Austin, Jane G. (Jane Goodwin), 1831-1894 [1870], The shadow of Moloch Mountain. (Sheldon and Company, New York) [word count] [eaf454T].
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CHAPTER I. “MORE THAN KIN AND LESS THAN KIND. ”
The Brewster Place
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Near the town and seaport of Milvorhaven,
stood, some years ago, an old
farm-house known as the Brewster Place.
The house itself might have been copied as
a type of rural architecture in the New-England
of fifty years ago, with its low, red walls;
its roof sweeping downward at the back until
it touched the ground; its huge chimney-stack
occupying nearly half the area of the house;
its unhewn “door-rock” and primitive elmshaded
well; its lilac and syringa bushes, and
the fine, short turf crowding close to the low
sills. A pleasant house, although somewhat
lonely, set as it was in the midst of low sandhills
and dwarfed pine forest, with no hint of
neighborhood in sight, unless it was to be inferred
from the narrow wheel-track winding
away from the door and losing itself in the
blue-green shadow of the wood. A pleasant
house, and a good farm, as farms went in the
township of Milvorhaven; and yet, as Peleg
Brewster, driving his span of stout grays from
the barn to the house, cast a gloomy look over
his possessions, he muttered with a bitter curse:
“I wish the devil had the farm—and me too, for
that matter.”
At the door of the farm-house stood a woman
about thirty years old, whom one might call
pretty at the first glance, qualifying the opinion
as he chose, after noting with a second look
the cunning and sensual lines about the red
mouth, the false light in the greenish-blue
eyes, the depression of the forehead, and the
firmness of the lower jaw. This woman was
Semantha Brewster, second wife of the blackbrowed
farmer who, sitting in the wagon at
the gate, sternly asked of her:
“Well, where is Ruth?”
“Getting ready, but as ugly as sin about it,”
said the woman sulkily.
“Tell her to make haste, or I'll come and
fetch her in a hurry,” ordered her husband
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and the woman disappeared within the
house.
Peleg Brewster, still sitting at the gate,
watched the door for a moment, and then suffered
his eyes to wander on, over the low,
round hills, over the dense pine wood, past
the scattered houses, set here and there upon
their lonely farms, until far on the horizonline
he caught the glint of the sea, bright beneath
the morning sun.
It was the same view that had met his eyes
ever since he first opened them forty years before;
and yet, to-day, he looked upon it as a
stranger might, noting with curious interest
the zigzag line of the half-cleared wood, where
he had gone chestnuting so long ago that half
these trees had sprung since then, the broken
chain of hills beyond, the gap where they
parted to let Milvor Branch bring its bright
waters to the sea, and, finally, the fields and
pastures, green with aftermath, of his own
domain. Over all these swept the gloomy
gaze, softening and saddening as it went, until,
with a sudden movement, Peleg Brewster
turned and looked intently toward a rising
ground behind his house, where, within an enclosure
of evergreen-trees, lay a little burialplace
dotted with white gravestones.
“If Mary had lived!” muttered he, and leaning
an elbow upon his knee, rested his chin
in his hand, and set his haggard gaze straight
before him.
“Forty years boy and man, and now I'm
going. The same roof shan't cover us—”
The figure of a man crossing the road in
front of his horses' heads broke the line of
that set gaze, and it altered to an expression
of concentrated rage.
“Hallo, there! Joe—Joe Brewster, I say!
Come here,” called he, sitting upright, and
clenching the hand a moment before hanging
supinely from his knee.
The man thus addressed paused, hesitated a
moment, and then came slouching down the
road, until, standing near, but not within reach
of the wagon, he raised his eyes as far as the
other's breast, then dropped them again, and
asked in a low voice:
“Well, Peleg, what is it?”
Peleg Brewster did not immediately reply,
but in the look he fixed upon the other's face
burned such concentrated scorn and wrath, such
utter loathing and contempt, that the glance
could not fail but reach the consciousness of
its object with a sting words might have failed
to convey. Shifting uneasily from foot to foot,
and moistening his white lips before he spoke,
the new-comer asked again:
“Did you want to say any thing more, Peleg?
I'm just a going.”
“The same father and the same mother
owned us, and I wonder why I don't take this
gun and shoot you in your tracks,” said Peleg,
half turning toward a rifle lying behind him
in the wagon. His brother glanced apprehensively
in the same direction, but made no reply.
Peleg still regarded him in silence, and
within the house was heard the soft and silky
voice of Semantha, calling:
“Come, Ruthie, aren't you ready yet?”
The sound seemed to rouse her husband
from the gloomy reverie into which he was
falling, and he hurriedly said:
“What I have to tell you, Joe Brewster, is
this: I am going to the 'haven this morning,
and to Milvor this afternoon; and before I
come home, I'll sell this place, and every hoof
and every stick upon it, and I'll make a will
that shall put the price of my home out of
your reach, and out of hers—yes, and out of
the child's too, that you, between you, have
made near as big a devil as yourselves. And
when that's over, I'm going—no matter where.
Where I never shall see or liear of the man I
called my brother, or the woman I called my
wife, or the girl that was Mary Brewster's
daughter. Curse you, curse you all, I say,
and may—”
He shut his teeth firmly over the next
words, and though the tempest of passion
shook him like a leaf, and though his writhing
lips grew white, and his very eyes blanched
in their agony, the imprecation remained unspoken.
Oh! well for you, Peleg Brewster—well for
you before the night fell, that those words
were never said, that you fought the fight and
conquered!
Wiping the great drops from his forehead,
he said more calmly than he had yet spoken:
“Take whatever belongs to you, Joe, and
keep the farm-money which I gave you last
week, but begone from here before I come
home; mind that, or I won't answer for what
I may do. Begone from here by five o'clock
this afternoon, as you value your life. To-morrow,
I shall take Semanthy to her mother's,
and in another day I shall be gone
myself.”
He spoke the last words more to himself
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than to his brother, and again his haggard
eyes wandered over field and wood, and distant
ocean-view, with the strange, and gaze of
one who looks with new eyes upon the dear
spot he leaves forever.
Joe, stealing a glance upward, caught the
softened expression of his brother's face, and,
after a moment's hesitation, asked deprecatingly:
“Why can't you let me try to explain a little?”
“Explain!” interposed the other fiercely.
“Do you think I need any explanations? Do
you take me for a fool? Be off, I tell you!
Don't wait till the devil gets uppermost in
me, or—”
A savage glance filled up the sentence, and
without waiting for another, Joe Brewster
turned and made the best of his speed toward
the shelter of the grove whence he had
emerged. At the same moment, Mrs. Brewster
appeared at the door, followed by a girl
of about twelve years of age, meanly dressed,
tall and gaunt, and with her face as nearly
hidden as possible beneath a large cape-bonnet
made of striped print. Between them,
these two carried a small round trunk, covered
with horse-hair, which they placed in the
back of the wagon. The girl then came forward
to the step, but her father, without looking
round, and with a backward motion of the
hand, repulsed her, saying shortly:
“Get in behind, and sit on the trunk; I
don't want you here.”
And as Ruth silently obeyed, he continued
still, without looking round:
“Semanthy, you can put up every thing in
the house that you brought to it, and whatever
else you've any claim to; but see that you
don't touch a thing that was Mary's—mind
you that! To-morrow morning, you'll go
home to your mother; and if she wants to
know why you've come, I'll tell her.”
Still, without looking round, he gathered
up the reins and drove away—away from the
house where he had been born, where he had
lived ten happy years with the wife whose
white head-stone now looked farewell from
the far hill-side—from the home which, to his
mind, had of a sudden grown less a home
than the narrow bound beside that dead wife
where he had always thought to be laid.
Away from home, and the memories of
forty peaceful years, drove Peleg Brewster,
and the rustling shadows of the pine-wood re
ceived him and hid him, and threw themselves
an impassable, if impalpable, barrier
between him and that home forever.
CHAPTER II. MARSTON'S CHOICE.
Following the waters of Milvor Branch ten
miles back from “The Haven,” as Milvor folk
loved to call their little seaport, one finds their
source in the confluence of two or three merry
little brooks near the foot of Moloch Mountain.
Each one of these brooks is a beauty in
its way, and as full of character as most beauties
are not; but the loveliest, the most piquant,
and utterly fascinating of them all is the
tricksy watercourse known as the Millbrook.
As the name implies, the little stream has
been utilized, or rather practicalized; for let
no man deny that beauty is also use, and
that to be is to be utilized; but it chanced
one day that Millbrook, dancing along in
her usual heedless fashion, found a barrier
across her path, and after a little pause of indignant
astonishment, gathered her forces and
leaped it. The fall was not high, and rather
enjoying it than otherwise, the brook, hurrying
on, next encountered a large wooden wheel,
which, as she dashed through and by, began
to revolve—slowly at first, then faster, snatching
up masses of the bright water, scattering
them in the sunshine, and letting them fall
again into the sparkling torrent, like a giant
baby playing with his mother's diamonds.
“Ha! ha!” laughed the brook. “This is
fun—now, isn't it?” and slipping by the wheel,
she danced out into the sunlight again, all
dimpled with laughter and bubbling with fun,
as she held her course to the rendezvous where
she and her sisters were to join forces and rechristen
themselves Milvor Branch.
And from that day to this, Millbrook tumbles
over the dam and through the wheel—not
because she can't help it—oh! no; but because
it is so capital a joke, and really such an
amusing little variety to the old routine; and
always when she reappears, it is with a whirl
and a slide, and bubbling and dimpling all
over with fun, and a new joy in sunshine
and liberty. But one cannot expect human
nature to go to school to the brooks, or if he
does, he will probably be disappointed.
Just where Millbrook, yet unconscious of
what life means, comes rioting down the side
of Moloch Mountain, and, making a sudden
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fantastic twist, crosses the path ascending that
eminence, two lovers lingered to watch the
setting of the sun whose rising had seen Peleg
Brewster sitting before his farm-house door,
and bidding good-by to the familiar scenes
and memories of a lifetime.
Two lovers, and yet as unloverlike as a six-months'
married couple, with whom the honeymoon
is over, and the serene sun of marriage
not yet risen; for Marston Brent, leaning
against a tree-boll, with his arms folded, his
heavy jaw set, and his black brows drawn
low over his moody eyes, looked more like a
Brutus than a Romeo; and Beatrice Wansted,
spite of her yellow hair and soft hazel eyes,
had more of Kate than Juliet in her present
mien.
Was it an odd chance, a presentiment, or a
cause working out its own effect, that had led
the girl's dead mother to call her Beatrice?
One thing was certain, that when Alice Wansted
returned a poor widow to her father's house,
the only relic of her brief magnificence that
she brought with her was an exquisite copy of
the Cenci, done by a young Italian artist whom
Arthur Wansted had fancied to patronize during
the winter in Rome that had opened a new
life to his young wife, and ended in his own
death. So, the poor young widow, creeping home
to the quiet country fireside where she had been
born, brought hardly more than this exquisite
picture, her broken heart, and the unborn
child whom, with one of the few faint breaths
drawn between its birth and her own death,
she named Beatrice. The desire was heeded,
as dying people's wishes occasionally are, and
the little girl, developing, year by year, into
rarer beauty, developed too so striking a resemblance
to the pictured face she best loved
to contemplate, that the country-folk who visited
at the old house could not be persuaded
but that the picture was a likeness of Mrs.
Wansted, although her husband and the
artist might, perhaps, have given it the untoward
name now borne by the child. Even
the expression, the melancholy beseeching,
mingled with an indomitable resolution, “the
stern, yet piteous look,” that tells the story of
Beatrice Cenci to-day, from Guido's canvas,
as it spoke from her living lineaments two
hundred years ago, was to be found, latent
as yet, perhaps, in this young girl's face.
There, too, the sensitive and exquisite lines
that told of a heart to love till death; a pride
that would hide that love beneath the ruin of
a life; passion, resolution, and over all an invincible
purity and refinement.
Just now, however, that fair face expressed
no more than vexation and astonishment, as,
looking up in her lover's face, Beatrice quietly
asked:
“You don't mean to refuse my uncle's offer,
do you?”
“Why, yes, Beatrice; I have just explained
to you that I should do so, and why.”
“What folly!” ejaculated the young lady
pettishly. “He said himself that before ten
years were out, you might be an equal partner
with himself, and meantime would be sure of
a handsome salary.”
Marston Brent raised his dark head a trifle
higher, and said quietly:
“I prefer to be my own master even for ten
years.”
“And you prefer to become a miserable—
what shall I call your future occupation?—
wood-chopper, perhaps, to becoming a merchant
prince?” asked Beatrice bitingly.
“I prefer the woods to the cities, nature to
trade—yes,” replied her lover.
“And your own will to my wishes?”
“My own judgment to your fancies.”
“Fancy! No; it is something more than
fancy that makes my taste and my pride, my
whole nature indeed, revolt from the life you
propose to me, especially when we see the
way so fairly opened to another.”
“But, Beatrice, don't you perceive that what
you wish is to sacrifice my pride to yours? It
is not a very amiable quality, to be sure, but as
I have unfortunately as large a share as yourself,
you must allow me to consult it a little;
and to become a clerk in your uncle's counting-house
would injure my pride far more
severely than the mode of life at which you
sneer could injure yours.”
Miss Wansted plucked a handful of leaves
from the alder beside her, and cast them
into the stream with a scornful air, but otherwise
made no reply
Marston Brent looked down at her with the
half-angry, half-loving air of a man at once
vexed and charmed with his antagonist, and
throwing himself upon the sward beside her,
seized her hand, saying good-humoredly:
“Come, Trix, don't be unreasonable. Wait
until I set my plans once more before you, and
see if I cannot make you look at them through
my eyes. When the news of my father's death
reached me, you know, I was on my way home
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from the West, and had been for some weeks
visiting Mills in his logging camp, and you
have no idea of the sport we found—”
“You told me all that,” interposed Miss
Wansted, just a little scornfully.
“Excuse me. I remember that I did. I will
try not to weary you more than I can avoid.
Mills had just decided, as I left, to return to
the city and resume his former business, and
was anxious that I should purchase his claim,
including the bark-mill, tannery, and all the
logging shanties and tools, offering them at
a bargain. I had no money then; but now,
after settling my father's affairs, I find myself
master of very nearly the whole sum Mills
demanded, and shall no doubt be able to
make easy terms with him for the remainder.
Then, Beatrice, the rest depends upon my own
strength, energy, and ambition, and I hope it is
not boasting in me to say, I have no fear of
failing in either of the three.”
He raised his eyes with a proud smile to
those of his betrothed, but found there no answering
expression. No marble could have
been colder than Miss Wansted's face as she
inquired:
“And do you propose to take me to one of
the `shanties,' as you call them, and have
me cook the pork and potatoes for you and
your wood-choppers?”
Brent bit his lip, flushing redly the while,
but answered patiently:
“I told you—did I not?—that I am meaning
in the spring to build a pretty cottage beside
the river, and ask you to furnish it to suit
your own taste. Could not you be happy in
such a home with me, Beatrice, though it
might be many a mile from city or wateringplace?”
The girl was silent, and he continued with
a simple pathos in his voice, the more touching
from contrast with the rugged strength
and energy of his former tone:
“Only have faith and patience, Trix, and I
promise that you shall be a rich woman before
you are twenty years older—perhaps before
ten years. Only give me time and the
heart to work, knowing that I am working
for you, and I can do any thing.”
“In twenty years, I shall be forty years old,
and half my life will have been spent in a
wilderness. How shall I be fitted for the society
I may then have an opportunity of enjoying?”
asked Beatrice sullenly. “Not that
I would refuse to consent even to this,” added
she presently in a softened tone, “if you had
no other prospect or hope. But to contrast
with this dreary future, here is my uncle's
letter, offering you a position in one of the
first mercantile houses in the city, and with
such prospects as he himself says not one
young man in a hundred can command. It is
downright folly and perversity for you to refuse,
and I will never consent. Give up the
woods, or give up—”
“Stop, Beatrice! Don't say that, and don't
let us become excited or ill-tempered,” said
Marston, dropping the hand he had held until
now, and sitting upright. Had Beatrice
glanced then at his face, and read there the
nature she had never yet learned to know,
the whole course of her life might have been
changed by the brief lesson; but she only tore
at the alder-leaves in her hand, and set her
lips more firmly together.
“The time has come,” said Marston very
patiently, “to you and me that must come to
all people who try to make their two lives run
in one channel. One of us must yield a decided
wish, opinion, and plan to the other.
Now, Trix, in choosing the occupation and
whole character of my future life, of my manwork
in the world, it cannot be doubted that
my own capacities, tastes, and ideas of independence
should be the first things to be consulted,
nor can it be doubted that these are
better known to me than they can be to you.
I have chosen, and I am very sure that I have
chosen rightly. More than that,” and he
paused a moment, then went on full-voiced,
“I shall not alter my decision; but though I
cannot give up my manhood to please you,
Beatrice, there is hardly any thing else I would
not do; and I need not tell you again that
your love is the sweetest and dearest thing in
life to me, and that to call you wife has been
for months the fondest hope I have ever
known. Darling, do not fear that you shall
suffer want or care in our forest-home, or that
any ill shall reach you other than those—”
“Stop, if you please, Mr. Brent,” said a
clear, cold voice; and Marston, raising his
honest eyes to those of his mistress, felt an
involuntary thrill of admiration, for never
had Beatrice Wansted looked so beautiful as
now, with her hazel eyes wide and bright, her
creamy cheek lightly flushed, and her mouth
curved with pride and scorn.
“You have given your decision,” said she
slowly, “now hear mine: I will never follow
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you to the wigwam you offer. I will never
marry you if you persist in your refusal to accept
my uncle's offer. Choose this moment
between your will—and me.”
With an involuntary motion, Marston
grasped her wrist, and bent his head until
their eyes confronted: in his a sudden anguish,
in hers a scornful assurance—in each an indomitable
will. He was the first to speak:
“Beatrice, be careful. You know that I
love you, heart and soul, and with every fibre
of my whole body. You know that to part
from you in this way would be like dragging
that heart and body asunder. But you do not
know, you cannot know, that to go back from
my pledged word, my solemn purpose, would
be worse. Beatrice, I cannot; I tell you I
cannot yield to you. For God's sake, show in
this moment that you have a woman's softer
nature, and save both our lives from wreck.”
She looked him steadily in the face, marked
with a sort of wonder the terrible emotion
that in one moment had drawn and blanched
it until it might have been the picture of a
malefactor expiring under torture, and then
she slowly repeated:
“Choose between your own will and me.”
“Not now. Let us go home and wait a little—
wait perhaps until I have been away a
year, and then I will come and ask you again.
You shall be free as air in the mean time—
only you will let me come and ask again
when the year is over, and the little cottage
built?”
His deep voice pleaded now like that of a
little child, and the tears stood in his dark
eyes as he sought hers, which for a moment
had turned aside.
“Do you mean by let us wait that perhaps
by morning you may change your mind? Of
course, after a year, you could not,” said Beatrice
coldly.
“My God! Have I not told you that I cannot
change? Ask the rocks, the trees, the
water to change, but not me. It is not in me
anywhere. It can never be,” burst out Marston
in a tone of desperate agony.
“Then we part this moment, and forever,”
said Beatrice, the whole passion of her nature
flaring up through the icy mask she had assumed.
“If you cannot and will not yield to
me in this, neither will I yield to you. I will
not wait; no, not one hour, one moment. I
will never see you, never speak to you, or, if
I can help it, breathe the same air with you
again. You have made me love you, and now
you wish to make a slave of me through that
love. You are hard, and selfish, and obstinate,
and I am well released from you.”
She rose to her feet; he too, and holding
her by the shoulders, looked into her face, his
own white and set.
“Beatrice,” said he slowly, “you are spoiling
both our lives. Have a care, for you will
suffer too. I will not take your answer now;
I will write to you from Wahtahree.”
He was turning away, but she caught him
passionately by the hand. He turned and
met the fiery devil in her eyes with a look of
unmoved determination.
“Stop!” cried she, “stop and hear me! If
you write to me, I will return your letter unopened;
if you try to see me, I will order you
from my doors; if you send me a message, I
will not listen to it; if you leave me now, you
leave me forever—forever, Marston Brent,
though you come but to-morrow to lay yourself
with the world's wealth at my feet. Now
choose, and for the last time—your own will
or my love.”
A moment, another, and another went by,
and still he stood looking into her white face
and burning eyes, with a solemn earnestness
conquering the pain and the bitterness that
had so wrung his soul. At last he said:
“Beatrice, swear before God that what you
say you mean.”
The girl lifted her palm to heaven. Marston
caught it in his own, and a sudden terror
sprung into his eyes as he cried:
“Oh! think once more. Remember how I
love you, remember that the long future lies
before us, and that your next words make or
mar it forever. Wait one moment, think one
moment.”
But Beatrice, tearing away her hand, lifted
it again to heaven, and said slowly:
“I swear before God that what I have just
said I mean and will do. Now choose, Marston
Brent.”
“I choose—liberty,” said he, and without
another word, they parted, going by different
paths, down the mountain-side which they
had climbed, his arm about her waist, her
hand locked in his.
CHAPTER III. THE OLD GARRISON.
The autumn twilight was deepening into
night as Beatrice Wansted reached her home,
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and paused, before pushing open the swinging
gate, to look at it with a strange distaste.
“How can I go in and sit down as if nothing
had happened? How can I smile, and
talk, and live day after day? How long will
it be before I break out into raving madness,
crazed by the cold monotony of such a life—
such a life for me?”
So whispering, she leaned upon the mossy
fence, and stared at the old house with such
distasteful interest as a trappist, newly hidden
but not divorced from the world, might
feel for the spot where he is bid to dig his
future grave.
And yet the Old Garrison, as Milvor called
it, was no uncheerful dwelling, albeit venerable
and quaint as its origin promised. More
than two hundred years ago—not fifty after
Beatrice Cenci had expiated upon the scaffold
her most righteous crime—a party of Puritans,
straying from the settlement about Plymouth
Bay, had urged their skiff up Milvor Branch,
and at its head had diverged into Millbrook,
following the bright course of its waters, until,
not far from the mouth, they curved in a
sudden bend about a pretty knoll surrounded
by rich meadow-land. Here they halted, and
here one of the party, Peleg Barstow by name,
decided to remain; and being a godly and just
man, bestowed such treasure of beads, gunpowder,
cloth, and, it may be, less innocent
wares, upon the Indian owners, as induced
them to affix their signs-manual to a deed, yet
extant in the old house, by which they made
over to Peleg Barstow and his heirs forever
all right and title to knoll, meadows, upland,
brook, and the herring which crowded its merry
waters, forever and a day.
But—alas! that we should say it—not fifty
years later, Peleg and his sons found themselves
obliged to fortify their dwelling against
the invasion of these same savage allies, now
become their cruel enemies; and so successfully
did they strengthen its defences that the
women and children for miles around flocked
to them for shelter, and the house received the
name it has since retained, and is still known
as the Old Garrison.
But to the few rooms of the original house
with their walls three feet in thickness, and
their leaden casements with tiny diamondshaped
panes, came to be added, by successive
generations of Barstows, additions of such
style and size as suited the wants or the taste
of the builders, so that the house stood final
ly a sort of hieroglyphic genealogy of the
race, and Beatrice Wansted might have read,
had she been so minded, the story of her ancestors
in the motley architecture of the home
they had bequeathed her.
But Time has power over none but his
own dominion, and though the work of old
Peleg Barstow's hands had well-nigh mingled
with the dust that had once been flesh and
bones of that sturdy old Puritan, the knoll
and the brook, and human nature remained
much as they had been in his day; and this
his fair descendant stood contemplating her
home in the gray twilight, with far less
thought of the past it represented, than of her
own future, linked it might be to those crumbling
walls—it might be to far different scenes.
“But never,” whispered Beatrice again, as
she softly swung open the gate, “never to be
passed at your side, or beneath your feet,
Marston Brent—never—never!”
She murmured the words again and again,
the bitter refrain of a dreary song, as she
lingered up the narrow path whose box-borders,
brushed by her garments, gave out a
faint, melancholy perfume, a perfume of night
and autumn, of dead memories and hopes,
and life slowly lapsing into death, and then decay
and nothingness.
Fine ladies have their fancies, and in after
years it was noted as one of Miss Wansted's
whims to detest the sight or smell of boxplants.
Near the door she paused, and stood looking
in at the unshuttered window, with the
same half-loathing interest that had held her
at the garden-gate.
She saw a room low and large, its ceiling
divided by two heavy beams crossing each
other in the centre. Other beams stood sentry
in the corners, and ran like a low bench
around the side of the room. To one of these
a descendant of Peleg Barstow, crazed through
religious fanaticism, had been chained by his
family, and then had dragged out the twenty
weary years lying between such strange imprisonment
and death. The scar worn by his
chain still stared from the heavy beam—a
character, and a significant one, in the hieroglyphic
history unconsciously left behind by
the successive occupants of the Old Garrison.
At one end of the room yawned a fireplace
so wide that the bright copper andirons, with
their load of three-foot maple logs, were
quite at one end of it, while at the other end
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and in the back of the chimney was the door
of a great brick oven, and below it a bench
where Beatrice, a little rebellious imp, had
often been set to recover from the effects of
too long a ramble in the winter woods, or an
involuntary immersion in the icy waters of
the brook.
In one of the deep recesses of the windows
lay an enormous tortoise-shell cat, her fore
paws curled under her breast, her yellow
eyes half closed, and winking slowly at the
fire. Beyond her in the corner stood a clock,
reaching from floor to ceiling, sedate and
grave, in spite of the glittering brass ornaments
which it wore as meekly as an old
lady wears the gold beads she retains from
habit, although the vanities of youth have long
been laid aside.
Above the high mantle-shelf was fastened
the head and branching antlers of a deer,
and as the firelight rose and fell, its shadow,
changing in every fantastic fashion, danced
upon the ceiling—now spreading to its farthest
limit, in semblance of a tangled arabesque,
now shrinking to such narrow limits and so
defined a shape that it might have been the
ghost of the murdered stag peering down
into the room and demanding restitution of
his stolen honors.
All alone in his deep arm-chair, before the
fire, sat an old man—a man so old that his
hair, long and thick and soft, had not one
dark thread left in its creamy masses; that
his face was not lined, but grained with
wrinkles; that his toothless jaws met in a
straight, deep line, hiding in great measure
the expression of the mouth; and his form
was bowed and trembling, even as he sat motionless
before the fire. His eyes, shrewd and
kindly, even through the dimness of age,
were fixed upon the blaze, and his white and
shapely hands were folded meditatively upon
his knee. A charming picture of serene old
age, but Beatrice regarded it with a shiver.
