IN CHICOPEE
They were having a late dinner at Aunt Barbara's, a four o'clock dinner of roast fowls with onions and tomatoes, and the little round table was nicely arranged with the silver and china and damask for two, while in the grate the fire was blazing brightly and on the hearth, the tabby cat was purring out her appreciation of the comfort and good cheer. But Aunt Barbara's heart was far too sorry and sad to care for her surroundings, or think how pleasant and cozy that little dining room looked to one who did not know of the grim skeleton which had walked in there that very day along with Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, of Boston. That lady had come up on the morning train and in her rustling black silk with velvet trimmings, and lace barb hanging from her head, she sat before the fire with a look of deep dejection and thoughtfulness upon her face, as if she too recked little of the creature comforts around her. Aunt Barbara knew nothing of her coming, and was taken by surprise when the village hack stopped at the door, and Sister Sophia's sable furs and beaver cloak alighted. That something was the matter she suspected from her sister's face the moment that lady removed her veil and gave the usual dignified kiss of greeting. Things had gone wrong again with Frank and Nettie, most likely, she thought, for she was not ignorant, of the misunderstandings and misery arising from that unfortunate marriage, and she had about made up her mind to tell her sister just where the fault lay. She would not spare Frank any longer, but would give him his just deserts. She never dreamed that the trouble this time concerned Ethie, her own darling, the child whom she had loved so well, and pitied, and thought of so much since the time she left her out West with "those Philistines," as she designated Richard's family. She had not heard from her for some time, but, in the last letter received, Ethie had written in a very cheerful strain, and told how gay and pleasant it was in Camden that winter. Surely nothing had befallen her, and the good woman stood aghast when Mrs. Dr. Van Buren abruptly asked if Ethelyn was not there, or had been there lately, or heard from either. What did it portend? Had harm come upon Ethie? And a shadow broke the placid surface of the sweet old face as Aunt Barbara put these questions, first to herself, and then to Mrs. Van Buren, who rapidly explained that Ethelyn had left her husband, and gone, no one knew whither.
"I hoped she might be here, and came up to see," Mrs. Van Buren concluded; while Aunt Barbara steadied herself against the great bookcase in the corner, and wondered if she was going out of her senses, or had she heard aright, and was it her sister Van Buren sitting there before her, and saying such dreadful things.
She could not tell if it were real until Tabby sprang with a purring, caressing sound, upon her shoulder, and rubbed her soft sides against her cap. That made it real, and brought the color back to her wrinkled face, but brought, also, a look of horror into her blue eyes, which sought Mrs. Van Buren's with an eager, and yet terribly anxious glance. Mrs. Dr. Van Buren understood the look. Its semblance had been on her own face for an instant when she first heard the news, and now she hastened to dispossess her sister's mind of any such suspicion.
"No, Barbara; Frank did not go with her, or even see her when in Camden. He is not quite so bad as that, I hope."
The mother nature was in the ascendant, and for a moment resented the suspicion against her son, even though that suspicion had been in her own mind when Frank returned from Camden with the news of Ethie's flight. That he had had something to do with it was her first fear, until convinced to the contrary; and now she blamed Aunt Barbara for harboring the same thought. As soon as possible she told all she had heard from Frank, and then went on with her invectives against the Markhams generally, and Richard in particular, and her endless surmises as to where Ethelyn had gone, and what was the final cause of her going.
For a time Aunt Barbara turned a deaf ear to what she was saying, thinking only of Ethie, gone; Ethie, driven to such strait, that she must either run away or die; Ethie, the little brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, willful, imperious girl, whom she loved so much for the very willful imperiousness which always went hand in hand with such pretty fits of penitence, and sorrow, and remorse for the misdeed, that not to love her was impossible. Where was she now, and why had she not come at once to the dear old home, where she would have been so welcome until such time as matters could be adjusted on a more amicable basis?
