Books by Sarah Orne Jewett
STORIES AND TALES. 7 vols. Illustrated.
THE LETTERS OF SARAH ORNE JEWETT. Illustrated.
THE TORY LOVER. Illustrated.
THE QUEEN'S TWIN AND OTHER STORIES.
THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS.
DEEPHAVEN.
Holiday Edition. With 52 illustrations. Attractively bound.
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW.
COUNTRY BY-WAYS.
THE MATE OF THE DAYLIGHT, AND FRIENDS ASHORE.
A COUNTRY DOCTOR. A Novel.
A MARSH ISLAND. A Novel.
A WHITE HERON AND OTHER STORIES.
THE KING OF FOLLY ISLAND, AND OTHER PEOPLE.
STRANGERS AND WAYFARERS.
A NATIVE OF WINBY, AND OTHER TALES.
THE LIFE OF NANCY.
TALES OF NEW ENGLAND.
The Same. In Riverside Aldine Series In Riverside School Library.
PLAY-DAYS. Stories for Girls.
BETTY LEICESTER. A Story for Girls.
BETTY LEICESTER'S CHRISTMAS. Illustrated.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Boston and New York
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW
BY
SARAH O. JEWETT
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT 1879 BY HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1907 BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW
CONTENTS.
A LOST LOVER.
For a great many years it had been understood in Longfield that Miss Horatia Dane once had a lover, and that he had been lost at sea. By little and little, in one way and another, her acquaintances had found out or made up the whole story; and Miss Dane stood in the position, not of an unmarried woman exactly, but rather of having spent most of her life in a long and lonely widowhood. She looked like a person with a history, strangers often said (as if we each did not have a history); and her own unbroken reserve about this romance of hers gave everybody the more respect for it.
The Longfield people paid willing deference to Miss Dane: her family had always been one that could be liked and respected, and she was the last that was left in the old home of which she was so fond. This was a high, square house, with a row of pointed windows in its roof, a peaked porch in front, with some lilac-bushes around it; and down by the road was a long, orderly procession of poplars, like a row of sentinels standing guard. She had lived here alone since her father's death, twenty years before. She was a kind, just woman, whose pleasures were of a stately and sober sort; and she seemed not unhappy in her loneliness, though she sometimes said gravely that she was the last of her family, as if the fact had a great sadness for her.
She had some middle-aged and elderly cousins living at a distance, and they came occasionally to see her; but there had been no young people staying in the house for many years until this summer, when the daughter of her youngest cousin had written to ask if she might come to make a visit. She was a motherless girl of twenty, both older and younger than her years. Her father and brother, who were civil engineers, had taken some work upon the line of a railway in the far Western country. Nelly had made many long journeys with them before and since she had left school, and she had meant to follow them now, after she had spent a fortnight with the old cousin whom she had not seen since her childhood. Her father had laughed at the visit as a freak, and had warned her of the dulness and primness of Longfield; but the result was that the girl found herself very happy in the comfortable home. She was still her own free, unfettered, lucky, and sunshiny self; and the old house was so much pleasanter for the girlish face and life, that Miss Horatia had, at first timidly and then most heartily, begged her to stay for the whole summer, or even the autumn, until her father was ready to come East. The name of Dane was very dear to Miss Horatia, and she grew fonder of her guest. When the village-people saw her glance at the girl affectionately, as they sat together in the family-pew of a Sunday, or saw them walking together after tea, they said it was a good thing for Miss Horatia; how bright she looked; and no doubt she would leave all her money to Nelly Dane, if she played her cards well.
But we will do Nelly justice, and say that she was not mercenary: she would have scorned such a thought. She had grown to have a great love for her cousin Horatia, and she liked to please her. She idealized her, I have no doubt; and her repression, her grave courtesy and rare words of approval, had a great fascination for a girl who had just been used to people who chattered, and were upon most intimate terms with you directly, and could forget you with equal ease. And Nelly liked having so admiring and easily pleased an audience as Miss Dane and her old servant Melissa. She liked to be queen of her company: she had so many gay, bright stories of what had happened to herself and her friends. Besides, she was clever with her needle, and had all those practical gifts which elderly women approve so heartily in girls. They liked her pretty clothes; she was sensible and economical and busy; they praised her to each other and to the world, and even stubborn old Andrew, the man, to whom Miss Horatia herself spoke with deference, would do any thing she asked. Nelly would by no means choose so dull a life as this for the rest of her days; but she enjoyed it immensely for the time being. She instinctively avoided all that would shock the grave dignity and old-school ideas of Miss Dane; and somehow she never had felt happier or better satisfied with life. I think it was because she was her best and most lady-like self. It was not long before she knew the village-people almost as well as Miss Dane did, and she became a very great favorite, as a girl so easily can who is good-natured and pretty, and well versed in city fashions; who has that tact and cleverness that come to such a nature from going about the world and knowing many people.
She had not been in Longfield many weeks before she heard something of Miss Dane's love-story; for one of her new friends said, in a confidential moment, "Does your cousin ever speak to you about the young man to whom she was engaged to be married?" And Nelly answered, "No," with great wonder, and not without regret at her own ignorance. After this she kept her eyes and ears open for whatever news of this lover's existence might be found.
At last it happened one day that she had a good chance for a friendly talk with Melissa; for who should know about the family affairs better than she? Miss Horatia had taken her second-best parasol, with a deep fringe, and had gone majestically down the street to do some morning errands which she could trust to no one. Melissa was shelling peas at the shady kitchen-doorstep, and Nelly came strolling round from the garden, along the clean-swept flag-stones, and sat down to help her. Melissa moved along, with a grim smile, to make room for her. "You needn't bother yourself," said she: "I've nothing else to do. You'll green your fingers all over." But she was evidently pleased to have company.
"My fingers will wash," said Nelly, "and I've nothing else to do either. Please push the basket this way a little, or I shall scatter the pods, and then you will scold." She went to work busily, while she tried to think of the best way to find out the story she wished to hear.
"There!" said Melissa, "I never told Miss H'ratia to get some citron, and I settled yesterday to make some pound-cake this forenoon after I got dinner along a piece. She's most out o' mustard too; she's set about having mustard to eat with her beef, just as the old colonel was before her. I never saw any other folks eat mustard with their roast beef; but every family has their own tricks. I tied a thread round my left-hand little finger purpose to remember that citron before she came down this morning. I hope I ain't losing my fac'lties." It was seldom that Melissa was so talkative as this at first. She was clearly in a talkative mood.
"Melissa," asked Nelly, with great bravery, after a minute or two of silence, "who was it that my cousin Horatia was going to many? It's odd that I shouldn't know; but I don't remember father's ever speaking of it, and I shouldn't think of asking her."
"I s'pose it'll seem strange to you," said Melissa, beginning to shell the peas a great deal faster, "but, as many years as I have lived in this house with her,—her mother, the old lady, fetched me up,—I never knew Miss H'ratia to say a word about him. But there! she knows I know, and we've got an understanding on many things we never talk over as some folks would. I've heard about it from other folks. She was visiting her great-aunt in Salem when she met with him. His name was Carrick, and it was presumed they was going to be married when he came home from the voyage he was lost on. He had the promise of going out master of a new ship. They didn't keep company long: it was made up of a sudden, and folks here didn't get hold of the story till some time after. I've heard some that ought to know say it was only talk, and they never were engaged to be married no more than I am."
"You say he was lost at sea?" asked Nelly.
"The ship never was heard from. They supposed she was run down in the night out in the South Seas somewhere. It was a good while before they gave up expecting news; but none ever come. I think she set every thing by him, and took it very hard losing of him. But there! she'd never say a word. You're the freest-spoken Dane I ever saw; but you may take it from 'our mother's folks. I know he gave her that whale's tooth with the ship drawn on it that's on the mantel-piece in her room. She may have a sight of other keepsakes, for all I know; but it ain't likely." And here there was a pause, in which Nelly grew sorrowful as she thought of the long waiting for tidings of the missing ship, and of her cousin's solitary life. It was very odd to think of prim Miss Horatia's being in love with a sailor. There was a young lieutenant in the navy whom Nelly herself liked dearly, and he had gone away on a long voyage. "Perhaps she's been just as well off," said Melissa. "She's dreadful set, y'r cousin H'ratia is, and sailors is high-tempered men. I've heard it hinted that he was a fast fellow; and if a woman's got a good home like this, and's able to do for herself, she'd better stay there. I ain't going to give up a certainty for an uncertainty,—that's what I always tell 'em," added Melissa, with great decision, as if she were besieged by lovers; but Nelly smiled inwardly as she thought of the courage it would take to support any one who wished to offer her companion his heart and hand. It would need desperate energy to scale the walls of that garrison.
The green peas were all shelled presently, and Melissa said gravely that she should have to be lazy now until it was time to put in the meat. She wasn't used to being helped, unless there was extra work, and she calculated to have one piece of work join on to another. However, it was no account, and she was obliged for the company; and Nelly laughed merrily as she stood washing her hands in the shining old copper basin at the sink. The sun would not be round that side of the house for a long time yet, and the pink and blue morning-glories were still in their full bloom and freshness. They grew over the window, twined on strings exactly the same distance apart. There was a box crowded full of green houseleeks down at the side of the door: they were straying over the edge, and Melissa stooped stiffly down with an air of disapproval at their untidiness. "They straggle all over every thing," said she, "and they're no kind of use, only Miss's mother she set every thing by 'em. She fetched 'em from home with her when she was married, her mother kep' a box, and they came from England. Folks used to say they was good for bee-stings." Then she went into the inner kitchen, and Nelly went slowly away along the flag-stones to the garden from whence she had come. The garden-gate opened with a tired creak, and shut with a clack; and she noticed how smooth and shiny the wood was where the touch of so many hands had worn it. There was a great pleasure to this girl in finding herself among such old and well-worn things. She had been for a long time in cities or at the West; and among the old fashions and ancient possessions of Long-field it seemed to her that every thing had its story, and she liked the quietness and unchangeableness with which life seemed to go on from year to year. She had seen many a dainty or gorgeous garden, but never one that she had liked so well as this, with its herb-bed and its broken rows of currant-bushes, its tall stalks of white lilies and its wandering rose-bushes and honeysuckles, that had bloomed beside the straight paths for so many more summers than she herself had lived. She picked a little nosegay of late red roses, and carried it into the house to put on the parlor-table. The wide hall-door was standing open, with its green outer blinds closed, and the old hall was dim and cool. Miss Horatia did not like a glare of sunlight, and she abhorred flies with her whole heart. Nelly could hardly see her way through the rooms, it had been so bright out of doors; but she brought the tall champagne-glass of water from the dining-room and put the flowers in their place. Then she looked at two silhouettes which stood on the mantel in carved ebony frames. They were portraits of an uncle of Miss Dane and his wife. Miss Dane had thought Nelly looked like this uncle the evening before. She could not see the likeness herself; but the pictures suggested something else, and she turned suddenly, and went hurrying up the stairs to Miss Horatia's own room, where she remembered to have seen a group of silhouettes fastened to the wall. There were seven or eight, and she looked at the young men among them most carefully; but they were all marked with the name of Dane: they were Miss Horatia's brothers, and our friend hung them on their little brass hooks again with a feeling of disappointment. Perhaps her cousin had a quaint miniature of the lover, painted on ivory, and shut in a worn red morocco case; she hoped she should get a sight of it some day. This story of the lost sailor had a wonderful charm for the girl. Miss Horatia had never been so interesting to her before. How she must have mourned for the lover, and missed him, and hoped there would yet be news from the ship! Nelly thought she would tell her her own little love-story some day, though there was not much to tell yet, in spite of there being so much to think about. She built a little castle in Spain as she sat in the front-window-seat of the upper hall, and dreamed pleasant stories for herself until the sharp noise of the front-gate-latch waked her; and she looked out through the blind to see her cousin coming up the walk.
Miss Horatia looked hot and tired, and her thoughts were not of any fashion of romance. "It is going to be very warm," said she. "I have been worrying ever since I have been gone, because I forgot to ask Andrew to pick those white currants for the minister's wife. I promised that she should have them early this morning. Would you go out to the kitchen, and ask Melissa to step in for a moment, my dear?"
Melissa was picking over red currants to make a pie, and rose from her chair with a little unwillingness. "I guess they could wait until afternoon," said she, as she came back. "Miss H'ratia's in a fret because she forgot about sending some white currants to the minister's. I told her that Andrew had gone to have the horses shod, and wouldn't be back till near noon. I don't see why part of the folks in the world should kill themselves trying to suit the rest. As long as I haven't got any citron for the cake, I suppose I might go out and pick 'em," added Melissa ungraciously. "I'll get some to set away for tea anyhow."
Miss Dane had a letter to write after she had rested from her walk; and Nelly soon left her in the dark parlor, and went back to the sunshiny garden to help Melissa, who seemed to be taking life with more than her usual disapproval. She was sheltered by an enormous gingham sunbonnet.
"I set out to free my mind to your cousin H'ratia this morning," said she, as Nelly crouched down at the opposite side of the bush where she was picking; "but we can't agree on that p'int, and it's no use. I don't say nothing. You might's well ask the moon to face about and travel the other way as to try to change Miss H'ratia's mind. I ain't going to argue it with her: it ain't my place; I know that as well as anybody. She'd run her feet off for the minister's folks any day; and, though I do say he's a fair preacher, they haven't got a speck o' consideration nor fac'lty; they think the world was made for them, but I think likely they'll find out it wasn't; most folks do. When he first was settled here, I had a fit o' sickness, and he come to see me when I was getting over the worst of it. He did the best he could, I always took it very kind of him; but he made a prayer, and he kep' sayin' 'this aged handmaid,' I should think, a dozen times. Aged handmaid!" said Melissa scornfully: "I don't call myself aged yet, and that was more than ten years ago. I never made pretensions to being younger than I am; but you'd 'a' thought I was a topplin' old creatur' going on a hundred."
Nelly laughed; Melissa looked cross, and moved on to the next currant-bush. "So that's why you don't like the minister?" But the question did not seem to please.
"I hope I never should be set against a preacher by such as that." And Nelly hastened to change the subject; but there was to be a last word: "I like to see a minister that's solid minister right straight through, not one of these veneered folks. But old Parson Croden spoilt me for setting under any other preaching."
"I wonder," said Nelly, after a little, "if Cousin Horatia has any picture of that Captain Carrick."
