CHAPTER XIV—ARCHIE FINDS A PACKAGE
Mrs. Warfield was deeply grieved and disappointed that Fred had given Hilda cause to lose confidence in him so utterly, as she had given evidence in her letter to him. She had intended speaking plainly to him in regard to his heartless conduct, thinking it would influence him in his future companionship with Hilda, and was much disappointed that the summons came for her to return to Dorton before his next visit home.
Her resolutions, like many others depending upon circumstances, were put aside, for instead of setting out to chide she remained to comfort. Fred, for the first time in his life, was completely cast down. Ever since receiving Hilda’s letter he had been revolving in his mind what he would say when they met, in order to place himself upon the former basis.
The passage at arms had aided him, as it had Hilda, to define his feelings. He realized that he loved her, and this time, if never before, was in earnest. It was his intention to offer a humble apology, and to ask a place in her esteem with the eloquence of which he was master, and he did not believe that she would refuse.
His hopes received a blow when he came home and found her gone, and no time specified for her return. He could have shed tears in the bitterness of his soul, and Mrs. Paul Warfield, who suspected how matters stood, shook her shrewd head and agreed with herself that it served him right.
After sending the valentine he hoped to hear a word from Hilda, but in her letter to his mother no special mention was made of him, so he wrote to her imploring her to believe him sincere in his profession of affection for her, and asked for a line bidding him hope. Perry brought the missive from the village post-office and Norah took it to the parlor where Hilda and Mr. Courtney were conversing by the early evening fire-light.
Hilda, with a deep blush, opened and read it and passed it to Mr. Courtney.
“I hope you don’t think I expect this of you,” he said gently. “Believe me, I have not a particle of jealous curiosity.”
“No, sir; I gave it because I wish your advice in regard to answering it, and you could not give it unless you understood the whole affair. Aunt Sarah has also written to me, and says that Fred deplores his mistake and she hopes I will reconsider the matter, for she knows him to be sincere and pities him.”
“It would be well to answer both letters immediately,” remarked Mr. Courtney when he finished the perusal of Fred’s letter. “It is far kinder to tell them the relation in which we stand to each other than to allow them to indulge a false hope.”
“I do not mind telling Fred,” replied Hilda, a flush very like anger coming into her face, “but I do feel sorry to grieve Aunt Sarah. She is as kind to me as an own mother, and I love her so dearly.”
“I know it, but it will not be the task to write it that it would be to tell them were you there. I should write at once to both.”
“I will do as you advise. I can see that it is the kinder way.”
“There is another favor I would ask of you, my dear one, and that is not to address me as ‘sir.’ It keeps the difference in our ages in very large figures before my eyes.”
“I never thought of that,” responded Hilda, laughing and blushing.
“I hope you will never feel under more restraint in my company than in that of Fred Warfield or any other person near your own age. I should be grieved to know that we were not in every way congenial and at home with each other.”
“I never felt otherwise with you; you have always appeared young to me,” said Hilda, sincerely.
“Thank you, my darling; I am truly glad to hear this. I have known two instances where the husband was double the age of his wife, and the lady in both cases seemed to be in awe of her husband. I would be miserable to know that you felt so toward me.”
“You need not dread my being in awe of you,” laughed Hilda. “You were somewhat younger than now when I first became acquainted with you. I suppose that accounts for my lack of deference. We have grown old together.”
Mr. Courtney had suggested an early day for their marriage, and there was nothing to prevent except the item of a trousseau, a subject which Hilda, penniless, and having no claim upon a human being, did not consider open for discussion.
Mr. Courtney believed that to be the cause of her reluctance to agree to his suggestion for an early day, and had he not appreciated her fine nature so thoroughly, might have been tempted through the aid of Mrs. Courtney, to do away with that hindrance. As it was, he could only await Time’s adjustment.
Hilda wrote to Mrs. Warfield and to Fred and waited for the second time in her life with keen anxiety for Mrs. Warfield’s reply. Would she be wounded because Hilda remained indifferent to the united appeal of mother and son? Would she resent the reticence of Hilda in not giving them knowledge of her attachment to Mr. Courtney in the nearly two years she had been with them and thus misleading Fred?
Smothering the pain in her heart, Mrs. Warfield’s letter was candid, cordial and affectionate. She wrote nothing that would mar the happiness of the girl whom she held blameless. She offered her sincere congratulations, and added to the measure of her kindness by enclosing a check for the purchase of a handsome outfit as a wedding present.
There was now nothing to prevent Hilda from acceding to Mr. Courtney’s wish to appoint an early day for the marriage, which would be at the home of the Merrymans, Rev. Carl officiating, and the bridal tour followed by a reception at “My Lady’s Manor” under the auspices of Mrs. Courtney and Mrs. Merryman.
As upon a former occasion, Mrs. Courtney offered her assistance in the matter of shopping, and the offer was accepted gladly by Hilda.
The evening before they were to drive to Baltimore, Mrs. Merryman and Hilda took a walk to the cottage, and upon reaching the gate saw Archie coming down the road from “My Lady’s Manor,” where he had been the past night and day.