For Aunt Barbara, though in taking Ethie's side altogether, had no thought that the separation should be final. She had chosen a life of celibacy because she preferred it, and found it a very smooth and pleasant one, especially after Ethie came and brought the sunshine of joyous childhood to her quiet home; but "those whom God had joined together" were bound to continue so, she firmly believed; and had Ethie come to her with her tale of sorrow, she would have listened kindly to it, poured in the balm of sympathy and love, and then, if possible, restored her to her husband. Of all this she thought during the few minutes Mrs. Dr. Van Buren talked, and she sat passive in her chair, where she had dropped, with her dumpy little hands lying so helplessly in her lap, and her cap all awry, as Tabby had made it when purring and rubbing against it.
"Then, you have not seen her, or heard a word?" Mrs. Van Buren asked; and in a kind of uncertain way, as if she wondered what they were talking about, Aunt Barbara replied:
"No, I have not seen her, and I don't know, I am sure, what made the child go off without letting us know."
"She was driven to it by the pack of heathens around her," Mrs. Dr. Van Buren retorted, feeling a good deal guilty herself for having been instrumental in bringing about this unhappy match, and in proportion as she felt guilty, seizing with avidity any other offered cause for Ethie's wretchedness. "I've heard even more about them than you told me," she went on to say. "There was Mrs. Ellis, whose cousin lives in Olney--she says the mother is the most peculiar and old-fashioned woman imaginable; actually wears blue yarn stockings, footed with black, makes her own candles, and sleeps in the kitchen."
With regard to the candles Aunt Barbara did not know; the sleeping in the kitchen she denied, and the footed stockings she admitted; saying, however, those she saw were black, rather than blue. Black or blue, it was all the same to Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, whose feet seldom came in contact with anything heavier than silk or the softest of lamb's wool; and, had there been wanting other evidence of Mrs. Markham's vulgarity, the stocking question would have settled the matter with her.
"Poor Ethie!" she sighed, as she drew her seat to the fire, and asked what they ought to do.
Aunt Barbara did not know. She was too much bewildered to think of anything just then, and after ordering the four o'clock dinner, which, she knew, would suit her sister's habits better than an earlier one, she, too, sat quietly down by the fire with her knitting lying idly in her lap, and her eyes looking dreamily through the frosty panes off upon the snowy hills where Ethelyn used to play. Occasionally, in reply to some question of her sister's, she would tell what she herself saw in that prairie home, and then look up amazed at the exasperating effect it seemed to have upon Mrs. Dr. Van Buren. That lady was terrible incensed against the whole Markham race, for through them she had been touched on a tender point. Ethie's desertion of her husband would not be wholly excused by the world; there was odium attaching to such a step, however great the provocation, and the disgrace was what Mrs. Van Buren would feel most keenly. That a Bigelow should do so was very humiliating; and, by way of fortifying herself with reasons for the step, she slandered and abused the Markhams until they would hardly have recognized the remotest relationship between themselves and the "terrible creatures" whom the great lady from Boston dissected so mercilessly that afternoon in Chicopee.
It was nearly four o'clock now, and the dinner was almost ready. Aunt Barbara had dropped her knitting upon the floor, where the ball was at once claimed as the lawful prey of Tabby, who rolled, and kicked, and tangled the yarn in a perfect abandon of feline delight. Mrs. Van Buren having exhausted herself, if not her topic, sat rocking quietly, and occasionally giving little sniffs of inquiry as to whether the tomatoes were really burned or not. If they were, there were still the silver-skinned onions left; and, as Mrs. Van Buren was one who thought a great deal of what she ate, she was anticipating her dinner with a keen relish, and wishing Barbara and Betty would hurry, when a buggy stopped before the door, and, with a start of disagreeable surprise, she recognized Richard Markham coming through the gate, and up the walk to the front door. He was looking very pale and worn, for to the effects of his recent illness were added traces of his rapid, fatiguing journey, and he almost staggered as he came into the room. It was not in kind Aunt Barbara's nature to feel resentment toward him then, and she went to him at once, as she would have gone to Ethie, and, taking his hand in hers, said softly:
"My poor boy! We have heard of your trouble. Have you found her yet? Do you know where she is?"
There was a look of anguish and disappointment in Richard's eyes as he replied:
"I thought--I hoped I might find her here."
"And that is the reason of your waiting so long before coming?" Mrs. Dr. Van Buren put in sharply.