"He wasn't captain," said Melissa. "I never heard that it was any more than they talked of giving him a ship next voyage."
"And you never saw him? He never came here to see her?"
"Bless you, no! She met with him at Salem, where she was spending the winter, and he went right away to sea. I've heard a good deal more about it of late years than I ever did at the time. I suppose the Salem folks talked about it enough. All I know is, there was other good matches that offered to her since, and couldn't get her; and I suppose it was on account of her heart's being buried in the deep with him." And this unexpected bit of sentiment, spoken in Melissa's grummest tone, seemed so funny to her young companion, that she bent very low to pick from a currant-twig close to the ground, and could not ask any more questions for some time.
"I have seen her a sight o' times when I knew she was thinking about him," Melissa went on presently, this time with a tenderness in her voice that touched Nelly's heart. "She's been dreadful lonesome. She and the old colonel, her father, wasn't much company to each other, and she always kep' every thing to herself. The only time she ever said a word to me was one night six or seven years ago this Christmas. They got up a Christmas-tree in the vestry, and she went, and I did too; I guess everybody in the whole church and parish that could crawl turned out to go. The children they made a dreadful racket. I'd ha' got my ears took off if I had been so forth-putting when I was little. I was looking round for Miss H'ratia 'long at the last of the evening, and somebody said they'd seen her go home. I hurried, and I couldn't see any light in the house; and I was afraid she was sick or something. She come and let me in, and I see she had been a-cryin'. I says, 'Have you heard any bad news?' But she says, 'No,' and began to cry again, real pitiful. 'I never felt so lonesome in my life,' says she, 'as I did down there. It's a dreadful thing to be left all alone in the world.' I did feel for her; but I couldn't seem to say a word. I put some pine-chips I had handy for morning on the kitchen-fire, and I made her up a cup o' good hot tea quick's I could, and took it to her; and I guess she felt better. She never went to bed till three o'clock that night. I couldn't shut my eyes till I heard her come upstairs. There! I set every thing by Miss H'ratia. I haven't got no folks either. I was left an orphan over to Deerfield, where Miss's mother come from, and she took me out o' the town-farm to bring up. I remember, when I come here, I was so small I had a box to stand up on when I helped wash the dishes. There's nothing I ain't had to make me comfortable, and I do just as I'm a mind to, and call in extra help every day of the week if I give the word; but I've had my lonesome times, and I guess Miss H'ratia knew."
Nelly was very much touched by this bit of a story, it was a new idea to her that Melissa should have so much affection and be so sympathetic. People never will get over being surprised that chestnut-burrs are not as rough inside as they are outside, and the girl's heart warmed toward the old woman who had spoken with such unlooked-for sentiment and pathos. Melissa went to the house with her basket, and Nelly also went in, but only to put on another hat, and see if it were straight, in a minute spent before the old mirror, and then she hurried down the long elm-shaded street to buy a pound of citron for the cake. She left it on the kitchen-table when she came back, and nobody ever said any thing about it; only there were two delicious pound-cakes—a heart and a round—on a little blue china plate beside Nelly's plate at tea.
After tea Nelly and Miss Dane sat in the front-doorway,—the elder woman in a high-backed arm-chair, and the younger on the doorstep. The tree-toads and crickets were tuning up heartily, the stars showed a little through the trees, and the elms looked heavy and black against the sky. The fragrance of the white lilies in the garden blew through the hall. Miss Horatia was tapping the ends of her fingers together. Probably she was not thinking of any thing in particular. She had had a very peaceful day, with the exception of the currants; and they had, after all, gone to the parsonage some time before noon. Beside this, the minister had sent word that the delay made no trouble; for his wife had unexpectedly gone to Downton to pass the day and night. Miss Horatia had received the business-letter for which she had been looking for several days; so there was nothing to regret deeply for that day, and there seemed to be nothing for one to dread on the morrow.
"Cousin Horatia," asked Nelly, "are you sure you like having me here? Are you sure I don't trouble you?"
"Of course not," said Miss Dane, without a bit of sentiment in her tone: "I find it very pleasant having young company, though I am used to being alone; and I don't mind it so much as I suppose you would."
"I should mind it very much," said the girl softly.
"You would get used to it, as I have," said Miss Dane. "Yes, dear, I like having you here better and better. I hate to think of your going away." And she smoothed Nelly's hair as if she thought she might have spoken coldly at first, and wished to make up for it. This rare caress was not without its effect.
"I don't miss father and Dick so very much," owned Nelly frankly, "because I have grown used to their coming and going; but sometimes I miss people—Cousin Horatia, did I ever say any thing to you about George Forest?"
"I think I remember the name," answered Miss Dane.
"He is in the navy, and he has gone a long voyage, and—I think every thing of him. I missed him awfully; but it is almost time to get a letter from him."
"Does your father approve of him?" asked Miss Dane, with great propriety. "You are very young yet, and you must not think of such a thing carelessly. I should be so much grieved if you threw away your happiness."
"Oh! we are not really engaged," said Nelly, who felt a little chilled. "I suppose we are, too: only nobody knows yet. Yes, father knows him as well as I do, and he is very fond of him. Of course I should not keep it from father; but he guessed at it himself. Only it's such a long cruise, Cousin Horatia,—three years, I suppose,—away off in China and Japan."
"I have known longer voyages than that," said Miss Dane, with a quiver in her voice; and she rose suddenly, and walked away, this grave, reserved woman, who seemed so contented and so comfortable. But, when she came back, she asked Nelly a great deal about her lover, and learned more of the girl's life than she ever had before. And they talked together in the pleasantest way about this pleasant subject, which was so close to Nelly's heart, until Melissa brought the candles at ten o'clock, that being the hour of Miss Dane's bed-time.
But that night Miss Dane did not go to bed at ten: she sat by the window in her room, thinking. The moon rose late; and after a little while she blew out her candles, which were burning low. I suppose that the years which had come and gone since the young sailor went away on that last voyage of his had each added to her affection for him. She was a person who clung the more fondly to youth as she left it the farther behind.
This is such a natural thing: the great sorrows of our youth sometimes become the amusements of our later years; we can only remember them with a smile. We find that our lives look fairer to us, and we forget what used to trouble us so much when we look back. Miss Dane certainly had come nearer to truly loving the sailor than she had any one else; and the more she had thought of it, the more it became the romance of her life. She no longer asked herself, as she often had done in middle life, whether, if he had lived and had come home, she would have loved and married him. She had minded less and less, year by year, knowing that her friends and neighbors thought her faithful to the love of her youth. Poor, gay, handsome Joe Carrick! how fond he had been of her, and how he had looked at her that day he sailed away out of Salem Harbor on the ship Chevalier! If she had only known that she never should see him again, poor fellow!
But, as usual, her thoughts changed their current a little at the end of her reverie. Perhaps, after all, loneliness was not so hard to bear as other sorrows. She had had a pleasant life, God had been very good to her, and had spared her many trials, and granted her many blessings. She would try and serve him better. "I am an old woman now," she said to herself. "Things are better as they are; God knows best, and I never should have liked to be interfered with."
Then she shut out the moonlight, and lighted her candles again, with an almost guilty feeling. "What should I say if Nelly sat up till nearly midnight looking out at the moon?" thought she. "It is very silly; but it is such a beautiful night. I should like to have her see the moon shining through the tops of the trees." But Nelly was sleeping the sleep of the just and sensible in her own room.
Next morning at breakfast Nelly was a little conscious of there having been uncommon confidences the night before; but Miss Dane was her usual calm and somewhat formal self, and proposed their making a few calls after dinner, if the weather were not too hot. Nelly at once wondered what she had better wear. There was a certain black grenadine which Miss Horatia had noticed with approval, and she remembered that the lower ruffle needed hemming, and made up her mind that she would devote most of the time before dinner to that and to some other repairs. So, after breakfast was over, she brought the dress downstairs, with her work-box, and settled herself in the dining-room. Miss Dane usually sat there in the morning, it was a pleasant room, and she could keep an unsuspected watch over the kitchen and Melissa, who did not need watching in the least. I dare say it was for the sake of being within the sound of a voice.
Miss Dane marched in and out that morning; she went upstairs, and came down again, and she was busy for a while in the parlor. Nelly was sewing steadily by a window, where one of the blinds was a little way open, and tethered in its place by a string. She hummed a tune to herself over and over:—
"What will you do, love, when I am going, With white sails flowing, the seas beyond?"
And old Melissa, going to and fro at her work in the kitchen, grumbled out bits of an ancient psalm-tune at intervals. There seemed to be some connection between these fragments in her mind; it was like a ledge of rock in a pasture, that sometimes runs under the ground, and then crops out again. I think it was the tune of Windham.
Nelly found there was a good deal to be done to the grenadine dress when she looked it over critically, and she was very diligent. It was quiet in and about the house for a long time, until suddenly she heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming in from the road. The side-door was in a little entry between the room where Nelly sat and the kitchen, and the new-comer knocked loudly. "A tramp," said Nelly to herself; while Melissa came to open the door, wiping her hands hurriedly on her apron.
"I wonder if you couldn't give me something to eat," said the man.
"I suppose I could," answered Melissa. "Will you step in?" Beggars were very few in Longfield, and Miss Dane never wished anybody to go away hungry from her house. It was off the grand highway of tramps; but they were by no means unknown.
Melissa searched among her stores, and Nelly heard her putting one plate after another on the kitchen-table, and thought that the breakfast promised to be a good one, if it were late.
"Don't put yourself out," said the man, as he moved his chair nearer. "I put up at an old barn three or four miles above here last night, and there didn't seem to be very good board there."
"Going far?" inquired Melissa concisely.
"Boston," said the man. "I'm a little too old to travel afoot. Now, if I could go by water, it would seem nearer. I'm more used to the water. This is a royal good piece o' beef. I suppose couldn't put your hand on a mug of cider?" This was said humbly; but the tone failed to touch Melissa's heart.
"No, I couldn't," said she decisively; so there was an end of that, and the conversation seemed to flag for a time.
Presently Melissa came to speak to Miss Dane, who had just come downstairs. "Could you stay in the kitchen a few minutes?" she whispered. "There's an old creatur' there that looks foreign. He came to the door for something to eat, and I gave it to him; but he's miser'ble looking, and I don't like to leave him alone. I'm just in the midst o' dressing the chickens. He'll be through pretty quick, according to the way he's eating now."
Miss Dane followed her without a word; and the man half rose, and said, "Good-morning, madam!" with unusual courtesy. And, when Melissa was out of hearing, he spoke again: "I suppose you haven't any cider?" to which his hostess answered, "I couldn't give you any this morning," in a tone that left no room for argument. He looked as if he had had a great deal too much to drink already.
"How far do you call it from here to Boston?" he asked, and was told that it was eighty miles.
"I'm a slow traveller," said he: "sailors don't take much to walking." Miss Dane asked him if he had been a sailor. "Nothing else," replied the man, who seemed much inclined to talk. He had been eating like a hungry dog, as if he were half-starved,—a slouching, red-faced, untidy-looking old man, with some traces of former good looks still to be discovered in his face. "Nothing else. I ran away to sea when I was a boy, and I followed it until I got so old they wouldn't ship me even for cook." There was something in his being for once so comfortable—perhaps it was being with a lady like Miss Dane, who pitied him—that lifted his thoughts a little from their usual low level. "It's drink that's been the ruin of me," said he. "I ought to have been somebody. I was nobody's fool when I was young. I got to be mate of a first-rate ship, and there was some talk o' my being captain before long. She was lost that voyage, and three of us were all that was saved; we got picked up by a Chinese junk. She had the plague aboard of her, and my mates died of it, and I was sick. It was a hell of a place to be in. When I got ashore I shipped on an old bark that pretended to be coming round the Cape, and she turned out to be a pirate. I just went to the dogs, and I've been from bad to worse ever since."
"It's never too late to mend," said Melissa, who came into the kitchen just then for a string to tie the chickens.
"Lord help us, yes, it is!" said the sailor. "It's easy for you to say that. I'm too old. I ain't been master of this craft for a good while." And he laughed at his melancholy joke.
"Don't say that," said Miss Dane.
"Well, now, what could an old wrack like me do to earn a living? and who'd want me if I could? You wouldn't. I don't know when I've been treated so decent as this before. I'm all broke down." But his tone was no longer sincere; he had fallen back on his profession of beggar.
"Couldn't you get into some asylum or—there's the Sailors' Snug Harbor, isn't that for men like you? It seems such a pity for a man of your years to be homeless and a wanderer. Haven't you any friends at all?" And here, suddenly, Miss Dane's face altered, and she grew very white; something startled her. She looked as one might who saw a fearful ghost.
"No," said the man; "but my folks used to be some of the best in Salem. I haven't shown my head there this good while. I was an orphan. My grandmother brought me up. Why, I didn't come back to the States for thirty or forty years. Along at the first of it I used to see men in port that I used to know; but I always dodged 'em, and I was way off in outlandish places. I've got an awful sight to answer for. I used to have a good wife when I was in Australia. I don't know where I haven't been, first and last. I was always a hard fellow. I've spent as much as a couple o' fortunes, and here I am. Devil take it!"
Nelly was still sewing in the dining-room; but, soon after Miss Dane had gone out to the kitchen, one of the doors between had slowly closed itself with a plaintive whine. The round stone that Melissa used to keep it open had been pushed away. Nelly was a little annoyed: she liked to hear what was going on; but she was just then holding her work with great care in a place that was hard to sew; so she did not move. She heard the murmur of voices, and thought, after a while, that the old vagabond ought to go away by this time. What could be making her cousin Horatia talk so long with him? It was not like her at all. He would beg for money, of course, and she hoped Miss Horatia would not give him a single cent.
It was some time before the kitchen-door opened, and the man came out with clumsy, stumbling steps. "I'm much obliged to you," he said, "and I don't know but it is the last time I'll get treated as if I was a gentleman. Is there any thing I could do for you round the place?" he asked hesitatingly, and as if he hoped that his offer would not be accepted.
"No," answered Miss Dane. "No, thank you. Good-by!" and he went away.
