Amorelle (20 page)

The bank trustee was laughing now, and Amorelle joined with him, though she was too bewildered to take it all in.

“There are other papers in the box. Perhaps you better see what they are before I leave,” said Mr. Aiken, “although I think these are all I need for the Pike case.”

Amorelle opened a long envelope and found it contained her father’s life insurance papers, and being interpreted by Mr. Aiken, she discovered that there was still another five thousand dollars that was due her beside the money Lemuel Pike had paid back. Ten thousand dollars! Her father had saved all that out of his salary and yet had been so generous to everybody. Everybody except himself. She recalled how careful he was about personal expenditures, how he would not even buy clothes for himself until his were almost shabby. The tears gathered in her eyes.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve found that, and it ought to be applied for at once,” said the lawyer. “If you’ll just give me those papers, I’ll take the necessary steps for you to secure it.”

There were some government bonds, a few hundred dollars’ worth, the deed to a little worthless property that had been taken over in payment for a debt, and nothing more except a letter from her father that he had written Amorelle a few weeks before his death. Precious letter! If she only could have had it for her comfort during the hard winter just past.

Mr. Aiken took his departure presently, and Amorelle, after reporting briefly to Miss Landon what they had found, went to her room to read her father’s letter.

There was so much in that letter. She was amazed. When she read it the second time, and the third, she began to realize that it touched upon everything that had troubled her and perplexed her in the days that had followed his death. Yes, and in the whole winter. Here it had been stowed away in his desk all the time, full directions about how she should proceed, full details of his life insurance and everything financial. Advice that she had longed for! And he had even
told
her he was writing that letter, and yet she had so forgotten it that she hadn’t opened his desk to find out.

That afternoon when she told Miss Landon about it, that sweet saint replied with a far-away look in her eyes, “Isn’t that for all the world the way we do with our heavenly Father’s letter? He has filled it with instructions, advice, sympathy, comfort, love, everything we need, including promises to supply all our needs, and we just get so busy trying to work out our own little problems that we don’t take time to read it.”

Amorelle smiled over that that night as she remembered her day in the woods with Garrison and what he had said along those same lines.

She took out her father’s letter again to read it over, and suddenly one paragraph stood out from all the rest and claimed her attention.

Ah! Her father would never have favored her marriage with George. And she felt absolutely sure that, were he here this minute, he would say she must break with him at once, for she remembered his oft-repeated saying: “A bad promise is better broken than kept.”

T
he season was much more advanced here in Glenellen than in the west. For three days Amorelle basked in the quiet joy of Aunt Lavinia’s home, sitting beside the dear invalid while she was awake and able to talk with her; hovering around the old nurse, Bonny, in the kitchen; sitting on the side porch behind the lilacs, shelling peas or just looking into the sweet, shimmering beauty of the little old-fashioned garden of pinks, phlox, and verbenas, with delphiniums and white Canterbury bells like tall steeples, and a bank of purple-and-gold pansies at the end of the porch. There were many bees and butterflies hovering in the sunshine around the quaint old house, and a hummingbird had built its nest in the honeysuckle vine. It was beautiful just to sit and dream and know that this was her own real home. If only the dear old lady could stay, too, and share it with her. How she loved it all! How good God had been to give it to her and make her free from further dependence!

She had put away the thought of George and of everything else connected with her life in the city. It was as if she were sheltered here to rest and wait to see what God would tell her to do.

Then on the fifth morning, as if a hand had been laid upon her, she awoke in the early dawn and immediately knew that she was to arise and write that letter to George. It was as clear as if she had received a direction from above, and she obeyed without hesitation. She had no need even to search for words. They were there, ready for her pen, waiting in the pearl-dewiness of the morning.

After Amorelle had sent off the letter and the ring, she went around the house singing like a bird. Somehow it seemed that she had a new lease on life. The very air seemed sweeter, the day more bright. Aunt Lavinia, from her couch, watched her and smiled.

Three days later came a reply from George, written on business stationery.

When Amorelle read this letter, the color flew into her cheeks and her eyes grew hard and bright. Around her gentle, yielding lips that had worn patient lines so long, a firm determination grew. Then her face broke into a wondering smile. She let the letter drop to the floor and slipped down to her knees beside her chair.

“Father,” she whispered, “I thank You for showing me.” Then she arose and wrote with swift pen:

With a quick glance at her watch, Amorelle took both letters and hurried down to Miss Landon.

“Aunt Lavinia, please read these letters and see if you think George will understand now,” she said, handing out the letters.

The old lady began to read, sniffing indignantly as she progressed and fairly sizzling with indignation as she finished.

“What a little pig of a soul that man must have!” she snorted.

But as she read Amorelle’s answer, amused satisfaction came upon her face.

“No, child,” she said with a twinkle, as she handed the letters back, “that man will never understand you because he isn’t capable of doing so. He isn’t big enough. But I think it will astonish him, and I certainly would like to be a fly on the wall when he reads it. You needn’t worry any about that man’s affections; he hasn’t any, or if he has any, the seat of them is in his pocketbook. If he had cared the least little mite about the real you, he would have been down here on the first train. He would at least have telephoned or telegraphed. But no, I suspect that would have cost too much. Well Amorelle, child, run to the post office. You’ve just time to get this in the noon mail. I’m curious to see what the poor creature will do next.”

Amorelle cast a frightened glance at her old friend.

“Do? You think he’ll do anything
more
, do you?”

Miss Landon laughed.

“I don’t think he’s even begun yet. He evidently considers you so thoroughly his that nothing you say will matter. Wait till he really finds out that you mean it. Run along quick, child, or you’ll miss the mail.”

Amorelle hurried down the pleasant village street with a song in her heart. Somehow life had suddenly become good to live. She pushed the letter into the little post office window and then went over to the bank to tell them she would be ready to begin her work the next day.

The morning seemed to be pulsing in golden waves through her heart and making her feet move in rhythmic measure, as if some music of the spheres were directing all her movements. As she came in from the sunshine and stood in the door of the old lady’s room, her hair seemed to be a halo around her face, and her eyes had taken on a starriness that made her very beautiful. Miss Landon, watching her, rejoiced in the sweet young life that had come to be with her in her last days. It was almost like having a daughter of her own.

Acting on her old friend’s advice, Amorelle wrote to her uncle at his office a breezy, loving letter, thanking him for all he had done for her, telling him of Miss Landon’s condition, saying she decided to stay with her while she lived and had taken a position in the Glenellen bank, which would enable her to be independent. She thanked him again for his kindness when she left and added at the end, “I think you may be glad to know I have broken my engagement with George.”

Then she wrote a brief little note to her aunt.

She read this letter over carefully, wondering whether she had made it as pleasant as she possibly could, hoping that none of her bitterness of soul had crept in, and feeling no ill will for the days and nights of loneliness she had endured in her aunt’s house.

It was like cutting the last tie that bound her to another life when she went down to mail those letters, and her heart was filled with what was almost exultation as she dropped them into the box, although she gave a little, wistful, lingering, affectionate touch to Uncle Enoch’s, for the old man who had given her so much kindness as he had been allowed to give.

She never dreamed what a breeze she was stirring up back in the West.

Promptly as the mail could carry, came a letter from Aunt Clara: