Mabel's Mistake

by Ann S. Stephens

Harrington was, indeed, surprised when he saw this woman. She was evidently ten years older than she had appeared at a distance, and, though that seemed an impossibility, darker too. The Madras kerchief certainly had been refolded since her return to the house, for it came low upon the forehead, and the hair visible beneath it was thickly scattered with white. She stooped somewhat, and her gait was slow, almost shuffling. Not a vestige of the imperious air that had rendered her so picturesque a few minutes before, remained. She appeared before him simply as a common-place light mulatto of rather more than middle age, who might have been an upper house servant in her day, but nothing more. On closer inspection, even the orange-tinted shawl was soiled and held around her person in a slovenly manner, as rich cast-off garments usually are by the servants who inherit them.

At first, Harrington would not believe that this was the same woman whose appearance had made so deep an impression on him, for a heavy sort of sluggishness, both of thought and feeling, lay on her features, while those that had aroused his attention so keenly, were active and full of intelligence. The woman did not sit down, but stood by the open door, looking stupidly at Agnes Barker, as if waiting for some command.

"Well, Miss Agnes, I'se here, what does the master please to want?"

It was rather difficult for James Harrington, self-possessed as he was, to answer that question. The woman had taken him by surprise. Her appearance was so completely that of a common-place servant, that he was silenced by the very surprise she had given him. But for her dress, he would not have believed in her identity with the person he had seen in the open air, and that was worn with a slovenliness altogether unlike the ease remarkable in the person whom she represented, without conveying an impression of absolute identity.

Harrington had spent his early life in the South, and was at no loss to comprehend the peculiar class to which this woman belonged. He answered her quietly, but still with suspicion:

"Nothing, aunty, except that you will oblige me with a glass of water."

The woman shuffled across the room, and brought him some water, which she placed scrupulously on a plate, by way of waiter, before presenting it. Her air—the loose, indolent gait, like that of a leopard moving sleepily around its lair—convinced him that she had been nothing more than a common household slave, out of place in her cold, and almost poverty-stricken northern home. He drank the water she gave him, and handing back the glass, inquired if she did not feel lonely and chilled by the cold climate?

"I'se allus warm and comfortable where dat ere chile is," said the woman, looking at Agnes, "any place 'pears like home when she's by, and I 'xpect she feels like dat where old aunty is, if she is poor."

"She is happy in having one faithful friend," answered Harrington, more and more satisfied that the woman was simply what she seemed.

A strange smile quivered for a moment around Agnes Barker's lip, but as Harrington turned his glance that way, it subsided into a look of gentle humility.