I said he had been lifted a little above his low life; he fell back again directly before he was out of the gate. "I'm blessed if she didn't give me a ten-dollar bill!" said he. "She must have thought it was one. I'll get out o' call as quick as I can, hope she won't find it out, and send anybody after me." Visions of unlimited drinks, and other things in which the old sailor found pleasure, flitted through his stupid mind. "How the old lady stared at me once!" he thought. "Wonder if she was anybody I used to know? 'Downton?' I don't know as I ever heard of the place." And he scuffed along the dusty road; and that night he was very drunk, and the next day he went wandering on, God only knows where.
But Nelly and Melissa both had heard a strange noise in the kitchen, as if some one had fallen, and had found that Miss Horatia had fainted dead away. It was partly the heat, she said, when she saw their anxious faces as she came to herself; she had had a little headache all the morning; it was very hot and close in the kitchen, and the faintness had come upon her suddenly. They helped her walk into the cool parlor presently, and Melissa brought her a glass of wine, and Nelly sat beside her on a footstool as she lay on the sofa, and fanned her. Once she held her cheek against Miss Horatia's hand for a minute, and she will never know as long as she lives what a comfort she was that day.
Every one but Miss Dane forgot the old sailor-tramp in this excitement that followed his visit. Do you guess already who he was? But the certainty could not come to you with the chill and horror it did to Miss Dane. There had been something familiar in his look and voice from the first, and then she had suddenly known him, her lost lover. It was an awful change that the years had made in him. He had truly called himself a wreck: he was like some dreary wreck in its decay and utter ruin, its miserable ugliness and worthlessness, falling to pieces in the slow tides of a lifeless southern sea.
And he had once been her lover, Miss Dane thought many times in the days that came after. Not that there was ever any thing asked or promised between them, but they had liked each other dearly, and had parted with deep sorrow. She had thought of him all these years so tenderly; she had believed always that his love had been greater than her own, and never once had doubted that the missing ship Chevalier had carried with it down into the sea a heart that was true to her.
By little and little this all grew familiar, and she accustomed herself to the knowledge of her new secret. She shuddered at the thought of the misery of a life with him, and she thanked God for sparing her such shame and despair. The distance between them seemed immense. She had been a person of so much consequence among her friends, and so dutiful and irreproachable a woman. She had not begun to understand what dishonor is in the world; her life had been shut in by safe and orderly surroundings. It was a strange chance that had brought this wanderer to her door. She remembered his wretched untidiness. She would not have liked even to touch him. She had never imagined him grown old: he had always been young to her. It was a great mercy he had not known her; it would have been a most miserable position for them both; and yet she thought, with sad surprise, that she had not known she had changed so entirely. She thought of the different ways their roads in life had gone; she pitied him; she cried about him more than once; and she wished that she could know he was dead. He might have been such a brave, good man, with his strong will and resolute courage. God forgive him for the wickedness which his strength had been made to serve! "God forgive him!" said Miss Horatia to herself sadly over and over again. She wondered if she ought to have let him go away, and so have lost sight of him; but she could not do any thing else. She suffered terribly on his account; she had a pity, such as God's pity must be, for even his wilful sins.
So her romance was all over with; yet the towns-people still whispered it to strangers, and even Melissa and Nelly never knew how she had lost her lover in so strange and sad a way in her latest years. Nobody noticed much change; but Melissa saw that the whale's tooth had disappeared from its place in Miss Horatia's room, and her old friends said to each other that she began to show her age a great deal. She seemed really like an old woman now; she was not the woman she had been a year ago.
This is all of the story; but I so often wish when a story comes to an end that I knew what became of the people afterward. Shall I tell you that Miss Horatia clings more and more fondly to her young cousin Nelly; and that Nelly will stay with her a great deal before she marries, and sometimes afterward, when the lieutenant goes away to sea? Shall I say that Miss Dane seems as well satisfied and comfortable as ever, though she acknowledges she is not so young as she used to be, and somehow misses something out of her life? It is the contentment of winter rather than that of summer: the flowers are out of bloom for her now, and under the snow. And Melissa, will not she always be the same, with a quaintness and freshness and toughness like a cedar-tree, to the end of her days? Let us hope they will live on together and be untroubled this long time yet, the two good women; and let us wish Nelly much pleasure, and a sweet soberness and fearlessness as she grows older and finds life a harder thing to understand and a graver thing to know.
A SORROWFUL GUEST.
Dear Helen,—What do you say to our going to housekeeping together? I'm a very old bachelor, with many whims; but I'm your brother, and I don't know that there was ever an act of Parliament that we should spend our lives on opposite shores of the Atlantic. The Athertons' lease of our house is out next month, and I have a fancy for taking it myself. We will call it merely an experiment, if you like; but I'm tired of the way I live now. I'm growing gray, and I shall be dreadfully glad to see you. We will make a real home of it, and see something of each other; you must not ask for any more pathos than this. Pick up whatever you can to make the house look fine, but don't feel in the least obliged to come, or put it off until the spring. Do just as you like. I hear the Duncans are coming home in October; perhaps you could take passage on the same steamer. I can't believe it is three years since I went over last. Do you think we shall know each other? "L'absence diminue les petits amours et augmente les grandes, comme le vent qui éteint les bougies et rallume la feu." I met that sentiment in a story I was reading to-day, and I thought it would seem very gallant and alluring if I put it into my letter. I think you will not be homesick here: you will find more friends than seems possible at first thought. I'm in a hurry to-day; but I'm none the less Your very affectionate brother,
JOHN AINSLIE.
Boston, Aug. 2, 1877.
This was a letter which came to me one morning a year or two ago from my only brother. We had been separated most of the time since our childhood; for my father and mother both died then, and our home was broken up, as Jack was to be away at school and college. During the war he was fired with a love of his country and a longing for military glory, and entered the army with many of his fellow-students at Harvard. I was at school for a time, but afterwards went to live with an aunt, whose winter home was in Florence; and when Jack left the army he came to Europe to go on with his professional studies. He was most of the time in Dublin and London and Paris at the medical schools; but we were together a good deal, and he went off for several long journeys with my aunt and me before he went back to America. I always hoped that we might some day live together: but my aunt wished me never to leave her; for she was somewhat of an invalid, and had grown to depend on me more or less in many ways. She could not live in Boston, for the climate did not suit her. If Jack and I had not written each other so often, we should have drifted far apart; but, as it was, I think our love and friendship grew closer year by year. I should have begged him to come to live with me; but he was always in a hurry to get back to his own city and his own friends when he sometimes came over to pay us a visit in my aunt's lifetime, and I knew he would not be contented in Florence.
At Aunt Alice's death I went on with the same old life for a time from force of habit; and it was just then, when I was with some friends in the Tyrol, and had been wondering what plans I should make for the winter,—whether to go to Egypt again, or to have some English friends come to me in Florence,—that Jack's letter came. I was only too glad that he made the proposal, and I could not resist sending him a cable despatch to say, "Hurrah!" I had not realized before how lonely and adrift I had felt since Aunt Alice died. I had a host of kind friends; but there is nothing like being with one's own kindred, and having one's own home. It was very hard work to say so many good-byes; and my heart had almost failed me when I saw some of my friends for, it might be, the last time, as some of them were old people. And, though I said over and over again that I should come back in a year or two, who could be certain that I should take up the dear familiar life again? But, though I had been so many long years away from dear old Boston, I never had been so glad in my life to catch sight of any city as I was that chilly, late October morning, when I came on deck, and somebody pointed out to me a dull glitter of something that looked higher and brighter than the land, and said it was the dome of the State House.
I felt more sure than ever that I was going home when I saw my brother standing on the wharf, and I remembered so clearly many of the streets we drove through; and when we came to the house itself, and the carriage had gone, and we stood in the library together where the very same books were in the cases, and the same dim old Turkey carpet on the floor, the years seemed suddenly to vanish, and it was like the dear old childish days again: only where were my mother and my father? And Jack was growing gray, as he had written me, and so much had happened to me since I had been in that room last! I sat down before the wood-fire; and the queer brass dragons on the andirons made me smile, just as they always used. Jack stood at the window, looking out; and neither of us had a word to say, though we had chattered at each other every minute as we drove over from the steamer.
That first evening at dinner I looked across the table at my brother: and our eyes met, and we both laughed heartily for very contentment and delight.
"I'm sure Aunt Marion ought to be here to matronize you," said Jack. Neither of us like Aunt Marion very well; and this was a great joke, especially as she was ushered in directly to welcome me home.
Jack had been living at the house for a few weeks already; but it was great fun, this beginning our housekeeping together, and we were busy enough for some time. I had brought over a good many things that my aunt had had in Florence, and to which I had become attached; and in the course of many journeys both Jack and I had accumulated a great many large and small treasures, some of which had not been unpacked for years. I very soon knew my brother's best friends; and we both tried to make our home not only cheerful and bright and pleasant in every way, but we wished also to make it a home-like place, where people might be sure of finding at least some sympathy and true friendliness and help as well as pleasure. Mamma's old friends were charmingly kind and polite to me; and, as Jack had foretold, I found more acquaintances of my own than I had the least idea I should. I had met abroad a great many of the people who came to see me; but the strangest thing was to meet those whom I remembered as my playmates and schoolmates, and to find them so entirely grown up, most of them married, and with homes and children of their own instead of the playhouses and dolls which I remembered.
We soon fell into a most comfortable fashion of living, we were both very fond of giving quiet little dinners, my brother often brought home a friend or two, and we were charmingly independent; life never went better with two people than it did with Jack and me. We often had some old friends of the family come to stay with us, and I sent hither and yon for my own old cronies, with some of whom I had kept up our friendship since school-days; and, while it was not a little sad to meet some of them again, with others I felt as if we had only parted yesterday.
I had been curious to know many things about Jack, and I found I had been right in supposing that his profession was by no means a burden to him. I was told again and again that he was a wonderfully successful and daring surgeon; but he confessed to me that his dislike to such work continually increased, and could only be overcome in the excitement of some desperate emergency. It seemed to me at first that he ought not to let his skill lie useless and idle; but he insisted that the other doctors did as well as he, that they sent for him if they wanted him, and he did not care for a practice of his own. So he had grown into a way of helping his friends with their business; and he was a microscopist of some renown, and a scientific man, instead of the practical man he ought to have been,—though his was, after all, by no means an idle nor a useless life, dear old Jack! He did a great deal of good shyly and quietly; he was often at the hospitals, and his friends seemed very fond of him, and said he had too little confidence in himself. I have often wondered why he did not marry; but I doubt if he ever tells me, though he knows well enough my own story, and that there is a quiet grave in Florence which is always in sight, no matter how far away from it I go, while sometimes I think I know every ivy-leaf that falls on it from the wall near by.
As I have said, my brother was constantly meeting some one of his old classmates or army comrades or school friends during that first winter; and, while sometimes he would ask them to dine at his club, he oftener brought them home to dine or to lunch; for we were both possessed with an amazing spirit of hospitality. I wish I could remember half the stories I have heard, or could keep track of the lives in which I often grew much interested. There is one curious story which I knew, and which seems very well worth telling,—an instance of the curious entanglement of two lives, and of those strange experiences which some people call supernatural, and others think simple enough and perfectly reasonable and explainable.
One short, snowy December day, just as it was growing dark, I was sitting alone in the library, and was surprised to hear my brother's latch-key click in the hall-door; for he had told me, when he went out after our very late breakfast, that he should not be in before six, and perhaps dinner had better wait until seven. He threw off his wet ulster, and was talking for some time to the man, and at last came in to me.
"What brings you home so early?" said I.
"I'm going to have two or three friends to dine. I suppose it'll be all right about the dinner? That was not why I came home, though: I had some letters to write which must go by the steamer, and I didn't go to Cambridge after all. The snow-storm was too much for me, I wanted a good light there."
"Sit down a while," said I. "You have time enough for your letters; it's only a little after four." Jack hated to write at the library-table, and always went to the desk in his own book-room if he had any thing to do. He seemed a little tired, and threw me some letters the postman had given him as he came in at the door; then he sat down in his great chair near me, and seemed to be lost in thought. He was immensely interesting to me then; for we had only been together a few weeks, and I was often curious about his moods, and was apt to be much pained myself if any thing seemed to trouble him. I was always wishing we had not been separated so much, and I was afraid I might be wanting in insight and sympathy; but I think the truth has been that we are much more intimate, and are far better friends, and have less restraint, because we had seen so little of one another in the years that had passed. But we were terribly afraid of interfering with each other at first, and were so distractingly polite that we bored each other not a little; though that did not last long, happily, after we had convinced each other that we could behave well.
"You say it'll be all right about dinner?" repeated my brother.
"Oh, yes!" said I, "unless you wish for something very grand. Would you like to have me put on my crown and sceptre?"
"There has never been a day yet when I should have been sorry to have brought a friend home," said Jack, with a good deal of enthusiasm, and I was at once puffed up with pride; for Jack, though an uncomplaining soul, was also fastidious, and his praise was not given often enough to be unnoticed.
"I met an old classmate just now," said he presently, rousing himself from his reverie. "I haven't seen him for years before. He went out to South America just after the war, and I supposed he was there still. He used to be one of the best fellows in the class; and he enlisted when I did, though we did not belong to the same company. I heard once he was rather a failure; but something has broken him down horribly. He doesn't look as if he drank," said my brother, half to himself. "I met him over on Tremont Street, and I think he meant to avoid me; but I made him walk across the Common with me, for he was coming this way. He promised to come to dinner this evening; and I stopped at the club a few minutes as I came down the street, and luckily found George Sheffield, and he is coming round too. I told him seven o'clock, but I told Whiston we dined at six, without thinking; so he will be here early. Never mind: I'll be ready, and we will take care of ourselves. I must finish my letters, though," and he rose from his chair to go upstairs. "It is dreadful to see a man change so," said Jack, still lingering. "He used to be one of the friskiest fellows in college. I hope he'll come. I didn't exactly like to ask where I could find him."
Then he went away: and I waited awhile, looking out at the snow, and thinking idly enough, until Patrick came silently in, and surprised me with a sudden blaze of gas; when I went upstairs to dress for dinner, as there didn't seem to be any thing else to do. I was a little sorry that any one was coming. Jack and I had arranged for a quiet evening together, and he was reading some new book aloud in which I was much interested. His reading was a perfect delight to me. He did not force you to think how well he read, but rather how charming the story or the poem was; and I always liked Jack's voice.
