Ida waited anxiously to see if she would come out again, and presently she appeared, this time in her bonnet, but still with the letter in her hand. She crossed the street, and seemed to be coming to the house. Then the bell rang, and in she came. Ida's curiosity became intense, and was not lessened by the fact that the little old lady did not come to her, but stayed below talking with some one. The old gentleman had not returned, so it must be Nurse.

At last the conversation came to an end, and Mrs. Overtheway came upstairs.

She kissed Ida very tenderly, and inquired after her health; but though she seemed more affectionate than usual, Ida felt persuaded that something was the matter. She drew a chair to the fire, and the old lady sat down, saying—

"May I stay a little with you, my dear?"

"Oh, thank you?" said Ida, and put a footstool for the old lady's feet.

Mrs. Overtheway stroked her head tenderly for some time in silence, and then said, in a gentle voice—

"I have something to tell you, my dear."

"Another story?" Ida asked. "Oh, thank you, if it is another story."

The old lady was silent, but at last she said, as if to herself—

"Perhaps best so," and added: "yes, my love, I will tell you a story."

Ida thanked her warmly, and another pause ensued.

"I hardly know where to begin, or what to tell you of this story," said the little old lady at last, seeming to falter for the first time in her Scharazad-like powers of narration.

"Let it be about a Home, please; if you can," said Ida.

"A home!" said the old lady, and strangely enough, she seemed more agitated than when she had spoken of Reka Dom—"It should have begun with a broken home, but it shall not. It should end with a united home, God willing. A home! I must begin with a far-away one, a strange one, on the summit of high cliffs, the home of fearless, powerful creatures, white-winged like angels."

"It's a fairy tale," said Ida.

"No, my child, it is true."

"It sounds like a fairy tale," Ida said.

"It shall be a tale of that description, if you like," said the old lady, after a pause, "but, as I said, the main incidents are true."

"And the white-winged creatures?" Ida asked. "Were they fairies?"

"No, my love; birds. But if to see snowy albatrosses with their huge white wings wheeling in circles about a vessel sailing in mid ocean be anything like what I have read of and heard described, fairyland could hardly show anything more beautiful and impressive."

"Do they fly near ships, then?" Ida asked.

"Yes, my child. I remember my husband describing them to me as he had once seen them in southern seas. He said that when he saw them, great, white, and majestic, holding no intercourse with anyone on board the ship, and yet spreading their wings above her day and night for hundreds of miles over the ocean, with folded feet, the huge white pinions, except for an occasional flap, outstretched in steady sail, never resting, and seemingly never weary, they looked like guardian angels keeping watch over the crew."

"I wonder if they are sorry for the ships that go down?" said Ida, thoughtfully.

Mrs. Overtheway took her hand.

"Do you think it unkind in me to talk of ships, my love?" she asked.

"No, no, no!" Ida exclaimed, "I don't mind your talking about it. I wish I could talk to the birds that saw papa's ship go down, if there were any, and ask them how it was, and if he minded it much, and if he remembered me. I used to wish I had been with him, and one night I dreamed about it; but when the water touched me, I was frightened, and screamed, and woke; and then I was glad I hadn't been there, for perhaps he wouldn't have loved me so much if he had seen that I wasn't brave."

The little old lady kissed her tenderly.

"And now the story, please," said Ida, after a pause.

And Mrs. Overtheway began the following story: