HUGH INGELOW KEEPS HIS PROMISE.
Mrs. Susan Sharpe was up with the lark, or, rather, with the sea-gulls whirling and shrieking out on the tossing waters. The early morning sun streamed in the little chamber; the wind wailed plaintively still, and the dull tramp, tramp of the multitudinous waves kept up their ceaseless refrain.
All was yet still in the lone farmhouse—no living thing was stirring, not even the rats, that had held high carnival all night. Down in the back yard and front garden, Tiger and Nero prowled about their beat, surlily growling at the tossing trees, and were monarchs of all they surveyed.
Mrs. Sharpe was not an imaginative person, luckily. She got up and made her toilet, and splashed herself briskly in a basin of cold water. The effect of these ablutions was singular—they effected a total cure of her inflamed eyelids.
More singular still, a wig of red hair stood on the dressing-table, and Mrs. Sharpe's cranium was adorned with a respectable growth of dark, glossy, brown hair.
"If they only saw me now," said Mrs. Sharpe to herself, with a chuckle, "I rather think they'd open their old eyes!"
She went to work artistically—reddened her eyelids over again, carefully adjusted her wig, set her cap on it, fixed her spectacles on her nose, and surveyed herself complacently in the cracked chimney-glass.
"You'll do," said Mrs. Sharpe, nodding familiarly to her image: "You're as ugly as if somebody had bespoke you. I only wonder how that little unfortunate can take to such a looking object—and she does take to me, poor dear! And now I'll write to him. He's sure to be along in the course of the morning."
Taking from her capacious pocket a blank-book and a lead-pencil, Mrs. Susan Sharpe sat down and wrote.
And this is what Mrs. Sharpe wrote:
"She's here, and safe and well, and don't know me no more than the dead. But I can't get her out. Two old women and one old man are on the watch all day long. I daren't sneeze but they know it. And before they go off the watch there's two big, savage dogs goes on, and prowl about all night. I don't know what to do; tell me. She's awful down-hearted, and cries and goes on. I heard your whistle last night. Her room is next to mine—the windows to the left. If you walk on the beach she'll see you; she sits at the window all day. Doctor O. is going to Cuba in a week, and going to take her with him; so you had better be quick."
Mrs. Sharpe read her own composition over two or three times, with a satisfied look.
"I think that will do," she murmured. "Trust him to find a way out of a fix, and we're in a fix now, if there ever was one. Drat the dogs! If it wasn't for them I could get on myself."
Mrs. Sharpe was not a rapid scribe. It had taken her a considerable while to write this, and the household was astir. She folded it up in the smallest possible dimensions, and wedged it into her thimble.
"A brass thimble makes a good, strong envelope," said the nurse, with a grim smile. "And now to begin my day's work."
She quitted her own apartment and went into that of her charge. Mollie was still asleep—sleeping like a babe, with lips apart, and cheeks softly flushed, and loose, golden hair falling in burnished masses over the pillow. Involuntarily Mrs. Sharpe paused.
"She looks like a picture," she thought. "No wonder he's crazy in love."
The sound of the opening door awoke the light sleeper. She rose up on her elbow and stared around. The nurse advanced with a propitiatory smile.
"Good-morning, miss," she said, cheerfully. "I hope you had a nice sleep."
"Oh, is it you?" said Mollie. "I was dreaming I was back home with guardy, and Sir Roger, and poor Hugh, and here I am still. Oh!" in a voice of bitter anguish, "why did you awake me?"
"My poor dear," said the nurse, touched, "I didn't know, you know, or I wouldn't. There! don't think about it now, but get up, like a good girl, and wash and dress yourself, and have your breakfast comfortable. Things won't be always like this, you know."
Mollie looked wistfully at her, but Mrs. Sharpe wasn't going to commit herself, with no certainty but that listening ears were at the door.
She assisted the poor prisoner with her toilet, combed out and curled the beautiful, abundant hair, and made her as pretty as a picture.
"She's lost her rosy cheeks, and is failed away to nothing," mused the nurse. "Only for that, she'd be the loveliest thing the sun shines on."
"And now you're fixed, my pretty dear," said Mrs. Sharpe, "I'll go down and get your breakfast. Nobody ever feels right in the morning on an empty stomach."
Down in the kitchen, Mrs. Sharpe found things in a lively state of preparation—coffee boiling, steak broiling, toast making, and muffins baking. Old Sally, in a state threatening spontaneous combustion, bent over the fire, and Mrs. Oleander, in her rocking-chair, superintended.
"Are you only getting up now?" asked the doctor's mother, suspiciously.