I found something to be busy about in my room, and did not come down again until some time after six. When I entered the parlor, Jack arose with a satisfied smile, and presented Mr. Whiston; and I was pleasantly surprised, for I had half expected to see a most forlorn-looking man, perhaps even out at elbows, from what Jack had said. He was very pale indeed, and looked like an invalid; and he certainly looked frightened and miserable. He had a hunted look. It was the face I should imagine one would have who was haunted by the memory of some awful crime; but I both pitied him and liked him very much.
He said he remembered seeing me one day out at Cambridge with my brother when I was hardly more than a child; and we talked about those old days until my cousin George Sheffield came, Jack's best friend, who had also been Mr. Whiston's classmate.
I fancied, as we went out to dinner, that our guest would enjoy the evening, his friends were giving him so hearty and cordial a welcome; and I was glad the table looked so bright with its roses and fruit, and its glittering glass. I somehow looked at it through his eyes. His face lighted a little, as if he thought he should dine to his liking. He looked as if he were poor; but he was most carefully dressed, and I grew more and more curious about him, while I liked him better and better for the grace of his good manners, and for his charmingly bright and clever way of talking. He spoke freely of his South-American life, and of being in Europe; but there was something about him which made neither of his friends dare to ask him many questions. I could see that my cousin George was in a great hurry to know more of his history, for they had been very good friends, and he had lost sight of Mr. Whiston years before, and had been amazed when he was asked to meet him that evening. They talked a great deal about their Harvard days, and grew more and more merry with each other; but, when Mr. Whiston's face was quiet, the look of fear and melancholy was always noticeable.
When dinner was over, I went away to see one of my friends who came in just then. I could hear the gentlemen laughing together, and I stood talking in the hall some time with my friend before she went away; but at last I went back to the dining-room, for I always liked my tea there with Jack better than in the parlor. I took my chair again; and I was glad to find I did not interrupt them, of which I had a sudden fear as I entered the door.
They were talking over their army life; and my brother said, "That was the same day poor Fred Hathaway was killed, wasn't it? I never shall forget seeing his dead face. We had thrown a dozen or more men in a pile, and meant to bury them; but there was an alarm, and we had to hurry forward again, what there was left of us. I caught sight of Fred, and I remember now just how he looked. You know what yellow hair he had, and we used to call him The Pretty Saxon. I know there were one or two men in that pile still alive, and moving a little. I hardly thought of the horror of it as I went by. How used we were to such sights in those days! and now sometimes they come to me like horrid nightmares. Dunster was killed that day too. Somebody saw him fall, and I suppose he was thrown in a hurry into one of the trenches; but he was put down as missing in the reports. You know they drove us back toward night, and held that piece of cleared land and the pine-woods for two days."
"It all seems like a dream to me now," said George Sheffield. "What boys we were too! But I believe I never shall feel so old again."
"You are such comfortable people in these days," said I, "that I can't imagine you as soldiers living such a rough and cruel life as that must have been."
I happened to look up at Mr. Whiston; and to my dismay he looked paler than ever, and was uneasy. He looked over his shoulder as if he knew a ghost was standing there, and he followed something with his eyes for a moment or two in a way that gave me a little chill of fear. I looked over at Jack to know if he was watching also, and I was rejoiced when he suddenly nodded to me, and asked George Sheffield something about the cigars; and George, who had also noticed, answered him, and began to talk to me about an opera which we had both heard the evening before. I did not know whether they had chanced upon an unlucky subject, or whether Mr. Whiston was crazy; but at any rate he seemed ill at ease, and was not inclined to talk any more. He looked gloomier and more frightened than ever. I went into the library, and presently they followed me; and Mr. Whiston came to say goodnight, though, when Jack insisted that he should not go away so early,—for it was only half-past nine,—he sat down again with a half-sigh, as if it made little difference to him where he was.
"You're not well, I'm afraid, Whiston," said my brother in his most professional tone. "I think I shall have to look after you a little. By the way, are you at a hotel? I wish you would come to us for a few days. I'll drive you to Cambridge, and you know there are a good many of your old friends here in town." And I seconded this invitation, though I most devoutly hoped it would not be accepted. I had a suspicion that he would be a most uncomfortable guest.
"Thank you, Miss Ainslie," said he, with a quick, pleasant smile, that brought back my first liking for him. "You're very good, but I'm not exactly in trim for paying visits. I will come to you for to-morrow night, Ainslie, if you like. I should be glad to see you and Sheffield again—to say good-by. I am going out in the Marathon on Saturday."
Later, when he had gone, Jack and my cousin and I had a talk about this strange guest of ours. "Is he crazy?" said I to begin with; "and did you see him look at a ghost at dinner? I'm sure it was a ghost." And George Sheffield laughed; but one of us was as much puzzled as the other. "I thought at first he was melodramatic," said he; "but there's something wrong about him. Is he crazy, do you think, Jack? You're lucky in having a doctor in the house, Helen, if he does come back."
"He's not crazy," said Jack; "at least I think not. I have been watching him. But he is no doubt shattered; he may have some monomania, and I'm afraid he takes opium."
"I should urge him to spend the winter," said George serenely, "and what's the difference between having a monomania and being crazy? Couldn't he take a new fancy, and do some mischief or other some day?" But Jack only laughed, and went to a book-case; while I thought he had been very inconsiderate, and yet I wished Mr. Whiston to come again. I hoped he would tell us what it was he saw.
"Here's Bucknill and Tuke," said my brother, coming close to the drop-light, and turning over the pages; "and now you'll always know what I mean when I say 'monomania.' 'Characterized by some particular illusion impressed on the understanding, and giving rise to a partial aberration of judgment: the individual affected is rendered incapable of thinking correctly on subjects connected by the particular illusion, while in other respects he betrays no palpable disorder of the mind.' That's quoted from Prichard." And he shut the book again, and went back to put it in its place; but my cousin asked for it, and turned to another page with an air of triumph. "'An object may appear to be present before his eyes which has no existence whatever there.... If unable to correct or recognize it when an appeal is made to reason, he is insane.' What do you think of that?" said he. "You had better be on your guard, Jack. I'm very wise just now. I have been studying up on insanity for a case of mine that's to be tried next month,—at least I devoutly hope it is."
"But tell me something about Mr. Whiston," said I. "Do you suppose he has no friends? He seems to have been wandering about the world for years."
"I remember his telling me, when we were in college, that he had no relatives except an old aunt, and a cousin, Henry Dunster, whom we spoke of to-night, who was killed in the war. Whiston was very fond of him; but I always thought Dunster was entirely unworthy his friendship. Whiston was thought to be rich. His father left him a very good property at any rate, and he was always a generous fellow. Dunster made away with a good deal, I imagine; they roomed together, and Whiston paid most of the bills. There was something weak and out-of-the-way about him then, I remember thinking, but he was a fairly good scholar, and he made a fine soldier. He was promoted fast; but you know he resigned long before the rest of us were mustered out. Had a fever, didn't he?"
"I believe so," said the judge, as his friends always called my cousin. "The snow will reach my ears by this time. I must go home. What a storm it is! No, I can't stay later. All night! no, indeed. I'll come round late to-morrow evening if I can; but it will not be likely. Now, if you had only been sensible and studied law, Jack, you wouldn't have missed the festivities: it's too bad. To tell the truth, I wish I could make some excuse, and come here instead. I'm very much excited about Whiston." And with a "good-night" to us, and a fresh cigar which he was sure the snow-storm would put out, he went away,—my lucky, easy-going cousin George Sheffield, whose cigars never did go out at inopportune times, and who never was excited about any thing. It always seemed refreshing to find in this age of hurry and dash and anxiety so calm and comfortable and satisfied a soul.
I was in doubt whether we should see any more of our sorrowful guest: but he appeared late the next afternoon; and, when I came in from my walk, I saw a much-used portmanteau being taken upstairs by Patrick, who told me that there were some flowers in the parlor that Mr. Whiston had brought. So I went in to see them, and my heart went out to the giver at once; for had he not chosen the most exquisite roses,—my favorite roses,—and more like Italy than any thing I had seen in a long day? Patrick had crammed them into exactly the wrong vase; but I thanked him for that, since it gave me a chance of handling all the beautiful heavy flowers, and making them comfortable myself, which was certainly a pleasure.
I found Mr. Whiston evidently in better spirits than he had been the night before, and I was not sorry when I found we were to be by ourselves at dinner. I had not asked any one myself, you may be sure. My brother and I have a fashion of lingering long at the table, unless I am going out for the evening; and that night he and his friend lit their cigars, and went on with their talk of old times, while I listened and read the Transcript by turns. Presently there were a few minutes of silence, and then Jack said,—
"There was a strange case brought into the city hospital to-day,—a poor young fellow who had been literally almost frightened to death. One of his fellow-clerks, who boarded with him, went into his room the night before in a horrible mask, and wrapped in a sheet, and stood near him in the moonlight, watching him until he woke. He did it for a joke, of course, and is said to be in agonies of penitence; but I'm afraid the poor victim will lose his wits entirely, if he doesn't die, which I think he will. I don't know what they can do with him. He had one fit after another. He may rally; but he looked to me as if he wouldn't hold out till morning. A nervous, slight fellow, it was a cruel thing to do. Somebody told me he belonged somewhere up in New Hampshire, and that his mother was almost entirely dependent upon him."
Mr. Whiston listened eagerly. "Poor fellow! I hope he will die," said he sadly; and then, hesitating a moment: "Do you believe in ghosts, Ainslie?"
"No," said Jack, with the least flicker of a smile as I caught his eye; "that is, I've never seen one myself. But there are very strange things that one can't explain to one's satisfaction."
"I know that the dead come back," said Mr. Whiston, speaking very low, and not looking at either of us. "John Ainslie," said he suddenly, "I never shall see you again. I'm not going to live long at any rate, and you and your sister have given me more of the old-time feeling than I have had for many a day before. It seems as if I were at home with you. I suppose you will say I am a monomaniac at the very least; but I'm going to tell you what it is that has been slowly killing me. You're a doctor, and you may put any name to it you like, and call it a disease of the brain; but Henry Dunster follows me."
Jack and I stole a glance at each other, and I felt the strongest temptation to look over my shoulder. Jack reached over, and filled Mr. Whiston's glass; and the Transcript startled me by sliding to the floor.
"I don't often speak of it now: people only laugh at the idea," said our guest, with a faint smile. "But it is most horribly real to me. It sometimes seems the only thing that is real." And this is the story he told:—
"When I was in college, you know, Henry roomed with me; and at one time we were greatly interested in what we called then superstition and foolishness. We thought ourselves very wise, and thought we could explain every thing. There was a craze among some of the students about spirit-rappings, and that sort of thing; and we went through with a good deal of nonsense, and wasted a good deal of time, in trying to ravel out mysteries, and to explain things that no mortal man has ever yet understood. One night very late we were talking, and grew much excited; and we promised each other solemnly that the one who died first would appear to the other, if such a thing were possible, and would at least warn him in a way that should be unmistakable of his death. We were half in fun and half in earnest, God forgive us! and we made that awful promise to each other. Then we went into the army, and I don't remember thinking of it once until the very night before he was killed. We were sitting together under a tree, after a hard day's fight, and Dunster said to me, laughing, 'Do you remember we promised each other, that whoever died first would appear to the other, and follow him?' I laughed,—you know how reckless we were in those days when death and dying were so horribly familiar,—and I said the same shell might kill us both, which would be a great pity. We were very merry and foolish; and I should have said Henry had been drinking, but there had been nothing to drink and hardly any thing to eat: you remember we were cut off from our supplies, and the men had very little in their haversacks. Next day the fight was hotter than ever, and we were being driven back, when I saw him toss up his hands, and fall. He must have been trodden to death at any rate. When we regained that little field beyond the woods some days afterward, they had dragged off the wounded, and buried the dead in shallow trenches. I knew Dunster was dead; and I stood on picket near a trench which was just about where he fell, and I cried in the dark like a girl. I loved Dunster. You know he was the only near relative I had in the world whom I cared any thing for, and ours wasn't a bonfire friendship. He had his faults, I know he wasn't liked in the class. He was a brilliant fellow; but I used to be afraid he might go to the bad. Do you remember that night, Ainslie? The men were so tired that they had dropped down anywhere in the mud to sleep, and there was some kind of a bird in the woods that gave a lonely, awful cry once in a while."
"I remember it," said my brother, moving uneasily in his chair, and this time I had to look behind me, there was no help for it.
"I went to the hospital soon after that," Mr. Whiston said next. "I was not badly wounded at all, but the exposure in that rainy weather played the mischief with me, and I was discharged, and, before you were mustered out, I went to South America, where a friend of mine wished me to go into business with him. I did capitally well, and I grew very strong. The climate suited me, and I used to go on those long horseback rides into the interior among the plantations that I told you about last night. My partner disliked that branch of the business far more than I did; so he left it almost wholly to me. I did not think often about Henry, though I mourned so much over his death at first, and I never was less nervous in my life.
"One evening I had just returned to Rio after an absence of several weeks, and I went to dine with some friends of mine. It was a terribly hot night, and after dinner we went out in the harbor for a sail, as the moon would be up later. There was not much wind, however; and the two boatmen took the oars, and we struck out farther, hoping to catch a breeze beyond the shipping. It was very dark, and suddenly there came by a large, heavy boat which nearly ran us down. Our men shouted angrily, and the other sailors swore; but there was no accident after all. They seemed to be drunk, and we were all in the shadow of a brig that was lying at anchor; but, Ainslie! as that boat slid by—I was half lying in the stern of ours, and so close that I could have touched it—I saw Henry Dunster's face as plainly as I see yours now. It turned me cold for a minute, and gave me an awful shock. I told the men to give chase; and they, thinking I was angry at the carelessness, bent to their oars with a will, and overhauled them. There were two men on board,—one a negro, and the other an old gray-haired sailor,—not in the least like Henry. And I said I had been half asleep, and dreamed it was his face. But there was no mistaking him; it was the most vivid thing; it was the man himself I saw for that one horrible minute. And late the next night I was sitting in my own sleeping-room. I had reasoned myself out of the thing as well as I could, and said I was tired, and not as well as usual, and all that; and I had thought of it as calmly as possible. I sat with my back toward the window; but I was facing a mirror, and suddenly I had a strange feeling, and looked up to see in the mirror Dunster's face at the window looking in. It was staring straight at me; and I met the eyes, and that was the last I knew: I lost my senses. Only a monkey could have climbed there. There was a frail vine that clung to the stone, and in the morning there was no trace of any creature.