It was three weeks now since Ethie's flight, and her husband had shown himself in no hurry to seek her, she reasoned; but Richard's reply, "I was away a week before I knew it, and I have been very sick since then," mollified her somewhat, though she sat back in her chair very stiff and very straight, eyeing him askance, and longing to pounce upon him and tell him what she thought. First, however, she must have her dinner. The tea would be spoiled if they waited longer; and when Aunt Barbara began to question Richard, she suggested that they wait till after dinner, when they would all be fresher and stronger. So dinner was brought in, and Richard, as he took his seat at the nicely-laid table, where everything was served with so much care, did think of the difference between Ethie's early surroundings and those to which he had introduced her when he took her to his mother's house. He was beginning to think of those things now; Ethie's letter had opened his eyes somewhat, and Mrs. Dr. Van Buren would open them more before she let him go. She was greatly refreshed with her dinner. The tomatoes had not been burned; the fowls were roasted to a most delicate brown; the currant jelly was just the right consistency; the pickled peaches were delicious, and the tea could not have been better. On the whole, Mrs. Van Buren was satisfied, and able to cope with a dozen men as crushed, and sore, and despondent as Richard seemed. She had scanned him very closely, deciding that so far as dress was concerned, he had improved since she saw him last. It is true, his collar was not all the style, and his necktie was too wide, and his coat sleeves too small, and his boots too rusty, and his vest too much soiled; but she made allowance for the circumstances, and his hasty journey, and so excused his tout ensemble. She had resumed her seat by the fire, sitting where she could look the culprit directly in the face; while good Aunt Barbara occupied the middle position, and, with her fat, soft hands shaking terribly, tried to pick up the stitches Tabby had pulled out. That personage, too, had had her chicken wing out in the woodshed, and, knowing nothing of Ethie's grievances, had mounted into Richard's lap, where she lay, slowly blinking and occasionally purring a little, as Richard now and then passed his hand over her soft fur.
"Now tell us: Why did Ethelyn go away?--that is, what reason did she give?"
It was Mrs. Dr. Van Buren who asked this question, her voice betokening that nothing which Richard could offer as an excuse would be received. They must have Ethie's reason or none. Richard would far rather Mrs. Dr. Van Buren had been in Boston, or Paris, or Guinea, than there in Chicopee, staring so coolly at him; but as her being there was something he could not help, he accepted it as a part of the train of calamities closing so fast about him, and answered, respectfully:
"It was no one thing which made her go, but the culmination of many. There was a mistake on my part. I thought her guilty when she was not, and charged her with it in a passion, saying things I would give much to recall. This was one night, and she went the next, before her temper had time to cool. You know she was a little hasty herself at times."
"Perhaps so, though her temper never troubled me any. On the whole, I think her temper amiable and mild in disposition as people generally are," Mrs. Van Buren replied, forgetting, or choosing to forget, the many occasions on which even she had shrunk from the fire which blazed in Ethie's eyes when that young lady was fully roused.
But Aunt Barbara had either more conscience or a better memory, and in a manner half apologetic for her interference, she said: "Yes, Sophia, Richard is right. Ethie had a temper--at least she was very decided. Don't you remember when she broke the cut glass fruit dish, because she could not have any more pineapple?"
"Barbara!" Mrs. Dr. Van Buren exclaimed, her voice indicating her surprise that her sister should so far forget herself as to reveal any secrets of the family, and especially any which could be brought to bear upon Ethelyn.
Aunt Barbara felt the implied rebuke, and while her sweet, old face crimsoned with mortification, she said: "Truth is truth, Sophia. Ethie is as dear to me as to you, but she was high-tempered, and did break the big fruit bowl, and then denied herself sweetmeats of all kinds, and even went without sugar in her coffee and butter on her bread until she had saved enough to buy another in its place. Ethie was generous and noble after it was all over, if she was a little hot at times. That's what I was going to say when you stopped me so sudden."
Aunt Barbara looked a little aggrieved at being caught up so quickly by her sister, who continued: "She was a Bigelow, and everybody knows what kind of blood that is. She was too sensitive, and had too nice a perception of what was proper to be thrown among"--heathen, she was going to add, but something in Aunt Barbara's blue eyes kept her in check, and so she abruptly turned to Richard and asked, "Did she leave no message, no reason why she went?"