"Been up these two hours, ma'am," responded Mrs. Sharpe. "I tidied up myself and my room, and then tidied up Miss Dane and her'n. I came down to fetch up her breakfast."
"It's all ready," said Sally. "Fetch along your tray."
So Susan Sharpe fetched along her tray, and received a bountiful supply of coffee and toast, and steak and muffins.
"There's nothing like plenty of good victuals for curing the vapors," observed Sally, sagely. "You make the young woman eat this, Mrs. Sharpe, and she'll feel better, you'll see."
Mrs. Sharpe smiled, as she bore off her burden, at the idea Sally must have of one little girl's appetite.
She found Mollie sitting at the window gazing at the sea, sparkling as if sown with stars, in the morning sunshine.
"Is it not beautiful?" she said, turning to the nurse. "Oh, if I were only free once more—free to have a plunge in that snow-white surf—free to have a breezy run along that delightful beach this magnificent morning?"
Mrs. Sharpe set down her tray, looked cautiously around her, lowered her voice, fixed her green-spectacled eyes meaningly on Mollie's face, and uttered these remarkable words:
"Wait! You may be free before long!"
"What do you mean?" cried Mollie, starting violently.
"Hush! 'Sh! 'sh!" laying her hand over the girl's mouth. "Not a word. Walls have ears, in prisons. Take your breakfast, miss," raising her voice. "It will do you no good, acting ugly and not eating."
For the stairs had creaked under a cautious, ascending footstep, and Mrs. Sharpe had heard that creak.
So, too, had Mollie this time; and she turned her shining eyes in eloquent silence to Mrs. Sharpe, and Mrs. Sharpe had nodded, and smiled, and grimaced toward the door in a way that spoke volumes.
"I'm going down to get my breakfast, now," she said, authoritatively. "Let me see what you'll have done by the time I get back."
The stairs were creaking again. Mrs. Sharpe did not hurry too much, and Mrs. Oleander, all panting, was back in her rocker when she re-entered the kitchen, trying very hard to look as though she had never left it.
"And how's your patient to-day, Mrs. Sharpe?" she asked, as soon as she could properly get her wind.
"Much the same," said Mrs. Sharpe, with brevity; "wants to starve herself to death, crying in spells, and making a time. Let me help you."
This to Sally, who was scrambling to get half a dozen things at once on the table. Mrs. Sharpe came to the rescue with a practiced hand, and upon the entrance of old Peter, who had been out chaining up the dogs, the quartet immediately sat down to breakfast.
After breakfast, the new nurse again made herself generally useful in the kitchen, helped Sally, who was inclined to give out at the knees, to "red up," washed dishes and swept the floor with a brisk celerity worthy of all praise.
And then, it being wash-day, she whipped up her sleeves, displaying two lusty, round arms, and fell to with a will among the soiled linens and steaming soap-suds.
"I may as well do something," she said, brusquely, in answer to Mrs. Oleander's very faint objections; "there's nothing to do upstairs, and she doesn't want me. She only calls me names."
So Mrs. Susan Sharpe rubbed, and wrung, and soaped, and pounded, and boiled, and blued for three mortal hours, and then there was a huge basket of clothes all ready to go on the line.
"Now, ma'am," said this priceless treasure, "if you'll just show me the clothes-line, I'll hang these here out."
Mrs. Oleander pointed to two long ropes strung at the lower end of the back yard, and Susan Sharpe, hoisting the basket, set off at once to hang them to dry.
The two old women watched her from the window with admiring eyes.
"She's a noble worker!" at last said old Sally. "She 'minds me of the time when I was a young girl myself. Dearie me! It went to my heart to see her rubbing them sheets and things as if they were nothing."
"And I think she's to be trusted, too," said Mrs. Oleander. "She talks as sharp to that girl as you or I, Sally. I shouldn't mind if we had her here for good."
Meantime, the object of all this commendation had marched across the yard, and proceeded scientifically to hang the garments on the line. But all the while the keen eyes inside the green spectacles went roving about, and alighted presently on something that rewarded her for her hard day's work.
It was a man emerging from the pine woods, and crossing the waste strip of marshland that extended to the farm.
A high board fence separated the back yard from this waste land, and but few ever came that way.
The man wore the dress and had the pack of a peddler, and a quantity of tow hair escaped from under a broad-brimmed hat. The brown face was half hidden in an enormous growth of light whiskers.
"Can it be?" thought Susan, with a throbbing heart. "I darsn't speak, for them two old witches are watching from the window."