"And since then he follows me. I saw that haggard, wretched face of his last night when I sat here at the table; and I see him watching me if I look among a crowd of people, and, if I look back along a street, he is always coming towards me; but, when he gets near, he vanishes, and sometimes at the theatre he will be among the actors all the evening. Nobody sees him but me, but every month I see him oftener, and his face grows out of the darkness at night; and sometimes, when I talk with any one, the face will fade out, and Dunster's comes in its place. It is killing me, Ainslie. I have fought against it; I have wandered half over the world trying to get rid of it, but it is no use. For a few days in a strange place, sometimes for weeks, I did not see him at first; but I know he is always watching me now, and I see him every day."
I can give you no idea how thrilling it was to listen to this unhappy man, who seemed so pitifully cowed and broken, so helpless and hopeless. Whether there had been any thing supernatural, or whether it was merely the workings of a diseased brain, it was horribly real to him; and his life had been spoiled.
"Whiston, my dear fellow," said my brother, "I'm not going to believe in ghosts if I can possibly help it. Could you be perfectly sure that you did not see Dunster himself at first? You know he was counted among the missing only, there is no positive proof that he died, though I admit there was only a chance he was not killed outright. We never saw him buried," said Jack, with unsympathetic persistence. "I'm sorry for you; but you mustn't give way to this thing. You have thought about it until you can't forget it at all. Such cases are not uncommon: it's simply a hallucination. I'll give you proofs enough tomorrow. Have some more claret, won't you?" Jack spoke eagerly, with the kindest tone; and his guest could not help responding by a faint, dreary little smile. "Do you like music as much as ever? Suppose we go over into the parlor, and my sister will play for us; won't you, Helen?" which was asking a great deal of me just then.
And we apparently forgot all about Mr. Dunster for the rest of the evening. And, when Jack asked Mr. Whiston if he remembered a song he used to sing in college, to my delight he went at once to the piano, and sang it with a very pleasant tenor voice; and when he ended, and my brother applauded, he struck some new chords, and began to sing a little Florentine street-song, which was always a great favorite of mine. It is a sweet, piteous little song; and it bewitched me then as much as it did the very first time I had heard some boys sing it, as they went under our windows at night, when I was first in Florence years ago.
He said no more about the ghost; but later that night, when I happened to wake, I wondered if the poor man was keeping his anxious watch, and listening in a strange house to hear the hours struck one by one. He went away soon after breakfast; and, though he promised to come in again to say good-by, that was the last we saw of him, and we did not see his name on the steamer list either, so we were much puzzled, and we talked about him a great deal, and told George Sheffield the story, which he wished he had heard himself.
"Of course it is a hallucination," said Jack: "they are by no means uncommon. I can read you accounts of any number of such cases. There is a good deal about them in Griesinger's book,—the chapter called 'Elementary Disorders in Mental Disease,' Helen, if you care to look at it, or any of those books on insanity. Didn't you have Dr. Elam's 'A Physician's Problems' a while ago? He has an essay there which is very good."
"I was reading his essay on 'Moral and Criminal Epidemics,'" said I, "that was all. It's a cheerful thing too!"
"Isn't there such a thing as these visions coming before slight attacks of epilepsy?" said George. And my brother said yes; but Mr. Whiston had nothing of that kind, he had taken pains to find out. There was no hope of a cure, he feared; he was not wise in such cases. But the trouble had gone too far, there were bad symptoms, and he confesses he has hurt himself with opium during the last year or two. "He will not live long at any rate," said Jack; "and I think the sooner the end comes the better. He has a predisposition to mental disease, and he was always a frail, curious make-up. But I don't know—'There are more things in heaven and earth,' George Sheffield; and I wish you had heard him tell his story."
And we talked over some strange, unaccountable things; and each told stories which could neither be doubted nor explained. I had been readier to believe in such things since I was warned myself before the greatest sorrow I had ever known. I was by the sea; and one of my friends and I were walking slowly toward home one dark and windy evening, when suddenly we both heard a terrible low cry of fear and horror close beside us. It was hardly a cry, it was no noise that either of us had ever heard before; and we stopped for an instant, because we were too frightened to move. And the noise came again. We were in an open place, and there was nothing to be seen; but we both felt there was something there, and that the cry had some awful meaning. And it was not many days before I had reason to remember that cry; for the trouble came. I do not know what it might have been that I heard; but I knew it had the saddest meaning.
Two or three weeks after we saw Mr. Whiston, my brother came in one afternoon; and I saw he could hardly wait for some friends to go away, who were paying me a call.
"I have found poor Whiston," said he, when I joined him in the library at last: "he is at the Carney Hospital. It seems he was ill for a few days at his hotel, and the servant, who was very kind to him, advised him to go there. He insists that he is very comfortable, and that he has money enough. I wished to bring him over here at first; but I saw that it was no use, and I asked him why he didn't let me know, but he is completely wrecked; I doubt if he lives more than a day or two, he was wandering half the time I was there. He said he should be very glad if you would come to see him, and I told him I was sure you would."
I went to see him with my brother the next day, and I saw that Jack was shocked at the change that had come already. There was that peculiar, worried, anxious look in his face, that one only sees in people who are very near death, and his fingers were picking at the blanket. I do not believe he knew me; but he smiled,—he had a most beautiful smile,—and I gave him some grapes, and wished I could make him a little more comfortable. The sister came just afterward on her round, and gave him his medicine, and raised him with a strong arm, while she turned his pillow in a business-like way, and I thought what a lonely place it was to be ill and die in; and I was more glad than ever that Jack and I had a home, and were always to be together. I left Jack to stay the night, and, as I came away, I had more and more compassion for the man who was dying; yet I was glad to think so sad a life was almost over with. His days had been all winter days in this world, it seemed to me, and I hoped some wonderful, blessed spring was waiting for him in the next.
When I went over in the morning, it was cheerless enough. The rain was falling fast and the snow melting in the streets. My brother was watching for me, and came out at once. "Poor Whiston is dead," said he, as he shut the carriage-door. "He wished me to thank you for your kindness to him," and I saw the tears in Jack's eyes. "There's another star for the catalogue,—how small the class is growing! Poor fellow! I didn't know he had gone, I thought he was asleep, for we were talking together only a few minutes before. He was not at all bewildered, as you saw him yesterday."
I heard this case talked over more than once by my brother, and one or two professional friends of his who came often to the house. Nobody was ready to believe that Mr. Whiston had seen an apparition; but the truth always remained that the man's nerves were so shocked by what he believed to be the appearance of a ghost, that he had become the prey of a monomania, and had by little and little grown incapable of distinguishing between real things and the creations and projections of his own unsteady brain. Il s'écoutait vivre, as the French phrase has it; and, having nothing to live for but this, it was well that life was over for him. I suppose the acute disease of which he died met with little resistance, for he looked so ill when we first saw him; but it would have been sadder if he had lingered a few more years, so miserable as he was,—hardly fit either for the inside of an asylum or the outside,—to die at last without money or friends to give him the last of this world's comforts, perhaps without mind enough left to miss them.
Strangely enough, some months after this, when it was spring, my brother found Dunster at the Marine Hospital in Chelsea, where he had gone with another surgeon to see a curious operation in which he felt a great interest. He was walking through the accident ward when somebody called him from one of the cots,—a wretched-looking vagabond, whom at first he did not recognize. But it was Dunster, and he tried to put on something of his old manner, which made him seem like a wretched copy of his former self.
Jack made him give an account of himself. It seemed that he had been thrown among the dead in that battle when he was supposed to have been killed; but he had recovered his senses, and crawled from the place where he had fallen farther into the enemy's lines, and he had been sent to the rear. He had nearly died from the effects of his wounds, and it was evident that he had been very intemperate. He had drifted to New Orleans, and lead a most wretched life there; and at times he had gone to sea. My brother asked him if he was ever in Rio; and at first he denied it, and afterward confessed that he was there once, and had seen Whiston in a boat, and had dropped over the side in the dark to evade him, but when Jack questioned him about being at the window, he denied it utterly. He said his ship sailed that day. It might have been that he meant to commit a robbery, or that he really told the truth, and that it was the first of poor Whiston's illusions. Of course it was possible that Dunster might have swung himself down from the flat roof by a rope, and they might have really met at other times, it was not unlikely. But one can hardly conceive of Mr. Whiston's perfect certainty, in such a case, that the glimpse he had of his cousin's face was a supernatural vision.
My brother said, "I did not tell him what wreck and ruin he had made unconsciously of Whiston's life,—at least the part he had played in it; it would do no good, and indeed he is hardly sane, I think. It would be curious if they had both inherited from their common ancestry the mental weakness which shows itself so differently in the two lives,—Whiston's, so cowardly and shrinking and weak; and Dunster's, so horribly low and brutal. There is not much the matter with him, he had a fall on board ship. The nurse told me he was very troublesome, and had fairly insulted the chaplain, who had said a kind word to him. It is a pity that shot had not killed him; and I suppose most of the class who ever think of him will say he was a hero, and died on the field of honor."
And my brother and I talked gravely about the two men. God help us! what sin and crime may be charged to any of us who take the wrong way in life! The possibilities of wickedness and goodness in us are both unlimited. I said, how many lives must be like these which seemed such wretched failures and imperfections! One cannot help having a great pity for such men, in whom common courage, and the power of resistance, and the ordinary amount of will seem to have been wanting. Warped and incapable, or brutal and shameful, one cannot pity them enough. It is like the gnarled and worthless fruit that grows among the fair and well-rounded,—the useless growth that is despised and thrown away scornfully.
But God must always know what blighted and hindered any life or growth of His; and let us believe that He sometimes saves and pities what we have scorned and blamed.
A LATE SUPPER.
The story begins one afternoon in June just after dinner. Miss Catherine Spring was the heroine; and she lived alone in her house, which stood on the long village street in Brookton,—up in the country city people would say,—a town certainly not famous, but pleasant enough because it was on the outer edge of the mountain region, near some great hills. One never hears much about Brookton when one is away from it, but, for all that, life is as important and exciting there as it is anywhere; and it is like every other town, a miniature world, with its great people and small people, bad people and good people, its jealousy and rivalry, kindness and patient heroism.
Miss Spring had finished her dinner that day, and had washed the few dishes, and put them away. She never could get used to there being so few, because she had been one of a large family. She had put on the gray alpaca dress which she wore afternoons at home, and had taken her sewing, and sat down at one of the front windows in the sitting-room, which was shaded by a green old lilac-bush. But she did not sew as if she were much interested in the work, or were in any hurry; and presently she laid it down altogether, and tapped on the window-sill with her thimble, looking as if she were lost in not very pleasant thought. She was a very good woman, and a very pleasant woman; a good neighbor all the people would tell you; and they would add also, very comfortably left. But of late she had been somewhat troubled; to tell the truth, her money affairs had gone wrong, and just now she did not exactly know what to do. She felt more solitary than she had for a long time before. Her father, the last of the family except herself, had been dead for many years; and she had been living alone, growing more and more contented in the comfortable, prim, white house, after the first sharp grief of her loneliness had worn away into a more resigned and familiar sorrow. It is, after all, a great satisfaction to do as one pleases.
Now, as I have said, she had lost part of her already small income, and she did not know what to do. The first loss could be borne; but the second seemed to put housekeeping out of the question, and this was a dreadful thing to think of. She knew no other way of living, beside having her own house and her own fashion of doing things. If it had been possible, she would have liked to take some boarders; but summer boarders had not yet found out Brookton. Mr. Elden, the kind old lawyer who was her chief adviser, had told her to put an advertisement in one of the Boston papers, and she had done so; but it never had been answered, which was not only a disappointment but a mortification as well. Her money was not actually lost: it was the failure of a certain railway to pay its dividend, that was making her so much trouble.
Miss Spring tapped her thimble still faster on the window-sill, and thought busily. "I'm going to think it out, and settle it this afternoon," said she to herself. "I must settle it somehow, I will not live on here any longer as if I could afford it." There was a niece of hers who lived in Lowell, who was married and not at all strong. There were three children, with nobody in particular to look after them. Miss Catherine was sure this niece would like nothing better than to have her come to stay with her. She thought with satisfaction how well she could manage there, and how well her housekeeping capabilities would come into play. It had grieved her in her last visit to see the house half cared for, and she remembered the wistful way Mary had said, "How I wish I could have you here all the time, Aunt Catherine!" and at once Aunt Catherine went on to build a little castle in the air, until she had a chilly consciousness that her own house was to be shut up. She compared the attractions of Lowell and Brookton most disdainfully: the dread came over her that most elderly people feel at leaving their familiar homes and the surroundings to which they have grown used. But she bravely faced all this, and resolved to write Mary that evening, so the letter could go by the morning's mail. If Mary liked the plan, which Miss Catherine never for an instant doubted, she would stay through the early fall at any rate, and then see what was best to be done.
She took up her sewing again, and looked critically at it through her spectacles, and then went on with her stitching, feeling lighter-hearted now that the question was decided. The tall clock struck three slowly; and she said to herself how fast the last hour had gone. There was a little breeze outside which came rustling through the lilac-leaves. The wide street was left to itself, nobody had driven by since she had sat at the window. She heard some children laughing and calling to each other where they were at play in a yard not far away, and smiled in sympathy; for her heart had never grown old. The smell of the roses by the gate came blowing in sweet and fresh, and she could see the great red peonies in generous bloom on the borders each side the front walk. And, when she looked round the room, it seemed very pleasant to her, the clock ticked steadily; and the old-fashioned chairs, and the narrow high mirror with the gilt eagle at the top, the stiff faded portraits of her father and mother in their young days, the wide old brass-nailed sofa with its dim worsted-worked cushion at either end,—how comfortable it all was! and a great thrill of fondness for the room and the house came over our friend. "I didn't know I cared so much about the old place," said she. "'There's no place like home.'—I believe I never knew that meant so much before;" and she laid down her sewing again, and fell into a reverie.
In a little while she heard the click of the gate-latch; and, with the start and curiosity a village woman instinctively feels at the knowledge of somebody's coming in at the front-door, she hurried to the other front-window to take a look at her visitor through the blinds. It was only a child, and Miss Catherine did not wait for her to rap with the high and heavy knocker, but was standing in the open doorway when the little girl reached the steps.
"Come in, dear!" said Miss Catherine kindly, "did you come of an errand?"