Richard could have boasted his Markham blood had he chosen, and the white heats to which that was capable of being roused; but he was too utterly broken to feel more than a passing flash of resentment for anything which had yet been said, and after a moment's thought, during which he was considering the propriety of showing Mrs. Van Buren what Ethie had written of Frank, he held the letter to her, saying, "She left this. Read it if you like. It's a part of my punishment, I suppose, that her friends should know all."
With a stately bow Mrs. Van Buren took the letter and hastily read it through, her lip quivering a little and her eyelids growing moist as Ethie described the dreariness of that dreadful day when "Aunt Van Buren came up from Boston and broke her heart." And as she read how much poor Ethie had loved Frank, the cold, proud woman would have given all she had if the past could be undone and Ethie restored to her just as she was that summer nine years ago, when she came from the huckleberry hills and stood beneath the maples. With a strange obtuseness peculiar to some people who have seen their dearest plans come to naught, she failed to ascribe the trouble to herself, but charged it all to Richard. He was the one in fault; and by the time the letter was finished the Bigelow blood was at a boiling pitch, and for a polished lady, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, of Boston, raised her voice pretty high as she asked: "Did you presume, sir, to think that my son--mine--a married man--would make an appointment with Ethie, a married woman? You must have a strange misconception of the manner in which he was brought up! But it is all of a piece with the rest of your abominable treatment of Ethelyn. I wonder the poor girl stayed with you as long as she did. Think of it, Barbara! Accused her of going to meet Frank by appointment, and then locked her up to keep her at home, and she a Bigelow!"
This was the first inkling Aunt Barbara had of what was in the letter. She was, however, certain that Frank was in some way involved in the matter, and anxious to know the worst, she said, beseechingly:
"Tell me something, do. I can't read it, for my eyes are dim-like to-night."
They were full of unshed tears--the kind old eyes, which did not grow one whit sterner or colder as Mrs. Van Buren explained, to some extent, what was in the letter; reading a little, telling a little, and skipping a little where Frank was especially concerned, until Aunt Barbara had a pretty correct idea of the whole. Matters had been worse than she supposed, Ethie more unhappy, and knowing her as she did, she was not surprised that at the last she ran away; but she did not say so--she merely sat grieved and helpless, while her sister took up the cudgels in Ethelyn's defense, and, attacking Richard at every point, left him no quarter at all. She did not pretend that Ethie was faultless or perfect, she said, but surely, if mortal ever had just provocation for leaving her husband, she had.
"Her marriage was a great mistake," she said; "and I must say, Mr. Markham, that you did very wrong to take her where you did without a word of preparation. You ought to have told her what she was to expect; then, if she chose to go, very well. But neither she nor I had any idea of the reality; and the change must have been terrible to her. For my part, I can conceive of nothing worse than to be obliged to live with people whom even sister Barbara called 'Hottentots,' when she came home from Iowa."
"Not Hottentots," mildly interposed Aunt Barbara. "Philistines was what I called them, Sophia; and in doing so; I did not mean all of them, you know."
"Well, Philistines, then, if that's a better word than Hottentots, which I doubt," Mrs. Van Buren retorted sharply.
Aunt Barbara's evident wish to smooth matters irritated her to say more than she might otherwise have done, and she went on:
"I know you made exceptions, but if my memory serves me right, your opinion of Ethie's mother-in-law was not very complimentary to that lady. A man has no business to take his wife to live with his mother when he knows how different they are."
"But I did not know," Richard said; "that is, I had never thought much of the things which tried Ethie. Mother was always a good mother to me, and I did not suppose she was so very different from other women."
"You certainly must be very obtuse, then," Mrs. Van Buren replied: "for, if all accounts which I hear are true, your mother is not the person to make a daughter-in-law happy. Neither, it seems, did you do what you could to please her. You annoyed her terribly with your codger-like ways, if I may be allowed that term. You made but little effort to improve, thinking, no doubt, that it was all nonsense and foolishness; that it was just as well to wear your hat in church, and sit with your boots on top of the stove, as any other way."