Here the peddler espied her, and trolled out, in a rich, manly voice:
"My father he has locked the door,
My mother keeps the key:
But neither bolts nor bars shall part
My own true love and me."
"It is him!" gasped Mrs. Susan Sharpe. "Oh, good gracious!"
"Good-day to you, my strapping, lass. How do you find yourself this blessed morning?"
Susan Sharpe knew there were listening ears and looking eyes in the kitchen, and for their benefit she retorted:
"It's no business of yours how I am! Be off with you! We don't allow no vagrants here!"
"But I ain't a vagrant, my duck o' diamonds. I'm a respectable Yankee peddler, trying to turn an honest penny by selling knickknacks to the fair sect. Do let me in, there's a pretty dear! You hain't no idee of the lovely things I've got in my pack—all dirt cheap, too!"
"I don't want nothing," said Mrs. Susan Sharpe.
"But your ma does, my love, or your elder sister, which I see 'em at the winder this minute. Now do go, there's a lamb, and ask your ma if I mayn't come in."
Mrs. Sharpe dropped her basket in a pet and stalked back to the house.
"It's a peddler-man," she said, crossly, "a-wanting to come in. I told him he couldn't, and it's of no use; and the best thing you can do is to set the dogs on him."
"No, no!" cried Mrs. Oleander, shrilly. "Let him come in. I like peddlers. Go with her, Sally, and tell the man to come round to the garden gate."
"I'll tell him," said Susan Sharpe, stalking out again. "Let Sally go and open the gate."
She marched across the yard and addressed the "perambulating merchant."
"You're to go round to the front gate. This way. I've a note for you in my thimble. I'll drop the thimble in your box."
The first half of Mrs. Sharpe's speech was given for the benefit of Mrs. Oleander's greedy ears—the latter half, hurriedly and in a low voice, for his own.
The sagacious peddler nodded, struck up a second stave of his ditty, and trudged round to the front gate.
Mrs. Sharpe finished hanging out the clothes before she re-entered the kitchen. When she did, there sat the peddler displaying his wares, and expatiating volubly on their transcendent merits. And there stood Sally and Mrs. Oleander, devouring the contents of the box with greedy eyes.
It is not in the heart of women—country women, particularly—to resist the fascinations of the peddler's pack.
Mrs. Oleander and her old servant were rather of the strong-minded order; but their eyes glistened avariciously, for all that, at the display of combs, and brushes, and handkerchiefs, and ribbons, and gaudy prints, and stockings, and cotton cloth, and all the innumerables that peddlers do delight in.
"This red-and-black silk handkerchief, ma'am," the peddler was crying, holding up a gay square of silk tartan, "is one fifty, and dirt cheap at that. Seein' it's you, ma'am, however, I'll take a dollar for it. Wuth two—it is, by ginger! Sold three dozens on 'em down the village, and got two dollars apiece for 'em, every one."
"I'll take it at a dollar," said Mrs. Oleander. "Sally, that piece of brown merino would just suit you."
"Makes up lovely, ma'am," said the peddler, turning to Sally; "only four dollars for the hull piece. Jest feel of it—soft as a baby's skin. Halloo! miss, what can I do for you?"
This last to Susan Sharpe, who had set down her basket, and was looking on.
"Nothing," replied Susan, with asperity.
"Oh, now, don't you say that!" exclaimed this persuasive man; "you do want suthin'—lots o' things—I kin see it in them air sparklin' eyes o' your'n. What makes you wear green glasses. See here, I've blue, and white, and fancy colors, with silver straddles for the nose. Do look at 'em—there's a love!"
Mrs. Oleander laughed, and Mrs. Sharpe so far unbent her austerity as to kneel down and begin rummaging the miscellaneous articles.
The peddler's quick eye never left her hands; and when he heard the tiny click of something falling, an intelligent flash shot from him to the obnoxious green glasses.
"I want a thimble," said Mrs. Sharpe, with phlegm. "I've lost mine. How much do you ask for these here, mister?"
"Three cents apiece."
Susan paid down the three cents, pocketed the brass thimble, and slowly rose.
"No more to sell to-day," said the peddler, bundling up with celerity. "So you won't take the brown, ma'am? Sorry we can't make a trade; but I'll run up again to-morrow with a new lot, and I've no doubt we can strike a bargain. Good-morning, ladies."
With which Mr. Peddler shouldered his pack and trudged away, singing. Old Peter let him out, and locked the gate after, and watched him out of sight. The peddler ceased his song the moment he was out of hearing, struck into the woods the instant he was out of sight, and flinging his pack on the grass, tore it open.