“Ninety-four years old!” murmured she,
“and I but twenty. If I should live till
then!”
She meaned impatiently, and twisted her
fingers within each other in a gesture of fierce
protest.
A door opened in the back of the room, and
two women entered—one of them nearly as
old as the dreamer before the fire, the other
perhaps fifty years younger, but claiming
neither the beauty of youth nor age; for while
losing the bloom of one, she had not yet acquired
the serenity of the other; and with her
tall and angular figure, sharp features, abundant
red hair, and quick gray eyes, contrasted
unfavorably enough with the placid patriarch
and his cheery, active wife.
Beatrice looked at her, and made a little
mutinous gesture, full of deflant expression.
“And to live with Aunt Rachel all my
days, or until I come to be just like her!”
muttered she; and slowly raising the latch,
she passed through a square passage into the
room where the family were collected. All
looked up at her entrance, and saluted her
variously.
“Well, daughter,” said the old man. “So
you have finished your wanderings for one
day more. Night brings the stray lambs
home, but they go out with the sun again.”
“You shouldn't linger out in the nightdews
so, child,” chimed in his wife. “It's
dreadful unwholesome to breathe the air at
this time of day. I declare, you're as pale as
a ghost—and no wonder. Sit to the fire and
heat the soles of your feet. Won't you drink
a little balm-tea if I make it for you? It's
proper good with sugar in it; or you can have
some tansy if you like it better.”
“Just look at that dress round the bottom,
and then your skirt, Beatrice! Where have
you been trailing them? I can tell you,
miss, if you had the washing or the starching
or the ironing to do, you wouldn't be quite
so careless of your things. You put them on
clean this afternoon, didn't you? And where
is Marston?”
Beatrice stooped and kissed the hand her
grandfather held out to detain her, smiled
coaxingly at her grandmother, while she said:
“Please not any balm-tea, grandma. I
will be good without it.” And to her aunt:
“I have been on Moloch Mountain, and I
did put the dress and skirt on clean, and I do
not know where Mr. Brent is at this moment.”
Then she passed on to her own little chair
in the farther corner of the fireplace, and
pushing it deeper into the shadow, sat down,
and obediently dried her feet and garments,
drenched with the heavy dew.
CHAPTER IV. WHAT THE RUSHES HID.
Heart-wounds, while they sink deeper
and last longer in a woman's nature, convey
more instant agony to the firm fibre and
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powerful organization of the man. So, while
Beatrice Wansted went quietly home, and
stopped at the gate to speculate upon her future—
preparing herself, as it were, for the
slow death of many a lingering year—her
lover rushed from her presence, dazed, blind,
mad with agony, his tortured heart consenting
to no future, incredulous of any relief, present
or to come, feeling only that his hope had
failed him, his motive was gone, that earth
had lost its savor and life its salt.
Up to the last moment, even until he heard
her sternly call God to witness her words, he
had hoped that Beatrice would repent, and
since, as he had naïvely asserted, it was impossible
for him to retract his decision, that
she herself would yield to him, especially in
this matter, where, as he still told himself, his
own convictions should be final in both their
minds.
But now that she had decided against him,
and had so solemnly sealed her determination.
Marston's own ideas of truth and honor, his
reverence for the woman whom he adored,
would have withheld him from one word of
argument or entreaty, had she remained forever
in his presence. She had taken her resolution,
and he his. Hers, sealed by a solemn
oath, was to him irrevocable; his, simply
spoken, quite as much so. All was over between
them, over forever; and even while
ready to dash his life out against this self-created
barrier, it never occurred to Marston
Brent to try to scale it.
Wandering whither he knew not, moonrise
found him near the foot of the mountain and
in its densest shadow. The wood-path he had
been unconsciously pursuing ended in the secluded
road skirting the base of the mountain,
and leading from Milvor to Milvorhaven.
Beside this road, at the point of intersection,
lay a sluggish pool, product of the mountain
drainage retained in a natural hollow; and,
leaning upon the broken roadside-fence, the
young man stood staring into the shadow of
the willows and alder-bushes that had sprung
up around it. Hardly had he taken this position
when the sound of coming footsteps broke
upon the silence, and the figure of a stout lad,
dressed in farmer's costume, appeared coming
round the turn of the road.
With a gesture of annoyance, Brent would
have plunged again into the covert of the
wood, but the new-comer had already seen
him and called cheerily:
“Good-evening, Mr. Brent. I was just going
to your house, but meeting you will save
me the two-mile walk, and after digging potatoes
all day, I'm willing enough to lose it.”
Marston Brent, staring steadily in the young
man's face, answered him never a word; and he,
rather embarrassed and yet sturdily self-possessed,
went on:
“You know you were talking to me about
going into York State with you to learn lumbering;
and the more I think of it, the more I
think it will suit, and I've pretty much made
up my mind to try. The terms we talked of
the other day suit me well enough; and anyway,
I know you'll do the fair thing by me,
and I'd as lief have your word as a lawyer's
writing; but I can't leave Barstow's before
next week. When was you calculating on
going?”
“To-morrow morning,” said Brent hoarsely.
The boy whistled in dismay.
“Why, I thought you said the last of the
week, or the first of next. I can't leave to-morrow
morning, nohow. Mr. Barstow has
hired a man, but he isn't coming till Saturday,
and — to be sure Jabez Minot would come
and do the chores night and morning till then—
and to-day is Tuesday. But I want to go to
the haven and haul my money out of the savings-bank;
and, no, sir, I don't see as I could
go anyway to-morrow morning, but I can
come alone, and if you will give me the directions,
I will. I suppose you'd as lief pay my
fare next week as this?”
He waited for an answer, but Brent, his elbows
on the railing, his face buried in his
hands, had forgotten his presence.
The lad looked at him keenly.
“Do you feel bad anyway, Mr. Brent?”
asked he, touching him on the shoulder.
Brent started and raised his haggard face.
“What do you want?” asked he fiercely.
“I asked if you were sick or anything. I
thought you seemed to feel bad,” said the boy,
still fixing his keen eyes upon the other's
face, and silently deciding that neither intoxication
nor illness had produced the ghastly
change he saw.
“Sick? Oh! no, there's nothing the matter,
Paul. A little tired with walking, that's all.
You say you are going with me to Wahtahree.
I shall start in the morning, before light perhaps.
I am going to drive my horse and
wagon to Bloom, where I have sold it, and
take the cars there. You can come to my
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eyes.[end figure description]
house to-night and start with me, if you like.
There, I won't keep you from your preparations.”
He turned away with a gesture of dismissal.
The boy looked intently at him a moment,
and then walked slowly away without
audible reply, although to himself he muttered:
“I'll think over it a bit first, I reckon. More
than that, I'll ask Miss Trix. She'll know
what's up.” He looked round at the turn of
the road. Brent had already forgotten his
presence, and leaning his folded arms upon
the rail, was again staring into the dark
shadow of the willows, his white face showing
ghastly and spectral against the black background.
So he stood when, an hour later, the moon,
climbing the crest of Moloch Mountain,
glanced athwart its shadow, and thrusting
aside with slender, trembling finger-rays the
leaves of willow and alder, peered down upon
the surface of the pool.
The black waters, sullen and irresponsive,
gave back no dimpling smile like that with
which Millbrook all night long received and
returned the kisses of the moon; but as the
rays, growing momently more vertical, plunged
deeper and deeper into the leafy cavern above
the pool, a strange horror and mystery gathered
from its depths, and lay waiting till those
accusing fingers should reach and pluck it
forth. From the pendent leaves, whose whisper
had told the story over and over to the
shuddering night; from the gnarled and
writhing roots, showing above the water like
the muscles of a tortured Titan; from the
blotched, unwholesome palms of the handlike
leaves, held up in dismay by the foul
weeds rooted beneath the tide; from the tangled
grasses, floating like the hair of a drowned
woman upon its surface; from the faint mist
gathering in the dark recesses of the wood, and
creeping out to peer at the beholder, and see
how he should bear it; from the inarticulate
murmurs and whispers of the night—from
these, and all these, gathered the horror and
the mystery the moon had come to look at,
and, as they gathered, drew Marston Brent
within their circle and held him there.
In vain did he struggle to arise and flee.
In vain did he seek to throw off the mysterious
chain binding body and soul to the moment
he felt approaching. In vain even did
he try to fix his thoughts upon his own
misery, and the proud heartlessness of his
mistress.
Vainly, vainly. Moment by moment, the
slowly-creeping horror mastered all. Thought,
memory, consciousness, will, life itself, fell,
one by one, within its grasp, and all were concentrated
in a nameless horror, a breathless
expectancy of what must come.
Slowly the moon crept on; slowly and surely
the relentless fingers stole deeper and deeper
into the shadow—searching, groping always
for what they had come to seek, until in the
blackest recess of the covert they found it, and
with one shuddering flash seized and held it.
A white, white face, with wide-open black
eyes staring horribly at the sky; thick dark
hair, with which the waters, moved by a little
shivering breeze, toyed in ghastly fondness;
shrunken lips, showing the teeth strongly
clenched beneath; a dim figure half hidden
among the gnarled roots; a hand awfully outstretched,
as in dumb appeal—such was the
aspect, such the form of the slowly gathering
mystery and terror—such the secret that the
sullen pool had vainly tried to hide—such the
secret plucked from its recesses by the resistless
grasp of light and truth.
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Marston Brent, staring incredulously at the
awful thing below him, watched while one
feature, then another, took form, vainly trying
the while to doubt the evidence of his own
senses, vainly arguing that it was but the
flickering light, the changing shadows, his
own disturbed imagination, that had formed
this ghastly image from the creeping mists
of the pool, and that he should see it presently
waver and change to some other if not less
hideous form. But still as he gazed, the
white face and staring eyeballs grew more
distinct and personal; the figure assumed
more unmistakably human proportions; the
stiff white hand seemed to beckon more and
more imperiously to him for aid and vengeance.
Slowly and with effort, he drew himself to
a standing posture, and looked stealthily
about him, half expecting to find the familiar
scene changed by sudden glamourie to one of
those wild regions where the soul, wandering
forlorn, lapses from horror to horror, and
wastes itself in vague and unfruitful efforts to
escape an unknown evil.
But the mild autumn night lay serene and
beautiful about him. The moon, now riding
high in heaven, looked calmly down, content
in having brought human consciousness to
human ill, and willing to leave the sequel to
the sure hand of justice.
Far down in the valley twinkled the lights
of the village with cheerful intimation of home
and companionship within reach. A solitary
farm-dog drowsily bayed the moon, and the
clock of the little church struck the hour
of ten.
It was these familiar sights and sounds,
more than any conscious effort of the will,
that restored to Marston Brent the self-possession
he so seldom lost; and to-night more
from the shattering blow, dealt by the hand
of the woman he loved, at all the plan and
hope of his life, than from any weakness of
organization or undue susceptibility to the
marvellous.
Standing with his back to the pool for a
few minutes, and forcing himself to note the
objects about him, the young man found both
his physical and mental excitement toned
rapidly down to a condition in which he could
once more exercise will and purpose, reassuming
as it were the reins of his own imagination,
and checking it to its ordinary sober
pace.
Then he turned, and, parting with his arms
the drooping limbs, gazed steadfastly into the
pool, satisfied himself that the drowned body
of a man actually lay there, and that he could
not reach it from the bank, and then, throwing
off his upper garments, stepped quietly
into the black waters, which curdled and
seethed about his limbs as if eager to draw
them within their corrupting grasp.
Reaching the body, the young man stooped
to examine the face more closely, but failed to
recognize it, and after a moment of hesitation
placed his hands beneath the arms of the
corpse, and, wading back to the shore, drew
it after him. His utmost strength, however,
no more than sufficed to place it upon the
bank, for the body was that of a stalwart
man, and the heavy clothes were saturated
with water.
“Lie there, then,” muttered Brent, arranging
the limbs as decently as he could, “while
I go for help.”
He stood a moment, gazing down at the
face of the dead man, in whose rigid lines
and staring eyeballs was to be read nor liking
nor disliking, assent or refusal, and then
turned away.
But with his feet upon the highway, he
paused, turning now this way, now that—
this, leading toward his own home, two miles
away, and inhabited only by a stupid servingwoman;
that, by which he should reach in ten
minutes the house of Deacon Barstow, the
house that for the last two months had been
to him more than home, but now—
“I must, but I need not see her,” muttered
he at last; and striking down the road in the
same direction taken by the boy called Paul,
he soon stood before the Old Garrison, and
half unconsciously noted, as he pushed open
the gate, the picturesque effect of the weatherbeaten
house, with its drooping woodbinewreaths,
the dewy knoll and shining brook,
with the moonlight lying over all like the
silvery veil covering, but not concealing, the
charms of an Eastern bride.
The blaze in the great fireplace had died
away to a dull glow, and the arm-chairs of
the old man and his wife were vacant. A
glancing light in the rooms at the back of the
house showed Aunt Rachel thriftily preparing
for the morrow, and convincing herself that
the house was secure from intrusion. One
figure alone remained in the great east-room,
as it was called—the graceful figure of a girl
crouching upon the floor, her golden head
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laid upon the beam where, a hundred years
before, the gibbering maniac had lain to moan
away his life, her hands tightly clasped
across her eyes.
A piteous sight, and a cruel one to Marston
Brent, who, gazing, felt the great grief at his
heart rise again above the horror of the last
hour, and turn him sick and faint with its extremity
of anguish.
Had there been anger, pique, or jealousy in
that heart, that moment must have crushed
it out, and Beatrice Wansted had seen her
lover at her feet; but in the grand, simple nature
of the man, each added pang, each fresh
proof of intensest love but added another
line to the barrier between him and the woman
whose word was to be held by him as
truth too solemn for even a thought of
doubt.
“She called God to witness that she would
never yield, and I will never ask her; nor if
I were coward enough to do what I know
wrong to please her, would she accept the
lying sacrifice.”
So groaned he between clenched teeth, and
turned away.
At the window of his little chamber sat
Paul Freeman, his chin resting on the sill,
his eyes vacantly gazing at the moon. Not
looking at her, however, but using the luminous
surface as a tablet upon which fancy
painted pictures of the future, as brilliant
and beautiful, and, alas! as far away, as that
fair moon herself.
“Paul! Paul, I say!”
The boy started, and looking down, answered
quietly:
“Yes, sir. Do you want me?”
“Yes; come down as quickly as you can,
and make no noise.”
Paul disappeared from the window, and the
next minute slid back the bolt of the kitchendoor
and stepped out into the moonlight.
“Is Miss Rachel still up?” asked Brent.
“I guess so. She's the last one mostly.”
“Call her quietly.”
But the feline ears of Aunt Rachel had already
caught the slight disturbance, and as
Paul turned to enter the door, she stood upon
the threshold inquiring:
“Is that you, Marston?”
“Yes, Aunt Rachel, and I want some help.”
“Well, I'm ready.”
In a dozen words, Marston Brent told his
errand, and asked hospitality for the poor,
homeless effigy of a man lying stark and forlorn
upon the margin of Blackbriar Pool.
In one strong, brief sentence, Miss Rachel
bid him to bring it without delay, promising
to be ready when it should arrive. Then
when the men had departed, she turned into
the east-room. Beatrice rose, with a coldly
careless mask drawn so suddenly over the
anguish of her face as to but half conceal it.
Her aunt glanced keenly at her, and said
bluntly:
“Come, Trix, you must rouse up. There's
a man drowned, and they are bringing him
here.”
“A man!”
All the blood in the girl's veins flew to her
heart with a cruel pang, and then back to
her brain, sending her reeling against the
wall.
Had she murdered the man for whose pleasure
she would have died in torture? Had
she indeed “ruined his life” here and hereafter?
But she only gasped again:
“A man!”
Miss Rachel's keen gray eyes fixed themselves
steadily upon her niece's face.
“Yes,” said she coldly. “And the man is
not Marston Brent. He is no such fool as
that.”
CHAPTER V. THE FIRST SUSPICION.
“It's Peleg Brewster,” said Paul, kneeling
beside the corpse and peering into the sodden
face. “Peleg Brewster,” repeated he, rising
and looking at Brent, who was staring abstractedly
into the pool.
“Yes. I never knew him, though I remember
the name,” said he, rousing himself
with an effort. “Well, let us get the body
upon the stretcher.”
With laborious effort, the ghastly burden
was arranged, and the litter raised between
the two men. Through the rustling wood, and
along the quiet road, between hedges of goldenrod
and asters, they carried it, until coming
to the farm-house, they laid it upon the bed
prepared by Rachel Barstow's active care, and
left it in the hands of the doctor hastily summoned
by Nancy, Miss Barstow's maid.
“Quite dead hours ago, but not by drowning,”
mysteriously pronounced the healing
oracle, after a prolonged examination.
“What then?” asked Miss Rachel bluntly.
“He was killed by a shot fired from behind,
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and passing through the heart, and out at the
other side. It is a pity it is lost.”
“Pity what is lost?”
“The bullet. It would help to convict the
murderer,” said the doctor gravely.
“He was murdered then?” asked Brent,
aghast.
“Men do not shoot themselves in the back,”
replied the physician dryly.
“Who could have done it? Had the man
enemies?” pursued Marston, upon whose mind
the satirical hint at his own obtuseness made
no more impression than a drop of vinegar
upon the coat of a Newfoundland dog.
“That is a question for the coroner and his
jury. You will have to attend, Mr. Brent.”
“I shall not be here. I leave early in the
morning for the West.”
“I am afraid you will have to postpone your
journey for a day at least. You are the principal
witness in this matter,” said the doctor
gravely; and the young man turned away with
an uncontrollable gesture of impatience.
The doctor's eyes followed him, and he
asked: “Did Mr. Brent know Brewster at all?
Had he ever any dealings with him?”
“No, he hadn't, Dr. Bliss. There's no use
in thinking about that,” said Miss Rachel,
somewhat sternly; and the two pairs of keen
eyes met and read each other. At last the
doctor said:
“Then I won't think about it, Miss Rachel.
I have no doubt you are right.”
“And I have no doubt that sugar is sweet,
or ice is cold, or the sun bright, or water wet,”
rejoined Miss Rachel with asperity. “And
after you have proved me wrong in all these,
we'll talk about the other matter.”
The doctor shook his head, with a smile at
once respectful and tolerant, saying the while:
“Very positive and very warm, as usual.
You don't change as the years go on, Miss
Rachel.”
“No, I don't change,” said Rachel Barstow
briefly; and they both remembered the day—
now twenty years by-gone—when she first had
said those words to Wyman Bliss.
The woman's hard face softened, and, after
a little while, she said, toying nervously with
her apron-string:
“My friends must take me as I am, Wyman,
Hard, and narrow, and obstinate, and crosstempered.
I cannot change.”
“But you won't let them take you, as they
would be glad to do, good and bad together,”
said the doctor significantly; and Miss Rachel,
freezing suddenly, replied:
“If you have got through with the body,
Dr. Bliss, I will call Nancy to help lay it out.”
“By no means, Miss Rachel, by no means.
It must not be touched in any way until the
coroner has seen it. We will lock the door of
this room if you please, and leave every thing
just as it is until the morning. I will take all
the necessary steps toward making the matter
known to the authorities, if you like.”
“Thank you—I wish you would. Father is
old now, and we try to keep him as quiet as
we can,” said Miss Barstow wearily. And with
a few words of farewell, the doctor rode away,
saying to himself, as he turned into the road:
“A great pity, my dear—a great pity for us
both.”
Marston Brent meantime was striding home
across the moonlit fields, having left the Old
Garrison without seeing Beatrice, or even
hearing her name. Beside him walked Paul
Freeman, whom an uneasy and excited mood
had debarred from sleep or rest.
Nearly a mile had been passed, and neither
had spoken, when Paul suddenly asked:
“Would they hang a woman if she killed a
man, Mr. Brent?”
“Of course they would if she was convicted,”
said Brent.
Another silence—again broken by Paul:
“Well, it was the best thing that could
have happened to him.”
“That's weak as water, Paul. A man
should never want to die because things go
wrong, and he is miserable. Rather let him
live, and live it through, and live it down.
Work, my boy—that's the salvation of a sick
heart.”
He threw back his shoulders, opening his
broad chest, and looking up to the sky as he
spoke. Already the strong vitality of his
nature was gathering to assuage the wound
which at first had seemed so hopeless of cure.
Paul stared at him a moment, then said:
“Peleg Brewster had work enough to do; but
that didn't hinder this.”
“No,” replied Brent vaguely; and then:
“You knew him it seems?”
“He brought me up. His first wife was
like a mother to me. She was a real good
woman,” blurted the boy.
“And why did you say that death was the
best thing that could have happened to him?”
“He was so unhappy at home. You see,
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sir, his wife died, and in a little while he married
again, and the second woman was just as
far below the mark as the other one was above.
She led him a dog's life, and, what was worst,
set his child and him against each other, till it
seemed as if the house couldn't hold the three
of them. Then Joe came to live with them,
and I quit.”
“Who was Joe?”
“Joe Brewster, brother to Peleg, and the
same for a man that Semanthy was for a
woman—only he was a coward, and she
wouldn't have been scared by Old Nick and
all his host.”
“And what happened then?”
“Why, it happened that, from quarrelling,
they come to fighting; and one day, Peleg
struck Semanthy in the face, and sent her up
against the wall. Lord, sir! Did you ever
see a cat that mad that she'd fly at the biggest
dog that ever was, and beat him too?
Then you've seen Semanthy Brewster as she
leaned up against the wall and looked at
Peleg and smiled. Yes, sir, smiled; and I
hope I'll never see another smile like that.”
“When did this happen?” asked Brent, after
a little while.
“About a year ago—just before I left there.”
“And how have they gone on since?”
“From bad to worse. I've been once in a
while to see Ruth.”
“Who is that?”
“The child of the first wife, and, to be sure,
the only child, for Semanthy never had any.
She's thirteen now.”
“And what sort of girl?”
“It would be hard saying, sir. Five years
ago, when her mother died, there wasn't a nicer
little girl nor a likelier anywhere round. She
was always shy and quiet to strangers, but
with her mother she'd come out and show for
what she was. Semanthy set out to ruin her,
and she's done it.”
“How, and why?”
“Why, because Peleg was fond of her, and
Semanthy meant to rule the roast herself; and
how, it would be hard to tell unless you seen
it. She made Ruth feel that her father wasn't
satisfied with her, and didn't think her equal
to other folks, and she made her think he
talked against her mother—which I don't believe
he ever did, for I know how he set by
her: and then she made Peleg think Ruth was
sulky and lazy, and told lies, and spoke disrespectful
of him behind his back. And so she
kept at work, now this side, and now that, till
she'd got a good wide wedge drove in between
them, as ought to be like the bark and the
wood, and then there was no healing the
wound. I haven't seen any of them for a
month or more; but Miss Rachel was telling
me that Ruth was going out to service, she
heard. I don't know if she's gone, but I hope
so.”
“Poor child! How old did you say?”
“Thirteen. Just three years younger than
me,” said Paul; and then the two walked on
in silence until they came upon the little farm-house
bequeathed to Marston Brent by his
father, lately dead.
Here they paused, and the elder said: “I
shall not get away to-morrow, Paul; and if you
can finish your business here, we may leave
together the next morning. I shall drive from
this house to Bloom, and you can go with me
if you choose.”
“Yes, sir, I should like to. I'll be on hand,”
said Paul, but with so marked a change from
the joyous alacrity he had shown in first
speaking of the matter, that Brent turned to
look at him curiously by the light of the setting
moon.
“Not falling back already, are you, boy?”
“No, sir; not a mite of it. I a'n't given to
backing down. But I was thinking of Ruth
Brewster—poor little Ruthie. I wish I knew
what she'll do.”
And bidding good-night, or rather good-morning,
the boy thrust his hands deep in his
pockets and strode thoughtfully away.
CHAPTER VI. THE CORONER'S VERDICT.
Semantha Brewster, wife of the deceased,
being duly summoned and sworn, suddenly
scandalized all judicial propriety by exclaiming,
without waiting to be questioned:
“It was Ruth did it!”
“What!” exclaimed the coroner, not more
startled at the idea than at the mode of conveying
it.
“It was Ruth that killed him,” repeated
Semantha doggedly; and before the horrified
silence that fell upon the company could be
broken by question or exclamation, she went
on:
“There was bad blood between them. She
was jealous of me because I was in her
mother's shoes, and he set by me, same as a
man had ought to by his wife, and so there
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was trouble between them. Finally, the
night before it happened, he got real mad at
her, and said he'd take her off to live with a
woman over to Milvor that he'd spoke to
about taking her, and she up and declared
she wouldn't go. They had an awful time
about it, and I heard Ruth stamping about
her room pretty much all night. But yesterday
morning he tackled up, and made me
pack all her things in a trunk, and took her
off with him. He had his rifle in the back of
the wagon, going to get it fixed over to Milvor,
and he made her sit over there on her
trunk, because he was so provoked with her
he couldn't bear to have her on the seat alongside
of him. So then, I expect, when they got
into the woods, she up and shot him.”
“Could she use a rifle?” asked the coroner,
still too much astonished to notice the informality
of these proceedings.
“I guess you'd think so if you'd seen her,
as I have, shooting at a mark down in the
meadow, along with him, when they was good
together. She'd hit it as well as any man,
almost,” said Semantha coolly.
“Well—but—where is the child now?'
stammered the coroner.
“There, again,” rejoined Semantha, triumphantly;
“she's run off; and what would
she do that for if she didn't feel she'd done
what she hadn't ought to?”
“Now, Mrs. Brewster, this isn't the way to
give evidence. You are to begin at the beginning,
and tell all that you know of your
husband's leaving home, and what followed
relating to it; but do not give any opinions or
arguments, or accuse any body of any thing.
Go on, if you please.”
And the coroner, feeling that he had vindicated
the judicial dignity, and restored things
to their true position, leaned back in his chair,
and listened complacently.
Mrs. Brewster, thus adjured, began with her
story, and repeated it substantially as before,
contriving, with small feminine tact, to suggest
the suspicions of Ruth, no longer openly
expressed.
When she had finished, Joachim Brewster,
brother of the deceased, was summoned, and
gave his evidence so closely, to the same
effect as that of Semantha, that the coroner
shrewdly inquired, as he finished:
“Did you and Mrs. Brewster talk over together
what you'd say to-day?”
“No, we didn't. It's because both stories
are true that they fay in so well together,”
said Joachim, a little anxiously.