"I never wore my hat in church!" Richard exclaimed, with more warmth than he had before evinced.
"I don't suppose you did do that particular thing, but you were guilty of other low-bred habits which grated just as harshly as that. You thought because you were a judge and an M.C., and had the reputation of possessing brains, that it did not matter how you demeaned yourself; and there you were mistaken. The manners of a gentleman would sit ten times more gracefully upon you because you had brains. No one likes a boor, and no man of your ability has any business to be a clown. Even if you were not taught it at home, you could learn from observation, and it was your duty to do so. Instead of that, you took it for granted you were right because no one had ever suggested that you were wrong, while your mother had petted you to death. I have not the honor of her acquaintance, but I must say I consider her a very remarkable person, even for a Western woman."
"My mother was born East," Richard suggested, and Mrs. Van Buren continued:
"Certainly; but that does not help the matter. It rather makes it worse, for of all disagreeable people, a Western Yankee is, I think, the most disagreeable. Such an one never improves, but adheres strictly to the customs of their native place, no matter how many years have passed since they lived there, or how great the march of improvement may have been. In these days of railroads and telegraphs there is no reason why your mother should not be up to the times. Her neighbors are, it seems, and I have met quite as cultivated people from beyond the Rocky Mountains as I have even seen in Boston."
This was a great admission for Mrs. Van Buren, who verily believed there was nothing worth her consideration out of Boston unless it were a few families in the immediate vicinity of Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. She was bent upon making Richard uncomfortable, and could at the moment think of no better way of doing it than contrasting his mother's "way" with those of her neighbors. Occasionally Aunt Barbara put her feeble oar into the surging tide, hoping to check, even if she could not subdue the angry waters; but she might as well have kept silent save that Richard understood and appreciated her efforts to spare him as much as possible. Mrs. Van Buren was not to be stopped, and at last, when she had pretty fully set before Richard his own and his mother's delinquencies, she turned fiercely on her sister, demanding if she had not said "so and so" with regard to Ethie's home in the West. Thus straitened, Aunt Barbara replied:
"Things did strike me a little odd at Ethie's, and I don't well see how she could be very happy there. Mrs. Markham is queer--the queerest woman, if I must say it, that I ever saw, though I guess there's a good many like her up in Vermont, where she was raised, and if the truth was known, right here in Chicopee, too; and I wouldn't wonder if there were some queer ones in Boston. The place don't make the difference; it's the way the folks act."
This she said in defense of the West generally. There were quite as nice people there as anywhere, and she believed Mrs. Markham meant to be kind to Ethie; surely Richard did, only he did not understand her. It was very wrong to lock her up, and then it was wrong in Ethie to marry him, feeling as she did. "It was all wrong every way, but the heaviest punishment for the wrong had fallen on poor Ethie, gone, nobody knew where."
It was not in nature for Aunt Barbara to say so much without crying, and her tears were dropping fast into her motherly lap, where Tabby was now lying. Mrs. Van Buren was greatly irritated that her sister did not render her more assistance, and as a failure in that quarter called for greater exertions on her own part, she returned again to the charge, and wound up with sweeping denunciations against the whole Markham family.
"The idea of taking a young girl there, and trying to bend her to your ways of thinking--to debar her from all the refinements to which she had been accustomed, and give her for associates an ignorant mother-in-law and a half-witted brother."
Richard had borne a great deal from Mrs. Van Buren, and borne it patiently, too, as something which he deserved. He had seen himself torn to atoms, until he would never have recognized any one of the dissected members as parts of the Honorable Judge he once thought himself to be. He had heard his mother and her "ways" denounced as utterly repugnant to any person of decency, while James and John, under the head of "other vulgar appendages to the husband," had had a share in the general sifting down, and through it all he had kept quiet, with only an occasional demur or explanation; but when it came to Andy, the great, honest, true-hearted Andy, he could bear it no longer, and the Bigelow blood succumbed to the fiery gleam in Richard's eyes as he started to his feet, exclaiming:
"Mrs. Van Buren, you must stop, for were you a hundred times a woman, I would not listen to one word of abuse against my brother Andy. So long as it was myself and my mother, I did not mind; but every hair of Andy's head is sacred to us who know him, and I would take his part against the world, were it only for the sake of Ethie, who loved him so much, and whom he idolized. He would die for Ethie this very night, if need be--aye, die for you too, perhaps, if you were suffering and his life could bring relief. You don't know Andy, or you would know why we held him as dear as we do the memory of our darling Daisy; and when you taunt me with my half-witted brother, you hurt me as much as you would to tear my dead sister from her grave, and expose her dear face to the gaze of brutal men. No, Mrs. Van Buren, say what you like of me, but never again sneer at my brother Andy."
