I CHAPTER XXIX. SOME DEAD FLOWERS. "No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet, "Dear as remembered kisses after death, Tennyson. KEPT my resolution for a few days. I only saw him from the window, going in and out. I walked much. I tried to keep myself from thought by busy occupation. Sophia had nothing to complain of in my devotion to her and her duties. I even found a day, once in the week, to go back to the hospital. But, all I succeeded in doing was wearing myself out, and leaving thought still master. Mr. Conyngham's cards and visitors increased; his goings out increased. Several days in the week Buttons brought down word he would not dine at home. On many nights I heard him come in after midnight. Had he found Naomi Emlyn yet? The papers were daily chronicling his doings. He was lecturing very often; sometimes he was gone for a day or two, lecturing in other cities. It was my constant hope the corner rooms would be rented. I even sent an advertisement of them to the papers. Many people came to see them, but they were not taken-now for this reason, now for that. I longed to see that temptation closed upon me; but, while those rooms were vacant, I was not sure of myself I might be tempted to go again into the room which I had declared to myself I never again would enter. About this time there appeared in all the papers an advertisement addressed to Sophia Atkinson. I took pains that it should never meet her eye. The servants did not read; but the lodgers-one or two of themnoticed the advertisement, and sent it to Miss Atkinson, with their compliments. I was fortunate enough to intercept the papers, and take them to my own room first; and so Mr. Hardinge's efforts for his client were not crowned with much success. His detective, also, I had the good fortune to see in the hall, as I came in one day, and to throw completely off the track. I convinced him that this Atkinson was a very different one from the Atkinson whom he pursued. By a fortunate mistake, her residence, in the directory, was put down as the number of the house on the street, and not the house on the avenue. It was also put in, S. Atkinson, and not Sophia Atkinson. So Sophia nursed her rheumatism up-stairs, and Mr. Conyngham, unsuspected, kept his rooms below. One day, it was a rainy, in-door day, I had had less possibility of occupation than usual, and had taken out my water colors. There was an unfinished sketch of a bit of the South Berwick beach, having for background an opening in the dunes, and a distant glimpse of green meadows and purple hills beyond. I finished it; it was a characteristic view; it seemed to me no one could claim it for any other spot on earth. A sudden impulse seized me. I scorned my resolution; the corner parlor door stood open as I went up-stairs to my room, with the picture in my hand. I pushed through the door; in another minute I was in the forbidden rooms. I had forgotten to say, that over the corner where stood a little table with cigars and ash-stand, I had hung an engraving, and under it, a small and insignificant photograph of some favorite picture, I can't recollect at this moment what. These two had hung low, and I had, in other unconventional places, put one or The walls were rather dark, and they had a two more. good effect. I hastily took out the photograph from its frame, and put in its place the little water color I had just finished, and hung it exactly as it had hung before. Why did I do it? It would be hard to say. It might never attract his notice. It might even be that he would look at it and never see a suggestion of the spot I meant. I did it, perhaps from an impulse to escape from the resolution that I had made to hide myself from him, to defend him from the past. It was a perverse and passionate resistance of my own decree. When I had put the little picture in its place and given a glance back at it, I hurried out, to escape from reason and from self-reproach. As I passed his dressing-table, I saw lying on it, beside a crumpled handkerchief and a pair of gloves, a couple of dinner cards and some withered flowers. It was evidently the contents of his pocket, emptied out the night before when he came home. The chambermaid had left them, not knowing where to put them. I glanced down at the cards. They were exquisitely painted. On one was written, Miss Emlyn; on the other, Mr. Conyngham. My heart gave a throb. Then he had met her; they had been side by side for hours, last night at dinner. I would take my little sketch away: South Berwick was recalled enough. But no; it should stay. I would go away, and never come back into this cruel room again. But what were my resolutions worth? Not long after, it was a wild and stormy evening, I was sitting in my window, looking out; the light within was turned low. The people struggled past around the corner where the wind met them full, with heads bent down, and umbrellas bent and twisted. I liked the fierce beat of the rain upon the pane. I liked anything better than soft moonlight and calm days of sunshine; I was too restless to like things that were at rest. While I looked out, leaning my forehead against the glass, I saw Mr. Conyngham come out and get into a carriage. A man held the umbrella over him and opened the carriage door; then got up beside the driver on the box, and they drove away. I don't know what there was in the sight of his departure that gave me such bitter thoughts. It was in such contrast to my loneliness, to my misery. I thought of the gay scene to which he went, the adulation with which he would be met. I remembered Naomi would be there, no doubt. Naomi, whose eyes he thought he must remember, who had been "his only friend!" The world was at his feet, if he wanted it; love, perhaps, and a life-long devotion was stretching out its hands to him to draw him from his life of cold seclusion; and I, ah, what lay before me in the dreary years to come? I turned from the window, and shut out the storm and darkness. I opened my portfolio, and sat down beside the lamp. From a folded sheet of paper there fell out a bunch of flowers that had been pressed, steins and roots and leaves and all. Sudden tears sprang to my eyes at the sight of them. They were little pink flowers that I had gathered at South Berwick the year before, when I had spent a day there, in the latter part of August. The country people call them "meadowpinks," I don't know what their correct name is. They are a little star-shaped flower, of a soft yellowish pink, with brown and yellow centers. They grow in salt-meadows, and no doubt are very common, but I had never seen them anywhere but at South Berwick, and they were entirely associated with the place. In masses, they are very beautiful, and they were often the ornament of my little tea-table at the cottage; in a low glass dish, against the dark mahogany, they were lovely. I was very apt to wear them in my dress. Ned and Macnally never crossed the meadows without bringing me a bunch. They did not grow very near us, a mile or more away. It was quite a circumstance to get them, but I was seldom without them. When we were driving, it was an excuse to prolong the drive, to go and get some. I knew Macnally had often walked miles out of his way, to bring a handful to me. I could see him now, standing in the door, in his blue-flannel clothes, with his game-bag over his shoulder, his cap in one hand, the flowers in the other, his face eager, bright, and yet almost shy, if I were sitting alone in the parlor, and there was no child to pick up in his arms and make a turmoil over. They were my flowers, par excellence; every one got them for me, brought them to me, associated them with the thought of me. These I held in my hand were |