Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/133

 him she had to trust, for the rescue that was to come in time. In how much time? In how little? Ah, there was the ever-present, ever-pressing question, and Marian brought to its perpetual repetition all the importance, all the unreasonable measurement of time, all the ignorance of its exceeding brevity and insignificance, inseparable from her youth.

She had nearly completed the preparations for departure from the old home; the few possessions left her and her mother were ready for removal; a lodging in the village had been engaged, and the last few days were dragging themselves heavily over the heads of Mrs. Ashurst and Marian, where Mr. Creswell, having returned to Woolgreaves after a short absence, came to see them.

Mrs. Ashurst was walking in the neglected garden, and had reached the far end of the little extent, when Mr. Creswell arrived at the open door of the house. A woman servant, stolid and sturdy, was passing through the red-tiled square hall.

"Is Miss Ashurst in?" asked the visitor. "Mrs. Ashurst is in the garden I see—don't disturb her."

Marian, who had heard the voice, answered Mr. Creswell's question by appearing on the threshold of the room which had been her father's study, and which since his death her mother and she had made their sitting-room. She looked weary; the too bright colour which fatigue brings to some faces was on hers, and her eyelids were red and heavy; her black dress, which had the limp ungraceful lustreless look of mourning attire too long unrenewed, hung on her fine upright figure, after a fashion which told how little the girl cared how she looked, and the hand she first held out to Mr. Creswell, and then drew back with a faint smile, was covered with dust.

"I can't shake hands," she said, "I have been tying up the last bundles of books and papers, and my hands are disgraceful. Come in here, Mr. Creswell; I believe there is one unoccupied chair."

He followed her into the study, and took the seat she pointed out, while she placed herself on a pile of folios which lay on the floor in front of the low wide window. Marian laid her arm upon the window sill, and leaned her head back against one of the scanty frayed curtains. Her eyes closed for a moment, and a slight shudder passed over her.

"You are very tired, Miss Ashurst, quite worn out," said Mr. Creswell; "you have been doing too much—packing all those books I suppose."

"Yes," said Marian, "I looked to that myself, and, indeed, there was nobody else to do it. But it is tiring work, and dirty,"—she struck her hands together, and shook her dress, so that a shower of dust fell from it—"and sad work besides. You know, Mr. Creswell," here her face softened suddenly, and her voice fell—"how much my father loved his books. It is not easy to say good-bye to them; it is like a faint echo, strong enough to pain one though, of the good-bye to himself."

"But why are you obliged to say good-bye to them?" asked Mr. Creswell, with genuine anxiety and compassion.

"What could we do with them?" said Marian; "there's no place to keep them. We must have taken another room specially for them, if we took them to our lodgings, and there's no one to buy them here. So we are going to send them to London to be sold; I suppose they will bring a very small sum indeed—nothing, perhaps, when the expenses are paid. But it is our only means of disposing of them. So I have been dusting and sorting and arranging them all day, and I am tired and dusty and sick—sick at heart."

Marian leaned her head on the arm which lay on the window sill, and looked very forlorn. She also looked very pretty, and Mr. Creswell thought so. This softened mood, so unusual to her, became her, and the little touch of confidence in her manner, equally unusual, flattered him. He felt an odd sort of difficulty in speaking to her. To this young girl, his old friend's orphan child, one to whom he intended so kindly, towards whom his position was so entirely one of patronage; not in any offensive sense, of course, but still of patronage.

"I—I never thought of this," he said, hesitatingly; "I ought to have remembered it, of course; no doubt the books must be a difficulty to you, a difficulty to keep, and a harder one to part with. But, bless me, my dear Miss Ashurst, you say there is no one here to buy them. You did not remember me? Why did you not remember me? Of course I will buy them. I shall be only too delighted to buy them, to have the books my good friend loved so much—of course I shall."

" I had seen your library at Woolgreaves," said Marian, replying to Mr. Creswell's first impetuous question, "and I could not suppose you wanted more books, or such shabby ones as these."