"I wanted to ask you something," said the child, following her into the sitting-room, and taking the chair next the door with a shy smile that had something appealing about it. "I came to ask you if you want a girl this summer."
"Why, no, I never keep help," said Miss Spring. "There is a woman who comes Mondays and Tuesdays, and other days when I need her. Who is it that wants to come?"
"It's only me," said the child. "I'm small of my age; but I'm past ten, and I can work real smart about house." A great cloud of disappointment came over her face.
"Whose child are you?"
"I'm Katy Dunning, and I live with my aunt down by Sandy-river Bridge. Her girl is big enough to help round now, and she said I must find a place. She would keep me if she could," said the little girl in a grown-up, old-fashioned way; "but times are going to be dreadful hard, they say, and it takes a good deal to keep so many."
"What made you come here?" asked Miss Catherine, whose heart went out toward this hard-worked, womanly little thing. It seemed so pitiful that so young a child, who ought to be still at play, should already know about hard times, and have begun to fight the battle of life. A year ago she had thought of taking just such a girl to save steps, and for the sake of having somebody in the house; but it never could be more out of the question than now. "What made you come to me?"
"Mr. Rand, at the post-office, told aunt that perhaps you might want me: he couldn't think of anybody else."
She was such a neat-looking, well-mended child, and looked Miss Catherine in the face so honestly! She might cry a little after she was outside the gate, but not now.
"I'm really sorry," said Miss Spring; "but you see, I'm thinking about shutting my house up this summer." She would not allow to herself that it was for any longer. "But you keep up a good heart. I know a good many folks, and perhaps I can hear of a place for you. I suppose you could mind a baby, couldn't you? No: you sit still a minute!" as the child thanked her, and rose to go away; and she went out to her dining-room closet to a deep jar, and took out two of her best pound-cakes, which she made so seldom now, and saved with great care. She put these on a pretty pink-and-white china plate, and filled a mug with milk. "Here," said she, as she came back, "I want you to eat these cakes. You have walked a long ways, and it'll do you good. Sit right up to the table, and I'll spread a newspaper over the cloth."
Katy looked at her with surprise and gratitude. "I'm very much obliged," said she; and her first bite of the cake seemed the most delicious thing she had ever tasted.
Yes, I suppose bread and butter would have been quite as good for her, and much less extravagant on Miss Catherine's part; but of all the people who had praised her pound-cakes, nobody had so delighted in their goodness as this hungry little girl, who had hardly ever eaten any thing but bread all her days, and not very good bread at that.
"Don't hurry," said Miss Spring kindly, "you're a good girl, and I wish I could take you,—I declare I do." And, with a little sigh, she sat down by the window again, and took up the much-neglected sewing, looking up now and then at her happy guest. When she saw the mug was empty, and that Katy looked at it wistfully as she put it down, she took it without a word, and went to the shelf in the cellar-way where the cream-pitcher stood, and poured out every drop that was in it, afterward filling the mug to the brim with milk, for her little pitcher did not hold much. "I'll get along one night without cream in my tea," said she to herself. "That was only skim-milk she had first, and she looks hungry."
"It's real pleasant here," said Katy, "you're so good! Aunt said I could tell you, if you wanted to take me, that I don't tear my clothes, and I'm careful about the dishes. She thought I wouldn't be a bother. Would you tell the other people? I should be real glad to get a place."
"I'll tell 'em you're a good girl," said Miss Catherine; "and I'll get you a good home if I can." For she thought of her niece in Lowell, and how much trouble there was when she was there about getting a careful young girl to take care of the smallest child. Then it occurred to her that Katy was very small herself, and did not look very strong, and Mary might not hear to it; so, after Katy had gone, she began to be sorrowful again, and to wish she had promised less, and need not disappoint the little thing.
Another hour had gone, and it was four o'clock now, and in a few minutes she heard a carriage stop at the gate. She heard several voices, and was discouraged for a minute. Three people were coming in; and she was so glad when she saw it was a nephew and his wife from a town a dozen miles away, and a friend with them whom she had often seen at their house. They came in with good-natured chatter and much laughing. They had started out for a drive early after dinner, and had found the weather so pleasant that they had kept on to Brookton.
"I don't know what the folks will think," said they: "we meant to be back right away."— "Well," said the niece, "I'm so glad we found you at home; and how well you do look, Aunt Catherine! I declare, you're smarter than any of us."
"I guess she is," said her nephew, who was a great favorite. "I tell you she's the salt of the earth." And he gave her a most affectionate and resounding great kiss, and then they were all merrier than ever.
"What are you sitting down for, without laying off your bonnets?" asked the hostess. "You must stay and get supper before you ride home. I'll have it early, and there's a moon. You take the horse right round into the yard, Joseph: there's some more of that old hay in the barn; you know where to find it." And, after some persuasion, the visitors yielded, and settled themselves quietly for the rest of the afternoon. They had said, as they came over, that they were sure Aunt Catherine would ask them to stay until evening, and she always had such good suppers. Miss Stanby had never been at the house before, and only once as far as Brookton; and she seemed very pleased. She took care of her step-mother, who was very old, and a great deal crosser than there was any need of being. This little excursion would do her a world of good; and luckily her married sister happened to be at home for a day or two's visit, so she did not feel anxious about being away. She was a sharp-faced, harassed-looking little woman, who might have been pretty if she had been richer and less worried and disappointed. She was a pleasant and patient soul, and this drive and visit were more to her than a journey to Boston would be to her companions. They were well-to-do village people, comfortable and happy and unenvious as it is possible for village people, or any other people, to be.
Miss Spring was a little distracted and a bit formal for a few minutes, while she was thinking what she could get for tea; but that being settled, she gave her whole mind to enjoying the guests. She regretted the absence of the two pound-cakes Katy Dunning had eaten, but it was only for an instant. She could make out with new gingerbread, and no matter if she couldn't! It was all very pleasant and sociable: and they talked together for a while busily, telling the news and asking and answering questions; and, by and by, Joseph took his hat, saying that he must go down to the post-office to see Mr. Rand, the storekeeper. Soon after this it was time to get supper. Just as Miss Spring was going out, her niece said, "I had a letter from Lowell yesterday, from Mary."
"How is she now?" Miss Spring meant to talk over her plans a little with Joseph after supper, but was silent enough about them now.
"Her husband's oldest sister is coming to stay all summer with them. She is a widow, and has been living out West. It'll be a great help to Mary, and John sets every thing by this sister. She is a good deal older than he, and brought him up."
"It is a good thing," said Miss Catherine emphatically, and with perfect composure. "I have been thinking about Mary lately. I pitied her so when I was there. I have had half a mind to go and stay with her a while myself."
"You might have got sick going to Lowell in hot weather. Sha'n't I come out and help you, Aunt Catherine?" who said, "No indeed;" and went out to the kitchen, and dropped into a chair. "Oh, what am I going to do?" said she; for she never had felt so helpless and hopeless in her life.
The old clock gave its quick little cluck, by way of reminder that in five minutes it would be five o'clock. She had promised to have tea early; so she opened a drawer to take out a big calico apron, and went to work. Her eyes were full of tears. Poor woman! she felt as if she had come face to face with a great wall, but she bravely went to work to make the cream-tartar biscuit. Somehow she couldn't remember how much to take of any thing. She was quite confused when she tried to remember the familiar rule. It was silly!—she had made them hundreds of times, and was celebrated for her skill. Cream-tartar biscuit, and some cold bread, and some preserved plums; or was it citron-melon she meant to have?—and some of that cold meat she had for dinner, for a relish, with a bit of cheese.
She would have felt much more miserable if she had not had to hurry; and after a few minutes, when the first shock of her bad news had been dulled a little, she was herself again; and tea was nearly ready, the biscuits baking in the oven, and some molasses gingerbread beside, when she happened to remember that there was not a drop of cream in the cream-pitcher, she had given it all to poor little Katy. Joseph was very particular about having cream in his tea; so she called her niece Martha to the kitchen, and asked her to watch the oven while she went down the road to a neighbor's. She did not stop even to take her sun-bonnet: it was not a great way, and shady under the elms; so away she went with the pitcher. Mrs. Hilton, the neighbor, was a generous soul, and when she heard of the unexpected company, with ready sympathy and interest she said; "Now, what did you bring such a mite of a pitcher for? Do take this one of mine. I'd just as soon you'd have the cream as not. I don't calculate to make any butter this week, and it'll be well to have it to eat with your preserves. It's nice and sweet as ever you saw."
"I'm sure you are kind," said Miss Spring; and with a word or two more she went hurrying home. As I have said, it was not far; but the railroad came between, and our friend had to cross the track. It seemed very provoking that a long train should be standing across the road. It seemed to be waiting for something; an accident might have happened, for the station was a little distance back.
Miss Catherine waited in great anxiety; she could not afford to waste a minute. She would have to cross an impossible culvert in going around the train either way. She saw some passengers or brakemen walking about on the other side, and with great heroism mounted the high step of the platform with the full intention of going down the other side, when, to her horror, the train suddenly moved. She screamed, "Stop! stop!" but nobody saw her, and nobody heard her; and off she went, cream-pitcher and all, without a bit of a bonnet. It was simply awful.
The car behind her was the smoking-car, and the one on which she stood happened to be the Pullman. She was dizzy, and did not dare to stay where she was; so she opened the door and went in. There was a young lady standing in the passage-way, getting a drink of water for some one in a dainty little tumbler; and she looked over her shoulder, thinking Miss Spring was the conductor, to whom she wished to speak; and she smiled, for who could help it?
"I'm carried off," said poor Aunt Catherine hysterically. "I had company come to tea unexpectedly, and I was all out of cream, and I went out to Mrs. Hilton's, and I was in a great hurry to get back, and there seemed no sign in the world of the cars starting. I wish we never had sold our land for the track! Oh! what shall I do? I'm a mile from home already; they'll be frightened to death, and I wanted to have supper early for them, so they could start for home; it's a long ride. And the biscuit ought to be eaten hot. Dear me! they'll be so worried!"
"I'm very sorry, indeed," said the young lady, who was quivering with laughter in spite of her heartfelt sympathy for such a calamity as this. "I suppose you will have to go on to the next station; is it very far?"
"Half an hour," said Miss Spring despairingly; "and the down train doesn't get into Brookton until seven; and I haven't a cent of money with me, either. I shall be crazy! I don't see why I didn't get off; but it took all my wits away the minute I found I was going."
"I'm so glad you didn't try to get off," said the girl gravely: "you might have been terribly hurt. Won't you come into the compartment just here with my aunt and me? She is an invalid, and we are all by ourselves; you need not see any one else. Let me take your pitcher." And Miss Spring, glad to find so kind a friend in such an emergency, followed her.
There were two sofas running the length of the compartment, and on one of these was lying a most kind and refined-looking woman, with gray hair and the sweetest eyes. Poor Aunt Catherine somehow felt comforted at once; and when this new friend looked up wonderingly, and her niece tried to keep from even smiling while she told the story discreetly, she began to laugh at herself heartily.
"I know you want to laugh, dear," said she. "It's ridiculous, only I'm so afraid they'll be worried about me at home. If anybody had only seen me as I rode off, and could tell them!"
Miss Ashton had not laughed so much in a long time, the fun of the thing outweighed the misery, and they were all very merry for a few minutes. There was something straightforward and homelike and pleasant in Miss Catherine's face, and the other travellers liked her at once, as she did them. They were going to a town nearer the mountains for the summer. Miss Ashton was just getting over a severe illness; and they asked about the place to which they were bound, but Miss Spring could tell them little about it.
"The country is beautiful around here, isn't it?" said Alice West, when there was a pause: the shadows were growing long, and the sun was almost ready to go down among the hills. "Brookton! didn't you notice an advertisement of some one who wanted boarders there, aunty? You thought it was hardly near enough to the mountains, didn't you? but this is beautiful."
"Why, that was my notice," said Miss Spring; and then she stopped, and flushed a little. I believe, if she had thought a moment, she would not have spoken; but Miss Ashton saw the hesitation and the flush.
"I wish I were going to spend the summer with you," said she by and by, in her frank, pleasant way. And Miss Catherine said, "I wish you were," and sighed quietly; she felt wonderfully at home with these strangers, and, in spite of her annoyance when she thought of her guests, she was enjoying herself. "I live all alone," she said once, in speaking of something else; and, if she had been alone with Miss Ashton, I think she would have told her something of her troubles, of which we know her heart was very full. Everybody found it easy to talk to Miss Ashton, but there was the niece; and Miss Catherine, like most elderly women of strong character who live alone, was used to keeping her affairs to herself, and felt a certain pride in being uncommunicative.
When the conductor looked in, with surprise at seeing the new passenger, Alice West asked him the fare to Hillsfield, the next station; and, after paying him, gave as much money to Miss Spring, who took it reluctantly, though there was nothing else to be done.
"I'm sure I don't know how to thank you," said she; "but you must tell me how to direct to you and I will send the money back tomorrow."
"No, indeed!" said the girl: but Miss Spring looked unhappy; and Miss Ashton, with truer kindness, gave her the direction, saying,—
"Please tell us how you found your friends at home; because Alice and I will wish very much to know what they thought."
"You have been so kind; I sha'n't forget it," said Miss Catherine, with a little shake in her voice that was not made by the cars.
Alice had taken from her travelling-bag a little white hood which she had seen in a drawer that morning after her trunk was locked and strapped, and had put it over Miss Catherine's head. It was very becoming, and it did not look at all unsuitable for an elderly woman to wear in the evening, just from one station to the next. And she was going to wrap the cream-pitcher in some paper, when Miss Catherine said softly,—
"Does your aunty care any thing about cream?"
"She likes it dearly," said the girl, looking so much pleased. "I had half a mind to ask you if you could spare just a little;" and Miss Ashton's little tumbler was at once delightedly filled to the very brim.
Its owner said she had not tasted any thing so delicious in a long time; and would not Miss Spring take some little biscuit and some grapes to eat while she waited in the station? Yes, indeed: they had more than they wanted, and she must not forget it was tea-time already. Alice would wrap some up for her in a paper.
And at last they shook hands most cordially, and were so sorry to say good-by.
"I never shall forget your kindness as long as I live," said Miss Catherine; and Alice helped her off the car, and nodded good-by as it started.