“I am sure he is on his way to ‘Fair Meadow,’” said Mrs. Merryman. “Ask him to wait and go with us; he can carry the things you wish to take.”
Archie was willing to oblige and followed them up the grass-grown path. He sat down upon the door-step while the ladies went inside and opened the windows, letting in the soft evening air, laden with the odors of early spring.
As upon former visits, Hilda went to the desk, let down the lid and searched through the small drawers and other receptacles, but found nothing, and was about to lock it again when the old man entered and stood beside her.
“Archie knows where there is money,” he said abruptly.
“No, Archie,” said Hilda, “we have searched several times and can find nothing.”
“But Archie knows it is there. Archie saw the woman put it in there one night when he was looking for people in the snow.”
“Where is it, Archie?” asked Hilda, trying to conceal her eagerness, knowing it would confuse him.
“In that tall box,” pointing to the desk.
“There is no money there, Archie,” said Mrs. Merryman. “We have looked for it several times.”
“Archie can find it; he saw the woman put it there. Archie was looking through a crack in the shutter. The woman didn’t know Archie saw her,” he added earnestly.
“Show us where it is, Archie,” said Hilda; “take your own time.”
He stepped to the desk, put up the lid, lowered it again, and stood contemplating it with a look of perplexity upon his worn face.
“Archie forgets. He must think,” he said. He locked and unlocked the desk several times, the ladies sitting quietly by.
“Yes, Archie knows!” he cried exultantly. “The woman held the lid so, and put her hand under here,” and suiting the action to the word, he drew forth a small flat package and gave it into the hand of Hilda. It was addressed to her. She opened it and found Mrs. Ashley’s letter, the money, a letter from Jerusha Flint to her and the gold pen with its holder set with rubies.
Pale and silent, Hilda held them, her eyes brimming with tears. It seemed almost as if her aunt had returned to hold converse with her, and that poor Jerusha was yet craving forgiveness, though “after life’s fitful fever,” she was at rest in the grave.
“Hilda,” ran the letter, “I was cruel to you, and can never atone for that, but I give back all I kept from you. I did not intend to keep the pen, but forgot to send it with the trunks, and then, wishing to have no communication with you, put off sending it. I have used it twice, there being no other pen in the house. The first time was in writing my letter to Mrs. Merryman to keep you. You did not return, and I looked upon the pen as bringing me good luck. Diana told me that she used it in writing to Mrs. Warfield; you found a home with her, which I regarded as better luck, for it took you out of my sight. I directed an envelope to my brother Horace with it, enclosing three letters. One was my mother’s letter to me, received on my sixteenth birthday. The other two I requested Horace to forward to our grandfather after I am gone, and I wish him joy in reading my mother’s letter to him from Baltimore, and his reply. I also enclosed for Horace a slip cut from a London newspaper years and years ago, by my grandmother, which confirmed the record of our ancestry and heredity given in my mother’s letter to me.
“That letter from my mother served to keep in remembrance my miserable childhood. Her pride of ancestry kept her from allowing me to associate with the plebeian children of the neighbors, among whom our poverty-stricken homes were compelled to be, and to add to my half-starved, and in winter, half-frozen condition, I was shut up with her sighs and tears, her heart-sick waiting for forgiveness and help from her father which never came, and her unavailing regret for her disobedience to him and to her mother, which was the cause of all her troubles.
“My sleep was broken, my nerves wrecked; and I imagined and dreamed of all kinds of terrible calamities which we were powerless to escape. When my mother died, I was taken to an orphan asylum, which I hated from foundation to roof; and when old enough to earn my living was compelled to earn it by means of an occupation I despised.
“I mention these things as some little excuse for my warped disposition which made me so disagreeable to my fellow-creatures that I had not one real friend, and was so cruel to you that I wonder you lived. For that I implore your forgiveness.
“Jerusha.”
“Poor Jerusha looked upon this pen as a mascot,” remarked Hilda, taking it up to examine it after finishing the letter. “Oh, Aunt Merryman, how could I bear resentment toward her after reading this story of her life?”
“Yes, we should be patient with our fellow creatures. We cannot know the burdens that many of them are bearing. I have often wondered what trials poor old Archie has had to bring him to the condition he is in now, for he has evidently seen better days.”
“I have often said that Archie is my good genius. Besides saving my life, it seems that through him, guided by a kind Providence, I have found three beautiful homes, and now through him this package has been found.”
“Did you ever see anything so capable of keeping a secret as is this desk?” commented Mrs. Merryman. “Let us examine it more closely.”
“How simple when one understands it!” said Hilda, raising and lowering the lid. “The desk has a false bottom to which the lid is attached by hinges not placed at the end, but a short distance above it. Thus, when we put up the lid it closes the secret space, and when the desk is open—that is, the lid down and resting upon the open drawer beneath it—it is concealed.”
“It is the greatest curiosity in the shape of a desk that I have seen,” commented Mrs. Merryman. “Who would suspect a vacancy under what they suppose to be the floor of the desk, large enough to hold a larger package than yours? In truth, several of that thickness could be concealed there if laid side by side.”