“Was any body else in or about the house
that morning?” pursued the coroner.
“No, we don't keep any help. Peleg and
me carried on the farm, and Semanthy and
Ruth did the work in the house. There was
nobody else about.”
“Very well; you can sit down now. Call
Marston Brent.”
And Marston Brent, being summoned, deposed
to finding the dead body of Peleg
Brewster in the water called Blackbriar Pool,
and bringing it up the previous evening to
the house of Deacon Barstow, where it now
lay. He also spoke of searching for and
finding traces the next morning of the heavy
wagon and span of horses driven by the deceased,
and following them down the road to
a sudden turn, where the wagon lay broken,
with one horse still attached, and the other
lying dead not far off. The rifle and the little
girl's trunk had been thrown out by the
upsetting of the wagon, and lay in the road
beside it. The rifle had been discharged, and
he had found no trace of the child. So ended
this important evidence, and at its close the
coroner solemnly asked:
“What is your own opinion, Mr. Brent,
formed upon these circumstances, of the manner
in which the deceased came to his death?”
“My opinion is, sir, that the shot which
killed him was fired from behind, while the
wagon was passing through the thick clump
of trees shading Blackbriar Pool; that the explosion
frightened the horses, who swerved so
much as to throw Brewster from the wagon
into the water where I found him, and that
then they continued down the road as far as
the turn, where they upset.”
“And do you think it possible that a girl of
thirteen could have fired the shot which
killed this man?” continued the coroner, relying
more than he would have confessed
upon the opinions of the man before him.
“Certainly, it is possible,” replied Marston
Brent reluctantly.
“And if the wagon tipped enough to throw
out her father's body, it is not likely the child
would have remained in it?”
“No, especially sitting upon a trunk in the
back of the wagon.”
“And if she had been thrown into the
pool or upon its banks, you would have found
her or her body?”
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“Certainly. I waded over nearly the
whole pool when I took the body of the deceased
from it, and I have been all about
there this morning.”
“Alone?”
“No; Paul Freeman was with me.”
“That will do, Mr. Brent. Summon Paul
Freeman.”
But Paul Freeman, however summoned,
was not to be found, and the latest intelligence
to be gathered concerning him was Miss
Rachel Barstow's statement, that about an hour
before the inquest she had seen him going upstairs
to his own bedroom. He was not there
now, however, nor were any of his belongings,
from which Miss Rachel inferred that he had
gone to carry them to Mr. Brent's house, whence
he was to start for the West early the next
morning.
A messenger was immediately dispatched in
search of the truant witness, while the examination
of those present went on; but in a
brief half hour he returned with the report
that Paul Freeman had not been seen at Mr.
Brent's house, or at any other upon the road
there, and the inquest was perforce brought
to a close without his testimony, which, indeed,
was only expected to corroborate that of
Marston Brent.
The consultation of the jury was long and
animated—a natural incredulity and horror
in every mind arguing against the verdict
plainly suggested by the evidence. Slowly
and reluctantly, however, man by man yielded
his wishes to his convictions, and when at last
the little audience was reädmitted, it was to
hear that, in the opinion of this jury, “the
deceased came to his death by a shot fired
from his own rifle by Ruth Brewster, his
daughter,” and a warrant for the apprehension
of the said Ruth was obtained upon the
spot, and placed in the hands of the County
Sheriff, then present.
“It's no more that child did it than I!” exclaimed
Aunt Rachel, bringing one fist down
into the palm of the other hand. “I say it,
and I'll stick to it.”
“I wish I could say so too; but I've heard
too much of the way she and Peleg would
go on together. They were run in the same
mould, and when their temper was up, I
wouldn't have stood in the way not for a good
deal. I had a hard time of it with that child,
the dear knows,” said Semantha, with the
corner of her shawl to her eyes.
“I don't believe any such story. I knew
Mary Brewster as well as I know my own
sister; and I'm not going to believe her child
could be brought to all that in two years'
time, even by the worst of management,” rejoined
Aunt Rachel significantly, and with no
answer except an oblique gleam from her
beryl-tinted eyes, Semantha left the house.
CHAPTER VII. CRYSTALS.
The shadow of Moloch lay over all his
western valley, and only his topmost pines
caught the red light of the summer dawn,
when Marston Brent, alone and sorrowful,
came to bid good-by to the Old Garrison
House and its sleeping inmates. Avoiding
the creaking gate, he climbed the little paling,
and stole softly through the garden-walks,
smiling sadly as he brushed by the bachelor's-buttons,
with whose blossoms Beatrice had
sometimes merrily decked his coat, and bitterly
as he stood beside the plot of pansies whose
bed he had himself fashioned into the shape
of a great heart, and planted in its centre his
own and her initials.
“Heart's-ease!” murmured he. “Yes, for
her and me!” And with the smile which such
men use instead of tears, he gathered some of
the flowers and held them a moment to his
lips, then flung them down.
“Heart's-ease is sweet, but it does not last,”
said Marston Brent; and so bid good-by to
the old garden where they two had lingered
through so many blissful hours.
Then he passed on through the grove and
the meadow to the brook-side, where he had
planted the weeping willow, and fashioned a
seat beneath it—a seat just wide enough for
two, as he said that day, and now he sat down
upon it alone—alone forever, as he told himself
in bitter iteration; and plucking the long
branches that swept his face, he bound them
mockingly about his arm, then flung them indignantly
aside, and started to his feet.
“No willow for me!” said he aloud. “Or
if I must have it, I'll make a staff of it.”
And taking out his knife, he cut a stout
shoot from one of the principal branches of
the tree, and trimmed it to a walking-stick,
careful that all the twigs and leaves he cut
away should fall into the stream, instead of
littering the grass about the seat. The day
before, under the same impulse, he had
plucked away the weeds from the grave where
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his mother lay ten years buried; but this sorrow
was harder to bear than that.
As he turned from the brook-side, he found
Beatrice close behind him, her eyes dim, her
face wan, her drooping figure full of pathos
and of appeal.
He took her hands in his, and looked at her
long and sorrowfully.
“It is hard for you, too, poor darling,”
said he.
And at the loving word, her tears burst the
bonds she had laid upon them, and she sank
upon the little seat, sobbing without restraint.
He looked at her tenderly, pitifully, but did
not offer to approach her, did not dream of
returning upon the path wherein he had set
his feet.
Presently she looked up.
“I knew you were here, Marston. I saw
you in the garden. Look!”
And she held up the pansies he had kissed
and thrown away.
“You will keep them, Beatrice?”
“Always. But, O Marston! must you, will
you?”
“What, Beatrice?”
“Must you go?”
“You know I must.”
“Is it quite, quite impossible for you to
yield to my wishes?”
A slight frown changed the expression of
patient sadness upon his face.
“I am sorry you asked me that, Beatrice.
Is my word of so little account with you?”
“And yet you suffer!” murmured Beatrice.
“More than you can know, or I can tell.”
“But that is not firmness, that is —”
“What?”
“Obstinacy, fanaticism. You sacrifice yourself
and—yes, and me, rather than give up an
idea.”
“Beatrice, do you remember, in the chemical
experiments that amused us last winter,
watching the crystals form? Could those
crystals have been persuaded to change themselves
back into their component parts? And
just so, as it seems to me, a conviction should
form itself in a man's mind, and there remain
in its integrity through time and circumstances,
and the tears of the woman that he
loves, and the passion of his own heart, beat
against it without ceasing. It may be fanaticism,
dear, it may be obstinacy, but it is I as
God made me, and as I shall live and die.”
“Well, then,” cried the woman, driven to
her last extremity, and throwing to the winds
all considerations but the one standing closest
to her heart. “Well, then, if you will not
yield, Marston Brent, I will. I am not made
of these cold, hard crystals, but of warm flesh
and blood, thank God! I give up my opposition
to the life you propose. I consent that
you should go to Wahtahree, and I will follow—”
“Stop, Beatrice. Do not finish that sentence,
do not make that offer, for I—O Beatrice!
how can I accept it?”
The color slowly left her face, the light
faded from her eyes, and she stood staring at
him, her lips parted for that next word whose
utterance he had forbidden.
Brent went on, no less moved than she, yet
very firm:
“How can I accept it, Beatrice, when twelve
hours ago you deliberately resolved and
vowed, and called God to witness the oath,
that you would never consent to the entreaty
I urged upon you, would never follow me to
Wahtahree as my wife, would never yield to
the plan you had formed for me to that I had
formed for myself? Dear love, if I should
allow you to perjure yourself to-day, you
would despise yourself and me to-morrow; and
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whatever else befalls, I would save you from
the cureless pang of self-contempt. Words
may be but air, but honor turns them to claims
that may not be broken. Say that I am right,
Beatrice, for, O child! my burden is very hard
to bear.”
And snatching at her hands, he held them
close, turning upon her the while a face of
such white agony as might look up from the
rack whose utmost power may extort a groan,
but no recantation.
Her eyes met his, steadily enough now, and
coldly too.
“Thank you, Marston Brent,” said she;
“you have saved me from a great folly and a
great mortification. Good-by.”
“Good-by like this, Beatrice, after all that
has come and gone between us two!”
“Good-by,” repeated she; and drawing her
hands from his icy grasp, she walked steadily
up the path and disappeared in the wood, nor
once turned to look behind her.
Brent watched until the last flutter of her
dress was lost among the leaves, then cast
one slow, loving glance on all about him,
reverently raised his hat, murmuring:
“God bless and guard my darling, and all
about her!”
And taking the willow staff from the place
where it had fallen, went his way.
CHAPTER VIII. EXODUS.
Arrived at his own house, Brent found his
housekeeper impatiently awaiting him. She
was an old woman, and had lived in the family
so many years as to have acquired many privileges.
“Why, where have you been, Mr. Brent?”
began she as Marston entered the house.
“Here I've had breakfast ready this hour past,
and that boy's been hanging round asking
after you every five minutes.”
“Paul Freeman?”
“Yes. Have you forgot all about telling
me to fix him up a bed last night, and get
breakfast for him this morning? How do
they do up to Barstow's?”
“If breakfast is ready, we will have it, Zilpah,
and the sooner, the better. I did not see
you last night, or I should have told you that
I sold the place yesterday to a man at Milvorhaven,
who will be over to-day, I suppose,
to take possession. The furniture and every
thing in the house I give to you, to do as you
please with. You can either have an auction
and sell it all off, or carry it to your brother's.”
“Well, now, Marston, I declare if that a'n't
real generous! That's your mother all over
again. Oh! she was the givingest creatur' that
ever walked, and you're as like her as two
peas. Not but what your father was an
obleeging man too, but his folks was always a
little near—dreadful fore-handed and nice-feeling,
but a leetle close. Your mother was a
Winship, and they was different. But do tell,
Marston, do you mean all the stuff, every mite
of it, a free gift right out?”
“A free gift, Zilpah, and much good may it
do you,” said Marston, smiling sadly at the
old creature's incredulity; and then he turned
to greet Paul as he entered the house, and
the three sat down to break their bread
together in patriarchal simplicity.
“You don't eat, Marston. I made them pancakes
on purpose for you—you was always so
fond of them. Don't you rec'lect how you used
to come slying round, when you was a boy, going
out to work with your father in the field,
and tease me to have pancakes for supper?”
“And you always humored me, Zilpah,”
said Marston, taking one of the pancakes
upon his plate.
“Always when I could, and so did your
mother—and your father too, for that matter.
Oh! we was a happy and a u-nited family in
them days; and now the heads of it lays in
the grave, and the strength of it is going
away forever; and nobody but me, the poorest
and the weakest of all, is left, and that won't be
for long. When you come back for your wife,
Marston, there won't be no old woman to
wish you joy, nor to go along to your new
home and tend your babies. O dear! O dear!
I wish't I was dead too along of her.”
And Zilpah, throwing her apron over her
head, rocked to and fro, in the abandonment
of age and grief.
Marston rose in much emotion.
“Zilpah, do you want to go with me?” asked
he suddenly. “And can you go now—immediately?
My home will be no better than a
hut, and we may suffer many hardships; but
if you will go, you shall, for you are the only
creature alive who will mourn my absence.”
“Do you mean that, Marston Brent?”
asked Zilpah, raising her poor old tear-stained
face with the quick appreciation of a love-quarrel
inherent in her sex.
“I mean it, Zilpah.”
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“Then I'll go as quick as say it; for your
mother was like a sister to me when I was in
trouble, and she shan't have it to say in
Heaven that I turned my back on her boy
when other folks treated him bad. I'll go
with you—but how about the stuff?”
“We will stop at your brother's, on our
way to Bloom, and ask him to come and move
every thing over to his house. Then you can
write directions about selling what you do
not care to keep. I suppose you know pretty
well what is in the house.”
“Every stick, and thread, and pin, and
scrap,” said Zilpah complacently; and starting
from her chair with new alacrity, she began
setting the house in order, and preparing herself
for departure. Such good speed did she
make, assisted by Paul, whose good fairy
had endowed him with the gift of “handiness.”
so much more valuable than the purse of
Fortunatus, that in another hour she locked
the door of the house behind her, thrust the
key into its time-honored hiding-place beneath
the steps of the door, and climbed to
her seat in the wagon beside Brent, who
watched her proceedings with a vacant eye.
Paul disposed himself behind, among the
various packages with which Zilpah had encumbered
the march, and sat biting his nails,
and casting uneasy glances at Brent, as if
anxious to speak to him, yet not quite seeing
his opportunity.
When, however, Zilpah, having reached her
brother's house, insisted upon dismounting
and holding a private interview with her
sister-in-law upon the subject of her household
stuff, Paul stepped across the seat and said,
not without embarrassment:
“I was wanting to speak with you, Mr.
Brent.”
“Well, Paul, what is it?”
“Have you any objection to my taking my
little brother along with us, sir? I will pay
his car-fare, and all the costs there will be to
it; and when we get there he can do chores
round the house enough to pay his board. He
won't charge any thing of course, and I don't
think he'll be any trouble.”
“But where is your brother now, and why
did not you speak of this before?” asked
Marston, in some surprise, both at the matter
and the manner of his new retainer's speech.
“He's at Bloom, sir. I told him to meet
us at the depot, and I didn't have a chance to
speak before.”
“I never knew you had a brother, Paul.
Where has he lived all this time?”
“With a farmer's family, sir. I never said
much about him,” said Paul, a little uneasily.
“Well, I don't know as I object, if you
choose to take charge of him and his expenses.
How old a boy is he?”
“About a dozen years old, sir.”
“Strong and active?”
“Well, not very, sir, but he can do light
jobs round the house. He isn't very rugged,
to be sure.”
“Well, he may come along. I shall have
quite a family by the time I reach Wahtahree.”
And Marston smiled a little cynically as he
fancied Beatrice presiding over such a family.
Zilpah, reluctantly torn from her parting
gossip, was at last reëstablished in the wagon,
and Marston, hurrying his patient horse a little,
drove into Bloom, and leaving his charge at
the station, went to transact a little last business
at the office of his agent. When he returned,
he found an addition to the party in the person
of a small, delicate lad, whose pale face, downcast
eyes, and slender hands promised little in
the way of profitable labor, but at the same
time appealed not unsuccessfully to Brent's
softened feelings.
“You don't look very well, my boy,” said
he, kindly patting him upon the shoulder.
“What is your name?”
“His name is Willy, sir, and he is feeling
a little poorly just now, but he'll be better
pretty soon. I guess we'll go out and see if
the cars are coming, sir.”
“Very well; I will take tickets for the whole
party, and we will settle some other time,”
said Marston, noticing Paul's haste and confusion
with some surprise, but attributing them
to a country boy's nervousness in commencing
his first journey.
“Marston—Mr. Brent, I should say,” interposed
Zilpah at this moment. “Be we going
to take that other boy along too?”
“Yes. He is Paul's brother, and Paul is
anxious to keep him under his own eye,” said
Marston absently.
“Lor! A boy like that keeping any one
under his own eye,” sniffed Zilpah contemptuously.
“I reckon I'll keep a couple of eyes
on both of 'em, till I see what they be, anyway.”
Marston made no reply except a smile as
he moved away, and a few minutes later the
train arrived, swept up the waiting
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passengers, and bore them away to new scenes and
strange experiences.
CHAPTER IX. A NEW BEGINNING.
“Six of damsons, six of green-gages, and
a dozen rareripes—and, to my mind, there's
no peach like a rarerape for a preserve.
There, that will do for to-day,” said Aunt Rachel
complacently, tying down the cork of her
last bottle of rareripes, for these were not the
days or the meridian of “air-tight cans;” and
had such innovations been suggested to Aunt
Rachel she would probably have snubbed
them as “new-fangled” and “too notional”
for her.
“Now, Nancy,” continued she, “I am going
round to open the slide into the best china-closet,
and you can pass the bottles in. Mind
you don't drop them.”
“I won't drop 'em. They do look proper
nice to be sure, and I guess the doctor'll think
more than ever of our plums when he eats'
em this way,” replied Nancy, rubbing her
hands dry upon her tow apron, and eyeing the
jars of sweetmeats appreciatively.
“Lor! who cares what the doctor thinks?”
demanded Miss Rachel, bustling out of the
room, and through the long entry whose open
door framed a lovely little picture of mowers
knee-deep in greenest grass, while Millbrook
sparkled by, and Moloch rose dark and grand
against the summer sky. But Miss Rachel's
eye was not artistic, and her heart was just
now filled with visions of sweetmeats, with,
perhaps, one little suggestion of Doctor Bliss
crowded down in the corner, as the old masters
were apt to introduce the reigning pope
among a crowd of saints and angels. So,
without heeding the lovely “bit” framed by
her front door, Miss Rachel hurried by and
threw open the door of the parlor, a room
sacred to cleanliness, order, and decorum, but
upon the threshold she stopped dismayed.
The heavy inside shutters were all closed
except the upper half of one, through which
streamed a flood of noonday light, falling full
upon the picture of the Cenci taken from the
wall and placed upon a chair. In the deep
window-seat, with the light just glancing
over her red-gold hair as it passed on to light
the one stray curl creeping from beneath the
white turban of the pictured head, sat Beatrice,
her hands folded listlessly upon her lap,
her eyes fixed upon the painting. She neither
moved nor looked round to notice the advent
of her aunt, who, after a moment's wondering
gaze, exclaimed:
“Good gracious, Beatrice, what have you
got the room fixed up this style for?”
“I wanted to see this picture, Aunt Rachel,
and it hung in a bad light,” said the girl
wearily.
“See that picture! Well, I should say
you'd had a chance in the course of twenty
years! Didn't you ever notice it before?”
“She was killed—beheaded, was she not?”
asked Beatrice, unheeding the little sarcasm.
“Yes, I believe so. I forget about it just
now; but I think that is what your mother
said.”
“And she looked just so calm and serene
when they came to lead her out to die, they
say,” pursued Beatrice in the same dreamy
way.
“Who says? She died a hundred or more
years ago in Italy, or somewhere out there,
and who is to say how she looked or how she
felt? I value the picture more for its likeness
to your mother than for itself. It does look a
sight like her if the hair was fixed differently,
and it had a common sort of dress on,” said
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Aunt Rachel, gazing thoughtfully at the
painting.
“And like me too, does it not?” asked Beatrice,
looking at her aunt a little anxiously.
“Well, yes, it does—though why it should
look like you and your mother too, I don't
see,” said Miss Rachel with emphasis.
“Why? Did not we look alike? I always
supposed we did,” exclaimed Beatrice in a
tone of dismay.
“`Looks are nothing; behavior's every
thing,”' quoted Miss Rachel. “And when
you come to behavior, you and your mother
are as near alike as cream and red pepper—
just about. Alice was the sweetest, prettiest,
patientest woman that ever trod—never wanting
any thing she ought not to have; never
thwarting people that tried to do her good; never
answering back or saying pert, saucy things
to her elders and betters, or fretting because
she wasn't the queen and Pope of Rome.”
“And I am all that she was not,” interposed
Beatrice, half inquiringly, half pleadingly,
as she looked up into her aunt's face, which
softened as she met that look.
“Well, I don't say that,” replied she,
smoothing down her brown-linen apron, and
pleating the string between her fingers. “You
have your good points and your bad ones, like
the rest of us, I suppose, Trix, but you're not
like your mother—more like your great-aunt
there in the corner, though you don't look
like her”
“Tell me about her. I never heard any
thing but her name, and that she married a
nobleman,” said Beatrice, opening the other
front shutter, and looking with some curiosity
at a picture hanging upon the opposite wall.
It was the portrait of a woman in her ripest
bloom, with clear gray eyes, red lips, at once
full and firm, a low forehead, with blue-black
hair rolled high above it, a rich, sunny complexion,
and a square white chin. Will,
strength, and passion marked this face for
their own; and gazing at it, Beatrice felt an
answering chord thrill through her own
heart.
“Tell me about her, Aunt Rachel,” said she
softly.
“Why, you must have heard about her
from grandfather. He was always fond of
telling about her till he got so silent lately.
Her name was Miriam Barstow, and she lived
here in the Old Garrison with her father and
brothers, in the time of the Indian troubles,
more than a hundred years ago, I suppose; and
once, when the men-folks were all away, and a
party of savages came to plunder and burn
the house—for they spited it, you see, because
it had sheltered the folks they were after so
many times—she saw them coming, and barred
the doors and windows, and parleyed with
them out of one of the upper casements. They
tried to shoot her with their arrows- and there's
the stone head of one buried in the side of the
window now, there in my chamber—and then
they set out to burn the house down. She
warned them off once or twice, but they didn't
mind, and then she took down her father's
musket and shot the head man dead in his
tracks. He fell, so I've heard, right across the
door-stone, and his blood made that dark
streak you can see there now; for blood never
washes out, especially if it's shed in anger,
and his hasn't.”
“And what became of her then, Aunt
Rachel?” asked Beatrice with kindling eyes.
“Why, the Indians ran away, I believe,
and the men-folks came hurrying home to
see what was the matter; and here she was as
cool as you please, not scared a bit. After
that she married an English lord that came
over here and travelled round to see the country.
She was pleased enough, so they say,
for she was as proud and haughty as she was
smart; and after she got to England she sent
home this picture to let her folks see how
fine she dressed, I expect. Don't you see,
she's got on a velvet gown, and those are diamonds
round her neck and in her ears. She
was Lady Daventry then, all over.”
“But she would have taken off velvet and
diamonds and defended her fathers house
against the Indians again, if it had come in
her way to do so, and done it as coolly and
as well as she did while she wore linsey-woolsey
and tow-cloth here at home,” said
Beatrice proudly. “And she would have gone
to her death as haughtily as Beatrice did serenely
to hers. She would have defied Death,
as Beatrice conquered him.”
“Well, I haven't any more time to waste
on pictures or talk, and I should hope you
hadn't either,” said Aunt Rachel, coming
back to real life rather crossly. “Here's
your uncle coming to tea, and this room all
up in arms, and grandma's new cap not done.”
“I will see to both, and every thing else
you mentioned this morning; and, Aunt Rachel,
I am going to try to be more patient and
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better tempered after this—only please don't
say any thing to me about Marston Brent,
for he and I are—”
The girl had her arms about her aunt's
neck now, while all the golden curls went
dropping down that withered maiden's bosom,
as if searching there for tender memories and
sympathies responsive to the desolation of
that pathetic cry.
Miss Rachel smoothed the bright hair and
kissed the drooping head. Then she softly
said:
“I'm sorry, Trix, and I'll be careful not to
say any thing. But it's the way of the world,
child; most all of us get disappointed once.
Sometimes we get over it, and sometimes
that's the end of every thing. I guess you'll
get over it, dearie, you're so young and so
pretty. Your old auntie didn't.”
“Were you disappointed, auntie?” asked
Beatrice, startled even through her grief by
that rare confidence.
“Yes, child. You see I thought it was me
he wanted, and it was Alice all the time; but
they never knew, and he made her a real
good husband, and she died and I had to live
on. But—well then! I never said so much
to mother nor any one, and though I always
thought the doctor mistrusted how it was, he
never said any thing. `The heart knoweth
its own bitterness;' though there isn't any
bitterness left to it now, whatever there was
once, and sometimes it sort of eases off the
pain to know that other folks have felt just
as bad or worse, and got over it. I'm not
afraid of your saying any thing as if you
knew it, Trix, and I'm not sorry I told
you.”
“You need not be sorry, Aunt Rachel, and
I never loved you or respected you in all my
life so much as I do now,” said Trix, pressing
her ripe lips to the withered ones that trembled
as much as they.
“I shouldn't wonder if we got along better
after this. Beatrice,” said the elder softly; and
then the two embraced once more and separated,
each already anxious to hide her emotion
from the other.
“Now, you put this room to rights, won't
you? and if you've a mind to bring in some
flowers out of the garden. I don't care—only
mind and don't let the water go over on the
table, and pick up every mite of litter as fast
as it makes,” said Aunt Rachel, going into the
closet and opening the slide to the front
kitchen, where stood the preserve-jars and
Nancy.
“Well! I didn't know as you was ever
coming,” exclaimed the latter somewhat indignantly.
“I might have had the sarcekettle
scoured inside and out by this time if
I'd known you'd be so long.”
“Why, you haven't been standing and
waiting all this time, Nancy Beals!” exclaimed
her mistress in the same tone. “I should
have thought common-sense, if you'd got
any, would have told you to go about your
work till you heard me open the slide. Do
give me the jars now, and be done with it.”
Beatrice meantime, smiling a little at the
unwonted permission to “litter the front
room with a parcel of flowers,” as her aunt
generally described the operation, took a
basket and scissors and went out to the garden,
but as her eyes fell upon the pansy-bed,
as her garments brushed the borders of the
box and drew forth their heavy perfume, she
faltered and turned toward the house, but at
the end of three steps turned again.
“Miriam Barstow was not afraid to take
the life of her enemy, and Beatrice Cenci was
not afraid to lay down her own life, and I—
I am afraid of the sight of a bed of pansies
and the smell of a box-border,” muttered she
scornfully, and then went on without a pause.
The basket filled, she set it in the shade of a
great clump of lilacs, and passing swiftly
through the garden and the grove, she
reached the seat beneath the willow, looked
at it, passed on until she stood upon the edge
of the brook, returned and seated herself.
“Here I last saw Marston Brent,” said she
aloud in a hard, mechanical voice. “Here I
urged him to resign his resolution for the
sake of my love, and when he refused I offered
to give up my own, and to break my
solemn vow, and to follow him to the wilderness
as his wife. This I offered, and he—
refused! Yes, and he said he did it to save
me from self-contempt. What does a man
think of a woman whom he must save from
herself in that way? Good-by, Marston
Brent.”
