Papa's own girl: A novel

by Marie Stevens Howland

“Yes, if you like,” answered Susie; “as much as you like, or nothing. I do not think you are bad. I am sure you love truth and honesty better than falsehood and dishonor. Your face shows me that. This evening, if you like, we will come and sit by you.” Annie expressed her gratitude in a simple, touching way, said she was much better, and would soon be able to work and be of some use in return for all the kindness she had received. She expressed the greatest admiration for Minnie. She had never in her life, she said, seen so lovely a child. “She will not tell me her name,” continued Annie, “but she says she is her doctor’s pet.”

“She will be called Minnie Forest,” said Susie. “You may as well know now as at any time, that her father is the doctor’s only son, and that I was never married to him. You see I also have had my troubles, but I have lived through them.”

“Oh, how you must have suffered!” exclaimed Annie. “I was not so brave as you, was I? But oh! I felt that I must die, and be where I could forget my awful suffering.”

“Don’t think of them any more,” said Susie, with feeling. “You can live with us, and work with us in our flower business. Who knows what happiness may be in store for you?”

In the evening the doctor called, having been unable in the morning to do more than call at the door, when Clara told him that the patient was doing well. At the sight of him, Annie seized his hand and kissed it with tears. “I am glad already that you saved me,” she said; “and oh! I feel that I am among blessed angels. I never met such dear, noble women before. I wonder if there are any others in the whole world like them. To-night I am going to tell them my history. Will you stay and hear it? I should like to have you.” The doctor stayed, and that evening the three friends heard a most pitiful story, which was very nearly as follows:

“I was born in ——, about twenty miles from here. My father is a farmer, and a deacon in the church. I am the oldest of six children. All my early years were very sad. I had to work hard all the time, and went to school only in winter, for I had to take care of the younger children. I loved to go to school, but it was hard to keep up with my class, because I had to stay home Mondays and Tuesdays to help about the washing and ironing, and often other days also. I don’t know how I ever learned anything, for my father would never let me have a lamp in my room when I wished to study my lessons. It was very cruel in him, for I loved to read and study, and during the day I never had a moment. He used to whip me when I disobeyed him about borrowing books and papers to read. A girl who lived near, used to lend me her Waverly Magazines. That was six years ago, when I was ten years old. One day my mother told him; and he came to my room in an awful rage, and burned them all, though I cried and begged him on my knees to spare them, because they were not mine. It was no use, and my friend was much distressed, for she used to keep them all. I cried over it for days, and my mother was very angry with what she called my silliness. She thought I ought to be a very happy girl, but I was not. I could not be happy. Everything I wished to do was discouraged in every way. They thought me wicked because I was dissatisfied with the poor, cheap clothes my father allowed me; and I was dissatisfied, for my father was not poor. He always had money in the bank. I was never allowed a single pretty dress, like other girls, nor to go to any of their parties. My father called them all kissing parties, and both he and mother said they were ashamed of me because I wished to go. Mother cared for nothing but work, and I could not take the same pleasure in scrubbing and cooking that she did, though I did it all the time, and would have willingly, if I could have been allowed to read or to have any pleasures.

“In our school there was one scholar named George Storrs—the brightest and handsomest of all. I think I always loved him since I was a very little girl; but he never noticed me much until one year ago last August, when one day, on my way to the village, he joined me, and we walked together. The road lay through a beautiful wood, where there was a pond close by the road, full of water-lilies. We stopped, and George took off his shoes and waded in to get me some. Just as he came out with them, I saw my father coming from the village, and only a little distance from us. I screamed with fright, and flew into the bushes. George followed me, and I told him my fears. He told me my father should not hurt me, and I clung to him in an agony of dread. My father passed as though he had not seen me; but oh, how I dreaded to go home that day. I feared he would actually kill me in his anger. The state I was in, and George’s kindness, made me tell him of my life at home. He pitied me, and spoke tender words to me—the first I had ever heard. You cannot wonder that I clung to his words, and loved him with all my heart. I told him so. I could not help it. He said I was a good girl, and he had always loved me, and some time he would help me to get away from home. In a month he was to come to this place and work in the Oakdale Republican office as compositor. Three times after that I met him in the same place, for my fears had been groundless—my father had not seen me. George promised to write me, and he kept his word, and during a whole year I was happy, in spite of everything. Of course, I had to have him write me under a false name, and I had much trouble to get my letters. There was no one I could trust, and a hundred questions were asked whenever I wished to go to the village. I knew that my love for George was the highest and noblest thing in my soul, and yet I had to conceal it like a crime. Oh, it was so hard! My mother loves her children, I know. She works hard for them; but when she gives them food enough, keeps their clothes decent, and prays for them every day, she feels that she has done all. I do not blame her in the least; but oh! I should have worshipped her, if she had made me trust her like a friend. She never told me of myself—of the changes that happen to girls at a certain age; and when I passed that period I was horrified. I wondered if it were not some dreadful divine punishment sent to me because I did my hair prettily, and tried to manage, with my scanty materials, to make my dress more becoming. For this I was considered bad and perverse by my father. You may wonder at what I am telling you, but it is the solemn truth. In my distress I went to Laura Eliot, a girl much older than myself, who had for three years loaned me books whenever I went to the village. I had never been intimate with her, for she had considered me a mere child, I suppose, and loaned me the books because she was interested in my passion for them. She told me very kindly many things I ought to have learned from my mother, and after that, treated me more like a friend. She lived alone with her father, who was a drunkard, but a man of education, and she had been talked about. I think it was all false. My father never found out about the books she loaned me, but when he learned that I had called on Laura he was angry, and threatened to cowhide me if I ever set foot in her house again; but I did not obey him. I had made a large pocket that I used to tie on under my dress so I could secrete the books. I read in this way a great many works of Scott, Goldsmith, the poems of Shelley, Burns and Tennyson, and ever so many novels. Laura gave me a little tin oil lamp, which I kept supplied with oil out of money that I kept back cent by cent when I sold butter or eggs for my mother. It was wrong, I know, but mother used to cheat father in the same way. He never allowed her to sell butter or cheese for herself, but it was the only way she could get any money. I kept her secret, of course, for there was no sympathy between me and my father.

“One day, only two weeks ago, I went to the village against my mother’s wish. I had urged her to let me go for a month in vain, and I could not resist, for I knew there must be a letter from George. To my great disappointment, there was only one, and it had been lying there over three weeks. That night, after I went to bed, while I was reading George’s old letters to make up my loss—they were all the joy I had—” Here poor Annie broke down and cried bitterly. “Poor girl!” said Clara, soothing her. “I am ashamed, papa, that I have ever been unhappy myself, when there is so much misery in the world. Did you ever hear such inhumanity, papa?”

“Yes,” he said, “I have heard many similar confessions in my life. For cruelty, bigotry, tyranny to wives and children, commend me to your ignorant, skinflint New England farmer.” Clara told Annie she was exhausted, and had better rest. Susie had been crying half the time.

“Oh, let me finish, I beg you. There is little more to tell.”