He had not long to search—Mrs. Sharpe's tarnished old thimble was conspicuous enough among his glistening new ones. He fished it up, poked out the crumpled bit of paper, and slowly read it through. When read, he tore it into fifty morsels, and scattered them in a white shower all about. Then, with knitted brows and compressed lips, he sat and thought and thought for a full hour.
Meanwhile, matters went on smoothly behind him. Mrs. Sharpe, having finished the washing, and quite won the hearts of the two old women by her workmanlike manner, prepared her patient's dinner, and brought it up.
On this occasion Mrs. Oleander undertook to accompany her. They found that refractory patient at her usual post—the window—gazing with dreamy, empty eyes over the ceaseless sea.
Susan Sharpe was strictly on her guard; her austere face never unbent, and Mollie took her cue once more.
"Here's your dinner miss," she said, briefly; "is there anything I can do for you?"
"Nothing," replied Mollie, sullenly. "Only leave me alone. I never want to see either of your ugly old faces."
She turned her back upon them as she spoke, and never turned round until they had quitted the room.
"She's a little imp, if there ever was a little imp yet," said Mrs. Oleander, spitefully. "Does she always treat you like that?"
"Worse, mostly," said the imperturbable Susan; "but, la! I don't mind; I'm used to 'em."
"Do you think she'll ever get better?"
"I think it's very likely, ma'am," responded Mrs. Sharpe. "Your cross ones are always the likeliest. But, of course, I can't say."
All that long afternoon Mollie was left quite alone. Mrs. Sharpe never came near her. This indifference on the part of the nurse quite disarmed Mrs. Oleander's suspicions. If she had any wish to carry favor with her son's patient, or help her to escape, surely she would not sit there in the kitchen, hemming her new silk handkerchief, all the while. That was what Susan did, however, and the weary, weary hours of the warm, sunny day wore blankly on the poor, lone Mollie.
The horrible stillness of the place seemed driving her mad. The endless monotony of the waves rolling up on the beach was growing unendurable. The wild waste of sparkling-waters, ending in the low horizon line, wearied her eyes like the sands of the desert.
"I shall lose all the little reason I ever had if I am kept in this howling desolation much longer," she said, pressing her hands to her throbbing temples. "Oh! to shut out this mocking sunshine—to lose sight of this dreary waste, where no living thing comes! Oh, to get away from that horrible sea! If I could only die and end it all! But I live on, and live on where others would be happier and find death."
She sighed wearily, and looked across at the radiant western sky, gorgeous with the coming sunset.
"What did that woman mean? Did she mean anything? Yes, I am sure she did, and she has come here to help me to escape. Oh, Heaven have pity, and grant me freedom once more!"
She clasped her hands and sat there like one out of herself, while the moments wore on. Purple and gold made the western sky luminous with glory, and when the gorgeous flames were at their brightest, and the sea turning to a lake of blood-red fire, a little white boat, with a blue pennant flying, shot out of the red light and drifted close to the shore.
Mollie fixed her eyes on this tiny skiff—why, she could not have told. Boats passed and repassed often enough, but seldom so close to the shore. The beauty of the little bark attracted her, nestling as it did like a white dove on the water, and that fairy azure banner flying.
A solitary figure sat in the boat, his face turned her way; but the distance was too great for her to distinguish that face. A word in white letters she could see on the blue flag; but again the distance was too great for her to distinguish. She sat and watched and watched, until the opening of the door startled her. She turned round and saw Susan Sharpe—this time alone.
"Look there!" said Mollie, obeying a sudden impulse; "did you ever see anything so pretty?"
The nurse looked—bent her brows and looked again. Her face flushed—she caught her breath.
"Who is the man?" she asked, hurriedly, lowly.
"I don't know," in the same breathless way. "He is watching here—but the distance is so great. Oh, nurse—"
She did not finish the sentence, but with hands clasped and lips parted, stood looking imploringly in the woman's face.
"Wait a minute," said Mrs. Susan Sharpe; "there is no one on the watch this time, thank the Lord! Mrs. Oleander's down with the toothache."
She left the room—was absent in her own two or three minutes—then returned with a pocket telescope in her hand.
"Try this," she said, quietly; "it's small, but it's powerful."
She put it in the girl's hand. Mollie turned eagerly to the window—the boat and the man were near enough now. The word on the blue flag was Hope; the face of the man was still toward her, true as the needle to the north star. With the first look she recognized it. A low cry of amaze, and she dropped the glass, and stood all trembling with the sudden joyful shock.
For it was the face she had sighed for, day-time and night time—it was the man she loved. It was Hugh Ingelow.