She set her lips over that last phrase, as
her ancestress may have done over the dead
body of her enemy, and then she rose and
went slowly back to the house, dressed her
flower-vases, finished the simple decoration
of the room, and then crossing the hall to
the east-room, where the old people sat, one
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at either side of the little blaze—pleasant
even in summer to their chill blood—she took
the unfinished cap and sat herself down to
make it close by her grandfather's chair.
“Tell me about Miriam Barstow, grandpapa,”
said she; and the kind old man told
the story once again, as she had already
heard it, and at the end smoothed the fair
head beside him, saying:
“I am glad you will never have to shoot
Indians, daughter. Your lines are cast in
pleasanter places than that poor girl's.”
“No, I shall never have to shoot Indians,
grandpapa,” said Beatrice, bending over her
work.
CHAPTER X. UNCLE ISRAEL.
No railway had as yet invaded the quiet of
Milvor woods and fields, no steamboat had
desecrated the waters of Milvorhaven, and
such communication as was held by inhabitants
of either with the outer world was
carried on by means of a stage-coach visiting
them semi-weekly, and a packet-sloop making
its passage when wind, weather, and the humor
of the skipper's wife allowed.
The day whose morning we have noted
was one of those made memorable by the arrival
of the stage, and punctually at five o'clock
it appeared, rattling down the hill, across the
little bridge and round the corner, until, with a
superfluous whirl and flourish in honor of its
freight, it paused at the gate of the Old Garrison
House, whose inmates awaited it at the
open door.
“Here's all your folks waiting to see you,”
said Aaron Bunce, the driver, swinging himself
off his box and opening the door, while a
sympathetic smile opened a cleft in his red
face wide enough to display an ample set of
ivory.
“So I see, Aaron, so I see,” replied a handsome
middle-aged gentleman, slowly descending
from the coach, and putting a hand in his
pocket, while the smile upon the driver's rubicund
face widened expectantly. And while
Mr. Israel Barstow pays his passage-money, and
adds, according to his gracious wont, a buonomano
for the benefit of his old friend and playmate,
Aaron Bunce, we have time to notice that
he is a man of about fifty years old, handsomely
and soberly attired, although his watch-chain
is of the heaviest, and the solitaire diamond
fastening his black cravat is of the costliest.
For the rest, Israel Barstow is the oldest and
now only son of the old man watching his
arrival from the open door; is a bachelor, and
a very prosperous merchant in the China
trade, a circumstance memorized to the inhabitants
of the Old Garrison House by the
periodical arrival of chests of tea, boxes
containing blue-printed china jars of preserved
ginger, bamboo, limes, sugar-cane,
and a curious compound called chow-chow
sweetmeat; dress-patterns of silk, handkerchiefs,
shawls, toys of carved ivory, pictures
upon rice-paper, monstrously drawn and gorgeously
colored; an occasional bit of furniture
or china, and all the other odd or useful presents
abounding among the fortunate friends
of oriental traders. Nor can it be denied that
Mr. Israel Barstow's visits to his paternal
home were hailed with all the more pleasure
and interest from the circumstance of his
never coming empty-handed, or failing to
bring some especial gift to each member of
the family carefully adapted to the especial
taste of the individual—a style of gift-making
contrasting favorably with the practice of those
persons who offer presents as Timothy, Lord
Dexter did punctuation — namely: in the
lump, to be distributed according to taste.
But Mr. Barstow is already upon the door-step,
with his mother's arms around his neck,
and her withered lips pressed to his. Then
came the warm hand-pressure and the blessing
of his father; then an angular embrace
from Miss Rachel; and then, by way of bonne
bouche, a frank kiss from the fresh, ripe mouth
of Beatrice.
“Glad to see you looking so well, friends,
every one of you. Father, you are as hearty
as I am, for any thing that I can see; and as for
mother, I expect her to dance at my wedding
yet—unless, to be sure, Rachel gets the start
of me. How's the doctor, Rachel? And as
for that monkey, Trix—where is she?”
“Never mind just now, brother,” interposed
Miss Rachel, a little nervously. “Let me take
your bag and show you up-stairs.”
“Show me up-stairs, Shell! Why, I carried
you up and down those very stairs before
you could walk alone. You are grown amazingly
ceremonious, it seems to me.”
“No; but I want to speak to you a minute
before you see Beatrice, if you please, Israel,”
insisted Miss Rachel; and her brother, with a
shade of alarm upon his florid face, suffered
himself to be led away to the guest-chamber,
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pride of Miss Rachel's heart, with its neat
canton matting, its bed, and window-furniture
of white linen, embroidered by some Penelope
of an ancestress in huge bouquets of flowers,
dwarf-trees, and wonderful birds, decked in
Joseph coats of many-colored silks; its highbacked
carved chairs, black-mahogany clothespress
and chest of drawers; its spider-legged
dressing-table and light stand, and the great
easy-chair, covered with silk patchwork of
Rachel's own composition—each article resting
solidly upon the carved eagle-claw feet so
charming to virtuosi in antique furniture, and
perfect in all its ornaments.
Over the fireplace hung a piece of embroidery,
framed and glazed, depicting, in glowing
colors, the death of Absalom, who hung pendant
from an oak whose acorns were considerably
larger than his own head, while Joab
dismounted from a horse smaller than the
dog who followed him, attacked his master's
son with a lance longer than the oak was tall.
Beyond a division-line composed of harps and
crowns, set one above another, was shown
King David sitting upon his throne, with a
sceptre like Magog's mace at his feet, and both
his royal hands clutched in a mass of hair
which the most admiring courtier must have
confessed needed thinning; while Bathsheba
the fair stood beside him, a head and shoulders
taller than her lord, and with two large
tears wrought in white floss streaming down
the most hideous face that ever haunted a
Christmas-supper dream.
Upon the mantleshelf below this prodigy
stood a pair of Chinese josses grinning fiendishly
at each other in mockery of the Biblical
memorial above, and between them lay a
rosary of carved ivory, whose use or intent
Miss Rachel understood as little as she did the
worship of the josses, or the droll mixture of
religious faiths thus placed in juxtaposition.
“Well, what is the matter with Trix?” demanded
Mr. Barstow, as his sister followed
him into the room and closed the door.
“Nothing, Israel; only she has broken off
with Marston Brent, and, of course, it's a sore
subject, and she would rather not have it
spoken of. So I thought I would tell you,
lest you should hurt her feelings without
knowing it.”
“Of course, of course. But what is it?
What's the matter? He hasn't treated her
badly, has he?” asked Mr. Barstow, growing
very red in the face.
“Oh! no. At least, I know he couldn't have;
but Beatrice has never said a word about it,
except just that it was broken off and all over,
and he has gone out West.”
“He has, has he? Why, I thought—but
it is just as well. Broken off, have they?
Sho! I thought Trix was all settled, and just
the same as married; but, after all she might
do better. Brent was a good fellow, but she
is a girl to shine among a thousand. I'll have
her to spend the winter with me, Shell. I'll
take her home Monday, if you'll get her
ready. It is just the change she wants, and
it'll brighten up my old house there amazingly.”
Miss Rachel stood aghast.
“Carry her right off Monday!” exclaimed
she.
“Yes; why not? I suppose her stockings
are mended and night-caps washed, aren't
they? And if she needs a new gown, she can
buy it after she gets there. It will be amusement
for her.”
“But, brother—why, who will take care of
the child?”
“Child! She was twenty last birthday, I
know, for there are twenty stones in the ruby
bracelet I sent her; and as for care, why, I
shall look out for her, of course; and then
there is Mrs. Grey.”
“Your housekeeper?'
“Yes. And as nice a woman as ever trod.”
“But is she suitable—does she go out to
parties and the theatre, and such places?
You know Beatrice ought not to go alone,
and you won't want to be following her round
all the time,” said Aunt Rachel, whose ideas
of social propriety had not all been learned in
Milvor.
“Well—yes, there is something in that, I
suppose. How much more fuss there is about
a girl than a boy!” said Uncle Israel rather
testily, as he rubbed the somewhat scanty
hair from his forehead, and looked reproachfully
at his sister, who looked meekly back at
him.
“Mrs. Grey don't go into company, does
she?” inquired Miss Rachel presently.
“No, no, of course she don't—that is, not
into the sort of company Trix will frequent. I
suppose I could find some lady—why, there's
June Charlton!”
And Mr. Barstow's face lighted with an Eureka
glow, as he stopped opposite to Miss
Rachel, his large handkerchief suspended from
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[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]
his hand, and his hair in a state of frightful
confusion.
“June Charlton!” echoed Miss Rachel.
“Yes; my friend Chappelleford's niece, you
know. Now, Shell, don't tell me you don't remember
Chappelleford, who came down here
with me last year—no, two years ago—and
took such an interest in the Old Garrison.”
“Oh! yes; that old gentleman who cut a
piece out of the sitting-room wainscot to see
the logs behind it,” said Aunt Rachel rather
acrimoniously.
“Well, I told him he might if he didn't believe
that it was a log-house originally; and I
suppose he didn't believe it, that being a good
deal his way, and so— But all that is neither
here nor there,” said Mr. Barstow, resuming,
with a slight air of vexation, the interrupted
use of his handkerchief. “All that is neither
here nor there, but what I am coming to is:
Chappelleford has a niece, a young widow—
somewhere about thirty, I should say—who
has boarded with him for the last year at
the Grandarc House, and who is about the
most charming woman you ever laid eyes on,
Miss Shell. I'll get her to come and make me
a visit, and go out with Beatrice. So, there
now.”
“And she is a clever, nice woman, isn't
she? For you know, brother, Beatrice is new
to the world, and a great deal depends upon
the first start.”
“Clever and nice! Ha! ha!” laughed Mr.
Israel Barstow, rubbing his hands together.
“Well, I don't believe, Shell, that any one
ever put those words to June Charlton's name
before, and you would laugh at yourself if you
should see her once—only just see her, you
know.”
“Why, brother?” asked Miss Rachel, a little
hurt.
“Why because she's splendid, gorgeous,
bewitching — I don't know what — but not
clever—that is, not the way you use clever,
Shell; and as for nice—why, I shouldn't call
the sun nice, should you?”
Miss Rachel looked very thoughtful, and
made no reply.
“And now,” continued her brother presently,
“run away, like a good girl, while I
change my clothes, and then I will come down
to tea. Can Paul bring up my trunk, do you
think? It is a little one this time.'
“Paul has gone West with Marston Brent,
but there is a man here doing his work until
we can get some one, and he will, or Nancy
will.”
“No, no; not Nancy. If your man is away,
I'll fetch it up myself. No woman ever lugs
trunks or blacks boots for Israel Barstow, nor
will while he has the use of his own arms
and legs,” said the sturdy bachelor; and Miss
Rachel hastened from the room just as her
brother laid violent hands upon the lappets
of his coat.
CHAPTER XI. SEMANTHA'S TEARS.
If Miss Rachel had secretly hoped, or perhaps
feared, that the hidden sorrow of her
niece's heart would prevent her from accepting
an invitation which must leave the Old
Garrison House so lonely, she was disappointed,
for Beatrice hardly hesitated a moment
before assuring her uncle that she
should come to him with the greatest pleasure,
and could be quite ready at the end of the
four days he proposed remaining at home.
“And you won't miss the old folks, though
they'll be dull enough without you, lambie,”
said the grandmother, putting her shaking
arm about the stately young figure, and looking
lovingly up in the pale face half turned
from her gaze.
“Indeed, I shall miss you, grandmamma,
and I would never think of going if—if—I
felt that I could stay at home.”
“Can't stay at home! What does the
child mean? Do you suppose we can't support
you, Beatrice? I had to go out to work
when I was a girl, but you haven't any such
call, I'm sure.”
“Oh! no, grandmamma, I never thought
of such a thing,” replied the girl, laughing in
spite of herself. “But I feel as if I must have
a change. That is all.”
“Growing unsteady? Why, Trixie, that's
something new for you,” began the grandmother,
in a tone of gentle reproof; but the
tremulous voice of her husband interposed:
“Don't urge the child too much, mother.
These young things have their own secrets,
and have a right to keep them. Our child
won't go wrong, it isn't in her nature; and
though the lamb stay from the fold for a while,
the Good Shepherd has her in His charge, and
will lead her gently home at last. Come here,
little one.”
And Beatrice, kneeling at the feet of the
good old man, his hand upon her head, his
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blessing falling like a mantle about her, wept
tears that left a healing behind them, and
soothed as nothing yet had done the agony
of that fresh wound so jealously hidden in
her heart of hearts.
“She'd better go away for a while, wife,”
said the grandfather, when the old couple
were again alone. “Don't say a word to prevent
it, or to make her feel that we shall miss
her too much.”
“No, I won't; but I wish there was time for
me to knit her another set of lamb's-wool
under-vests before she goes. Folks that are
out of spirits and cry are always dreadful
chilly; but I'll send them after her if she
stays all winter. I always thought, if Alice had
worn lamb's-wool, we might have saved her.”
“Deacon Barstow raised his mild eyes to
his wife's face with a quaint smile, but made
no reply; and while she fell into a fit of musing,
he resumed the volume of Fenelon, which
he preferred to all reading, except that of the
great quarto Bible always lying upon the
stand at his elbow.
“What is all this dreadful story about Peleg
Brewster and his little girl, Rachel?”
asked Mr. Israel Barstow, soon after his return
home; and Miss Rachel, nothing loth to expatiate
upon the story to a new listener, proceeded
to narrate it with all the horrible details,
and giving the coroner's verdict at the
end as the solution most generally received
of the mystery that to her mind still hung
about the murder.
Israel Barstow listened attentively. The
murdered man had been his schoolmate and
playfellow in those long-past days when the
prosperous merchant still lay concealed in
the sturdy country boy, predominant in the
republic of the district-school, not through his
father's wealth or position, but his own powers
of combination and command. His wife
also, Ruth's mother, appeared among the
memories of those early days as a fair, gentle
child, grateful to the Deacon's sturdy son
for such small benefits as a coast upon his
sled, a share of his liberal lunch, or permission
to harvest the chestnuts beneath his
father's trees.
“Yes—Mary Williams—I remember her
very well,” said Mr. Barstow, softly drumming
on the window-pane, as he listened to his sister's
story, while his thoughts went swiftly back
to those years so far behind him now, and
touched upon many a half-forgotten memory.
And Peleg was a fine fellow too—a thought
hasty in his temper, and a little dangerous at
times, but a fine, brave fellow always. Yes,
we were boys together; but it is a great many
years ago now, a great many years.”
“Not so very many, Israel. You're not an
old man now,” said his sister, a little jealous
for the brother whom she admired and loved,
far more than she ever showed, even to him.
“But Joe was younger, and I don't remember
him so well,” pursued Israel. “My impression
is, however, that we didn't like him
very well. He was a bit of a sneak, if I remember.”
“He isn't very much thought of, nor Semanthy
either,” said Miss Barstow, breathing
upon the spot dimmed by her brother's finger-tips,
and rubbing it bright with her apron.
“Semanthy? I don't remember her,” said
Israel.
“No, I guess you never knew her. When
Mary Brewster was taken sick, or rather after
she got too feeble to do her work, Peleg got
Semanthy Whitredge to help her, and finally
to do all the work. She belongs to a family
over at the 'haven, and I rather think they are
poor sort of people anyway. Then, after
Mary died, Semanthy stayed on, and after a
while Peleg married her. She isn't very
well spoken of.”
“I think I shall go and have a talk with
Joe Brewster. I want to hear more about
poor Peleg, and what grounds they have for
accusing that child,” said Israel at length;
and Miss Rachel, after a moment's hesitation,
replied:
“Well, I believe I will go too.”
The next afternoon accordingly, as brother
and sister returned from an excursion to Milvorhaven,
where they had dined with some
family friends, Israel turned the horse into
the sandy by-road leading past the Brewster
place, and presently checked him at the very
spot where Peleg Brewster had sat a week
before, and unconsciously looked his last upon
the familiar scenes of his boyhood.
Following the simple country fashion, the
visitors entered the open door without the
ceremony of knocking, and passed into a
small entry with a door opening at either
hand, and a square staircase filling the middle
space.
“Knock on that door, Israel—I believe it is
the sitting-room,” said Miss Rachel audibly;
and as she spoke, both visitors were startled
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by the apparition of a white face peering at
them from over the banister, and a sound of
hurrying footsteps and hastily closing doors
in the room at their left hand.
“Is Mrs. Brewster at home?” asked Miss
Rachel, throwing the question at random up
the stairs; but the face had been withdrawn
as soon as seen, and no reply followed.
“Knock, Israel!” said his sister; and while
Mr. Barstow obeyed, Miss Rachel glanced out
at the door.
“See there!” whispered she, laying her
hand upon her brother's arm, and pointing to
a field at the corner of the house. Mr. Barstow
looked, and distinguished the figure of a
man crouching beside a high stone wall, and
pursuing its line toward the woods.
“It is Joe Brewster, and he was in that
room and heard us when we came in, and he's
running away,” whispered Miss Rachel with
emphasis; but before her brother could reply
the door at their right suddenly opened, and
the crafty face of Semantha appeared in the
opening.
“Oh! excuse me, Miss Barstow,” said she,
after a moment of apparent surprise; “I was
out behind the house looking after my bleach
ing, and I did not know that any one was
here. Have you waited long?”
“Not very. Are you all alone in the
house?” asked Miss Rachel, fixing her severe
gray eyes upon the false and faltering green
orbs of the other.
“Yes. Joachim he's been away since noon.
I rather guess he's over at the 'haven; and
there's no one but us two left of the family
now, you know. Won't you come in?” asked
Semantha, reluctantly opening the door a little
wider.
“Thank you. We'll stop a few moments.
This is my brother, Mr. Barstow, Mrs. Brewster.
He used to know Peleg and his first
wife very well when they were all young.”
“Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr.
Barstow,” said Semantha, in the stereotyped
phrase of Milvor introductions, and extending
a clammy hand, which Israel somewhat reluctantly
enfolded in his large, warm grasp.
“Sit down, won't you? How's your folks,
Miss Rachel?” continued the hostess, putting
forward two wooden rocking-chairs fitted with
feather cushions in patchwork covers.
“Very well, I thank you. Are you going
to stay here alone?” asked Miss Rachel, seating
herself with an air of reserve.
“Yes, I suppose so. Joachim calculates to
stay and carry on the farm.”
“You and he alone?”
“Why, yes; I don't seem to see any other
way,” said Semantha, nervously stooping to
pick some threads from the not over-clean
floor. “I don't know what folks will say.”
“I suppose they'll say a good deal; but
when any body's doing just what's right, I
don't know that they need ask what folks
say,” replied Rachel significantly.
“No, I suppose not,” replied Semantha,
turning very red; and then followed an awkward
pause, broken by Israel:
“I was very much shocked at hearing of
my friend Peleg's death, and especially at
the manner of it, Mrs. Brewster,” said he
kindly.
“Yes, every one was, I expect,” replied Semantha,
with her apron at her eyes. “He
was a good man, a real nice man, and he and
me were dreadful fond of each other always.
And then, as you say, Mr. Barstow, it makes
it so much harder to bear when we think that
it was his own child did it—”
“I don't think his own child did it, and I
didn't understand my brother to say that he
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thought so either,” interposed Miss Rachel
with considerable emphasis.
“Why, the coroner said so, and he'd ought
to know,” disconsolately replied the widow.
“Coroners may know, and they may not
know; but there's One that does know, and,
for my part, I'm not going to doubt that some
time or other He'll bring this and every other
hidden sin to light. And when that day
comes, I don't believe it will be Mary Brewster's
child that will be found guilty of Peleg
Brewster's murder,” replied Rachel with emphasis.
“Well, I'm sure I hope not; but if she didn't,
I don't know who did do it,” said Semantha,
wiping her eyes, and looking first at the one
and then at the other of her guests.
“What sort of disposition had the little
girl? Her mother, I remember, was very
mild,” asked Israel in a conciliatory tone.
“Well, sir, I don't want to say any harm of
the child, for her father was a good man to me
always, but since you ask it, I must own that
of all the deceitful pieces that ever stepped.
Ruth Brewster was the deceitfulest. She was
so smooth and soft when any one was here
that you'd think butter wouldn't melt in her
mouth, and then when we were alone, if she
got mad, it was enough to make any one's
blood run cold to hear the way she'd talk.
To say she threatened to poison me is no
more than a beginning—”
“And it had better be an ending too, for I
don't believe a word of it, and I don't want to
hear any more,” said Miss Rachel, rising and
pulling her shawl vehemently about her. “I've
seen that child, and I'm not a fool; and I knew
her mother and her father too, and I'm not a
fool. Come, Israel.”
“Softly, Rachel,” interposed Israel. “You
have no right to speak in this manner to Mrs.
Brewster. We cannot suppose that any person
suffering under the affliction that has
overtaken her could tell other than the truth,
or would slander the character of even a
child who is not here to defend herself. Mrs.
Brewster, I am very sorry to hear such an account
of your step-daughter; but if it is not
too painful a subject, will you be so good as to
tell me what motive could have led her to
commit so frightful a deed?”
“Clear ugliness of temper,” replied Semantha
with decision. “She and her father
didn't live happily together, and he had
threatened more than once to put her out to
service. At last they had a quarrel worse
than any that came before, and he took her off
that morning, and told her in my hearing
that she never should touch a cent of his
money, or a stitch of her mother's clothes, or
come under his roof again till she had turned
a square corner, and was a different girl from
what she had been. He talked pretty ha'sh,
and she didn't say much; but there was a look
in her eye that made my flesh creep on my
bones. Then they set off, and he, without
thinking, I suppose, put his loaded rifle right
down beside the trunk where she was sitting,
and I suppose when they got away from
houses and out in the woods there, she thought
nobody would see, and—”
“Israel Barstow, if you're a mind to stay
here any longer, you may stay alone. I wish
you good-afternoon, Mrs. Brewster; and the
next time you peek over your banisters and
see me in your front entry, I'll believe any
story you're a mind to tell me.”
And Miss Rachel, urged far beyond her
wont by the indignation and disgust rising in
her bosom, marched grandly from the house,
and climbed into the chaise without assistance.
“You don't believe I'm a liar and a slanderer,
Mr. Barstow?” whispered Semantha,
rising and approaching her remaining guest,
one hand covering her eyes and the other outstretched
in farewell. When a woman is poor
and alone in the world, and them that should
stand up for her and take care of her is dead
and gone, there's enough that'll turn against
her, and trample her into the dirt; but Israel
Barstow isn't one of that sort—I know it, and
I'll always say it.”
“Thank you. No, I never want to add to
any body's trouble, I'm sure. I am sorry
Rachel spoke so harshly; but she's a woman
of strong feelings, and she was very fond of
Peleg's first wife; but she should not have
hurt your feelings so; and—there, there, don't
cry, now don't, and if you would not be affronted—”
And the successful merchant, to whom experience
had thoroughly taught the power of
money, whether as a consoler or a mediator,
laid a bank-note of considerable value upon
the table, and then hastily joined his sister
who preserved a grim silence during nearly
the entire journey home.
CHAPTER XII. ZENOBIA AND DIOGENES.
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“How are you, James? All right at home?”
asked Mr. Barstow of the respectable-looking
coachman who stood ready to meet the
travellers in the station at the terminus of
their journey.
“All right, sir. We got your orders by
telegraph day before yesterday,” said James,
assuming his master's bag and shawl, and respectfully
touching his hat to Miss Wansted,
who followed her uncle down the steps of the
car.
“Well, let us get home as fast as possible.
I hope Mrs. Grey won't keep us waiting for
dinner,” said uncle Israel, a little impatiently;
and in a few moments Beatrice found herself
seated in a luxurious carriage, and rolling
rapidly through the lighted streets.
“It seems a little close here, after the country,
does it not?” asked Mr. Barstow, letting
down the windows with a jerk. “We must
have a run down to the sea-shore after you
have fairly established yourself in Midas-avenue.
By the way, you have never seen my
new house; I was still at the Grandare when
you visited us three years ago.”
“Yes, sir,” said Beatrice wearily.
“And that was before Chappelleford brought
his niece from the South, was it not?”
“I think he had gone for her then. I never
saw Mr. Chappelleford.”
“Not when he was at the Old Garrison?”
“No, sir. I was still at school.”
“Oh! yes; I remember. Well, I have invited
him and June to dine with us to-night,
and particularly asked them to be at the house
to receive us. I thought it would seem more
cheerful for you, my dear, to find the house
full.”
“Thank you, uncle,” said Beatrice, in wardly
longing to creep away somewhere, and hide
from the glare, the bustle, the introductions,
and the effort before her.
“You will be great friends with June, as
soon as you get to know her,” pursued Mr.
Barstow complacently, “and we will take
her to the beach with us. She was longing to
leave town the last time I saw her; but Chappelleford
never stirs from the neighborhood of
the libraries and museums among which he
lives; and June has no money of her own, poor
girl. Her husband died a bankrupt, or worse.”
“Is her name really June?” asked Beatrice,
feeling that she must say something.
“Oh! no. It is Juanita, and people generally
call her Nita; but I fancied to pronounce
the first syllable as it is spelled, and make
June of it. It is the same name as Jennie,
Mrs. Charlton says—that is, Juan is John, and
Juana is Jane, and Juanita is Jennie. Her
mother was a Spanish woman from Cuba,
who married Vezey Chappelleford's younger
brother in New-Orleans, and June lived there
until three years ago; so her blood is more
tropical than arctic, and her temper also; but
she and I always get on together admirably.”
“And I dare say she and I will also,” said
Beatrice, smiling a little at the lesson in philology
administered by her uncle, and beginning
to feel a dawning interest in this tropical
June-bird, whose praises her uncle so persistently
sung.
But the carriage-wheels already woke the
echoes of Midas-avenue, and presently stopped
mid-way down that aristocratic thoroughfare,
before a house large enough and handsome
enough to have served as the residence of an
ambassador, or to have crushed its parvenu
owner into insignificance had he been a man
less single-hearted and unpretentious than
Israel Barstow, who, opening his carriage-door
himself, stepped gayly out, and tendered
a hand to his niece, saying:
“Here we are at home, Trixie, and home
you must feel it to be, for there isn't the first
thing in it which is not yours as much as
mine.”
“Thank you, uncle,” said Beatrice quietly;
and in stepping from the carriage, she cast one
comprehensive glance at the house and locality,
feeling that the panacea for a wounded
spirit thus offered her was one not to be
despised.
