  Several days later Dick Ashton, walking out to the Sunrise cabin from Woodford, unexpectedly caught up with Esther making the same journey. He came up to her side very quickly and with one look in his face the girl gave a cry of dismay. Dick was always serious and yet in spite of his seriousness there was no one with a keener appreciation of humorous situations and people, but to-day his face was drawn and there was a set look about his lips. “I didn’t mean to startle you, Esther,” Dick said quietly, “but I am very glad it is you I have met rather than any one of the other girls. I have bad news for Betty.” Did Esther’s face for a fleeting instant show surprise and almost alarm? “It has nothing to do with me, has it?” she asked, but Dick, shaking his head and hardly heeding her question, went on: “I have just received news of my father’s death and must break it to Betty. It is going to be very hard; Betty has never known anything but happiness and in spite of—in spite of everything, I believe my father loved her almost better than either my mother or me.” After her first exclamation of sympathy Esther continued silent, feeling it wiser to let Dick talk himself out to a sympathetic listener than to pour forth her own regrets. “It isn’t only the loss of my father that Betty and mother will have to endure,” he continued, “but the entire loss of my father’s fortune. The trouble has been brewing for some time, but a few weeks ago the crash came and it must have hastened the end.” “You don’t mean to say they will have nothing?” Esther inquired in a frightened voice. The thought of Betty, whom her friends had always called “Princess” because of her careless generosity, her indifference, her absolute ignorance of the whole money question, now to face poverty without any training or preparation for it,—the thought fairly made Esther gasp, and Dick who had some idea of what was passing in her mind added: “Yes, it is pretty rough to bring a girl up to live like a Princess and then suddenly to leave her a pauper. I have always been afraid we have not been quite fair with Betty, maybe it would have been easier for her to have known the truth about things from the beginning. Still it can’t be helped now. But the worst of it is that I know nothing about business either; I have never cared for anything but my profession and it takes a long time for a man to be able to support even himself in medicine until he has had several years of experience at least. I must give it up.” Dick’s face went whiter than ever at this and Esther, who in spite of a certain shyness and nervousness when she found herself the center of observation, had a really good judgment and self-control, now replied quietly: “I wouldn’t think too much of this now, Mr. Ashton, things are pretty sure to turn out a little better than you feel they can at present and in any case I am sure something will be arranged so that you can go on with your profession. It would be too great a pity, when you have studied so long and are now so near your graduation, to have to give it up.” Dick Ashton looked at Esther gratefully, thinking of how their positions had been reversed in a little less than a year. Had he not, when first he came upon the shy, homely girl among his sister’s group of friends, done his best to make her more comfortable, less of a stranger and an outsider, and now he felt strangely strengthened and calmed by her presence and advice. He too saw that there were times when Esther’s self-forgetfulness gave her a kind of beauty which was more important than mere lines and color, since it was a beauty that would last far longer. So the young people walked on for a little time in silence, until Dick Ashton colored and then hesitated. “I hope you won’t think me rude, Miss Esther, that in my own trouble I have forgotten to congratulate you on having found your father. Betty has written me all about it and I certainly hope it may add to your happiness. I used to wonder even when I was a little boy if you felt very lonely at the asylum without a—a single relative.” “You wondered about me; then you knew about me?” Esther asked quietly, and turned, stopping short in the path to give Dick Ashton a long, quiet look. Something passed between them without words, one of those subtle and silent communications of thought for which there has been no satisfactory explanation. Yet in the instant each one of them knew that the other had guessed his and her secret, or if not quite guessing it, at least had very reasonable foundations for their suspicion. Dick’s formerly pale face crimsoned and he looked down at the ground, beginning to walk slowly on. “We—we thought it best this way, Miss Esther, and still think so. It has been hard upon you perhaps, but isn’t it better that one person should suffer than that a number should be made unhappy?” There was almost entreaty in Dick Ashton’s voice and at the same time he meant to make no betrayal if Esther did not know what he supposed she might possibly have learned within the past few weeks. Esther’s reply left no room for doubt. “It is best this way now,” she answered slowly. “I can’t say that I think it altogether fair or just at the beginning. But so far as I am concerned, why you need never worry.” “I wish there were some way in which we could make it up to you, but we have nothing now to be of any assistance to anybody. It is what my mother meant in a measure when——” Esther nodded. “I understand and there is no need of talking about repaying me. Betty has already done more than that and there is nothing in the world I would not do or give up for her sake. I care for her more than she may ever know.” His companion’s voice trembled so that Dick feared she might be losing her self-control and knew that they had a hard enough task before them. They were not very far from Sunrise cabin now and feared that at any moment Betty Ashton might come out to meet them, since Dick had telegraphed that he was coming to see her on important business in order that she might be a little bit prepared for what was to follow. “It is a pretty dark road for all of us just now, Miss Esther, but some day perhaps without our having to make the decision things will right themselves somehow,” he returned kindly. And at this instant the young man and girl discovered Betty flying along the path in their direction. It was a fairly warm April afternoon and she wore her blue cape, the cape which Esther remembered so well during the spring of her own coming to the big Ashton house. She had on no hat and her hair was tied back in a loose bunch of red-brown curls. Evidently Betty had suspected no trouble from Dick’s telegram (Betty and trouble were so far apart these days), for she laughed and waved both hands in joyous welcome at her brother’s approach. “Where did you two people find one another? I believe it was all arranged beforehand and Dick Ashton’s visits to our cabin are quite as much to see Miss Esther Clark—Crippen I meant to say—as they are to see poor little me.” Betty had always enjoyed teasing Esther and now she expected this silly remark of hers to make her friend blush and scold, but Esther seemed not to have paid the least attention, not even to have heard her. And in the same instant Betty guessed that something serious had occurred. Her expression changed instantly. Betty looked suddenly older and unlike any one had ever seen her look before. She took her brother’s hand. “Never mind, Dick, I think I know already,” she whispered, and unexpectedly it seemed to be Dick who was having to be upheld and consoled. Esther slipped silently away, leaving the brother and sister together in their sorrow, and somehow in her loneliness she felt almost envious of them in the closeness of their grief. |
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