"I wish with all my heart we could board with that dear good soul this summer," said Miss Ashton, "and I believe she has been dreadfully grieved because her advertisement was not answered; perhaps it may be yet. She looked sad and worried, and it was something besides this mishap. What a kind face she had! I wish we knew more about her. I'm so glad we happened to be just here, and that she didn't have to go into the car."
"Yes," said Alice; "but, aunty, I think it was the funniest thing I ever saw in my life, when she appeared to me with that horror-stricken face and her cream-pitcher."
And Miss Catherine, as she seated herself in the little station to wait for the down-train, said to herself, "God bless them! how good they were! How I should have hated to go into the car with all the people, and be stared at and made fun of." They had been so courteous and simple and kind: why are there not more such people in the world? And she thought about them, and ate her crackers and the hot-house grapes, and was very comfortable. It might have been such a disagreeable experience, yet she had really enjoyed herself. It did not seem long before she again took her seat in the cars, with the cream-pitcher respectably disguised in white paper, and herself looking well enough in the soft little white hood, with its corner just in the middle of her gray hair over her forehead; she paid her fare as if her pocket were full of money, and watched the other people in the car; and by the time she reached home she was her own composed and reliable self again.
There had been a great excitement at her house. The biscuit were done and the gingerbread; and the niece took them out of the oven, and thought her aunt was gone a good while, and went back to the sitting-room. After a few minutes she went to the front-gate to look down the street. Miss Stanby joined her; and they stood watching until Joseph Spring came hurrying back, thinking he was late, and ready with his apologies, when they told him how long Miss Catherine had been gone.
"She's stopped for something or other: they're always asking her advice about things," said he carelessly. "She will be along soon." And then they went into the house; and nobody said much, and the tall clock ticked louder and louder; and Joseph began to whistle and drum with his fingers, meaning to show his unconcern, but in reality betraying the opposite feeling.
"You don't suppose she's sick, do you?" asked Miss Stanby timidly.
"More likely somebody else is," said Mr. Spring. "Did you say she had gone to Mrs. Hilton's, Martha? I'll walk down there, and see what the matter is."
"I wish you would," said his wife. "It's after six o'clock."
"Hasn't got home yet!" said Mrs. Hilton in dismay. "Why, what can have become of her? She came in before half-past five, in a great hurry; and she left her pitcher here on the table. I suppose she forgot it. I lent her mine, because it was bigger. There's no house between but the Donalds', and they're all off at his mother's funeral to Lancaster. You don't suppose the cars run over her?"
"I don't know," said Miss Spring's nephew, in real trouble by this time.
They went out together, and looked everywhere along the road, apologizing to each other as they did so. They went up and down the railroad for some little distance, and it was a great relief not to find her there. Joseph asked some men if they had seen his aunt; and when they said no, wonderingly, and expected an explanation, he did not give it, he hardly knew why. They went to the house beyond Miss Catherine's, though Martha and Miss Stanby were sure she had not gone by. They looked in the barn even: they went out into the garden and through the house, for she might possibly have come in without being seen; but she had apparently disappeared from the face of the earth.
It had seemed so foolish at first to tell the neighbors; but by seven o'clock, or nearly that, Martha Spring said decisively, "She cannot have gone far unless she has been carried off. I think you had better get some men, and have a regular hunt for her before it gets any darker. I'm not going home to-night until we find her." And they owned to each other that it was a very serious and frightful thing. Miss Stanby looked most concerned and apprehensive of the three, and suggested what had been uppermost in her mind all the time,—that it would be so awful if poor Miss Spring had been murdered, or could she have killed herself? There was something so uncharacteristic in the idea of Miss Catherine's committing suicide, that for a moment her nephew could not resist a smile; but he was grave enough again directly, for it might be true, after all, and he remembered with a thrill of horror that old Mr. Elden, the lawyer, had told him in confidence, that Miss Spring was somewhat pinched for money,—that her affairs were in rather a bad way, and perhaps he had better talk with her, as he himself did not like to have all the responsibility of advising her.
"Poor old lady!" thought Joseph Spring, who was a tender-hearted man. "She looked to-day as if she felt bad about something. She has grown old this last year, that's a fact!" It seemed to him as if she were in truth dead already. "You had better look all over the house," said he to his wife. "Did you look in the garret?" He remembered the story that his great-grandfather had been found hanging there, and could not have gone to the garret himself to save his life.
He went hurrying out of the house, determined now to make the disappearance public. He would go to the depot, there were always some men there at this time. The church-bell began to ring for Wednesday-evening meeting, and she had always gone so regularly; he would hurry back there, and tell the people as they came. The train went by slowly to stop at the station, it was a little behind time. He hurried on, looking down as he walked. To tell the truth, he was thinking about the funeral, and suddenly he heard a familiar voice say,—
"Well, Joseph! I suppose you thought I was lost!"
"Heavens and earth, Aunt Catherine! Where have you been?" And he caught her by the shoulder, and felt suddenly like crying and laughing together. "I never had any thing come over me so in all my life," said he to his wife and Miss Stanby, as they went home later that evening. "I declare, it took the wits right out of me."
Miss Catherine looked brighter than she had that afternoon, the excitement really had done her good; she told her adventure as they hurried home together. When they reached the house Martha Spring and Miss Stanby kissed her, and cried as if their hearts would break. Joseph looked out of the window a few minutes, and then announced that he would go out and see to the horse.
The tears were soon over with; and, as soon as it seemed decent, Mrs. Martha said, "Aunt Catherine, do tell me where you got that pretty hood! I wish I had seen it when I first got here, to take the pattern. Isn't it a new stitch?"
"Dear me! haven't I taken it off?" said Miss Catherine. "Well, you must excuse me if I am scatter-witted. I feel as if I had been gone a week."
They had supper directly—that very late supper! They were all as hungry as hunters, even poor little Miss Stanby; and the re-action from such suspense made the guests merry enough, while, as was often said, Miss Catherine was always good company. The cream-tartar biscuits were none the less good for being cold. Joseph hadn't eaten such gingerbread since he was there before; and the tea was made fresh over a dry-shingle fire, which blazes in a minute, as every one knows. There were more than enough pound-cakes; and Martha asked all over again how Miss Catherine made her preserves, for somehow hers were never so good; while Miss Catherine meekly said that she had not had such good luck as usual with the last she made.
At last they drove off down the road. The moon had come up, and was shining through the trees. It was so cool and fresh and bright an evening, with a little yellow still lingering in the west after the sunset! The guests went away very happy and light-hearted, for it seemed as if they had been spared a terrible sorrow.
"I saw the prettiest little old-fashioned table up in the garret," said Mrs. Martha. "It only needs fixing up a little. I mean to ask your Aunt Catherine if I can't have it when I go over again."
"No, you won't," said her husband, with more authority than was usual with him.
Miss Catherine stood watching at the gate until they were out of sight. "I must settle down," said she. "I feel as if it had been a wedding or a funeral or something; and I declare if it isn't Wednesday evening, and what will they think has become of me at meeting?" though she could have trusted Mrs. Hilton to spread the story far and wide—by which you must not suppose that good Mrs. Hilton was a naughty gossip.
The next morning Miss Catherine waked up even more heavy-hearted than she had been the day before. I suppose she was tired after the unusual excitement. She wished she had talked to Joseph, she must talk with somebody. She wished she had not been such a fool as to get on those cars, for she was sure she never should hear the last of the joke; and, after the morning work was done, she sat down in the sitting-room with the clock ticking mockingly, and that intolerable feeling of despair and disgust came over her; there is nothing much harder to bear than that, if you know what it is I am sure you will pity her.
The afternoon seemed very long. It rained; and nobody came in until the evening, when Mrs. Hilton's boy came with a letter. Miss Catherine had been to the post-office just before dinner, to send the money to Miss Ashton; and this surprised her very much. "It must have come by the seven-o'clock train," said she. "I never get letters from that way;" and she took it to the window, and looked curiously at the address, and at last she opened it. It was a pretty letter to look at, and it proved a pleasant one to read. It was from Alice West, Miss Ashton's niece; and Miss Catherine read it slowly, and felt as if she were in a dream.
"My Dear Miss Spring,—My aunt, Miss Ashton, wishes me to write to you, to ask if it would be convenient for you to take us to board. We are very much disappointed here, and are glad we did not positively engage our rooms until we had seen them. It is a very damp house, and I am sure my aunt ought not to stay, and would be uncomfortable in many ways. We should like two rooms close to each other, and we were each to pay ten dollars a week here, but are perfectly willing to pay more than that. We are almost certain that we shall like your house; but perhaps it will be the better way for me to come down and see you, and then I can make all the arrangements. If Brookton suits my aunt, we may wish to stay as late as October; and should you mind if one of my friends comes to stay with us by and by? She would share my room. If you will write me to-morrow morning, and if you think you can take us, I will go down in the early afternoon train.
"We hope you reached home all right, and that your friends were not much worried. We begin to think that your adventure was a fortunate thing for us. With kind regards from us both,
"Yours sincerely,
"Alice West."
Did you ever know any thing more fortunate than this? Poor Miss Catherine sat down and cried about it; and the cat came and rubbed against her foot, and purred sympathizingly, and was taken up and wept over, which I believe had never happened to her before. Of all people, who could be pleasanter boarders than these? They had won her heart in the half-hour she had already spent with them. She had wished then that they were coming to her: it would be such a pleasure to make them comfortable. And twenty dollars a week,—that would surely be more than enough for them all to live upon with what she had beside. And there was Katy, who could save so many steps, and could wait on Miss Ashton; she would have the child come at once. She could have Mrs. Brown come every day for a while, beside Mondays and Tuesdays; and how glad she would be of the extra pay! Miss Catherine even went up stairs in the late June twilight, to look at the two familiar front-chambers, with only the small square hall separating them. They looked so pleasant, and were so airy and of such good size, they could not help being suited. She patted the pillow of her best bed affectionately, and thought with pride that they would find no fault with her way of cooking, and her house never was damp; there was not a better house in Brookton. Life had rarely looked brighter to Miss Catherine than it did that night.
Alice West came down the next afternoon, and found the house and the rooms and Miss Catherine herself were all exactly what wise Miss Ashton had said they would be. And the two boarders thought themselves lucky to have found such a pleasant house for the summer; they were so considerate, and became favorites with many people beside their hostess. They brought a great deal of pleasure and good-will to sober little Brookton, as two cultivated, thoughtful, helpful women may make any place pleasanter if they choose. Miss Ashton is a help and a comfort and a pleasure wherever she goes, while Alice West is learning to be like her more and more every year. Miss Catherine remembered sometimes with great thankfulness, that it was the loss of her money for a while that had brought her these friends. Katy Dunning was so happy to go to live at Miss Spring's after all, and did her very best,—a patient, steady, willing little creature she was! and I am sure she never had had so many good times in her life as she did that summer.
I might tell you so much more about these people, but a story must end somewhere. You may hope that Miss Catherine's fortunes bettered, and that she never will have to give up her home; that she can keep Katy all the time; that Miss Ashton will come back to Brookton the next year, and the next.
I am sure you will think, in reading all this, just what I have thought as I told it,—and what Miss Catherine herself felt,—that it was such a wonderfully linked-together chain. All the time she thought she was going wrong, that it was a series of mistakes. "I never will be so miserable again," said she. "It was all ordered for the best; and may the Lord forgive me for doubting his care and goodness as I did that day!" It went straight to her heart the next Sunday, when the old minister said in his sermon, "Dear friends, do not let us forget what the Psalmist says, that the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. He plans the way we go; and so let us always try to see what he means in sending us this way or that. Do not let us go astray from wilfulness, or blame him for the work he gives us to do, or the burdens he gives us to carry, since he knows best."
So often, in looking back, we find that what seemed the unluckiest day of the week really proved most fortunate, and what we called bad luck proved just the other thing. We trace out the good results of what we thought must make every thing go wrong: we say, "If it had not been for this or that, I should have missed and lost so much." I once happened to open a book of sermons, and to see the title of one, "Every Man's Life a Plan of God." I did not read the sermon itself, and have never seen the book again; but I have thought of it a great many times. Since it is true that our lives are planned with the greatest love and wisdom, must it not be that our sorrows and hindrances come just from our taking things wrong?
And here, for the last of the story, is a verse that Robert Browning wrote, that Miss Ashton said one morning, and Miss Catherine liked:—
"Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'"
MR. BRUCE.
Last summer (said Aunt Mary), while you were with your father in Canada, I met for the first time Miss Margaret Tennant of Boston, whom I had for years a great desire to see and know. My dear friend, Anne Langdon, has had from her girlhood two very intimate friends; and Miss Tennant is one, and I the other. Though we each had known the other through Anne, we had never seen each other before.
I was at the mountains, and upon our being introduced we became very good friends immediately; and, from at first holding complimentary and interesting conversations concerning Anne in the hotel parlor, we came to taking long walks, and spending the most of our time together; and now we are as fond of each other as possible. When we parted in September, I had promised to visit her at her house in Boston in the winter; and, when she was ready for it, I was too.
To my great delight, I found Anne there; and we three old maiden ladies enjoyed ourselves quite as well as if we were your age, my dear, with the world before us. Miss Margaret Tennant certainly keeps house most delightfully.
She lives alone in the old Tennant house, in a pleasant street; and I think most of the Tennants, for a dozen generations back, must have been maiden ladies with exquisite taste and deep purses, just like herself; for every thing there is perfect of its kind, and its kind the right kind. Then she is such a popular person: it is charming to see the delight her friends have in her. For one thing, all the young ladies of her acquaintance—not to mention her nieces, who seem to bow down and worship her—are her devoted friends; and she often gives them dinners and tea parties, takes them to plays and concerts, matronizes them in the summer, takes them to drive in her handsome carriages, and is the repository of all their joys and sorrows, and, I have no doubt, knows them better than their fathers and mothers do, and has nearly as much influence over them. Elly, my dear, I wish you were one of the clan; for I'm afraid, between your careless papa and your wicked aunty, you haven't had the most irreproachable bringing up! But, she is coming to visit me in June, and we'll see what she can do for you!
One night, while I was there, we were just home from a charming dinner-party at the house of her sister, Mrs. Bruce; and, as it was a very stormy night, we had come away early. Not being in the least tired, we sat ourselves down in our accustomed easy-chairs before the fire, for a talk, and were lazily making plans for the morrow; Miss Tennant telling us she should have the eight young ladies whom she knew best; the Quadrille as she calls them; to dine with us. I must tell you about that party some day, Elly. It was the nicest affair in its way I ever saw, and the girls were all such dear ones! I spoke of the company we had just left, and of my admiration of the Bruce family in general, and Mrs. Bruce in particular, and of my enjoyment of the evening.