At the door stood Mrs. Grey, a pale, placid
matron, with faded brown hair neatly folded
under a cap, faded blue eyes, habitually downcast,
and a faded smile upon her faded lips.
She dressed always in black silk or stuff
gowns, and wore clear-starched white muslin
aprons, and ruffles about her hands.
Mr. Barstow shook hands heartily with his
housekeeper and introduced his niece.
“This is Miss Wansted, or Miss Beatrice,
if you prefer it, Mrs. Grey, and she has travelled
sixty miles since breakfast, and would
like her dinner, I am very sure. I suppose,
though, she wants to wash her hands first,
and I am sure I do mine. You have a room
ready for her?”
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“Certainly, sir. Shall I show you up-stairs,
Miss Wansted?”
“Thank you, Mrs. Grey.”
And Beatrice meekly followed the housekeeper
through a hall and up a staircase,
wrought and furnished in the luxurious fashion
of the day, to an apartment upon the
second floor, whose magnificence was its only
fault.
“Mr. Barstow wrote me word that these
were to be your rooms, Miss Wansted,” said
the housekeeper, opening two rooms at the
further side of the sleeping-chamber. “This
is the dressing-room, and this the sitting-room,
with another door into the hall. I hope you
will find them comfortably arranged, though
Mr. Barstow said that you would re-furnish
them to suit yourself as soon as you were
settled. Shall I send a maid to help you
change your dress, Miss?”
“No, thank you. If you will let some one
bring up my trunks, I will do all the rest. Is
Mrs. Charlton here, Mrs. Grey?”
“Yes, Miss, she arrived about half an hour
ago, and is in the drawing-room waiting for
you.”
“Thank you. Won't you call me Miss
Beatrice instead of Miss Wansted, as my
uncle said?” asked Beatrice with a smile;
and the housekeeper replied less formally
than she had yet spoken:
“Thank you, Miss Beatrice, it does sound
more home-like, and I hope you will make up
your mind to stay with us a good long while.
Now I will send up the trunks, and dinner
will be ready at eight.”
Half an hour later, Beatrice, whose hands
were as quick as her head, came from her
chamber refreshed in body and mind, and
dressed with a quiet simplicity sure at least
not to offend, although a critical beholder
might feel that more elegant attire would
better suit her patrician style of beauty.
The drawing-room door stood open, and
Beatrice, while descending the stairs, assured
herself that the room was occupied, and that
her uncle was not of the company. A shy impulse
prompted her to retreat, and wait for the
protection of his presence before entering; and
she had actually stolen up several stairs, when
a reäctionary pride arrested her steps, and,
turning, she went steadily down, and into the
drawing-room without pause or hesitation.
The struggle, however, had brought a deeper
color to her cheek, and lent a certain haughty
self-possession to her bearing, so easily to be
mistaken for the aplomb of a woman of the
world, that none but the keenest observers
would have recognized it as the defiant selfassertion
of inexperienced pride.
Vezey Chappelleford was the keenest of
observers, and he at once came forward to
meet the young girl whom he had already
catalogued as “Barstow's rustic protégée.”
“Miss Wansted, allow me to claim a sort of
collateral acquaintanceship with the kinswoman
of my old friend, and to present my
niece, Mrs. Charlton. Nita, Miss Wansted
and you have much to do in settling the
etiquette of welcome, since both are, in a manner,
hostess for this evening. By to-morrow,
Miss Wansted will have fairly assumed the
sceptre.”
“I am but too happy to take my place as
guest upon the instant,” replied Mrs. Charlton,
in a voice peculiarly rich and mellow in its
modulations, and subdued in its tone. Beatrice,
while murmuring some commonplace
reply, noted the voice, and examined its possessor
with a glance of feminine comprehensiveness.
She found a woman framed upon the heroic
scale, but with a figure of admirable proportions,
with a head which might have been
regal had it not been languid in its pose; a
face of dark, sultry beauty, with a life's experience
beneath the drooping eyelids, and in
the curve of the passionate lips, and with a
manner of perfect polish and indolent grace.
“Cleopatra!” thought Beatrice, as her slight
fingers lay within the firm, satiny touch of
Mrs. Charlton's large white hand.
“No; Zenobia,” said she again, as the other
led her to a seat, and placing herself beside
her with the air of one receiving rather than
conferring a favor, asked some courteous
questions of her journey.
While she replied, Mr. Barstow entered the
room, and as he welcomed his guests, Beatrice
looked at Mr. Chappelleford as she had at his
niece, and following the same bad habit he
had indulged toward her, mentaly bestowed
upon him the sobriquet of Diogenes. Nor
could that famous cynic have possessed a
more dome-like brow, stronger lineaments, or
determined reticence of manner. With the
majority of mankind, Vezey Chappelleford
lived on terms of mutual intolerance; among
savans he was known as a man of profound
and varied erudition; to Israel Barstow, who
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[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]
never disputed the most untenable of his
theories, or interfered in the remotest manner
with his pursuits, he was a good humored
patron, although the merchant's daily income
far outweighed the philosopher s yearly annuity;
to children he was a simple-hearted
playmate; to women, a courteous misogynist;
to Juanita Charlton a puzzle without a key.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting, friends,
and to have left you to introduce yourselves
to each other,” said the host, shaking hands
with every body. “But in my dressing-room
I found that fellow Rowley—my head clerk,
you know, Chappelleford—and he had been
waiting an hour, and would have waited until
to-morrow morning if I had not attended to
him; so I had to sit down and listen and answer,
and sign, seal, and deliver, just as he ordered.
A shocking tyrant, that fellow.”
“Poor Rowley! I wish I had imagination
enough to fancy his crossing a t, or dotting an
i, without your especial permission, or your
amazed indignation should he do so,” said
Chappelleford with a cynical smile.
“Well, well, some people tyrannize by humble
appeals, as well as others by downright
bullying,” replied Mr. Barstow, reddening a
little at finding himself unmasked.
“Yes, that is the usual style of feminine
tyranny; is it not, Miss Wansted?” asked
Chappelleford, offering his arm to Beatrice as
dinner was announced.
“The disguise would not be of much use
where it is convicted beforehand,” replied she,
with a merry glance into the keen eyes bent
upon her; and the cynic replied with a smile
whose beauty always took the beholder by
surprise.
“You are right, young lady; most disguises
are like the shirt of Nessus, and he who
assumes them finds himself ruined within
them.”
“ `Honesty is the best policy' is as true now
as it ever was, and that's as true as the sun,”
remarked Mr. Barstow, who had caught the
last remark while seating himself at the foot
of the dinner-table.
“No need to look in books of reference for
that motto,” growled Chappelleford in reply.
“It is unmistakably English: none but a
nation of shopkeepers could have originated
it, or needed it.”
“Pitching into trade again?” laughed the
host with perfect good-nature, while his niece
raised her eyes indignantly. “Have some
turtle and a glass of Madeira, and consider
that, without trade, you must have begun your
dinner with clam-chowder and cider, and finished
it with hickory-nuts and currant-wine.”
“After which, we have only to consider
whether Madeira or manhood, callipash or
constitution, is more important to a nation, and
the question is settled,” said the philosopher,
sipping his glass of wine with a relish, and
glancing quizzically at Miss Wansted's flushed
face.
“Do you really think trade dishonorable,
Mr. Chappelleford?” inquired she, meeting
the glance.
“Did you ever read Mill on Political
Economy, Miss Wansted?” replied the philosopher.”
“No, sir.”
“Nor I, and Heaven send that we never
may. Is my friend Miss Barstow quite well,
and has she forgiven my rat-like invasion of
her wainscot, in search of truth?”
“Did you take a lantern to aid your search
for it?” asked Beatrice, her irritation outweighing
her discretion for the moment; but
her low voice was drowned by her uncle's
burly tones, and the allusion was unheard.
CHAPTER XIII. REIN, GRAHAME, AND LAFORET.
“And now,” said Mr. Barstow, as with
his niece and their guests they sat in the
dimly-lighted drawing-room, while the music
of the songs without words Mrs. Charlton
had been playing died dreamily away—“and,
now, June, this little girl and I want to know
when you are coming to take care of us. You
made no answer to my letter asking you to
spend the fall and winter here.”
“I thought to tell you better when we met
how much pleasure I should take in accepting
the invitation, and now I find it impossible
to tell you,” said Mrs. Charlton, looking significantly
toward Beatrice, and then upward
into her host's face.
“You like her then?” asked he in a pleased
tone.
“So much. I am afraid I shall love her,”
sighed Mrs. Charlton, idly striking minor
chords with her left hand, while the right lay,
a white, glittering wonder, upon her lap.
“Why do you say afraid? I hope you will
love her, and she you,” replied Mr. Barstow
bluntly.
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[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
“No, oh! no. I wish never to love, never to
hate, never to care for any created thing. The
only joy is calm,” murmured Juanita; and
honest Israel Barstow looked puzzled and disturbed.
“You got that from Chappelleford, but it is a
cold, dismal sort of philosophy—not fit for a
woman at all events,” said he. “Why, to my
mind, a woman ought to be all love and enthusiasm,
more so than any man; we go to
them for just that sort of thing.”
“And find it generally, I don't doubt. There,
at all events.”
And Mrs. Charlton again looked admiringly
at Beatrice, who was listenin with a face of
animated interest to Mr. Chappelleford's description
of Eastern scenery.
“Yes, Beatrice is enthusiastic enough, and
loving enough too, poor child,” said Mr. Barstow
with a sigh; and Mrs. Charlton, although
she wondered, did not ask him what
he meant.
“Then you will come and stay with us?”
said the merchant presently; and Juanita,
with a gracious smile, replied:
“Thank you very much. It will give me
the greatest pleasure to do so.”
“That's right. You had better remain to-night,
and I will send for your traps.”
“Thank you. But you have little idea
of the commotion of a feminine change of residence,”
replied Mrs. Charlton with a languid
smile. “I have oceans of preparations to
make; but if you will kindly send for me to-morrow
about noon, I will try to be ready.”
“Certainly; the carriage shall go for you at
twelve o'clock, and I will amuse Trix myself
until then. I don't want her to get homesick,
you know.”
“Certainly not;” and Mrs. Charlton, sweeping
her drowsy eyes once more upon Beatrice,
decided that she had prospered ill in some
love affair, and that Mr. Barstow had brought
her home with him to break up the train of
painful association.
“And asked me here as dame du compagnie,”
thought she. “Well, I shall earn my daily
plover, if not in the sweat of my brow, in the
strain of my endurance, and I like carriages
better than horse-cars.”
So the nextday, Mrs. Charlton and Mrs. Charlton's
luggage arrived in Midas-avenue, and
when Mr. Barstow came home to dinner, he
found two beautiful, well-dressed, and wellbred
women ready to receive and entertain
him, and to make for him a home in his
hitherto somewhat dreary palace.
“This is the pleasantest thing I have seen
to-day. This is what a man likes to look
forward to while he is bustling about on'
change, or bullying other men in his or their
counting-rooms,” said he, throwing himself
luxuriously into an arm-chair after dinner,
and contemplating the two young women—
seated, the one at her needle-work, the other
at the piano.
“And now, my dears,” pursued he, “I have
been all day settling affairs at the office, so
that I might be spared for a while, and to-morrow,
if you say so, we will turn our backs
upon the town, and go the sea-shore, the
mountains, the prairies, or even across the
water, if you will be satisfied with a peep and
good-by, for I cannot leave home for more
than a month or six weeks. What do you
say?”
“Which does Miss Wansted prefer of all
these delightful visions?” asked Mrs. Charlton,
smiling at Beatrice.
“Oh! the sea by all means, if I am to
choose; but which do you and my uncle like
best?”
“I wouldn't give a copper to choose. They
are all new to me; for since I left Milvor, I
have lived here in the city, boy and man, until
I fell strange anywhere else. I have never
cared to take a play-time before, since I had
the means of giving myself one,” said Mr.
Barstow honestly; and Mrs. Charlton added
with a smile:
“It is the meeting of extremes, for I have
travelled so much, and seen so many varieties
of scenery, that I do not care at all which way
I turn when I leave home.”
“Then it shall be to the sea-shore, and we
will go to-morrow, if you say so.”
“I shall be ready, uncle,” said Beatrice,
with feverish eagerness; and Juanita quietly
decided:
“It is a fresh wound, and stings keenly.
Poor fool! By and by, she can lay her
finger upon the scar and smile at its memories.”
A few days later found Mr. Barstow and his
“family,” as he liked to call the beautiful
women under his charge, established at
one of the loveliest points upon the New-England
coast, and entering with avidity into
the life about them. The place was crowded,
and both Mrs. Charlton and Mr. Barstow
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[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]
found many acquaintances—she among the
gayest, and he among the soberest of the
crowd.
Beatrice knew no one, and cared to know
no one—contenting herself with nature, and
continually stealing away to sit upon the
rocks by the shore, or weary herself to exhaustion
in mountain scrambles, and woodland
walks.
“This will not do; she might as well have
stayed in Milvor,” said Uncle Israel confidentially
to Juanita one day, when his wilful niece
had quietly disappeared from a projected bowling
party. “June, we must keep her among people,
make her merry, teach her to flirt as these
other girls do—any thing to take up her mind.
The truth is, you see, the poor child has met
with a disappointment; I don't know much
about it myself, and I never should speak of
it to her; but she needs to change the scene
inside her mind, as well as outside her body.
Now, you can do that, if any one can, I am
sure.”
“Yes, I can do that,” said Mrs. Charlton,
with one of her smiles of languid power. And
that evening she introduced Rein, the artist;
Grahame, the author; and Laforét, the invincible
of the salons, to her charge, having
previously dropped a quiet word into the ear
of each.
“Have you ever dreamed of such a head for
a study?” asked she of Rein; and while he
looked, she murmured to Grahame:
“There is a story there. See if you can
find it out.” And to Laforét:
“She is to come out this winter, and will
make a sensation. I will introduce you before
the world finds her out.”
So these three men, the nucleus of “society”
at Dream Harbor, devoted themselves, each in
his own interest, to the rising star, and left her
no longer a hope of solitude or quiet. Did
she wander to the sea-shore or the mountains?
Rein quietly attended her, and begged leave
to sketch her as a sea-nymph, a dryad, an urchin,
a saint, as every possible form of beauty
and inspiration. Did she listlessly dream
away the long summer hours, her thoughts
wandering, she knew not where? Grahame
was beside her, softly leading the talk to personal
experiences, to sympathy, to the forgotten
dreams, the impossible visions of youth.
Or did she seek refuge in the crowd, who so
ready as Laforét to ask her to dance, to propose
croquet, with himself as her partner, to
idle at her side, and affect an intimacy Beatrice
hardly took the trouble to deny.
“Why do these people haunt me so? I do
not want them or try to make myself agreeable
to them,” asked she of Mrs. Charlton once
when she had perforce spent the whole day in
company with Messieurs Rein, Grahame,
Laforét, and their friends.
“Because, my dear, these persons are society,
and society claims you as a fresh young
victim, and sends out its high priests to capture
you. Haven't you a taste for martyrdom?
If not, you had better cultivate one, since it is
your fate.”
“Does society mean martyrdom, then?”
asked the novice.
“As long as you persist in egotism,” replied
the teacher. “Go with the stream, and you
will swim easily and pleasantly; set your face
against it, and attempt some new method of
overcoming the inevitable, and you will be in
every one's way, and every one in yours, and
will finally be overwhelmed and drowned.”
“But with what stream am I to swim?”
asked Beatrice wearily. “I do not care for
Mr. Rein's ideas of art—they seem to me conventional
and hackneyed. Mr. Grahame's
favorite literature is too sentimental for my
taste, and Mr. Laforét's gossip is a weariness
to the flesh. Am I to force myself to sympathize
with my antipathies?”
Mrs. Charlton raised a warning hand.
“To answer the end of your question first,
my dear, let me warn you against that style
of thing: antitheses, syllogisms, argument,
metaphysics, are all topics defendre to a debutante.
They are the weapons of maturity,
of waning beauty, and it is as unfair and unbecoming
for your use as rouge or pearlpowder,
antimony or belladonna.”
“Who uses antimony and belladoma?”
asked Beatrice, yielding to a small side-current
of feminine curiosity.
“Secrets of the prison-house,” gayly replied
Juanita. “I won't even tell you their
uses; but again I warn you against the deep
waters which are as yet bad style for you.
Freshness, naïveté, universal interest in all
persons, all pursuits not too heavy for you,
all topics of the day—this is your rôle. You
have a taste for repartee—indulge it sparingly
and mildly. The reputation of a satirist, or
even of a wit, is as fatal to a young beauty as
that of a bas bleu. All this will come in time;
but meanwhile accept Rein's teachings in art,
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Grahame's in literature, and Laforét's in society.
They are all fools, but they are the
world's mouthpieces, and their jargon is its
Shibboleth. Learn it, for it as necessary as
French in the circle you are entering.”
“Thank you,” said Beatrice sadly. “Perhaps
I had better have stayed at Milvor.”
“Not at all, dear. You would have died
there—perished of—”
“What?” inquired the girl, flushing like
the morning.
“Of egotism,” coolly replied Juanita. “You
were quite too important to yourself there—to
other persons also, no doubt; but to yourself
fatally. In the world, we soon learn that our
own experience is every one's experience, that
our original ideas are hackneyed, and our life-hurts
are other people's callous scars. It is a
good school.”
“You indulge in the philosophies you deny
me,” said Beatrice, smiling bitterly.
“My dear, I am thirty-three years old, and
at sixteen I had seen more of the world than
you at twenty. Do not revenge yourself by
disliking me, for I like you better than any
one I have met in a dozen years.”
“Do you? Thank you,” hesitated Beatrice.
“I do not dislike you indeed, but I
dislike your theories and your world more
than I can tell.”
“You will come to adopt both as your own,
my poor child. Good-night.”
“Good-night. I am so sorry to seem ungrateful,”
said the girl; but her new friend
only smiled a little, and went without reply.
CHAPTER XIV. A FRIEND.
The next day had been appointed for an
excursion up the mountain, but the advent
in the morning of a rival base-ball club,
challenged some days before by the champions
of that noble game resident at Dream Harbor,
broke up all other excursions, and filled the
public mind with visions of blue or scarlet
banners, badges, dresses, prizes, and preparations.
Even the dogs of the respective houses,
and sheep of the field where the match was
to be played, were decorated with ribbons of
the rival colors, and one enthusiastic young
lady was heard to propose that a couple of
calves grazing in an adjacent paddock should
be adorned, the one in blue and the other in
red ribbons, and turned loose among the combatants;
but this notion was for some reason
hastily suppressed, and the young lady detailed
to the manufacture of paper caps for
the players, each one with a bow of ribbon
upon its pointed top.
Beatrice, who cared not at all for base-ball,
and a great deal for mountains, watched these
preparations with rather petulant disdain, and
finally, by condescending to a little coaxing,
persuaded her uncle to resume the idea of the
excursion, confining the party to their two
selves; for Mrs. Charlton was already the
centre of an eager throng, each claiming her
as a partisan, and making her umpire upon
various questions of dress, usage, and propriety.
“Of course I must side with the red, for I
have not a scrap of blue anything in my possession;
and scarlet is the only color I wear.
See, I assume my badge.”
And winding an Indian scarf about her
head, she became at once a sultana, a Zobeide,
a picture, an “Admirable of the Red,” as a
very young man, still in his Sophomore year,
remarked with the air of saying a good thing.
“She can spare us, uncle, and of course it is
proper if you go with me,” urged Beatrice.
And the matter was arranged with but slight
opposition from Mrs. Charlton, who enjoyed
the position she affected to disdain, and had
little thought to bestow upon her charge.
“There! This is real pleasure,” sighed
Beatrice, as near the crest of the mountain
they halted their panting horses, and turned
to look behind them. The day was perfect,
with so rare an atmosphere that the most distant
summits lay faintly purple against the
tender blue of the sky, and the gleam of
waters, leaving the farthest shores within
the reach of human vision, became distinctly
visible. Tempering the glow of the summer
noon, great white clouds floated now and
again across the fathomless blue depths of
heaven, their shadows falling upon sea and
land, mountains and valleys, like God's gift
of sleep; far out at sea the flash of white sails
showed the course of craft else hidden in the
distance, and still beyond them, ocean and
heaven hid their marriage-kiss behind a veil
of dazzling light, tempting and impenetrable
to mortal vision.
“Yes, it is a fine view,” said Mr. Barstow,
adjusting his double eye-glass upon his nose.
“Now, I wonder which of those peaks is
Kahtadin,” pursued he, scanning the horizon,
“and Mount Washington. They told me at
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“The little inn at the summit of the mountain.”
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the house that I could see them both to-day.
Washington is one hundred and seventy miles
from here, and it is seldom that it is visible:
but to-day is so clear. Now, where should
you look for it, Beatrice?”
“I do not know, uncle, I am sure. I suppose
the people up here can tell you,” said
Beatrice dreamily. “But don't you think it
just as pleasant to look at the landscape as if
you were the first person who ever saw it,
and it was all your own, as to know the names
that other people have given to every thing,
and be told that this is Goose Pond, and the
other is Bear Mountain, or Burnt Porcupine
Island?”
“Eh? Well; but if things have names,
why it is by the names you know them, and talk
about them. If I send to Canton for a cargo
of the tea that I like best, my agent would
think I was a fool, and would write back to
ask me its name. Don't you see?”
“But,” persisted Beatrice, “you don't send
for the mountains to come to you—you go to
the mountains, and when you are with them,
the names make but little difference to you or
to them.”
“And when you go away, and want to talk
about them to your friends, what then?”
asked Mr. Barstow; and Beatrice, laughing,
said:
“Your common-sense is too much for me,
Uncle Israel. Let us drive on, and find a
guide and a guide-book.”
Half an hour brought them to the little inn
at the summit of the mountain, and while
Mr. Barstow ordered dinner and awaited its
announcement in a comfortable rocking-chair,
with a bottle of London stout and a stand of
capital cigars at his elbow, his niece strolled
out upon the rocks, perversely determined to
make her first acquaintance with the scene,
alone and unaided by “guide or guide-book.”
Out of sight of the house, and yet within
hearing of a summons, she paused, and seating
herself upon a boulder, kindly fashioned
by nature into semblance of a chair, with
back and footstool, she drew a full, free
breath.
“Alone at last,” murmured she, and leaning
her face upon her hands, she gave way to the
tears that had lain, as it seemed to her, for
weeks, a crushing and intolerable weight
upon brain and heart.
“Is any thing the matter with thee, friend?”
said a low voice behind her; and hastily looking
up, Beatrice saw a woman of middle age,
dressed in the sober livery of the Quakers,
but carrying within her uncomely head-gear
a face so sweet, so calm, and withal so strong,
that no fashion could disguise or disfigure it.
“I do not wish to intrude upon thee,” continued
the stranger, as Beatrice hesitated how
to reply to her. “But as I came softly over
the rocks, I heard the sound of thy grief, and
thought I possibly might be of use. Is thee
hurt in any way?”
“Oh! no—thank you. I was thinking of
other scenes, and absent friends. I thought I
was quite alone,” stammered Beatrice; and
then fearing to have seemed rude and ungracious,
was suddenly silent.
“May I sit beside thee for a moment or
two? This is the finest outlook I have found.”
said the stranger, quietly seating herself,
while Beatrice, half vexed, half attracted to
that lovely face and reässuring voice, sat still,
without reply.
“I have been all day upon the mountain,”
continued the new-comer, “and am not yet
tired. It is a grand thing for us who live in
cities to see how much larger the world is
than we are taught to remember. Does thee
live in a city?”
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“A rude log-cabin in the forest.”
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“Sometimes I visit them.”
“I live always in Pennapolis. My name is
Mary Askew; what is thine?”
“Wansted—Beatrice Wansted,” replied the
young lady, with a half smile at this direct
questioning.
“And did thee ever come nearer to understanding
creation than here?” asked Mary
Askew, pointing to the grand panorama at
their feet.
“I—I have hardly looked yet,” faltered Beatrice.
“Why?” demanded the Friend, fixing her
clear, truth-compelling eyes upon those of the
young girl.
“Because, I was thinking —”
“Because thee was looking inside instead of
out; because thee was thinking of Beatrice
Wansted instead of God and His works, and
that was where thee was short-sighted. Does
thee know, Beatrice, why God made these
mountains and lonely places, and puts it into
our hearts to run away from our daily lives
and seek out the solitudes, when we are sorely
tried? I think it is that we may see at one
look the immensity of creation, and remember
how small a part of it our finger-hurts must
be.”
“But if an insect is crushed to death, it
does not cure it to know that the earth moves
on,” cried Beatrice bitterly.
“Thee is not an insect, Beatrice. Thee has
a soul higher than the mountains, deeper than
the ocean, wider than the sky. The grief of
to day, keen though it may be, will not out-last
even thy mortal life, and after that comes
eternity. That word, it seems to me, dwarfs
all else.”
Beatrice, weeping no more, turned and gazed
into the face of her companion with absorbing
interest.
“But if the same soul exists after death,
how can you tell that the same troubles will
not cling to it?” asked she.
“The troubles of this world belong to this
world: thee may so use them that they will
warp and deface thy soul even after it has
left them behind, if thee chooses, or thee may
make of them stepping-stones to a peace and
joy that ripen the soul for eternal bliss as no
prosperity ever ripens it,” said the Friend, in
a voice so full of meaning that Beatrice remembered
Aunt Rachel's words: “Most all
of us get disappointed once,” and asked herself
if the sweet content upon Mary Askew's
brow had been won from a stepping-stone of
sorrow such as now filled her own heart.
“Thee should look at that ocean and that
sky for the meaning of my words; not in my
face. I do but speak to thee as the spirit
moves me, and the translation is in thy own
heart,” said the Friend quietly; and just then
the clear notes of a horn blown at the house-door
recalled the two to a warning of daily
needs and waiting friends.
“I hope to see more of thee, Beatrice Wansted,”
said the elder, as they walked together
to the house; and Beatrice, a little shyly, answered:
“You are very kind, and I should be glad
to know you better.”
CHAPTER XV. IN THE WOODS
“There, Zilpah, this is home—the best
that I have to offer, at any rate. Are you
sorry you came?”
So spoke Marston Brent, throwing open the
door of a rude log cabin buried in the heart
of a hemlock forest, many miles from any
town, village, or even hamlet, and connected
with the haunts of man only by the capricious
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[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
highway of the Sachawissa, loveliest and most
unreliable of rivers. From the Ford, as the
highest point of sloop navigation upon this
stream is called, Brent had transported his
family and his chattels in two stout wagons
drawn by oxen, who now stood panting before
the log-house in the waning of a September
day.
