COMING.
Coming soon the long vacation,
When we'll throw our tasks aside,
And on wings the dancing hours
O'er our gleeful heads will glide.
Coming soon the merry season,
When we need not even look
Oh! for weeks and weeks together
At the inside of a book.
AN "OLD-FIELD" SCHOOL-GIRL.[1]
BY MARION HARLAND.
CHAPTER XIII.
Six years had passed since Major Duncombe's sudden death. He was the most popular man in the county, and beloved by high and low, yet the gap made by his going was apparently filled.
Robert, the eldest son, inherited the homestead, and at his marriage, two years later, his mother went to live with her daughter Eliza, who had married a Richmond lawyer. By the terms of her father's will Emily Duncombe received a valuable farm, embracing the house that had been built for the overseer.
Robert Duncombe would gladly have retained Mr. Grigsby in his employ, but the thrifty Scotchman had other views for himself. For years he had been putting aside money for the purchase of a home for his family, and a small plantation a few miles back from the river happened to be for sale about the time Major Duncombe died. Mrs. McLaren advanced a considerable sum to make up the necessary amount for the purchase. At the date at which our story reopens the Grigsbys had lived for five years and a half in the comfortable brick house attached to the Oatley farm. Perfect June days had come again. Bees were riding the red clover-tops, and everything that could blossom had burst into bloom as the birds into song. The great fields of oats, from which the place took its name, ruffled before the breeze as green billows are rocked and crisped by sea-winds; the soft blue of the sky was unclouded, and heaven's own peace was upon the face of the earth.
Something—and much—of this was in Felicia Grigsby's mind as she rode dreamily through the familiar scenes the day after she had returned home "for good." That was the way her father put it, and she echoed it heartily. Not cheerily as yet. Aunt Jean had joined husband and child in the world that makes up for the losses and mistakes of this. Flea's new black dress told that the grief of parting with her best friend was still fresh in her heart. Mrs. McLaren's property was divided equally between her brother, her namesake niece, and her nephew David.
Nobody called him "Dee" now. The diminutive did not suit the stalwart youth of seventeen who rode beside his sister to-day, and did most of the talking for the first hour. He was tall for his years, and well knit together, with a frank face his sister thought handsome.
"You were disappointed that I didn't go to college," he was saying, "but I was cut out and made up for a farmer, and nothing else. The smell of a ploughed field is the sweetest perfume in the world to me. When I see my crops growing, I feel my soul growing with them. Where will you find anything in town equal to that, now?"
They were on the top of a hill overlooking the fertile river-lands backed by a line of forest. The noble James, full to the brim after the May rains, glittered in the sun, and made a golden rim for the picture.
"We have the 'sweet fields,' the 'living green,' and the 'rolling flood' of the hymn," said Flea, softly. "Our Virginia is a bonnie country. I am thankful that it is 'my ain countree.' Why, there are the roof and chimneys of the old house! I did not know they could be seen from here. How strange it seems that we should be living anywhere else! How much stranger that Miss Emily should be living there!"
"The house is twice as big as it used to be," replied David. "That fellow made it his business forthwith to alter it as much as he could. You can't make him madder than by speaking of it as 'Grigsby's', or, worse yet, the 'overseer's house.' It is 'Broadlawn' now, if you please, and the model place of the neighborhood. But the old name sticks to it, and all the closer because it frets him. I never speak to him. I cut him upon principle. I promised myself over six years ago to thrash him as soon as I got big enough, and I'm on the lookout for an excuse to do it."
"When the time comes, give him a lash or two in my name—there's a dear boy! All the same, he did us a good turn without meaning to. If he had been half decent with us we might have staid in the Old-Field school for years. When it and the Old-Field schoolmaster are things of the past nobody will believe that such abuses existed in a Christian community. I am sorry for the Tayloe children."
"Red-heads, all three of them," said David. "With tempers to match, so I am told. You wouldn't know their mother. She has broken terribly."
"Who can wonder at it? I'd like to ride around that way, if you don't mind: by the school-house and the spring, and by what was the Fogg place, and see the short-cut we used to take coming home from school. Heigho! How long ago it all seems!"
She said "Heigho" again, and with a sadder intonation, in crossing the bridge from which she had been shot. No other picture of the past haunted her so persistently to-day as the vision of the "Miss Em'ly" of her childish adoration. They visited the empty school-house, disused for two years. The shingles were warping and loosening like neglected teeth; the door hung by one hinge; the steps were rotting into holes. Flea rode up close to the door and looked into the deserted room. Benches were gone, and the teacher's desk and chair. She had seen Miss Emily there but once, yet she recalled more vividly than any other image that of the pretty girl in her blue riding-habit and cap, and how she had befriended the forlorn little victim of a tyrant's temper.
Since the incident of the arbor she had not spoken or thought of Miss Emily when she could help it. Memories such as those that visited her now took the sting out of what had happened there, and made her gentler in judgment. Far down in her heart the old-time tenderness awoke and stirred.
"You say she has changed very much?" she puzzled David very much by asking, as the horses turned in at the branch of the main road leading to the overseer's house.