“But the hiding place is easily seen if one knows that the secret lies in holding the lid in a horizontal position; but being always under it, and the entrance to the secret nook being partly filled in by the lower end of the lid, it is sure to elude detection.”
“It eluded ours, and Archie was puzzled, although he had seen it.”
“It cannot be seen except at the moment that someone is raising or lowering the lid,” remarked Hilda, experimenting, “and then only by an observing person who was standing where a side view of the desk could be had, as did Archie. When the desk is closed it conceals the false floor; when it is open it conceals the real one.”
“But you and I are as intelligent as most persons,” said Mrs. Merryman, reflectively. “How is it that we could not find out the secret of that desk as did Jerusha Flint? She said in her letter that she had used the pen, and yet we find it with her letter in the secret nook. Who told her how to find it?”
“The information must have been in the letter she destroyed. She feared it would fall in other hands.”
“Yes, I am sure you are right,” answered Mrs. Merryman.
“It is no wonder that she longed to see me,” continued Hilda. “I wish for her sake that I had reached here in time to listen to all she wished to say.”
They arose, locked the desk and the cottage door, and, followed by Archie with the basket, went home, Hilda carrying the package which had been kept so long from its rightful owner.
Since her return to Dorton she had gone several times to the village churchyard to visit the grave of her Aunt Ashley—on which Mrs. Warfield had long before ordered to be placed a handsome memorial stone—and never left it without evincing her forgiveness by pausing at that of Jerusha Flint.
The wish had been in her heart to mark that lowly mound by a headstone, however small and plain—a greater longing than she had ever felt for any acquisition for herself. Now the way was opened, and the next day she made it part of her errand to the city to visit the marble yard where Mrs. Warfield’s order had been faithfully executed, and order one of snow-white marble bearing only the carved words—“Jerusha Flint.”
Invitations to the wedding reception at “My Lady’s Manor” were sent to the four members of the Warfield family, but Mrs. Warfield and Fred sent a courteous regret, promising to visit Hilda at some future time.
“They will never come,” commented Hilda, after reading the letter aloud to Mr. Courtney. “Fred will not wish to come, and Aunt Sarah would not travel so far unless Fred or Paul accompanied her.”
“After we are settled in our home we will invite them again,” said Mr. Courtney, “and if they are kept in ignorance of my knowledge of the engagement between you and Mr. Warfield it will save them embarrassment.”
“I shall never tell them unless they ask, and I scarcely think they will mention it to us, or to anyone.”
Mrs. Lura purposed making her annual visit to her uncle Robert De Cormis and his family in Philadelphia about that time, and Paul accompanied her there, and to the reception at “My Lady’s Manor.”
Upon her return to Ohio she discanted so volubly upon the beauty of the bride, the elegance of the bridegroom, and the grandeur of their home when in the presence of Fred that Mrs. Warfield was constrained to think that the chief pleasure she took in the visit was the opportunity it gave her to embarrass him.
Mrs. MacQuoid and Chloe were rejoiced that the home had a mistress, and that mistress, Hilda, and Sandy, who had resumed his position as coachman as soon as Mr. Courtney returned from Europe, was more than satisfied, and drove the iron-grays to town and back happier than a king.
Mr. and Mrs. Valentine Courtney made an effort to induce Archie to give up his wanderings and remain with them, but to all inducements he made the same reply, “No, Archie has plenty of homes; he must walk about to find people in the snow.”
“My Lady’s Manor” was a charming visiting place to the young people of the neighborhood, and to no one more so than to Erma Merryman, who looked upon it as a second home, and upon Hilda as a loved sister.
One morning, about two years after Hilda had taken up her residence there, Mr. Courtney came into the nursery with an open letter in his hand. The king of that small realm was Valentine Courtney, Jr., a healthy, handsome boy, “just as good as he is handsome,” being the opinion of each and all who saw him.
“I think I have a pleasant surprise for you, dear,” said Mr. Courtney, taking the infant upon his knee and looking with loving admiration upon mother and child.
“I am not easily surprised, but have my share of woman’s curiosity. What is it?” smiled Hilda.
“Judge Sylvester happened to mention to me some time ago that he wished a partner in his law business and preferred a young man. I thought immediately of Fred, and as Sylvester appeared willing to have me write to him, I did so, remembering that Mrs. Warfield said in one of her letters that he wished to go into partnership with an established firm. Fred answered promptly, and the result is that he is coming to Baltimore and we will have him near us.”
“That was so kind and thoughtful in you; Aunt Sarah will appreciate it,” said Hilda, gratefully.
“I have been wishing to do them some favor that they would accept, in return for their kindness to you, and am glad that this was acceptable.”
Hilda wrote that evening to Mrs. Warfield, inviting her to come with Fred and make a long visit, a request with which Mrs. Warfield gladly complied.
Thus before a month passed Fred Warfield was established as partner with Judge Sylvester in Baltimore, and Mrs. Warfield was at “My Lady’s Manor,” where her son was always a welcome guest.