“Well, I don't know as I be,” said Zilpah
cautiously, and pausing to look well about her
before she made reply. “Looks kind o' woodsy,
don't it?”
“Yes; that we must expect in a logging-camp;
but the trees just about the house are
cut away, you see,” said Marston, with an effort
at cheerful speech.
“Hm! That was so's to get something to
make the house of, I expect,” replied Zilpah
coolly. “It's a reg'lar log-cabin, a'n't it?”
“Yes; I told you it was.”
“I know it, Mr. Brent, I know it; I a'n't
complaining — don't you think it; only it
looks kind o' cur'us to any one that's always
lived amongst folks; now don't it?”
“I suppose so,” said Marston, smiling, as he
remembered the seclusion of Milvor, where
Zilpah had been born and bred; and then he
added gayly:
“Well, we must make company for each
other, Zilpah. Come into the house, won't
you? And, Richard, you must explain matters
a little as to where we are to get fuel, water,
and such matters. You know we are new
to this way of life.”
Richard, a veteran logger, who, having
spent the previous winter at Wahtahree, in
the employ of Mr. Mills, had been selected as
the fittest cicerone of the new proprietor,
came forward at the summons, saying with a
grin:
“As for fuel, Cap'n, why there's enough of
that all about, I should say; and as for water,
there's a spring right down there, and the
boys might fetch some in this bucket when
the cattle have done eating their meal out'n it.
There's a first-rate cook-stove in the shanty,
and I'll get the pork-barrel unloaded right
away. I expect she knows how to fry pork
and bile potaters, don't she? That's logger's
fare, mostly.”
“I guess I know as much as that, young
man, and I know better than to get water for
folks and feed critters in the same bucket.
Paul Freeman, you get a pail out of Mr.
Brent's goods. There's one there that won't
pizen, as I expect,” said Zilpah, with so much
dignity that Brent was fain to turn away to
hide a smile, and Richard grinned from ear to
ear as he led the way into the cabin, or shanty,
as the building would be styled in forest
parlance.
This consisted of two rooms and a closet
upon the lower floor, and a loft above, furnished
with wooden boxes or bunks filled with
hay, in which the wood-cutters were expected
to sleep. The outer room, into which opened
the principal door, was furnished with a long
table extending down the middle, with a
bench at either side, all of evident home manufacture,
and more solid than elegant; two or
three stools, and a smaller movable table, set
in front of the wide, open fireplace. This was
the dining and sitting room of the family,
while the smaller one behind it served as
kitchen and scullery. The closet was set apart
as Zilpah's bedroom, and Richard, Paul and
his brother, and the lumbermen, when they
should arrive, were quartered in the loft. For
his own use, Brent reserved a small room in
an adjacent building designed as a store-house,
and thither had his personal belongings transported
as they were unloaded.
Such articles of household gear as Zilpah
declared indispensable, Brent had purchased at
their last stopping-place, and the list had finally
lengthened so far that the great ox-wagon
engaged to transport them had almost proved
insufficient, and the old housekeeper, watching
her master's face during the process of
loading, expected every moment to see some
precious article discarded, or some favorite
scheme upset by loss of its material elements.
But Brent, like other men of his large, strong
nature, was ever over-indulgent to the weak
and helpless under his control, and although
Richard grumbled, and his assistant teamster
swore, Zilpah was not mulcted of pot or pan,
bread-tray, clothes-horse, or rubbing-board,
and Brent arranged all difficulties by hiring a
second yoke of oxen to accompany them to the
end of their journey.
These, her household gods, the old woman
now received at the hands of Paul, who was
unloading the wagon, and arranged them upon
the shelves, hooks, and walls of her new home
with much satisfaction.
“There, now, that looks something like!”
exclaimed she, as Brent returned to the shanty,
after superintending the ordering of his
own room. “Look at here, Mr. Marston, and
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[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
see my tin-shelf. Don't that seem most like
Milvor over again? Recollect our coffee-pot
to home? Wa'n't it the moral of this'n?”
“I should think so. Yes, they look very
home-like and housewifely, Zilpah. But
what!—a warming-pan!”
“Well, yes, Mr. Marston,” replied the old
woman, a little sheepishly; “you see a warming-pan
is dreadful handy in case of sickness;
and there's no knowing what might happen
to any of us, away off here in the woods, away
from doctors so.”
“But where did you get it?” asked Brent,
suppressing a smile.
“Why, don't you remember, while I was
trading with that tinman, you and he went
off to look at some kind of ox-tackle he'd been
getting up, and whilst you were gone, I sort
o' prowled round in the back-shop and peeked
into the cellar-way and the loft—not for no
harm, only to see what sort o' things he'd got
stowed away; and then I see this warming-pan,
and it looked so sort o' home-like—you
see, my folks had one when I was a small
girl, and I rec'lect my mother warming my
bed over when I'd got a bad cold—and so I
thought you wouldn't care, Marston, and I
just tucked it into the things that was sot off
for us, and didn't say nothing about it.”
“But did the man know it? There was no
such item in the bill,” said Marston, taking a
note-book from his pocket, and selecting a paper
to which the man of stoves had affixed
not only his name, but several of the black
“thumb-marks” which our illiterate ancestors
used in place of signatures.
“No, it is not in the bill,” added Brent severely,
as he refolded the document.
“Oh! well, dearie, if it isn't, it's no fault of
your'n,” said Zilpah in some confusion, and
making a great rattling among her pots and
pans. “He might have seed it if he'd looked,
I'm sure. It a'n't a thing I could hide in my
pooket.”
“But the articles were all noted down as
they were selected, and the shopman put
them into the wagon while his master made
out the bill. You have stolen this warming-pan,
Zilpah, and under cover of my name too,”
exclaimed Brent indignantly.
Whereupon, Zilpah, dropping the tin basin
and dipper from her hands, threw her apron
over her head and broke into violent weeping,
mingled with protestations of immaculate innocence
and wounded feeling at such unde
served suspicion from one whom she had regarded
`all the same as her own boy.”
Brent looked on for a moment in the helpless
and absurd way in which a man always
contemplates a weeping woman whom circumstances
or her own will do not permit of
his taking in his arms and kissing, and then
he strode out of the house, and stood vacantly
staring at the gloomy autumnal prospect.
And this, he thought, was his home and his
life. These petty and sordid cares within the
house were to be his relief from the exhaustive
labor without, from which he did not
shrink. No companionship, no sympathy,
no contact with a gentle and more delicate organization
to soothe away the asperities of his
daily life.
“Beatrice was right,” muttered he at last.
“It is no place for her. I am glad she did not
come.”
But the idea of regretting his own choice,
of reconsidering a decision deliberately made,
never crossed the mind of this man, whose nature,
ardent and impressionable as heated
lava, like hardened lava retained forever the
impressions so made. Nor was it in him to
devote many moments to repining, or, indeed,
to reverie of any sort; and before Zilpah, cautiously
peeping from her kitchen to ascertain
his whereabouts, had hidden the obnoxious
warming-pan in her own bedroom, Brent
had thrown off his coat and was helping his
man to move some of the heavier articles of
their load, and to stable the oxen, and the
horse he had provided for his personal use.
He was still engaged in this manner when a
timid voice at his elbow pronounced his name.
He turned and found the boy Willy watching
him attentively.
“Well, my little man, what is it?” asked he
good-naturedly.
“Zilpah sent me to tell you that supper
is ready,” said the child.
“I will come. And how do you like the
woods and our fine log-house, Willy?”
“Very much indeed, sir. Do people ever
come here?” asked the child, glancing timidly
around him.
“People? No, indeed,” replied Brent with
a short laugh. “Except my gang of lumbermen,
who will be along next week, I suppose
we may not see a human being before the
spring. We are pretty well `out of humanity's
reach,' as poor Selkirk has it. You won't
be lonesome, will you?”
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“Oh! no, sir. I am very glad indeed that people
won't come,” said the boy, raising his
large dark eyes to Brent's face with an expression
of confidence and reliance that went
to his heart.
“I don't think any body would hurt you if
they did come, Willy,” said he kindly. “Not
if I was about, at any rate.”
“I know it, sir, and I should like to keep
where you are all the time if I could.”
“What, stay with me rather than Paul?”
asked Brent laughing, and a little surprised.
“Yes, sir. You are the biggest, and besides,
you are the master here. Richard says you
are the boss, and that the boss can do any
thing he likes in a logging-camp, and every
one has to mind him, or else he can almost
murder them.”
Brent laughed aloud.
“Richard would make a despotism of our
encampment, and a tyrant of me,” said he.
“And so you want to keep where I am, do
you, my boy?”
“Yes, sir,” said Willy, looking once more
about him before he entered the house.
CHAPTER XVI. BRENT BECOMES A LAW-BREAKER.
The meal of fried pork, boiled potatoes,
hard bread, bannocks of Indian-meal, and
coffee without milk, was set upon the long
table, already noted, in the large room of the
shanty. Tablecloth, napkins, silver were all
dispensed with, and even the coarse earthern
plates and cups produced from among Zilpah's
purchases were an innovation upon the severe
custom of the woods, which sanctioned only
tin and iron as table equipage.
Brent had from the first decided to live with
his men, and as his men, laboring with them,
eating with them, resting with them, reserving
to himself only the privilege of a separate
sleeping-room, somewhat more fastidiously,
though hardly more luxuriantly, appointed
than their own. He now sat down at the
head of his homely table, and glancing from
its meagre appointments to the faces at either
hand, said simply:
“Welcome, friends, to our first meal together,
and may God make us all duly thankful for
this and his other gifts.”
“I don't know how you're a going to drink
your coffee without no milk in it, Mr. Brent.
It a'n't what you're used to,” said Zilpah querulously,
as she filled and passed the cups.
“We will have a cow next week, Zilpah,
and, meantime, if we cannot drink coffee
without milk, there is plenty of cold water,”
said Brent cheerily.
“I never see no milk in a logging-camp, nor
no cow neither, nor yet sugar,” said Richard,
reaching rather contemptuously for the sugar-basin.
“Where I've been, they always bile
merlasses with the coffee. Merlasses is first-rate
with fried pork too.”
“Molasses with fried pork!” cried Zilpah
indignantly.
“Jus' so. Didn't you ever eat none?”
asked Richard over the edge of his cup.
“No; nor I don't never mean to.”
“No more I wouldn't if I didn't want to;
but I'd like some, if you've got it hand, and
the boss ha'n't no objection.”
“Not the least,” said Brent smiling; and
Zilpah, with a snort of indignation, produced
and filled a japanned molasses-cup, which
Richard nearly emptied upon his plate, following
the usual habit of his class, to whom
instinct teaches the lesson of science, that the
carbon necessary to feed the fire constantly
formed by fierce labor and exposure is to be
found in heavy sweets and concentrated oils,
or, as they embody them, in molasses and
pork-fat.
Brent, silently revolving this idea in his
mind, finished his repast, and rising from the
table with the rest, was about to leave the
house, when Zilpah touched him upon the
arm, and mysteriously beckoned him into her
own room.
Brent followed, a little apprehensive of a
scene, and rapidly resolving to set the old
woman's mind at rest upon the vexed question
of the warming-pan by promising to pay for
it the first time he should have occasion to
send to the town. But Zilpah's conscience
was not of the peremptory and persistent
sort that will let neither its possessor nor accuser
rest, and so long as her felonious possession
remained snugly ensconced in the corner,
behind a black bombazine petticoat,
Zilpah was very willing to appear to forget it.
Her present subject of conversation was of
a different nature, and she heralded it with
the inquiry:
“There a'n't no sleeping-room except this
and your'n, and the loft where the men sleep,
is there?”
“No. What is wanted of more?” asked
Brent in some surprise.
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“Well, I don't know. Where was you calculating
that Willy would sleep?”
“Why, with his brother, I suppose.”
“I shouldn't hardly love to have 'em do that
way, seems to me,” suggested Zilpah mysteriously.
“Why not, in Heaven's name?” demanded
Brent, rather irritated at his housekeeper's
diplomatic reserve.
“Well, you see, Mr. Brent, I don't know
nothing about it, but I kind o' mistrust that
it a'n't all just as it appears with these boys.”
“Do tell me what you mean, Zilpah, without
any more mysteries. What is wrong with
the boys?”
“Well, I didn't never hear that Paul Freeman
had any brother. He was took out of
the poor-house, and his mother was a traveller
that died there, and nobody knows who his
father was; so where's his brother going to
come from, I'd like to know?”
“Are you sure of this, Zilpah?” demanded
Brent, whose anger was always stirred by
deception, even of the most trivial description.
“Sartain sure, Mr. Marston; and more than
all that, I've my suspicions that the boy a'n't
no boy at all.”
“Which boy? What do you mean, Zilpah?”
“Why, Willy. I don't believe he's any kin
to Paul Freeman, and, what's more, I don't
believe he's a boy. He's a gal, unless I
miss my guess, and his name's Ruth Brewster.”
“What, the girl who killed her father?
Peleg Brewster's daughter?” demanded Brent
in horror.
“Sho! Who's going to believe Semanthy
Brewster's stories about any one she spites?”
demanded Zilpah in high disdain. “Who
killed Peleg Brewster a'n't for me to say; but
you take my word for it, that young one that
you call Willy is Ruth Brewster.'
“That is soon proved,” said Brent, striding
from the room, in spite of Zilpah's efforts to
detain him.
Paul Freeman was not in sight from the
door of the shanty, but Willy, crouching upon
the doorstep, was making play with Blunder,
Richard's ugly little terrier.
“Come here, child,” said Brent, laying a
heavy hand upon his shoulder.
At sound of that stern voice, and touch of
that determined hand, the child started to his
feet, and raised a pale and terror-stricken face
to that bent so severely upon him.
“Oh! what is it, Mr. Brent?” exclaimed he,
visibly trembling in every limb.
“Nothing to alarm you if you have done no
wrong,” replied Brent gravely. “Come with
me—I wish to talk with you a little.”
And much to the disappointment of Zilpah,
who had expected to make a third in the conversation,
he led the child into the store-house,
and shut the door.
Alone with him, the young man seated himself,
and fixed his eyes keenly upon the terror-stricken
face of the supposititious boy.
“Child,” said he, “I can forgive almost
any offence against myself, but I cannot forgive
a lie, for that is an offence against God.
Will you remember this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And will you answer me some questions
fully and freely?”
“Y-e-s.”
“I do not force you to it, remember. If you
prefer, you may leave here to-morrow with
the man who drives the oxen back, and go
wherever you please. In that case, I shall ask
you nothing; but if you stay, I shall expect
you to give a full account of yourself. As
you said, hardly an hour ago, I am the master
of this place, and I want thoroughly understood
the position of each member of my
family. Will you be silent and leave me, or
will you stay and speak?”
The child hesitated for a moment, and then,
trembling all over, but resolutely raising his
eyes to Brent's, answered:
“I will stay and answer you.”
“Fully and truly?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then tell me your real name?”
“Ruth Brewster.”
“The daughter of Peleg Brewster, of
Milvor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And how came you here, in this disguise?”
“I met Paul, and I was—I was feeling very
bad, and he said he could get me away, and
take care of me; and he took me to Bloom, and
bought me these clothes, and then I came
with you to this place.”
“I must settle that part of the deception
with Paul, I perceive,” said Brent; and then,
laying a hand upon the girl's shoulder, and
fixing his eyes yet more keenly upon her face,
he asked:
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[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
“Ruth, why are you hiding from the relatives
and friends to whom you belong? Why
did you wish to be disguised, and to escape
from Milvor?”
“I cannot tell you, sir. Oh! I can't bear to
think about it!”
And the nervous trembling of the slender
figure increased to such a pitiable extent that
Brent could not in humanity pursue his interrogatory
in the same tone in which he had
begun it. Rising, he placed the young girl in
his own chair, offered her some water to drink,
and said kindly, although coldly:
“Do not be so distressed. I have no intention
of harming you; but I must know the
truth, or I cannot let you remain here. Now
tell me, Ruth, do you know of what you stand
accused at home?”
“They think I did it, don't they?” whispered
the child, her very lips blanched to a
deadly whiteness.
“Did what?”
“Killed father.”
“Yes, Ruth, they say so. It is a terrible
question to ask of a child, but it is my duty to
ask it. Did you do it?”
But instead of replying, Ruth slipped from
her chair to the floor, cowering there in a little
trembling heap, and hiding her face upon her
lap, while she burst into a fit of hysterical
weeping.
Brent looked at her in pity and dismay, for
he could not reconcile this excessive agitation
with the innocence in which he wished to believe.
“Ruth,” said he at last, “won't you speak
to me? Say that you are innocent of this horrible
crime, and I will not ask you another
question; for I am very, very sorry for you,
child.”
“Oh! don't, don't. I can't tell you any
thing about it. I dursn't,” gasped the child,
crouching still closer to the floor.
“Dare not! What are you afraid of, Ruth?
Is it of me?”
“No, sir, not of you.”
“Of whom then?”
“I can't tell, but I dursn't say a single word
to any body.”
“Cannot you even tell me that you are innocent
of your father's murder?” asked Brent,
in a voice of deep regret. “For on that turns
our whole future relation. If you can truthfully
deny that one accusation, you shall stay
with me, and I will protect you. If you can
not, Ruth, you must leave Wahtahree to-morrow.”
“O Mr. Brent! Leave you and Paul?
Where in all the world can I go?” asked the
child in sudden terror; and drawing herself
nearer to Brent, she clung about his knees,
her wet face imploringly raised to his. Inexpressibly
moved, the young man took her in
his arms, and seated her beside him. Then
with his arm still about her he said in a
voice of tenderest entreaty:
“Little Ruth, have faith in me. Whatever
alarms you so terribly forget it now, and only
remember that I have power to protect you,
and make your life a safe and happy one.
But you must trust me, child. I do not ask you
to break any promise, for even a bad promise
must be kept, unless the hand of God Himself
breaks it; but surely you can assure me that
you are innocent of the awful crime charged
upon you. That is all I ask.”
The child, no longer weeping, hid her face
for a moment in her hands, as if communing
with herself; then raised it, clear and luminous
with the truth, to meet Brent's tender but
penetrating look.
“I promised, and I said I hoped God would
strike me dead if I broke the promise, that I
never would say a single word about it anyway.
So can I?”
Brent sadly shook his head.
“No, child, you cannot.”
“But, Mr. Brent, look at me,” and the child,
slipping from her chair to the floor, stood upright
before him, her slender figure straightened,
her small pale face uplifted, her dark
eyes clear and fearless. “Look at me, please,
sir, and if you think I could have killed my
dear, dear father, the only one I had left to me
in all the world—O Mr. Brent! if you think I
killed him, let me go away—not to-morrow,
but now, this very minute. Let me go out
into the woods, and I don't care what becomes
of me till I die.”
And Brent laid his two hands upon her
shoulders, looked deep into her steadfast eyes,
and said:
“No, Ruth, I do not believe that you did it,
and although your oath of silence must not
be broken, I will believe the testimony of your
eyes against all the world. Nor will I
ever ask you another question upon this matter.
Rest content, and as happy as you may,
little Ruth, for I will take you safely upon
my own shoulders.”
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“How am I to trust you again?”
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“I won't be afraid any more, then,” said
Ruth quietly; and Brent smiled at the unconscious
flattery.
CHAPTER XVII. SMARTNESS AND HONOR.
But with Paul Freeman, the master of
Wahtahree dealt less lightly.
“How am I to trust you again?” asked he
of him. “You have thoroughly deceived me—
you have trapped me into connivance with
you in shielding an accused criminal from the
law—you have lied to me, for you said the
child was your brother!”
“No, sir!” interposed Paul; “I never said
downright that it was my brother, and I never
said that I had a brother at all.”
“Prevarication!” exclaimed Brent contemptuously—
“it is worse than lying, because
more cowardly. That defence is the very
worst you could have selected.”
“Well, then, sir,” replied Paul, throwing
up his head a little haughtily, “since you
think so bad of me, you had better let me go
at once. I am sure I don't want to stop with
a man that a'n't going to believe a word I say,
or trust me about his work. I think I did just
what was right by Ruth—placed as she was;
and if you don't, why, sir, we'd better part,
and the sooner the better.”
“If you think so, you had better go,” replied
Brent coldly.
“Well, I will. Ruthie and I will go along
with the men to-morrow.”
“You may, if you see fit—Ruth remains
here.”
“What, sir! you don't mean to keep her
away from me!” exclaimed Paul in a tone of
angry incredulity.
“I am going to keep her. You are free to
go or stay,” repeated Brent calmly.
“Why, sir, what good is she to you; and
what do you care for her? Maybe you think
of sending her back to Milvor to be tried for
murder.”
“What if I do, Paul Freeman? She is under
the ban of the law, and perhaps that is
my duty.”
The boy clenched his fists, and shut his
teeth hard together, looked at Brent, and
made no reply.
The latter returned the look with one of
calm superiority for a moment, and then slowly
said:
“The matter is in my hands completely,
you see, lad; and although I have no intention
of sending the child back to Milvor, and
do not believe her guilty of her father's murder,
you are none the less a law-breaker yourself
in bringing her away, and she one in
coming. I shall not send her back to Milvor,
but neither shall I permit her to leave this
place with you. I will keep her under my
own eye.”
“I don't want to be impudent, Mr. Brent,
but isn't it law-breaking for you to keep her
just as much as it was for me to take her?”
asked Paul shrewdly.
The question was one which had already
risen with troublesome persistency in Brent's
own mind, and he answered it from the lips
of another, as he had answered it to himself:
“Here, in the woods, I have a right to take
the law in some measure into my own hands. I
must decide for myself many questions which,
elsewhere, would be decided for me.”
Paul Freeman stared for a moment, considered
the question, and then said heartily:
“Well, that's so, sir; and though you won't
trust me, I'll trust you—not only on your account,
for that a'n't much, but on her account,
which is a good deal. I'll stop with you, if
you'll have me, and I'll let her stop too—
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though, of course, I could take her away from
here as easy as I could from Milvor, if I set
out to do it. I'm a Yankee boy, sir, and
they're smart, they are.”
“I was a Yankee boy myself once,” coolly
replied Brent; “but I find that truth and
honor are as effective weapons, in the long
run, as all the boasted `smartness' of our
countrymen. If I have judged her rightly,
Ruth Brewster is of my way of thinking. Let
us see.”
And Brent, who had seen the child from the
window where he stood, opened the door and
called her in. She came quickly, but timidly.
Brent took her hand, and looked her steadily
in the face.
“Ruth,” said he, “you feel the importance
of a promise, and you can keep one through
all temptation to break it. So much I know
of you. Now will you make me a promise?”
Ruth glanced aside at Paul, upward at
Brent, colored slightly, and said:
“I can't give up Paul, sir.”
“I do not ask you to give him up. The
promise I speak of is, that you will not leave
this place, either alone or with any one else,
without my knowledge and consent. Will
you sacredly promise this?”
“Yes, sir, I will.” And with instinctive
gesture, the child placed her slender, pale
hand in that of Marston Brent, and looked
confidingly into his face.
“Thank you, Ruth—that will do,” said
Brent kindly. “Please to wait for me a moment
outside the door.”
Ruth obeyed, and when they were alone,
the master calmly said:
“The child's honor is my sufficient guarantee
against any amount of `smartness' on
your part, Paul; and now we will lay aside
all weapons, and meet on the common ground
of interest in Ruth, and a mutual duty to each
other. Work with me instead of against me,
and we shall both fare the better. Is it a bargain,
my lad?”
“It's a bargain, sir,” said the boy, putting
his hand into that cordially outstretched toward
him; and as he walked slowly away into
the hemlock forest, Paul Freeman thought:
“`Honor and truth better than smartness?'
Let me see. Why not try to join them altogether?
I don't see but what they'd fay in
well enough.”
Brent, meantime, took Ruth by the hand,
and led her to Zilpah.
“Here is a little girl who wants some
clothes,” said he gayly. “How are we to
get them for her?”
“Good land! You don't say so, do you
now?” exclaimed the wily dame, apparently
overwhelmed with astonishment. “A gal!
And what's your name, dear?”
“Ruth,” replied the child timidly.
“Ruth Freeman, instead of Willy Freeman!
Now, do tell! And so you wanted to steal
off along of Paul, and thought you'd pass for
his brother instead of his sister, 'cause you
knew we couldn't think of taking a little gal
along, when we might like a boy well enough.
There, there, you needn't say a word. I understand
all about it, and I'll tell the men, so's
they needn't wonder. But how will you make
out for clothes?”
“I guess Paul has got mine along with his.
He said he'd bring them,” said Ruth shyly.
“Did? Well, that will make it all handy;
and when Mr. Brent sends to town, he can get
some factory cotton and gingham, and I'll
make you up another suit or so, and that'll be
all you'll need; and then you can help round
the house. On the whole, I'm glad you a'n't
a boy.”
“Well, is it all settled?” asked Brent, who
had retired a little from the feminine discussion
of clothes, and who now returned.
“Yes—all settled,” replied Zilpah hastily;
and the young man asked no further questions.
CHAPTER XVIII. AN EASTERN SPICE.
“That is all, Fanny; you may go and order
James to drive round to the door. Now,
Beatrice, please look at yourself in the full-length
mirror, and say that you approve my
taste.”
Miss Wansted rose from the low chair in
which she had submitted, during the last
hour, to the hands of her hair-dresser and ladies'-maid,
and obediently placed herself in
front of the mirror. Confronting her in its
depths she saw a regal figure, clothed in soft,
lustreless white silk—the hem, open neck, and
short sleeves of the dress ornamented with embroidery
of gold wrought in a classic pattern;
while the arms, the white throat, and the
bands of brown-gold hair were encircled with
chains of antique cameos, set in dead Etruscan
gold—Vezey Chappelleford's almost priceless
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[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
gift to his constant entertainer, Israel Barstow,
and transferred by him to his niece.
From this simple, severely classic, and yet
magnificent toilet, shone a face more incontestably
beautiful than that Marston Brent
had seen reflected beside his own in the mountain-pool,
where Millbrook pauses in her descent
of Moloch—more beautiful, because more
thoughtful, more assured—bearing traces of a
deeper life and larger experience.
“Well, what do you think?” demanded
Mrs. Charlton, a little impatiently.
“Why, that I ought to be named Lucia, or
Claudia, or Veronica, at the least. If Lord
Macaulay were to suddenly drop in upon our
transatlantic gathering, he would suspect me
of intriguing for a Lay of Ancient Rome in my
especial honor,” said Beatrice laughing.
