“Have you told her?” she asked of Herbert, when the first pleasure of our meeting was over.
He replied in the negative, whereupon she brought up from under a pile of pillows, coverlets, blankets and sheets, a little tiny, red-faced, wrinkled thing, to which she said I was Aunt! I knew, then, why Ada congratulated Herbert, and mentally chiding myself for my stupidity, I took the bundle of cambric and flannel in my arms, while Anna said, “We call him Jamie Lee, and we think he looks like you. Isn’t he a beauty?”
He did look like me, and knowing that, I wondered at Anna’s question; but where is the young mother who thinks her first born baby homely?—though his nose be flat—his forehead low—and his mouth extend from ear to ear! Not Anna, most certainly. He was her baby and Herbert’s, and to her partial eyes he was beautiful, even though he did resemble me, whom but one person had ever called pretty. As for myself, I hardly knew whether to be pleased with my new relative or not. Babies, particularly little tiny ones, had never been my special delight, but on this occasion, feeling that some demonstration was expected from me, I kissed my little nephew, who returned my greeting with a wry face, and an outcry so loud that Anna, in great alarm lest he was “going into a fit,” summoned from the kitchen, where she was enjoying a quiet smoke, Aunty Matson, who boasted of having washed and dressed two hundred and fifty babies, and who confidently expected to do the same service for two hundred and fifty more ere her life’s sun was set.
Wearied with my ride, I asked permission to retire early; whereupon Dame Matson volunteered to show me the way to my room. Up the narrow stairs, which creaked at every step, and on through one gloomy room after another, she led me until, at last, we came to a chamber, lighter and more airy, which, she said, my sister had papered, painted, and fitted up for me; adding, as she set the candle upon the table and closed the window, “You ain’t afraid of spooks nor nothin’?”
“Spooks” was to me a new word, and in some surprise I asked what she meant.
“Now, du tell,” she replied, seating herself upon the foot of the bed. “Now, du tell a body where you was brought up, that you don’t know what a spook is! Why, it’s a sperrit—a ghost—and this house, they say, is full on ’em. But I don’t b’lieve a word on’t. S’posin’ a gal was murdered near forty years ago, ’tain’t likely she haunts the place yet, and then, too, she warn’t none of the best of girls, I guess, from what I’ve heard my mother say.”
The wind was blowing hard, and as Dame Matson uttered these last words, the door, which she had left ajar, came together with a bang, while from the lake I heard again the wailing cry, which, this time, had in it an angry tone, as if the maiden were indignant at the wrong done her by the old dame, whose eyes seemed to expand and grow blacker at the sound. Overcome as I was with fatigue, I could not sleep; and for hours I lay awake, listening to the rain as it fell upon the roof, and to the howling wind, which, indeed, produced the most unearthly noises I had ever heard. At last, however, nature could no longer endure, and I fell into a deep slumber, from which I did not awake until the sun was high up in the heavens, and preparations were going forward in the kitchen for dinner, which was served exactly at twelve. Greatly refreshed, I was ready to laugh at my fears of the night previous; and with childish joy, I explored every nook and corner of the old castle; finding many a rathole, which threw some light on the sounds over my head, which I had likened to the trampling of horses.
It took but a few days for me to discover that Herbert was exceedingly popular at Breeze Hill, as the neighborhood in which he lived was called. His free, social manners had won for him many friends, and made him almost too much of a favorite. At least, I used to think so, during the long winter evenings, when Anna sat with her baby upon her lap, listening for the footsteps of her husband, who, at some neighbor’s fireside, was cracking the merry joke, and quaffing the sparkling cider; which, at Breeze Hill, was considered essential to hospitality. Gradually, too, as the winter wore on, my sister’s eye took the anxious expression I had so often seen in my Aunt Charlotte; and sometimes, when he stayed from her longer than usual, she would steal down to the foot of the long Avenue, and there, alone, would wait and listen for her husband’s coming; while the spirit from the lake would whisper sadly in her ear of the darkness and desolation hovering near. And all this time Herbert professed to be strictly temperate; and when, about the middle of March, a travelling lecturer held forth in the old log schoolhouse, thundering his anathemas against the use of all spirituous liquors, Herbert was the most zealous of all his listeners, and at the close of the lecture, arose himself and addressed the assembly, pouring out such a tide of eloquence as astonished the audience, who rent the air with shouts of “Langley forever!”
Knowing this, I was greatly surprised, after our return home, to see the young orator go up to the sideboard and drink off, at one draught, a goblet of the porter which had been ordered for Anna! She saw it, too, and for an instant her face was pressed against that of her sleeping boy; and when next the lamp-light fell upon it, I saw there traces of tears, while a faint smile played around her mouth, as she said, “I am afraid, Herbert, your audience would hardly think your theory and practice agree, could they see you now.”
The words were ill-timed; for they awoke the young man’s resentment, and with a flushed brow he retorted angrily, that “if porter were good for her, it was for him; he saw no difference between a drinking woman and a drinking man; except, indeed, that the former was the most despicable.”