David stared for a moment.
"Who is 'she'? Oh, you mean Mrs. Tayloe! More than anybody can believe without seeing her. Maybe we will see her as we go by."
"I hope not," said Flea, nervously. "I'd rather recollect her as she was at her best."
Nevertheless she brought the horse down to a slow walk in passing the gate; her eyes lingered wistfully upon house and grounds. The dwelling had been raised to two full stories; it was painted white and had green blinds; a porch covered with vines ran across the front and two sides. The turf of the yard was like green velvet, and three little negroes, two girls and a boy, dressed as for company, were picking up leaves and twigs about the front steps.
"Look at that, will you?" exclaimed David. "He is training them to be house servants. They are scrubbed within an inch of their lives, and put into their best clothes every morning, and put through a sort of drill out there. They mustn't speak, unless when spoken to, while they are there, and if they overlook a single straw or get their clothes dirty they are whipped. Will you look at the poor little rascals, now?"
The pickaninnies, the oldest of whom could not have been ten, drew up into a row, holding each other's hands, and as the riders were opposite to them, dropped a comical little courtesy all at once. They were as solemn as owls, and there was a mournful air about the whole performance that kept the young Grigsbys from laughing.
"I feel more like crying," Flea declared when they were out of hearing. "It is worse than dancing dogs and trained canaries. I sha'n't get their patient eyes and their every-day Sunday clothes out of my head for a week."
David's reply was checked by the patter of feet behind them. The boy they had seen was tearing up the road at the top of his speed.
"Please, ma'am! please, suh!" he panted, "mistes say you mus' please come back an' see her. She say to tell you marster done gone to de Cote-house for all day, an' she can' let you go by 'thout seein' her, 'pon no 'count."
Flea and David exchanged glances and turned their horses about. Mrs. Tayloe was leaning over the gate, waiting for them. David had said truly that they would never have known her. The auburn hair was faded to the color of a half-burned brick, and the gloss was gone; the blue eyes were sunken, yet seemed larger than of old in the thin face, and gave her the look of a hunted thing—a look that went to Flea's heart. She sprang from her horse into arms held eagerly to receive her.
"Miss Emily! dear Miss Emily!" The words were choked by a gush of feeling which she tried to cover up with a laugh. "Mrs. Tayloe, I mean!"
"Don't call me that, child. I wish I could be a girl again—like you!" holding her at arm's-length and gazing admiringly at the graceful figure and glowing face. "I saw you go by from the window, but I wouldn't have known you if your brother hadn't been with you. You've just got to stay to dinner. There's nobody here to-day to be afraid of. When the cat's away the mice will play."
She talked fast in a high, unnatural key. Voice and laugh had few familiar tones to the listeners. Flea hastened to say that their mother expected them home to dinner, and that their sister would come down the river early in the afternoon.
"She married a Richmond man, didn't she?" ran on the hostess. "Such a pretty girl as she was! Cecily! go tell your daddy to fix a nice snack on a waiter, and bring it out here for this lady and gentleman—you hear? and to be mighty quick about it. Sit down, both of you. It's a heap pleasanter here than in the house. Mr. Tayloe can't bear to eat out-of-doors, or I'd always have breakfast and supper on the porch. It's one of his hundreds of notions, and I daren't have so much as a biscuit eaten out here when he is at home. He was cut out for an old maid, and a fussy one at that. The very baby is afraid to cry where he can hear her. What a goose your pretty sister was to get married!"
"She doesn't think so," smiled Flea.
"Wait awhile, and you'll see. That is, if she tells the truth. Most women don't. I've got to the point where I don't care. How good-looking you are, Flea! Not exactly pretty, but stylish, and that's better. Beauty doesn't count for anything after a woman is married."
David had not sat down, and looked so uncomfortable while his hostess talked that his sister came to his help.
"You'd like to look at the garden and stable, I know, David. We will excuse you; but don't be gone long. I can stay but half an hour or so."
"I'll send for you when the snack comes," cried Mrs. Tayloe after him as he went down the steps; and to Flea, "Now we can have a comfortable, confidential chat."
David had said she had "broken." Flea thought that "frayed" would be the better word. The high, gay spirits had fled with youth and beauty. Her temper was quick, her husband's was violent. Their quarrels were the talk of the neighborhood, and a rumor was gaining ground that the wife was partially insane.
Grown-up Flea had never breathed to a living soul one word of what had happened in the summer-house six years ago. She was as loyal to those she loved as when the child had refused to tell how she got the scratch on her cheek. When flushed by heat or exercise a thin white sear, hardly wider than a hair, still showed the line the shot had taken. It was distinct now, and Mrs. Tayloe stroked it with a finger which was no longer plump and soft.
"I declare you'll carry that scar to your grave! What a game little thing you were! And how shamefully I treated you the last time I saw you! I was just crazy over that man—the biggest fool that ever lived. I've paid for it since! Oh, I've paid for it!"
A scarlet spot flashed out upon each cheek; her voice arose until it cracked.