“He would probably lay his ancient Rome
aside, and devote himself to youthful Columbia
in your person, my dear. Confess now
that face, figure, manner, and costume harmonize
admirably in the picture you seem so satisfied
to contemplate, and I am so delighted
to claim as my own production.”
But Beatrice was spared a reply she might
have found difficult to render both truthful
and modest, by the entrance of a servant with
a bouquet.
“For Miss Wansted, with Mr. Laforét's
compliments,” said he, presenting it.
Mrs. Charlton eagerly examined it; then
laid it somewhat contemptuously upon the
dressing-table.
“Roses, camellias, fuchsias, salvia, heath—
every thing in the hot-house—and all bundled
together without design or sentiment. You
must not touch it, Beatrice, under penalty of
spoiling your entire toilet.”
“Poor Mr. Laforét!” smiled Beatrice, rather
languidly.
“I hardly think you should carry a bouquet
at all,” continued Juanita thoughtfully. “I
do not know what would suit that dress.”
The door again swung open to admit Thomas,
carrying, with imperturbable face, another
bouquet upon his salver, and saying, in precisely
the same tone he had used before:
“For Miss Wansted, with the compliments
of a friend.”
“A friend! What friend, I wonder,” exclaimed
Beatrice, while Mrs. Charlton examined
the offering with a very different look
from that she had bestowed upon its predecessor.
“Now that is almost a miracle. I could not
have selected it better myself. Nothing but
a spike of tuberoses and a handful of Parma
violets in this porte-bouquet of Venetian filagree.
Thoroughly Italian, if not precisely Roman.
Now, this is admirable.”
“But who is the friend? I do not like accepting
or carrying anonymous porte-bouquets,
although I cannot object to the flowers,” said
Beatrice a little anxiously.
“Nonsense, my dear,” quietly replied
her chaperone. “If almost any gentleman
had offered the bauble in person, or over his
own name, you must have refused it, of
course; but dropping from Heaven, as it does,
you must accept it as a gift of Heaven—or, to
suit your ideas to your dress, as a gift of the
gods.”
“Well, then, as a gift of the gods. And
now are we ready? How nicely you are looking
yourself, Juanita. I have been so selfish,
and so—tired, I believe, that I have not looked
at you until now.”
“I do very well,” said Mrs. Charlton carelessly,
as she cast one comprehensive glance
at her own toilet of wine-colored velvet, rich
black lace, and the garnets which blazed like
red-hot coals upon her white, satiny neck and
arms, and among the abundant folds of her
blue-black hair.
“Yes, I do well enough for an old woman.
Come, here are your handkerchief, your gloves,
and this fan, dear, which I should like to give
you. I have had it for some time, but never
carried it—white silk embroidered with gold—
almost in the same pattern as your dress, you
see.”
“Admirable! How very kind of you, Juanita.
You think too much of me, and too little
of yourself,” said Beatrice, with a flush of
self-reproach; and then the two beautiful
women went together down the stairs, and
were escorted to their carriage by Mr. Barstow,
who sat smoking in his library with his
friend Chappelleford.
“Good-by, dears,” said he, as they seated
themselves with all the pleasant flutter of
silken skirts, perfumed handkerchiefs, laces,
bouquets, jewels, wraps, that attend such embarkations.
“Have a nice time, and we will
look in before you come home.”
Half an hour later, Beatrice was the centre
of a crowd of courtiers, and bearing herself
right royally among them. Not even the rivals,
who enviously watched the assumed ease
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[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
and grace of her every movement, and noted
the manner so nicely balanced between dignity
and archness, could find a flaw in either,
or could suggest a possible improvement in
person, dress, or bearing; nor could the most
critical observer detect in the style of this, the
latest “queen of society,” any trace of the
country breeding she never thought of concealing,
unless in a certain freshness and vitality
always remarked, and always celebrated
by Miss Wansted's admirers. She was not
without her weapons either, and could defend
herself upon occasion, as when Laforét, leading
her to the head of a set of Lancers, murmured
reproachfully:
“My poor flowers were not worthy to be
carried to-night, then?”
“Ah! Mr. Laforét, I have a quarrel with
you upon that subject! Which of my ill-wishers,
what woman selected that bouquet
for you to send me?”
“Ill-wishers! Woman! I beg your pardon
for echoing your words, and also for my
stupidity, but what do you mean?” asked the
unfortunate Laforét in great bewilderment.
“Why they were so magnificent, so rich
and varied in their colors, so conspicuous in
their brilliancy, so altogether admirable in
every way, that they would have utterly annihilated
the wearer. She would have become
merely the woman carrying that bouquet.
Now, what but feminine malice could have
suggested such a mode of smothering me in
honey? Confess, Mr. Laforét — tell me her
name.”
And Beatrice, flashing a bewildering smile
into her partner's face, turned to balance at
the corner with Rein, the artist, who seized
the occasion to murmur:
“If you would only sit to me in that
dress!”
“I will lend it you with the greatest pleasure,”
replied Beatrice, returning to her partner,
who began:
“No; but really were the flowers so unbecoming?”
“The flowers were magnificent. It was I
who was not equal to the occasion. Forward
with me, please.”
And Mr. Laforét finished the Lancers in a
state of mind equally balanced between doubt
and delight.
“But if I might ask, who gave you the
flowers you carry?” inquired he, escorting his
partner to her seat.
“It would be an odd question for you to ask,
or me to answer; but if you should ask, and I
should be indulgent enough to answer, I could
only say what was said to me: they are from
a friend.”
“That means any one among a hundred
men,” said Laforét.
“One among a hundred? One among a
thousand, if he were really a friend,” returned
Beatrice with a smile more bitter than gay,
and a little gesture of dismissal.
“Miss Wansted, allow me to present Mr.
Monckton, a gentleman who can give you the
latest news of the anthropophagi and King
Theodore,” said the hostess, pausing with a
gentleman in front of Beatrice.
Murmuring the conventional answer, she
looked up, and met the regards of a pair of
alert brown eyes set in a thin and deeply
bronzed face, whose claim to beauty was one
to be considered before determining.
“May I sit down, Miss Wansted? I am so
accustomed to making myself comfortable
whenever I have the opportunity.”
“Certainly; although, from what Mrs. Wesley
says of the direction of your travels, I
should not imagine comfort to have been your
principal object,” said Beatrice, quietly removing
her skirts from an ottoman beside her
chair.
“No. But like most of the good things I
have obtained in this world, it has often come
to me while I was looking for something
else. For instance, I came here to-night because
I thought I must, and — I have been
introduced to you.”
“I thought persons who travelled learned
new things,” remarked Beatrice very sweetly.
Mr. Monckton colored a little, then laughed.
“Really, Miss Wansted, I know it is rude to
be personal, but you must allow me to say I
had no idea that you would do that sort of
thing,” said he.
“What sort of thing, please?”
“The sarcastic and humiliating sort of
thing — the discovering so quickly, and telling
me so frankly, that I was talking like a
fool.”
“Not at all. I only meant that you talked
as if you supposed me one.”
“I shall never again suppose you one.”
“Again?” repeated Beatrice, with a smile of
quiet malice.
“Now, really, Miss Wansted! But I have
been so long out of society—the society of
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ladies, at least—that a good deal must be pardoned.
I have forgotten the usages of the
beau monde, you perceive.”
“And I have never learned them; so let us
lay aside all thought of them, and talk like
human beings uncorrupted by this beau monde
of which you speak. Have you really travelled
in the East?”
“From Alexandria to the Vale of Kashmeer,
and from Jaffa to Jerusalem and the
plains of Palestine,” said Monckton, smiling
frankly.
“And will you please tell me all about it?”
“All!”
“Oh! yes; for where could you stop when
once you had begun?”
“And will you give me time to tell all?”
“Begin, please.”
“Shall I tell you then, while we watch
these dancers and listen to this charming
music, of a nautch that I attended in Delhi,
when the eldest son of Rajah Ahmed Defter
Singh was married to the daughter of the
Baboo Ali Raj Malimoo?”
“Pray do. But remember, please, that I
have read the Arabian Nights and also the
Thousand and One Days.”
“I will quote neither, but tell you the truth
pur et simple. I was in Delhi —”
“Miss Wansted, I believe I have your
promise for this quadrille,” said a young gentleman,
bowing before the lady, whose smile
of acquiescence was, to say the least, a little
forced.
“It is the German, and will last all the
evening,” said she apologetically, as she rose
from Mr. Monckton's side.
“And my poor nautch story? May I come
and tell it you to-morrow?”
“Thank you,” said Beatrice, a little doubtfully.
“I think my old friend, Mr. Barstow, will
not close his door in my face. Au revoir,”
said Monckton smiling.
And Beatrice, her doubt resolved, answered
gayly:
“Au revoir then.”
CHAPTER XIX. THE BEDOUIN IN THE DESERT.
With the morrow came Mr. Monckton, and
Beatrice, somewhat to her own surprise, found
herself interested in his coming.
“You will see him, June, will you not?
asked she of Mrs. Charlton, who was doing
Sultana in a cashmere wrapper, with her slippered
feet curled under her, upon the lounge
in Miss Wansted's sitting-room.
“Must I? For whom did he ask, Thomas?”
“He is with Mr. Barstow, ma'am, and Mr.
Barstow told me to speak to the ladies.”
“Oh! well; if your uncle is down-stairs,
there is no need of my going—and really I am
so comfortable. Tell him, please, Trix, that I
am used up with last evening's gayeties—that
is, if he inquires.” And Mrs. Charlton, with a
luxurious sigh, sank back among her cushions,
as Beatrice, with a little smile upon her lips,
went down-stairs, and glided into the drawing-room
with the stately and yet graceful motion
characteristic of her.
Monckton stood, hat and cane in hand,
looking at a picture upon the wall. It was
an odd bit, the freak of some dreamy artist,
starving with cold in his barren garret, perhaps,
and mocking the sufferings of his body
with the illimitable fancies of his soul. At
least, that was the theory Beatrice had framed
about this sketch, and for the sake of the
theory, had asked her uncle to buy it.
An immense level plain—Sahara perhaps—
stretching away in such admirable perspective
that the eye returned from seeking the vanishing-point,
weary and strained—a coppery
sky arching the yellow sand, with no cloud
upon it except the faint white wreaths so expressive
of intense heat—the last faint breath
of earth, as they seem, sent up in an expiring
prayer to heaven.
In the midst of this plain, a fallen camel,
lying with outstretched neck, gaping mouth,
and staring eyeballs, the limbs slightly convulsed
in dying agony, and standing upon his
prostrate body a solitary Arab, shading his
eyes with his hand, and searching the horizon
for the help that we read in the whole tone of
the piece was not to come.
One long shadow of man and beast stretched
far toward the West, and faded into the sands
by fine gradations of color.
That was all; and yet Miss Wansted had
gazed for an hour at that picture, and turned
away unsatisfied.
“Good-morning, Mr. Monckton,” said she
now. “Do you remember the scene?”
“I beg your pardon—good-morning,” said
the traveller, cordially extending his hand.
“Yes, I remember the scene.”
“You remember it!”
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“Yes, or rather I remember as much of it
as human eye ever saw.”
“Oh! what do you mean? Pray tell me all
about it.”
And Beatrice, with a look of excited interest,
rare enough upon her statuesque features,
sank into a seat, and motioned her guest to
another, her eyes continuing the eager inquiry
of her lips.
Monckton smiled, well pleased.
“It is a fortunate chance for me to have noticed
this picture this morning, since it gives
me an opportunity of gratifying you,” said he,
so simply that the words rang true, and not
with the hollow tinkle of flattery.
“It was three years ago,” pursued the traveller,
“that I, journeying from Cairo to Damascus,
chose to pursue the old desert route, and
in the old desert fashion; for to my mind, this
invasion of the Orient by steam, and this erection
of railway stations and free-lunch booths
within the shadow of the Pyramids, and
under the very eyes of the Sphinx, is a sacrilege
likely enough to bring back old Cheops
to avenge it; and one looks to see each grain
of sand become a dusky warrior, armed with
bow and spear, and hungry for the slaughter.
At any rate, I preferred the camels and the
caravan, and so did Floyd, a young artist
whom I found hanging about Cairo, full of
fancies and inspiration, and singularly empty
of every thing else. Finding that he was
eager to get to Damascus, and utterly devoid
of means, I offered him an opportunity, and we
set out.”
“How grateful he must have felt to you!”
said Beatrice softly, while her shining eyes
spoke sweet applause of the generous deed.
But Monckton laughed.
“Grateful!” echoed he. “Pardon me, Miss
Wansted, but that remark speaks better for
your heart than your experience. No man is
grateful for having what he fancies his rights
offered him as an alms, and I saved myself
from Floyd's enmity only by asking him to
come along as a protector and reliable companion,
for I had no white man with me then.
As for the camels and provisions, they were
already engaged, and his presence made no
difference, which view of the case he obligingly
accepted, and consented to oblige me.
“Four days out of Cairo, Floyd and I, indulging
in an eccentric tour around an oasis,
missed our company just at nightfall, and
were forced to encamp upon the sand. Early
in the morning, we remounted, and just before
falling in with our men, we came upon that
scene—with a difference, for the poor Bedouin
lay with his head upon his camel's neck, as
dead as he. The camel, we noticed, had been
wounded in the leg, probably in some desert
fray, and had been unable to bring his master
to the journey's end before both were exhausted
and fell, almost within sight of harbor.
Floyd seemed very much impressed, and
lingered longer than I liked, examining now
the group, now the surrounding scene, with a
dreamy look in his eyes that I was sure meant
picture. At last he got out his sketch-book,
and in half a dozen strokes caught the spirit
of the whole thing. Just then our fellows came
up; they had missed us in the dark, and were
now retracing their steps to look for us.
They made very light of their fallen countryman,
and even refused to bury him, saying—
as I suppose truly—that if they did take the
trouble, the wind or the jackals would undo
their labor before another day. So we rode
on, and left them as they lay.
“A year later, a package reached me in
Rome charged with so much expressage that
it nearly ruined me. Within was this picture,
and a note from Floyd, who said that he sent it
me as a remembrance of our pleasant journey
across the desert. Of course I knew that it
meant camel hire and hard biscuit; but if it
soothed his feelings to put it in the way he
did, it could not injure mine to accept both his
picture and his definition of its meaning, as I
did. Having no provision for picture transportation,
however, I gave it soon after to a
man who seemed to fancy it excessively, but
who has, it appears, parted with it for filthy
lucre. Do you know where Mr. Barstow
found it?”
“At an auction sale of paintings in New-York.
He asked Mrs. Charlton and me to go
and look at them, and mark in the catalogue
what we should like. I selected this,” said
Beatrice, looking with a new interest at the
desert scene.
“But,” resumed she presently, feeling a
little nervously that Mr. Monckton's eyes were
as earnestly fixed upon her face as hers upon
the picture—“but I wonder that you did not
keep it for yourself.”
“What should I do with it?”
“Bring it home with you when you came.”
Monckton smiled sadly.
“Miss Wansted, you speak in a language I
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cannot understand. I have no home. I have
never known one. My childhood was passed
at school, my youth at foreign colleges; my
manhood has been as nomadic and as ignorant
of the sweet influences of home as that of
the Bedouin, whose death may but foreshadow
mine.”
And as the traveller fixed his eyes upon the
picture, a softness rarely seen in those piercing
orbs crossed their depths, and lent a strange
charm to the thin, brown face most persons
found so hard and unemotional.
The next moment he turned sharply, and
met the full, pitying gaze of those other eyes
whose hazel beauty he had already confessed.
“You are very good, Miss Wansted,” said
he, answering the unspoken sympathy of that
look. “But I should beg your pardon for my
bad taste. This is but another proof of what
I told you last night, that I have become a
mere uncivilized savage, unfit for society, and
unworthy of the patience you have vouchsafed
me.”
“Last night I proposed that we should drop
the beau monde, and talk like simply a man
and woman,” said Beatrice softly.
Monckton shot a keen glance at her face.
He found it slightly flushed, smiling, and
guileless as water, and he leaned toward it
eagerly.
“Miss Wansted you tempt me strangely,”
said he.
“In what manner?” asked Beatrice, smiling
still.
“To believe in you, to feel again that human
faith and interest which I had thought dried
out of my life forever. Miss Wansted, if this
is folly, if it is unconventional, inadmissible
perhaps, you should blame yourself. You
bid me with those candid eyes to be natural,
to speak from the heart out, and I speak as I
have not spoken for years, as I thought never
to speak again. Do you pardon me?”
“For what? Obedience?” asked Beatrice,
the subtle smile of power in her eyes.
“Yes,” said Monckton, steadily regarding
her. “I have been for many years out of the
artificial and hollow world we call society,
but I do not think I have lost the power of
discriminating between a fresh and ardent
nature, as yet uncorrupted and untrammelled
by that world, and—a finished coquette.”
“Is it so difficult to distinguish between the
two?” asked Beatrice.
“More difficult than to determine between
a gem of the Palais Royal and a genuine
diamond,” said Monckton. “And yet I am
sure that I am not mistaken.”
“And if you are not?” asked Beatrice.
“If I am not, I should dare to hope that
I might once more possess a friend; that
sympathy and confidence and the honest
speech of heart to heart were not yet deadletter
phrases for me, and that one spot of
earth, one human being, might become to me
of more importance than another. Miss Wansted,
it is for you to rebuke, if you will, this
last and wildest folly of a life outwardly prosperous,
and inwardly blank and desolate as
that Sahara. Do you find my presumption
something too monstrous for reproof?”
“Why should I, Mr. Monckton? I urged
you to throw aside the idea of etiquette, and
speak to me as honest man to honest woman.
You have done so, and I thank you. After
that, if you find my sympathy in the homeless
and friendless life you describe of any value,
it is yours; if you care to try whether that
sympathy and our mutual liking can become
a friendship, I will help you; and if it is so, you
will be no better pleased than I, for I too am
lonely, and sometimes heart-sick, and I too
need a friend.”
Her voice softened and faltered upon the
last words, and Monckton looked at her as
shrewdly and more kindly than Juanita Charlton
had done in first espying her heart-wound.
Past masters both, in this world's lore, they
had both found it quickly enough, and viewed
it, the one with the indulgent and delicate
pity of man for woman, the other with the
scornful and inquisitive pity of woman for
woman.
“Then, Heaven helping us, we two are to
become friends,” said Monckton, rising and
offering his hand.
“Yes,” replied Beatrice, laying hers in it
with a confiding smile.
CHAPTER XX. A DINNER-PARTY.
Mr. Chappelleford was not in a goodhumor—
in fact, he was in a very bad one,
and developed it in so many and such decided
forms, that even his patient friend, Israel
Barstow, was nearly out of patience with him,
and Miss Wansted entirely so. As for Mr.
Monckton, who made the fifth at Mr. Barstow's
little dinner-party, he received the attacks,
covert or open, of his fellow-guest much as he
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would have done those of an ill-conditioned
family dog—as something to be courteously
tolerated on account of its proprietors, so
long as it remained in their presence; but with
a reserved right upon the part of the sufferer
in favor of vengeance at the earliest possible
opportunity.
Mrs. Charlton, the remaining guest, looked
on with an air of impartial and cynical amusement
at her uncle's ill-humor, her host's uneasiness,
Beatrice's indignation, and Mr.
Monckton's patient endurance.
“So, Livingstone has turned up all right,”
said Mr. Barstow, casting about for a remark
adapted to the tone of his company, and not
likely to provoke discussion.
“Who's Livingstone?” inquired Mr. Chappelleford,
in a tone of contemptuous indifference.
“Livingstone! why — ah — why, of course
you know whom I mean,” stammered the host,
already doubtful of his own authenticity.
“There was a person of that name who
went peddling beads and calico-aprons among
the negroes—do you refer to him?”
“Why, he's the great African traveller of
course—every one acknowledges that, don't
they?” insisted Mr. Barstow, growing a little
warm.
“Great! Well, I don't know. Little men
might find him so,” replied the cynic.
“The title of the great African traveller
should, I think, be given rather to Speke, for
he has solved the question of centuries as to
the source of the Nile, and penetrated farther
than any man before him into the interior of
Africa,” said Monckton quietly.
“Solved the question of the source of the
Nile? So have a dozen adventurers before
him, and so will a dozen after, Mr. Monckton.
Who is to say that this Lake Victoria N'yanza
is more stationary or reliable than other African
water-holes and rain-puddles? The Nile
may rise there to-day and somewhere else to-morrow,
and probably does, even granting—
which is a great deal to grant—that this man—
Paddleford, Livingstone, Speke—whatever his
name is—has been there at all, or knows any
thing about the matter. As for penetrating
into the interior of Africa, what does that
amount to? The negroes away from the
coast wear bones in their noses, and those on
the coast wear oyster-shells; the first breech
themselves with cocoa-cloth, and the last with
kelp-leaves: what difference does it make to
us which is which? Of course one sees why
this insatiate trader risked his life, and those
of the fools who accompanied him, by his explorations.
The remoter the savage from civilization,
the more value he attaches to beads,
and the more gold-dust he is willing to pay
for them.”
“But then it makes us, who are so civilized,
and none of us at all like savages, appreciate
our own advantages so much the more highly,
to hear of these poor, ignorant, rude creatures,
who know no better than to talk and behave
as they do,” said Beatrice, whose burning
cheeks and sparkling eyes strongly belied the
unconscious and naïve tone she attempted.
Mr Chappelleford shot a keen glance in her
direction from beneath the gray pent-house
of his brows.
“I read a pretty story that would please a
young lady, I should think, in one of these
African books,” said he. “The story of a male
humming - bird attacked and nearly demolished
by a bigger bird, when, just as the humming-bird
was about to succumb, his mate,
who had watched the contest from her nest,
dashed down into the face and eyes of the intruder
and beat him off—by sheer audacity, as
you may say.”
“Audacious courage may be admired, but
audacious insolence —” began Beatrice; but
her trembling voice was covered by Mrs.
Charlton's full, round tones:
“That reminds me, Mr. Barstow, of the
loveliest thing I ever saw. It was a humming-bird
worn as an ornament to the hair
by a lady at Mrs. Lee's, last night, and composed
entirely of gems. You never saw any
thing so magnificent, and I resolved to tell
you of it, because you admire jewels so much.”
“Yes, I do, and I should like, of all things,
to see this one. Do you suppose another is to
be found for sale?”
“Oh! dear, no. This was Parisian, and, I
presume, made to order. It must have cost a
fortune,” said Mrs. Charlton, glancing at the
faces of her companions, and wondering
whether the diversion had been effectual.
“I wish you would write as good a description
of it as possible for me,” said Mr. Barstow
thoughtfully.
Mrs. Charlton laughed.
“Oh! I could not let Beatrice wear it if you
had it made,” said she; “it would be entirely
inharmonious with her style; and, you know,
she is in my hands this year.”
“Æsop has a fable of a fox, who took charge
of a farmer's poultry-yard, and, strange to say,
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found his own advantage in the position,” remarked
Mr. Chappelleford.
Juanita softly laughed and turned to
Monckton.
“You must have seen some splendid jewels
in the East, Mr. Monckton,” said she, inquiringly.
“Yes; I was just thinking of a set of turquoise
shown me at Delhi. They would have
suited Miss Wansted admirably.”
“I have seen turquoise from Delhi of remarkable
beauty. How were these set?”
asked Mrs. Charlton.
“Very elegantly with pearls. There was a
crescent for the hair, a chain of stars for the
throat, and bracelets with pendent ornaments
of gold in various Oriental devices. They
were very handsome.”
“I should think so. Now, Mr. Barstow,
where is your express for Delhi?” asked
Juanita, with a little laugh.
“I wish I knew how to send there, and I
would do it in a minute,” said the merchant,
smiling meaningly upon his niece, whose
cheeks were slowly regaining their natural
color.
Mr. Monckton unclosed his lips as if to
speak, shut them again, and smiled a little.
Mrs. Charlton, whose neighbor he was, also
smiled and whispered:
“You have them, and will offer them to—”
“My fiancée,” murmured the traveller in
reply; and Juanita looked thoughtfully at
Beatrice.
“The jewels of India are no more than traditions
now,” said Chappelleford dreamily.
“When one reads of Shah Jehan's peacock
throne, six feet long and four broad, one solid
block of gold, surmounted by a canopy supported
upon twelve pillars, all of the same
metal, and all inlaid with the most marvellous
of Oriental gems, while at the back stood the
golden peacocks, their fans blazing with
jewels worth a monarch's ransom, and remembers
that this was but an item—an adjunct
of the Mogul's imperial state—then we
look with somewhat of impatience upon the
trinkets of the modern Chandee Chok.”
“Is that story about the throne literally
true, Chappelleford?” asked Mr. Barstow
breathlessly.
“It is as literal as Israel Barstow himself,”
replied the philosopher.
“And what might such a thing be worth in
money? Do any of your books tell that?”
“Oh! yes. It was seen by one Tavernier,
a jeweller, who visited Delhi, in the way of
trade, and who estimated it professionally at a
sum about equivalent to thirty millions of dollars.
It was made by a Frenchman, too, one
Austin, of Bordeaux—a fellow who, obliged to
leave his country to save his neck, took refuge
in the domain of the Grand Mogul, and turned
his talents to account by decorating the imperial
palace. The ceiling of the throne-chamber,
also his handiwork, was of gold and silver
filagree, and round the cornice ran an inscription,
in golden letters, to this effect:
`If there be a paradise on earth, it is here—it is here!'
That was what Shah Jehan had to say for
himself, and he had hardly seen the golden lie
put in its place, when his four rebellious sons
clapped him into prison in the fortress of Agra,
and kept him there until he died. It took
ten years to kill him, however, and he kept
some of his best jewels until the last. Aurungzebe,
the third son and successful usurper,
used to send polite messages to his
papa, inquiring the state of his health, and
asking if he had not better give up the care
and responsibility of those jewels to his affectionate
son and successor. Old Shah Jehan
answered in the same strain until he got
tired of it, and then he sent word that he
should never give up the jewels while he
lived, and that if any attempt was made to
take them by force, he would pound them to
atoms with a big hammer, which he kept in
readiness. After that they let him alone.”
“But what became of the peacock throne,
and where is it now?” asked Mr. Barstow.