Richard paused, panting for breath, while Mrs. Van Buren looked at him with entirely new sensations from what she had before experienced. There was some delicacy of feeling in his nature, after all--something which recoiled from her unwomanly attack upon his weak-minded brother--and she respected him at that moment, if she had never done so before. Something like shame, too, she felt for her cruel taunt, which had both roused and wounded him, and she would gladly have recalled all she said of Andy if she could, for she remembered now what Aunt Barbara had told her of his kindness and the strong attachment there was between the simple man and Ethie. Mrs. Van Buren could be generous if she tried; and as this seemed a time for the trial, she did attempt to apologize, saying her zeal for Ethie had carried her too far; that she hoped Richard would excuse what she had said of Andy--she had no intention of wounding him on that point.
And Richard accepted the apology, but his face did not again assume the cowed, broken expression it had worn at first. There was a compression about the mouth, a firm shutting together of the teeth, and a dark look in the bloodshot eyes, which warned Mrs. Van Buren not to repeat much of what she had said. It would not now be received as it was at first. Richard would do much to bring Ethie back--he would submit to any humiliation, and bear anything for himself, but he would never again listen quietly while his mother and family were so thoroughly abused. Mrs. Van Buren felt this intuitively, and knowing that what she said had made an impression, and would after a time be acted upon, perhaps, she changed her tactics, and became quite as conciliating as Aunt Barbara herself, talking and consulting with Richard as to the best course to be pursued with regard to finding Ethie, and succeeding, in part, in removing from his face the expression it had put on when Andy was the subject of her maledictions.
Richard had a great dread of meeting his uncle, the old colonel, in his present trouble, and he was not quite sure whether he should go there or not. At least, he should not to-night; and when the clock struck eleven, he arose to retire.
"The room at the head of the stairs. I had a fire made for you in there," Aunt Barbara said, as she handed him the lamp.
Richard hesitated a moment, and then asked, "Does anyone occupy Ethie's old room? Seems to me I would rather go there. It would be somehow bring her nearer to me."
So to Ethie's old room he went, Aunt Barbara lamenting that he would find it so cold and comfortless, but feeling an increased kindliness toward him for this proof of love for her darling.
"There's a great deal of good about that man, after all," she said to her sister, when, after he was gone to his room, they sat together around their hearth and talked the matter over afresh; and then, as she took off and carefully smoothed her little round puffs of false hair, and adjusted her nightcap in its place, she said, timidly, "You were rather hard on him, Sophia, at times."
It needed but this for Mrs. Van Buren to explode again and charge her sister with saying too little rather than too much. "One would think you blamed Ethie entirely, or at least that you were indifferent to her happiness," she said, removing her lace barb, and unfastening the heavy switch bound about her head. "I was surprised at you, Barbara, I must say. After all your pretended affection for Ethelyn, I did expect you would be willing to do as much as to speak for her, at least."
This was too much for poor Aunt Barbara, and without any attempt at justification, except that her sister in her attack upon Richard had left her nothing to say, she cried quietly and sorrowfully, as she folded up her white apron and made other necessary preparations for the night. That she should be accused of not caring for Ethie, of not speaking for her, wounded her in a tender point; and long after Mrs. Van Buren had gone to the front chamber, where she always slept, Aunt Barbara was on her knees by the rocking chair, praying earnestly for Ethie, and then still kneeling there, with her face on the cushion, sobbing softly, "God knows how much I love her. There's nothing of personal comfort I would not sacrifice to bring her back; but when a man was feeling as bad as he could, what was the use of making him feel worse?"