"Yes," said Margaret, "I think Kitty is quite as young as her two daughters, and at their age she was more brilliant than either." She stopped talking for a moment, and then said, "Girls, are you in a hurry for bed?" (Elly! you ought to be ashamed of yourself for laughing! Just as if Anne Langdon and I were not as young as you and Nelly Cameron. There's no difference, sometimes, if we are fifty, and you twenty!)
We were not in a hurry, and told her so.
"Then," said Margaret, "I will tell you a story. Anne knows it, or used to; but I doubt if she has thought of it these dozen years, and I do not think she will mind hearing it again. It is about Kitty and Mr. Bruce, and their first meeting; also divers singular misunderstandings which followed, finally ending in their peaceful wedding in this very room."
Anne laughed; and I settled myself contentedly in my chair, for I had already found out that Miss Tennant possesses the art of telling a story capitally.
"Kitty Bruce is three years older than I," said Margaret,—"though I dare say you do not believe me,—and consequently, at the time I was fifteen she was eighteen; and whereas I was in my first year at boarding-school, she was about finishing. I was at Mrs. Walkintwo's, where you and I met, Anne; and that, as you know, was a quiet place, where we were taught history and arithmetic, and the other 'solids,' and from which she had graduated the year before, and gone to Madame Riche's to acquire the extras and be 'finished.' Her beauty was very striking, and she was quite as entertaining and agreeable as she is now,—very witty and original, with the kindest heart in the world, and enjoying life to the utmost. In the Easter vacation of that year we were at home together; and one morning I was sitting with her in her chamber, and she was confiding to me some of the state secrets of her room at school, to my inexpressible delight, for it was my great ambition to be intimate with Kitty; and, you know, that elder sisters are often strangely blind to the virtues of the younger.
"Mamma came in in the midst of it, with her usually cheerful face exceedingly clouded, so much so that both of us immediately asked what had happened.
"'Happened!' said poor mamma, sitting down disconsolately on Kitty's bed, and helping herself, by way of relief, from a box of candy which lay there. 'I'm sure I don't know what I'm to do. Your father has just sent me a note from the office, saying he has invited four gentlemen to dine, and wishes to have every thing as nice as possible. I can send John for the dinner; and, of course, I don't mind that part of it, for there is time enough and to spare, and Peggy never fails me; but you know Hannah is away; and this morning a small Irish boy came for Ann, saying his sister is sick and she went away with him. About an hour ago another little wretch came to say she was obliged to go to Salem with the sister, and would be back to breakfast. Now, children, what shall I do for some one to wait on the table?
"Kitty and I were as much posed as mamma. John, our coachman, was an immense Englishman, and perfectly unavailable as to taking upon himself any of Ann's duties save waiting upon the door. His daughter, who had been our nurse and was at that time seamstress, might have done very well, but she was away at Portsmouth; and as for Peggy, our dear old black cook, though I never knew any one to equal her in her realm, the kitchen, she had no idea of any thing out of it, and never had done any thing of this kind. It was raining in torrents, and none of us could go out; and we sat and looked at each other.
"Suddenly Kitty clapped her hands. 'Mamma,' said she, 'read us their names again.'
"So mamma read the names of two gentlemen from South America, and one from New Orleans, and that of Mr. Philip Bruce of London.
"'All perfect strangers except to papa,' said Kitty joyfully; 'and they're interested in that South-American business of his, and are all on their way there very likely; and we shall never see them again.'
"'Well, child, what has all this to do with Ann's being gone?'
"'I'll tell you, mamma: I have the jolliest plan, and it will be such fun! I shall be so disappointed if you say no to me. It isn't the least harm, and I know it will make no trouble. Just let me wear one of Ann's white aprons and look stupid, you call me Katherine, and I'll wait on the table as well as she could. No one ever notices the servants, and I'm not like you or papa or Margaret. You can turn my portrait to the wall in the drawing-room, and they'll think it's somebody that is disinherited. Those gentlemen haven't the least particle of information concerning papa's family; they may be possessed of the delusion that he is a bachelor in lodgings, for all we know; and if any thing is said about your children, tell them that your sons are in college and your eldest daughter with a friend. Of course I shall be, whether I am with Peggy in the kitchen or standing behind you. Oh! I'd like it so much better than sitting at the table; and Peggy will never tell. Who will be the wiser?'
"Mamma at first, though very much amused, shook her head, and said it was too foolish to be thought of; we could explain our troubles to the gentlemen, and get on as best we could; but Kate would not give up. Mamma gave some very good reasons; what should we do without Kitty to help entertain them? And any one,—though she knew it wouldn't be considered proper conduct in a mother to make such a remark,—any one would know Kate was not a servant. Papa, too, would want her to sing for them in the evening (for, though her voice is wonderfully sweet now, then she sang like a bird; and we were all very proud of the girl, as well we might be).
"But she upset all mamma's arguments, asking her how in the world she entertained so much company unaided, during the years she was unable to appear on account of extreme youth. She was charmed to hear her say she was too good looking; but as to her being wanted to sing, just see if the whole five didn't go directly to the library, and if the waste-paper basket wasn't filled with papers covered with figures in the morning!
"And so the end was, that mamma very reluctantly yielded to our teasing. Peggy, to whom the secret was instantly confided, nearly went into fits with laughing; and the more we all thought of it the more we were amused. Kitty suggested our total discomfiture in case papa brought home some one who knew her. I suggested, that, if it were any one we were intimate with, we take them into the secret, for I wished to see how Kate would carry it out; and if it were not, we might—and thereby I nearly ruined the whole affair—send for the 'lending' of Mrs. Duncan's Mary,—Mrs. Duncan being a great friend of ours, who lived only a door or two away. Such a pull as Kitty gave my dress when I mentioned it!
"However, in due season papa appeared with the four strangers, who had been at the office with him all day, and, luckily, no one with them. He was duly made acquainted with the programme for the evening; and finding the plans all settled, and Kitty's heart evidently set upon them, he made but little opposition, considering the disappointment it probably was to him not to show his uncommonly nice little daughter. We three could hardly conceal our amusement when Kate entered the drawing-room to announce dinner; and it was made the harder for us by the queer little Irish brogue she had assumed for the occasion. The guests—one in particular—could evidently not account for so striking a display of beauty and grace in so humble a position.
"The dinner went off capitally. Kitty was perfection; and the only way I could see that she betrayed herself was in having, for a moment or two, the most interested expression during a conversation we were all very much interested in. She told me afterward that she came very near giving her opinion,—and I know it would have been very sensible and original,—in the most decided manner. Wouldn't it have been shocking?
"We sat a much longer time than usual. The three gentlemen from the South were middle-aged, and evidently absorbed in business; but the Englishman was not over thirty, and as handsome and agreeable as possible. He watched Kitty as often as he dared, to our great amusement; and once, as she left the room, seemed on the point of asking us about her. My dears, what could mamma have said?
"Papa was overflowing with fun, and enjoyed it all very much. I could see he was nearly choking sometimes at Kitty's unnecessary 'Yis, sur-rs.' She never passed me a plate without giving me a poke; and, I dare say, reminded papa and mamma of her existence in the same way.
"As she had prophesied, they excused themselves after dinner, and went to the library,—all but Mr. Bruce, who had no interest in South America. He had an engagement, and so left us in the course of half an hour. Conceive our amusement, when, just after we left the table, Kitty entered with a note on a waiter, and a message purporting to be from Miss Harriet Wolfe, to the effect that she would call for mamma to go to an afternoon concert the next day. I was just leaving the room as she entered; and I can tell you I hurried a bit after that; and, as I looked around at mamma to see how she bore it, she was holding a fan before her face, in a perfect convulsion of laughter; and there stood that wicked Kate, with her hands folded, waiting solemnly for the answer. Poor Miss Wolfe had died some years before, and had been stone-deaf at that! How mamma gave the answer, or excused her amusement, I have forgotten. Kitty did it, as she said then, for a grand finale to her masquerading; but as she says now, and I firmly believed at the time, for a parting look at the Englishman.
"He went away, and Kitty came into the parlor, and we had a great laugh over our dinner-party; and the next day it was told to an admiring audience of three,—grandmamma and my two aunts; but I think the story never went any farther, as we did not even dare to tell my brothers. Ann probably wonders to this day who took her place.
"The next Monday we went back to our two boarding-schools, and after a while we forgot the whole affair. Kitty finished school with high honors in July, and 'came out' in November, and was a great belle in Boston all that winter. I, in durance vile at Mrs. Walkintwo's, read her journal-letters to a select circle of friends; and they were a green spot in our so-considered desert of life.
"Towards the last of the winter, papa's sister, for whom Kate was named, and who was very fond of her, sent for my sister to come to her for a visit of a few weeks during my uncle's absence. She wrote she would not have to suspend her pleasure in the least, as there had never been more gayety in Baltimore than at that time; and some young friends of Kitty's had that very day come from Europe, which was a great inducement. Baltimore was a kind of paradise to her, and her friends there were very dear ones. Her room-mate at Madame Riche's, who was her very best friend, lived quite near my uncle Hunter's, and she had not seen her for months. Besides, Boston was getting dull, and she was tired, and Baltimore air always made her well. So it was settled, and Kitty went.
"Papa carried her on; and for the first week she had a cold, and was not out of the house. However, her letters were very happy ones; the contents being mostly abstracts of conversations between herself and the dear Alice Thornton, and bits of Baltimore gossip, in which I wasn't particularly interested. But the cold got better, and her letters grew rather shorter as she got farther into the round of parties and pleasure.
"Finally there came a very thick letter, and there was something new on the stage. She wrote to me somewhat after this fashion, while staying with Miss Thornton:—
'You're not to tell this, Margie; but I'm getting involved in what seems to be a mystery. Ever since I've been here, the girls have talked to me of the most charming gentleman ever seen in Baltimore, and they all declared I must be introduced; so at last I got up quite a curiosity. They said he was an Englishman, very rich, and so handsome! why! if one were to believe their stories, he might be carried about for a show! He was said to be very reserved, and to pay very little attention to any of the young ladies. He knows Mr. Thornton, Alice's father; and they are good friends, so Alice has seen a good deal of him, and he has been more polite to her than to any one else.
"'She had told him of me, and he seemed quite anxious to know me. She had promised to present him the very first chance, and that was last night at her party.
"'I wish I had time to tell you about it. Every one says it was one of the most delightful ones ever given in Baltimore, and I did enjoy it wonderfully. But do let me tell you about the Englishman. It was about eleven before he came, and every thing was at its height. I was dancing with Mr. Dent; and the moment I stopped, up came Alice, with the most elegant-looking man I ever saw; and the strangest thing is, that I think now, and thought then, I have seen him somewhere before. He watched me intently as he crossed the room, and asked Alice, as she has told me to-day, who I was; and when she said, "That is Kitty Tennant," he looked as pleased as Punch. Don't tell mamma,' said Kitty. I keep wondering where it is I have met him; but I know I cannot have, for they say he is just from England. But you don't know how queerly he acted. All at once he looked as puzzled as could be; and by the time he was close to me he stared in the queerest way; and when Alice introduced us, he bowed, and said, "Haven't we met before, Miss Tennant?" I said, "I think so;" and said I wished he would help me remember, for I was very certain I had seen him.
"'Suddenly it seemed to flash into his mind; and he said to himself, "It couldn't be." But I heard him; and after that he was a perfect icicle; and I didn't have the courage to ask him any questions, for I knew it was something horrid by his looks. He evidently mistakes me for some one, and it is so queer that I firmly believe I have seen him. He went away from me in a very few minutes, and staid only a half-hour or so, avoiding Alice all the time. I had promised all the dances, and was desperately' busy all night, having such a good time that I quite forgot this unpleasant affair. Alice came to me after the people were gone away, and said, "Kate Tennant, what did you say to the poor man?" And she seemed so utterly astonished when I told her what had happened. She cannot account for it any more than I can, and says it is as unlike him as possible. I don't know whether I have told you his name: it is Bruce.'"
When Miss Tennant reached this point in her story, I laughed heartily (said Aunt Mary); and Anne and she laughed with me. "Why in the world didn't she know him," said I: "I should have thought the circumstances would have made her remember him always."
Miss Tennant said, "Indeed, I should have thought so too. I know I should have recognized him myself if I had seen him; but Kitty was always the very worst person in the world to remember people, and it had happened a year before nearly. We always had a great many guests.
"When I answered her letter, I said nothing about him; for I must confess that I did not recollect that the gentleman who stared so at Kitty the night she played waiter was Mr. Bruce of London; and, indeed, I didn't feel particularly interested; and my reply was probably filled as usual with an account of the exciting things that had happened to me at the school from which I so earnestly longed for deliverance.
"Kitty wrote me very often; and once in a while she mentioned this strange Mr. Bruce, and finally it occurred to me that my sister was getting very much interested in him; and as I had a woeful dread of losing her, I expostulated with her concerning the foolishness of caring any thing for a man who had treated her in so uncourteous a way, and I laughed at her.
"For some time after that she did not allude to him, and I had nearly forgotten him. At last there came a letter in which Kitty said, "I must tell you more of Mr. Bruce, if you are tired to death hearing of him; for it is really a perfect mystery. I have seen him at a number of parties, watching me in the most earnest way, as if he enjoyed it and still was rather ashamed. But when we meet he is just as cool and distant as possible. Alice and I have missed his calls; and all the way he has betrayed the slightest interest in me to any one else is that he met a Miss Burt, who has only lived here a short time, and to whom he had been presented a night or two before. He asked her incidentally if she knew Miss Alice Thornton; and, when she said she did a very little, he asked who the young lady was visiting her. Miss Burt said she never had seen her, but some one had told her it was a young lady Miss Thornton had met at boarding-school. "Then she has never been here before?" said he. And Miss Burt thought not, indeed was quite sure, as she never had heard of me. Isn't it a pity he didn't ask some one who could tell him all about me?—and then he could know whether he had met me, of course.'
"Now Kitty, in that same letter, confessed to me that she liked Mr. Bruce better than any one she had ever seen, which alarmed me so much that I remember I wrote her the most shocking scolding."