More than a week passed, and Mr. Copley was steadily convalescent. He had not left his room yet, but he needed no longer the steady attendance of some one bound to minister to his wants. Dolly was expecting now every day to hear Mr. Shubrick say he must bid them good-bye; and she took herself a little to task for caring so much about it. What was Sandie Shubrick to her, that she should feel such a heart-sinking at the prospect of his departure? It was a very wonderful thing that he, Christina Thayer's Mr. Shubrick, should have come to help this little family in its need; it was very astonishing that he should be there even then, waiting on Dolly Copley's sick father; let her be satisfied with this so unexpected good, and bid him farewell as easily as she had bid him welcome. But Dolly could not. How could she?
she said to herself. And every time she saw Mr. Shubrick she feared lest the dreaded words would fall from his lips. So when he came to her one afternoon when she was sitting in the porch, her heart gave a throb of anticipation. However, he said nothing of going, but remarked how pretty the sloping ground looked, on the other side of the little river, with its giant trees and the sunlight streaming through the branches upon the greensward.
"It is very pretty," said Dolly. "The park is beautiful. You ought to see it"--_before you go_, she was on the point of saying, but did not say.
"Will you come with me, and show me what I ought to look at?"
"Now?" said Dolly.
"If it is not too warm for you. We might take it easily and keep in the shadow of the trees."
"Oh, it is not too warm," said Dolly; and she ran to fetch her garden hat.
It was not August now; the summer was past, yet the weather was fit for the height of summer. Warm, spicy, dry air, showing misty in the distance like a gossamer veil, and near by a still glow over everything. The two young people wandered over the bridge and slowly mounted the bank among the oaks and beeches, keeping in the shade as much as might be. There was a glorious play of shadow and sunlight all over the woodland; and the two went softly along, hardly disturbing the wild creatures that looked at them now and then. For the woods were full of life. They saw a hare cross an opening, and grey squirrels eyed them from the great oak branches overhead; and there was a soft hum of insects filling all the silence. It was not the time of day for the birds to be merry. Nor perhaps for the human creatures who slowly passed from tree to tree, avoiding the spaces of sunlight and summer glow. They were neither merry nor talked much.
"This is very noble," said Sandie at last.
"Were you ever in England before, Mr. Shubrick?"
"Yes."
"Then you have seen many of these fine places already, perhaps?"
"No, not many. My stay has been mostly in London; though I did run down a little into the country."
"People say we have nothing like this in America."
"True, I suppose," said Sandie. "We are too young a people, and we have had something else to do."
"It is like a dream, that anybody should have such a house and such a place as Brierley," Dolly went on. "There is nothing wanting that one can imagine, for beauty and dignity and delight of living and luxury of ease. It might be the Arabian Nights, or fairyland. You must see the house, with its lovely old carvings, and pictures, and old, old furniture; and the arms of the family that built it carved and painted everywhere, on doors and chairs and mantelpieces."
"Of the family that built it?" repeated Mr. Shubrick. "Not the family that owns it now?"
"No. You see their arms too, but the others are the oldest. And then it would take you hours to go through the gardens. There are different gardens; one, most exquisite, framed in with trees, and a fountain in the middle, and all the beds filled with rare plants. But I do not like anything about the place better than these trees and greensward."
"It must be a difficult thing," said Sandie meditatively, "to use it all for Christ."
Dolly was silent a while. "I don't see how it _could_ be used so," she said.
The other made no answer. They went slowly on and on, getting up to the higher ground and more level going, while the sun's rays coming a little more slant as the afternoon declined, gave an increasing picturesqueness to the scene. Mr. Shubrick had been for some time almost entirely silent, when Dolly proposed to stop and rest.
"One enjoys it better so," she said. "One has better leisure to look.
And I wanted to talk to you, besides."
Her companion was very willing, and they took their places under a great oak, on the swell of greensward at the foot of it. Ground and grass and moss were all dry. Dolly sat down and laid off her hat; however, the proposed "talk" did not seem to be ready, and she let Mr.
Shubrick wait.
"I wanted to ask you something," said she at last. "I have been wanting to ask you something for a good while."
There she stopped. She was not looking at him; she was taking care not to look at him; she was trying to regard Mr. Shubrick as a foreign abstraction. Seeing which, he began to look at her more persistently than hitherto.
"What is it?" he asked, with not a little curiosity.
"There is nobody else I can ask," Dolly went on; "and if you could give me the help I want, it would be a great thing for me."
"I will if I can."
The young man's eyes did not turn away now. And Dolly was an excessively pretty thing to look at; so taken up with her own thoughts that she was in no danger of finding out that she was an object of attention or perhaps admiration. Her companion perceived this, and indulged his eyes fearlessly. Dolly's fair, flushed face was thin with the work and the care of many weeks past; the traces of that were plain enough; yet it was delicately fair all the same, and perhaps more than ever, with the heightened spirituality of the expression. The writing on her features, of love and purity, habitual self-devotion and self-forgetfulness, patience and sweetness, was so plain and so unconscious, that it made her a very rare subject of contemplation, and, as her companion thought, extremely lovely. Her attitude spoke the same unconsciousness; her dress was of the simplest description; her brown hair was tossed into disorder; but dress and hair and attitude alike were deliciously graceful, with that mingling of characteristics of child and woman which was peculiar to Dolly. Lieutenant Shubrick was familiar with a very diverse type of womanly charms in the shape of his long-betrothed Miss Thayer. The comparison, or contrast, might be interesting; at any rate, any one who had eyes to read this type before him needed no contrast to make it delightful; and probably Mr. Shubrick had such eyes. He was quite silent, leaving Dolly to choose her time and her words at her own pleasure.
"I know you will," she said slowly, taking up his last words;--"you have already; but I am a bad learner. You know what you said, Mr.
Shubrick, the day you came, that evening when we were at supper,--about trusting, and not taking care?"
"Yes."
Dolly did not look at him, and went on. "I do not find that I can do it."
"Do what?"
"Lay down care. Quite lay it down."
"It is not easy," Mr. Shubrick admitted.
"Is it possible, always? I find I can trust pretty well when I can see at least a possible way out of difficulties; but when the way seems all shut up, and no opening anywhere,--then--I do not quite lay down care.
How can I?"
"There is only one thing that can make it possible."
"I know--you told me; but how then can I get that? I must be very far from the knowledge of Christ--if _that_ is what is wanting."
Dolly's eyes filled with tears.
"No," said Mr. Shubrick gently, "but perhaps it does follow, that you have not enough of that knowledge."
"Of course. And how shall I get it? I can trust when I see some light, but when I can see none, I am afraid."
"If I promised to take you home, I mean, to America, by ways known to me but unknown to you, could you trust me and take the steps I bade you."
I am not justifying Mr. Shubrick. This was a kind of tentative speech for his own satisfaction; but he made it, watching for Dolly's answer the while. It came without hesitation.
"Yes," she said. "I should believe you, if you told me so."
"Yet in that case you would follow me blindly."
"Yes."
"Seeing no light."
"Yes. But then I know you enough to know that you would not promise what you would not do."
"Thank you. This is by way of illustration. You would not be afraid?"