CHAPTER XXVIII
Christmas Cove had entered its autumn lethargy when Aunt Abby Bemis and her new protégée reached it. Captain Bemis, who “never had no say ’bout nothin’,” but who had cooked his own meals uncomplainingly for three weeks, emerged, white-dusted, from the mill, to greet the arrivals, and Chip was soon installed in a somewhat bare room overlooking the cove. Everything seemed slightly chilly to her here. This room, with its four-poster bed, blue-painted chairs, light blue shades, and dark blue straw matting, the leafless elms in front, the breeze that swept in from the sea, and even her reception, seemed cool. Her heart was not in it. Try as she would, she could not yet feel one spark of affection for this “book-larned” Aunt Abby, who had already begun to reprove her for lapses of speech. It was all so different from the home life she had just left; and as Chip had now begun to notice and feel trifles, the relations of the people seemed as chilly as the room to which she was consigned.
When Sunday came–a sunless one with leaden sky and cold wind bearing the ocean’s moaning–Chip felt herself back at Greenvale with its Sundays, for now she was stared at the moment she entered the church. The singing was, of course, of the same solemn character, the minister’s prayers even longer, and the preaching as incomprehensible as in Greenvale.
To Chip, doubtless a heretic who needed regeneration, it seemed a melancholy and solemn performance. The sermon (on predestination, with a finale which was a description of the resurrection day) made her feel creepy, and when the white-robed procession rising from countless graves was touched upon, and a pause came when she could hear the ocean’s distant moan once more, it seemed that spites were creeping and crawling all about that dim room.
With her advent at school Monday came something of the same trouble first met at Greenvale, for the master, a weazen, dried-up little old man, who wore a wig and seemed to exude rules and discipline, lacked the kindly interest of Miss Phinney.
Chip, almost a mature young lady, was aligned with girls and boys of ten and twelve, and once more the same shame and humiliation had to be endured. It wore away in time, however, for she had made almost marvellous progress under Miss Phinney. Her mind was keen and quick, and once at study again, she astonished Mr. Bell, the master.
Something of her old fearless self-reliance now came to her aid, also. It had made her dare sixty miles of wilderness alone and helpless, it had spurred her to escape Greenvale and her sense of being a dependent pauper, and now that latent force for good or ill still nerved her.
But Christmas Cove did not suit her. The sea that drew her eyes with its vastness seemed to awe her. The great house, brown and moss-coated, where she lived, was barnlike, and never quite warm enough. The long street she traversed four times daily was bleak and wind-swept. Aunt Abby was austere and lacking in cordiality; and Sundays–well, Sundays were Chip’s one chief abhorrence.
She may be blamed for it,–doubtless will be,–and yet she never had been, and it seemed never would be, quite reconciled to Sundays. At Tim’s Place they were unknown. At Greenvale they had been dreaded, and now at Christmas Cove they were no less so.