"If I had only listened to you that day, I would have been a happier and a better woman. Poor, dear papa said I was bewitched, and I really think I was. Mr. Tayloe has quarrelled with my brothers, and not one of them ever comes near me. Robert told me once to provoke the man to strike me, and then my brothers would make the law step in. But there are the children, you see. I can't disgrace them."
"Dear Miss Emily," pleaded Flea, her eyes full of tears, "don't talk of these things. You are not well, and thinking of old times excites you. Where are the children? I want to see them. They must be a great comfort to you."
Mrs. Tayloe shivered at intervals, hysterically. She caught her breath at every other word.
"Comfort! They are a part of my torment. He will manage them to suit himself. Do you know that he whipped my little Lizzie when she was only a month old for crying with the colic? She was the oldest, you know, and her father said he couldn't begin discipline too early. He whipped her with a willow switch. My mother told him he was a brute, and he turned her out of the house—the house my father gave me!
"Set that down on the table here, Hampton, and you, Ned, tell Mr. David Grigsby that the snack is ready."
"He never eats between meals," said Flea, taking the chair Mrs. Tayloe pushed up to the table, "and I ought not; but I am so hungry, and everything looks so tempting, that I cannot refuse."
It was a lavish luncheon, and Mrs. Tayloe took a childish delight in pressing her delicacies upon the visitor.
"Hampton," she said, after a while, with a touch of her girlish vivacity, "go get a bottle of that shrub your master makes such a fuss over. I must have Miss Grigsby taste it. Here is the cupboard key."
When it was brought she went on with the same feverish gayety:
"He made it himself four years ago, and he gets stingier and stingier with it every year. It really is mighty good, though I wouldn't tell him so to save his life. He'd kill me if he knew I'd touched it."
"Don't have it opened—please!" begged Flea, checking the hand that held out the corkscrew to the butler. "I really would rather not drink it. I don't care for liquor of any kind."
Mrs. Tayloe shook her hand off with a shriek of laughter.
"I believe you are afraid of him to this day. Hampton won't tell on us. It isn't the first secret he and I have kept from our lord and master. Open it!" to the grinning man. "Now fill two glasses—one for Miss Grigsby and one for me. Take yours, Flea! I'll give you a toast. Single blessedness forever, and confusion to all husbands!"
Her elbow was grasped from behind as she lifted the glass above her head. Flea had set hers down, untasted, having seen who was coming up through the hall from the back door. At the same moment David Grigsby hurried around the corner of the house. He had had a glimpse of Mr. Tayloe as he rode into the stable-yard by way of a plantation road, and hoped to reach the porch in season to get his sister away without encountering him.
THE YOUNG FARMER DRAGGED THE MASTER DOWN THE STEPS.
The youth stopped short, confounded by what he saw. The wife tried to rise from the table, but was held down in her chair by the hand pressed upon her shoulder. The other hand did not relax the clutch upon her elbow. The sleeve of her dress had fallen back when she raised the glass, and David saw the flesh whiten under the cruel fingers. Flea gathered up her skirt and retreated to the steps, pausing there as if reluctant to leave her friend in the power of the angry man. His face literally blackened; his eyes were livid; the sneer that drew the corners of his mouth upward lifted the lips from strong sharp teeth like a hound's.
"So-ho!" he hissed between them. "This is what goes on while I am away!"
He got no further. David and Flea never agreed in their accounts of what happened next. The brother thought that the wife's struggle was to free herself from the savage grip upon her elbow. Flea saw the look of hate and fear with which the frantic woman dashed glass and liquor into her husband's face. He did not move so much as to wipe the red streams from his eyes. He spoke slowly and in deadly calm: "You have been taking a lesson from your distinguished visitor, have you?" glancing with his evil smile at the horror-stricken girl. "Let her take one in return from this!"
He raised his hand to strike her, but David saw the motion, and bounded up the steps.
The young farmer dragged the master of the house by the collar down the steps, thence along the gravel walk to the road. A blind instinct of what was conventional in such cases warned him not to beat a man on his own premises. Once upon the highway David stayed hand and whip no longer. Holding the elder and smaller man down upon the ground, he then and there paid off old and new scores. His whip was new and tough, the arm that wielded it was lusty. Every lash from David's whip cut through the light cloth of coat and vest, and cut the shirt into ribbons down to the skin.
Felicia Grigsby was a married woman with a David and a Jean of her own when she told me the story of her Old-Field school-days. Even then she was unable to describe without deep emotion the cruel scene I have just sketched.
"No," she said, in answer to my exclamation of indignant horror, "his wife did not leave him even after that. The act of infamous cruelty seemed to subdue her utterly. I never saw her again. I dared not visit her, and she never went beyond her yard gate, even to church. It was said she had fallen into a gentle melancholy. I am thankful, for her sake, that it was gentle. Her children loved her dearly. I hope they brought some balm to the wounded spirit.
"The youngest was ten years old when his mother died. The week after her burial her husband sold the plantation through a real-estate agent to my brother David. A month later he left the county and State, and removed to Louisiana. I hear that he has grown rich there on a sugar plantation. He says that the climate of Virginia did not agree with him. That was lucky for him—and for Virginia."