“About a century after Shah Jehan's deposition,”
said the scholar, leaning his elbow
upon the table, and shading his eyes with his
hand, “Nadur Shah, a Persian soldier-king,
invaded India, conquered Delhi, and murdered
Mohummud Shah, the emperor of the day, in
spite of the most abject submission and the
most piteous entreaties on the part of that unhappy
prince. Then he gave up the city of
Delhi to his soldiers for rapine and pillage, without
restraint, and the historians say that the
aqueduct through the middle of the Chandee
Chok, or principal street of Delhi, ran red
with the blood of her slaughtered inhabitants.
Six weeks later, Nadur Shah returned home,
carrying with him the peacock throne, all the
imperial jewels, and a countless treasure beside.
That was the death-blow of the Mogul
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[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
empire; and next came the English, ready,
ghoul-like, to devour the poor remains of the
dead sovereignty.”
“Was it not Shah Jehan who built the Taj
at Agra, of which you were telling me the
other night?” asked Beatrice, over whose
mood a story exercised as mollifying an influence
as over that of Schariar himself; nor was
this circumstance unknown to Mr. Chappelleford,
who now answered courteously:
“Yes, in honor of his wife, Moomtaz-ee-Mahal,
the ornament of the Harem, and niece
of the more celebrated Noor-Mahal, wife of
Jehan-geer.”
“I saw the Taj while I was in India, and it
is really a marvellous structure. Shah Jehan
himself is buried there, they tell me,” said
Monckton.
“Yes; after he was dead, his son did not
know what else to do with him, and so tucked
him in beside poor Moomtaz, who thought, I
suppose, that she might at least have her
tomb to herself; but Aurungzebe was of an
economical turn of mind, in all but his own
pleasures, and by making room for papa in
the Taj, he gave him a magnificent mausoleum,
without its costing the reigning sovereign
a single rupee. Shrewd fellow, Aurungzebe,”
said the philosopher, obeying the signal
to rise from the table.
CHAPTER XXI. THE AMULET.
“Step into the library a moment, if you
please, Miss Wansted,” said Mr. Chappelleford,
as, dinner over, the guests went up-stairs
together. “I brought that proof-engraving
of which I was speaking to show to you, and
left it in here. Will you look at it?”
“Certainly.” said Beatrice, still a little
coldly. “But why not take it into the drawing-room,
and let our friends see it also?”
“Because I brought it for you, and not for
your `friends,' as you call them.”
“I said our friends,” replied Beatrice
smiling.
“None for me, thank you,” replied the
philosopher. “It is some years since I indulged
in that delusion.”
“What—of friendship?”
“Exactly. It is one of the dreams of youth,
and as impossible to retain as your milk-teeth.
There, is not that a fine head?”
“Admirable. But about friendship—I wish
you would not say such things,” said Beatrice,
only glancing at the engraving, and fixing her
wistful eyes upon the shrewd, sad face of the
philosopher.
“Why do you wish so?”
“Because you know so much, and are so
often right when we differ, that it terrifies me
to have you assert what I cannot bear to believe
true.”
“Then you have a particular fancy for this
particular delusion?” asked Mr. Chappelleford,
not unkindly.
“Fancy! I consider friendship one of the
holiest and sweetest of realities, and it is because
I do not wish to have my faith disturbed
that I dread to hear you speak
of it.”
“Like the man falling asleep at low-water
mark, who begs his companions not to disturb
his nap.”
“But even if friendship is a dream, it will
not hurt me to believe in it. There is no
approaching destruction like that threatening
the sleeper you speak of,” pleaded Beatrice.
“Which is worse, destruction of your body
or destruction of your interest in keeping it
alive?” asked Chappelleford. “Believe in a
man, and after he has deceived you, or after
you have proved him a fool, you despise or
hate all men on his account. Avoid friendship,
that you may continue to care for mankind.
If you wish to value the species,
don't examine specimens—familiarity breeds
contempt.”
“O Mr. Chappelleford! yours is a very
dreary faith!” exclaimed Beatrice bitterly.
“My dear young lady, when you come to
my time of life, it will be yours as well. I remember
the period when I too believed in all
these pretty toys of friendship, confidence,
mutual reliance, and the rest, and the waking
from my dream was like the revivification of a
drowned man, who is roused from the sweet
visions that are death to the keen torture that
is life.”
“And what comes afterward?” asked Beatrice
slowly.
“Indifference,” replied the philosopher
drearily. “Things take the place of men,
theories of sentiment, speculations of passion.
You become an observer instead of an
actor—a thinker instead of a puppet.”
“And then do you become happy?” asked
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the young girl slowly wringing her hands
together.
“Happy!” echoed the philosopher scornfully.
“What is the need of that? Content
yourself with your position as an atom in
creation, and do not expect the universe to be
delayed, or its eternal order to be disturbed,
because you do not like travelling so fast, or
because some other atom becomes divided
from you. Nothing is more puerile than this
outcry for happiness in which young persons
constantly indulge. Make yourself happy, if
you choose, with what you have, or, if you
prefer, go unhappy, but expect nothing better
than what chances to befall you, for you will
not get it. And, after all, happiness is principally
a question of digestion, and your best
friend is a pill-box.”
“I do not like you in this mood, Mr.
Chappelleford, and I am going to the drawing-room,”
said Beatrice, turning toward the
door.
The cynic smiled grimly, and followed her
across the hall. In the open doorway of the
drawing-room he suddenly laid a hand upon
her arm, and drew her slightly back.
“Look!” whispered he. “There are two of
the friends whom you trust the most, and
who have no secrets from you, as you fancy.”
Half startled, half indignant, Beatrice followed
the direction of his eyes, and saw Mrs
Charlton standing with Mr. Monckton in the
recess of a bay-window at the farther end of
the room. She, with her face buried in her
hands, appeared to be weeping bitterly, and
he, stooping toward her, was talking in a low
voice, full, as the accents betrayed, of tender
meaning. As Beatrice looked, he extended
his hand with something in it toward the
weeping woman, who seized and kissed it
passionately. Then she made some request,
in a voice broken with sobs, and Monckton,
leaning over her, clasped the bauble he held
about her neck. Seizing it in both hands,
Juanita kissed it again and again, while
Monckton leaned caressingly over her.
“No secrets from you, you know,” whispered
Mr. Chappelleford mockingly.
And Beatrice angrily replied:
“At least you shall not make a spy of me,”
and walked openly into the room.
As she approached the window, Monckton
came forward, and with a skilful remark,
drew her to the piano where lay some new
music, while Juanita made her escape through
a door at the farther end of the room. Beatrice
understood the manœuvre, and smiled
sadly. For a moment she considered within
herself, and then fixing her eyes upon Monckton's
face, quietly asked:
“Of what were you and Juanita talking
when I came in?”
“Oh! nothing much. I was speaking of
Venice, I believe,” said the traveller; and
Beatrice turned away from him without a
word.
In a few moments, Mrs. Charlton reëntered
the room, smiling and calm as usual; and
Beatrice, sitting in a shaded corner of the
sofa, a fire-screen before her eyes, looked on
in silent amazement while she placed herself
at the piano, selected one of the new pieces
offered by Mr. Monckton, and played it through
with a faultless brilliancy, proving the closest
attention and real interest in the subject before
her.
Mr. Chappelleford, who, instead of returning
to the library with his host, as was his
usual fashion, had followed Beatrice into the
drawing-room, now took a seat upon the sofa
beside her.
“This cannel-coal makes a very pretty
fire,” remarked he; but Beatrice did not hear
him.
“You were telling me that you wanted a
new study yesterday,” said he again. “You
seem to have found one. How do you like
it?”
The girl turned her eyes upon him, dark
and piteous with anguish.
“Do not mock me,” said she pleadingly.
“Can it be that those two have deceived me?”
“In what?”
“Why, they both seemed so open and so
trustful with me. He said I was his friend
and knew all his life; and she—she always
spoke of him as a stranger. And now what
does it mean?”
“Poor child, my warning was too late,” said
the philosopher pitifully. “You have trusted,
and you have been deceived—that is all—only
the old story once more. I do not know the
precise meaning of what we saw, but I do
know that Juanita Charlton is a coquette,
trained and practised from her earliest youth.
I know that she has risked her own reputation
and the happiness of others in more than
one folly, and I know that she sincerely wishes
to marry any one with money and position to
render her independent of me; for which desire
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I do not blame her in the least. As for Mr.
Monckton, I only know that he is—a man.”
“But when I spoke to him just now he told
me— I am sure it could not have been
true,” murmured Beatrice.
“It was what you should have expected.
Your question was a piece of Quixotic daring.
Not one man in a thousand could or should
have answered you truly.”
“What! you defend a lie?”
“For Mr. Monckton in that situation—yes.
It was a necessary part of his system.”
“What is that system?” asked Beatrice
faintly.
“The system of polite, social intercourse,”
replied the philosopher.
“What would you have done in his place?”
“I cannot imagine myself in his place; but
had I been, I suppose I should have told you
I did not choose to answer your question.
That would have been bearish and brutal, and
that isn't Mr. Monckton's manner of doing
things.”
“But why not the truth?”
“What! that I was making love to another
woman! Pardon me, Miss Wansted, but you
suggest a stupidity.”
“Better that than a lie.”
“That depends upon who has the choice to
make,” said the philosopher, rising and strolling
toward the piano, where he began to
speak to his niece in so confidential a tone
that Mr. Monckton withdrew, and after a little
uneasy wandering, seated himself near Beatrice,
who met his attempts at conversation
with cold reserve—only tempered by remembrance
of her position as hostess. Monckton
felt it, and determined to bring the matter to
an issue.
“You are offended with me in some manner.
What is it?” asked he. “Remember
that we are friends.”
“How long since we became friends—that
is, since I told you that I considered you one?”
asked Beatrice.
“Nearly four months—four very happy
months to me,” said Monckton earnestly.
“Well, in all that four months I have never
deceived you in a single point. There are
passages in my life which I have not told you,
because I tell them to no one; but every thing
that has occurred to me since you knew me, I
have told you with perfect unreserve, and I have
never answered one of your questions with
less than entire truth. Do you believe this?”
“I believe it most fully, Beatrice.”
“And can you say as much upon your
part?” asked Beatrice, fixing her eyes keenly
upon him.
Monckton hesitated.
“Do your ideas of friendship demand as
much as this?” asked he.
“Yes; every thing or nothing,” replied
Beatrice.
“There is only one relation of life in which
that can be expected,” said Monckton, in a
still lower voice than that he had already used.
“No relation is to me more sacred than a
professed and accepted friendship—no relation
demands stricter honor or more inviolable
confidence,” said Beatrice severely.
“I know what you mean, Beatrice,” said
Monckton, after a silent but obvious struggle;
“and I cannot clear myself at present from
your imputation of insincerity. I confess
that I told you an untruth just now, when
you asked me, in Mr. Chappelleford's hearing,
of what I had been talking with Mrs. Charlton;
but my reply was a mere form, as I
wished you to perceive. I could not answer
you, and I could not leave you unanswered.
I was obliged to speak, and I replied as a lady
does who sends word that she is not at home
when she means she cannot see company.
Nor can I very clearly explain myself, nor—”
“It is quite unnecessary that you should do
so at all, Mr. Monckton. You confess to having
told me one untruth this evening; and although
you defend your course in some remarkable
manner, I am not enough of a sophist
to follow you. Let us drop the subject
at once and forever; and I will now wish you
good-evening, and leave you to complete your
explanation to Mrs. Charlton, who will probably
understand it better than I can.”
“Before retiring, please to receive my
adieux, as I am on the point of leaving.
Good-evening, Miss Wansted, and may our
next interview find you less severely and more
reasonably inclined. Good-evening, Mrs.
Charlton—Mr. Chappelleford. May I trouble
you, Mrs. Charlton, to say good-evening for me
to Mr. Barstow?”
And with a formal bow to every one, he
was gone; and Beatrice, honestly indignant
though she felt, was yet conscious of a heavy
pain at her heart in feeling that he had gone
in anger.
Mr. Chappelleford soon took his leave; and
the two women, left alone together, eyed each
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The Amulet
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other in the manner of familiar friends between
whom lies an unspoken secret. Suddenly
Juanita approached the sofa, where
Beatrice still sat, and crouching upon the hassock
at her feet, held up by its chain the glittering
toy hanging about her neck.
“See what Mr. Monckton gave me just
now. It is an Eastern amulet, and was sent
to me by a friend whom Mr. Monckton met
abroad,” said she.
“And he has never given it to you until to-night?”
asked Beatrice incredulously.
“No, he could not. I cannot tell you about
it just now.”
“There is no need, Juanita. It is no affair
of mine; and these answers of form, as Mr.
Monckton calls them, are very distasteful to
me. You need not have tried to explain at
all.” And Beatrice, her heart full of bitterness
and her eyes of tears, rose, and hastily
left the room.
Mrs. Charlton rose also, and replacing the
amulet in her bosom, muttered:
“Poor child!—poor, jealous baby—striking
at the hand that tries to soothe you. I am sure
it was very good of me to try to explain, and
no fault if she would not listen; and yet I am
sorry to break off that friendship. But, O
my heart! my heart! what are all these childish
troubles to your great anguish? Now, at
least, I can be alone.”
And with hurried, yet trembling steps,
Juanita fled to her own chamber, and locked
herself into it alone.
CHAPTER XXII. A LETTER FROM AUNT RACHEL.
“My Dear Niece Beatrice: It is a long time
since we heard any thing from you, and I trust that
both you and brother Israel are in good health
and prospered in your undertakings. We are all
in the enjoyment of our usual health, except your
grandmother, who has an attack of rheumatism,
from standing at the porch-door talking to Jacob,
our hired man, about the new calf. This calf is
the daughter of Polly, the red and white heifer
that you liked so well and dressed with a garland
of wild flowers, which she pulled off and eat up.
That was last Independence-day, you remember, and
you got mostly blue flowers, because, you said, she
must be red, blue, and white. The new calf is very
pretty, and we think of raising it; but we shall not
name it until you come home, as you may have a
choice in the matter. Grandfather is very well, considering,
and often speaks of you. He says he wants
to see you very much, and hopes you will not have
grown out of knowledge. He forgets, being old, that
you are grown up already, and will not change outwardly
any more until you begin to grow old, which I
suppose will not be yet.
“Nancy is well, I suppose, but she tires me very
much through forgetting what I tell her. Yesterday
she set a flat dish under the churn-stand, pulled out
the plug and let the buttermilk run, and then forgot to
stop it until it had flashed out of the dish all over the
floor. Then she forgets to make grandma's farina for
breakfast until I go out and do it, and that disturbs
grandma very much. But we all have our trials, and I
know these are not as great as those some are called to
bear.
“There is no news in Milvor, except that Joachim
Brewster and Semanthy Brewster are married, which
many of us think a burning shame—not but what it is
better than some other ways of living which I will not
allude to. Last month they found the bones of poor
little Ruthie in Black Briar Pool, with the remains of
her dress and shoes still on her. The body had drifted
under the bank where it shelves over, and lay hid among
the weeds. It was Joachim found it, going fishing,
and a good many knew the piece of calico clinging to
the poor arm-bones. It all seems straight enough, and
they had a funeral, and a coroner's inquest, and it was
put down in the town records that it was Ruth Brewster
that died; but somehow my mind misgives me that
it is not all exactly right. I am sure I do not know
how it can be wrong, but I would not trust Semanthy
Brewster with a dish of apple-parings if I was particular
the pig should get them; and as for Joachim, he
never had much force anyway, and I guess she trains
him round pretty much as she has a mind to.
“I do not know of any more news, my dear niece,
except some that I suppose will surprise you a good
deal—and that is, that I have concluded to be married
to Wyman Bliss, and we shall have the wedding next
fourth of March, the same day that the new President
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begins to live in the White House, and it seems a sort
of date to start from. I hope, my dear niece, that you
will not feel that I am doing any thing unbecoming in
a maiden lady who is no longer young; but it seemed
to me as good as any thing that could be done, for
your grandfather is getting so old it seems as if there
ought to be some other man round the house, and Wyman,
being a doctor, makes it real comfortable in case
of sudden sickness or any thing happening unexpectedly.
“Grandfather and grandmother seem very well
pleased with the arrangement, and grandfather is going
to give up the farm to us—which, I suppose, means
to me, for the doctor has his hands full with his profession—
as is no wonder when you consider that there
is not so good a doctor in the country. But though we
take the farm now, you need not be afraid, my dear
niece, that you are to be cheated out of your rights, or
Israel either, as I shall explain to him when I see him,
which I hope will be soon, for neither Wyman nor I
would do any thing unfair or try to get the upper hand,
especially when you know, Trix, that you've always
been like a child—I will not say to me, being a maiden
lady, but in the house, and we all take an interest in
you just as we always did. I have begun to get ready
somewhat, but I should be glad of a little of your taste
about my new gown—I refer to the one I shall be married
in, and also to know whether I had better wear a
bonnet; for as for flowers on my head, or a veil, or any
such nonsense, I must say I should not consider it respectable.
Also, grandmamma would like a new blonde
cap, she says, and perhaps you will buy the material
for her. Also for the dress, for which I enclose the
money, twenty dollars. It is a large sum for one dress,
but I want it good and handsome, and something that
will be serviceable. I should say a cinnamon brown
bearing on a chocolate would be a good color, but perhaps
a gray would be better. For service, I should prefer
a black silk, but I suppose that would not be considered
proper for a bride—that is, for a person going
to be married.
“But, above all things, my dear Trix, I want to see
you. We shall have a quilting-bee here all day Thursday
of next week, and I wish you could make it so as
to be at home. To-day is Tuesday; so that gives you
ten days to say good-by in, and to buy the lace for
grandmother and the other that I mentioned.
“Give my love to your uncle, and, if you please, you
can mention what I say.
“Your affectionate aunt,
“Rachel M. Barstow.”
With this letter in her hand, and a smile
upon her lips, Beatrice sought her uncle in his
dressing-room, and tapping gently at the door,
was bidden to enter. Obeying, she started
back in some surprise—hardly recognizing her
relative beneath the mask of soap-suds with
which his manly visage was adorned.
“The deuce! Is it you, Trix? I thought
it was the fellow with my boots. But come
in, little girl—come in, if you're not afraid to.
I'm almost through dressing, and then I must
hurry off down-town; so you might as well
say what you have to say here as anywhere.
You'd like a little money, eh? See how sharp
your old uncle is at guessing.”
“No, indeed, uncle; I have not half spent
what you gave me last time. You are so
generous I never have the opportunity to ask
for money. I came this time to give you
some news.”
“What! you're not going to be married?”
asked Mr. Barstow, turning from the glass,
razor in hand, and contemplating his niece
with comic dismay.
“Oh! no, uncle, I have no thoughts of it;
but I will read you Aunt Rachel's letter, and
then you will know all about it.”
“Rachel! The old folks aren't dead! No—
you wouldn't look so smiling. Well, there!
I am a fool to keep guessing, when, if I hold
my tongue, I shall know all about it; so, go
ahead, Trix.”
And Mr. Barstow effectually sealed his own
lips with a fresh brushful of lather, while his
niece, perching herself upon the edge of the
writing-table which adorned the merchant's
dressing-room, read the letter through without
interruption. As she finished, Mr. Barstow's
face issued from the napkin, which finished
his tonsorial operations, rubicund, smiling,
and smooth as a new-shaven lawn.
“The jolly old sister going to get married
at last!” exclaimed he. “Well, if that isn't
the last dodge! And Wyman Bliss, too!
Why, I knew him when he was a boy, and
he's always been hanging round after Rachel
ever since. Well, we must go to the wedding,
and have a rousing good time, and we'll make
them some presents. What do you say to a
dinner-service of plate with the coat-of-arms,
and all just as we have here at home?”
“I am afraid they would never use it, uncle,”
replied Beatrice gently. “But there are a
great many things that would be delightful
to give them. Aunt Rachel has sent to me to
buy her wedding-dress, you know—”
“And sent twenty dollars to pay for it! Ha,
ha!” laughed Mr. Barstow. “Why, a first-rate
silk gown, fit for a—`a person that is going
to be married'—ha, ha!—would cost a
hundred, wouldn't it?”
“The silk itself would cost about fifty, and
the trimming as much as any one chose to
give,” said Trix.
“Well, you go down-town and pick out the
very best and handsomest silk in the shops,
and the nicest sort of trimming to go with it,
and mind there's plenty of it—both gown and
trimming—and send the bills to me; or had
you rather have the cost in hand?”
“A little of both, please, uncle. I may have
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to look about for trimmings, and go to new
places.”
“Very well; here is a check for two hundred
dollars; and when that is gone, just
drive down to the office, and send up for me,
or if I am out, for Rowley. As for credit, you
can use that at discretion. And while you are
about it, Trix, you might as well get yourself
and June new dresses for the wedding—something
handsome, but not showy enough to
make the good Milvor folks feel ashamed of
their own rig. That wouldn't be good manners,
you know.”
“No, indeed, uncle; and for my own part, I do
not need a single thing; I have a great plenty
of dresses for a year to come. But, uncle, do
you think Mrs. Charlton had better go to the
wedding?”
“Why, she's one of ourselves, isn't she?”
demanded Mr. Barstow, in considerable surprise.
“I supposed of course she would go.”
Beatrice, folding and creasing the corner of
the envelope she held in her hand, made no
reply.
Mr. Barstow looked at her a moment in
much perplexity, whisked an atom of dust
from his coat-sleeve, and then asked:
“Don't you want her, Trix?”
“To tell the truth, uncle, I think she would
be rather out of place at Milvor, and I do not
believe Aunt Rachel would enjoy seeing her.”
“Oh! well, that alters the case. Very likely
Rachel might feel a little troubled about
the country ways and homely fashions of the
Old Garrison House—”
“Uncle Israel! you don't suppose I meant
that there was any thing to be ashamed of in
our dear old home? I am sure I wish every
one was as honest, and truthful, and reliable
as Aunt Rachel, or that other people's ways
were half as good as the country ways and
homely fashions of the Old Garrison House.
No matter who goes to Aunt Rachel's wedding,
there will not be a better woman there
than herself.”
If Mr. Barstow had been surprised before,
he was now actually petrified, and stood
staring at his niece, who never, in the whole
course of her life, had spoken so vehemently
in his presence before.
Beatrice, looking up, met his eyes, and her
own filled with tears of shame. Springing
suddenly from her seat, she threw her arms
about his neck.
“Oh! forgive me, Uncle Israel! I was
very, very wrong to speak so to you, but I—I
am not well, I believe—I am hardly myself.
It will do me good to go home and be quiet
for a while. Let me go to-day.”
“Not to-day, dearie, or to-morrow, but as
soon as we can make you suitably ready,” said
Uncle Israel, tenderly smoothing the bright
hair straying over his breast, while his honest
face never lost its look of wonder and concern.
“Yes, little girl, you shall go and stay until
after the wedding; but then, you know, you
are to come home for good and all. This is
home, remember.”
“Thank you, dear, dear uncle.”
“Thank you for nothing, you mean. Don't
you know that I can't get on without you, you
monkey? And as for asking June to the
wedding, I believe you are right. She would
be a little out of place, and it might be uncomfortable
all round. She can stay with her
uncle at the Grandarc while we are away, eh?”
“Just as you please, uncle,” murmured
Beatrice.
“Then that's settled; and now give me a
kiss and let me go, and you take the carriage
and go buy the wedding-finery.”
CHAPTER XXIII. WEDDING-FINERY.
“And now, Aunt Rachel,” said Beatrice, the
morning after her arrival in Milvor; “now let
us have a little fire in your chamber, and I
will show you my shopping.”
“Dear me, child, I'm in no hurry whatever
about that. Miss Billings isn't coming until
Friday to cut my dresses, and it will be time
enough then.”
“Now, Aunt Rachel, that is clear, sheer
nonsense! You want to make me believe
that you have no curiosity even about your
wedding-dress, and I shan't believe a word of
it. Of course you want to see it, and I want
to show it, and I am not going to hurry about
it either; so I shall just go and make the fire
myself, and then call you up.”
With which declaration, Miss Wansted, her
brilliant robes exchanged for one of gray
linsey-woolsey, with a bit of blue ribbon and
the plainest of linen collars at the neck, and a
pair of cuffs to match at the wrists, ran out of
the room, and was presently seen picking up
chips in the wood-yard.
“Dear creeter,” murmured her grandmother—
“not the leastest mite of difference, for all
the silk gowns and fal-lals Israel has given
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Picking up chips in the wood-yard.
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her, and all the attention the young fellers
have been paying her. I was dreadful afraid
she'd be set up in her own conceit, and not
think so much of our humble ways; but there
isn't any thing of that, as I can see.”
“You're too modest, wife,” replied the deacon,
glancing at her over the top of his Fenelon.
“I don't know why our grand-daughter
should be either daunted or too much astonished
by the ways of people richer maybe, but
no better, I hope, than those she has always
lived among.”
“Well, that's true enough, too, father,” assented
the old lady, straightening herself a
little. “The Barstows are as good as any
body—”
“So long as they behave as well,” interposed
her husband, with a quiet smile behind
his book; and Mrs. Barstow rather doubtfully
assented to the qualified self-glorification.
Beatrice, meanwhile, had filled her pretty
black silk apron with long ringlets of pineshavings,
cones of the fragrant fir-tree, splinters
and clean white chips from the heart of
the beech and buttonwood logs lying cleft in
the wood-yard, and some dry branches lopped
from the tops of the pine-trees, whose straight
trunks lay side by side, ready to be hauled to
the saw-mill; for the deacon burned his own
wood, and had some to sell to his neighbors
beside.
“Will you please bring in an armful of
wood, Jacob? Up into Miss Rachel's room,
if you please,” said the young lady, bestowing
a gracious smile upon the sinewy, wiry, and
most unlovely Yankee who at present replaced
Paul Freeman at the Old Garrison
House.
“Oh! yes, I'll fetch in as much as you want.
Kind o' chilly this morning, a'n't it?”
“Somewhat more than chilly, I think, Jacob,”
said the young lady, glancing rather
ruefully at the snowy landscape; “it looks
like midwinter yet.”
“Not if you know how midwinter had
ought to look,” bluntly replied Jacob. “See
them great white clouds banking up in the
south? You don't never see none of them in
December or January, do you? And then see
how sort of rotten the snow breaks away when
I pull a stick out o' the pile. There'll be a
change o' weather 'fore long, and I mistrust
it'll be rain. Declare for 't, I guess I'd better
go into the woods to-day, and leave this 'ere
chopping for a time when I can't do nothing
else. Wonder what the deacon 'd say?”
And Jacob, straightening himself with a
huge armful of wood, drew his right shirtsleeve
across his nose and looked inquiringly
at the sky.
“You had better go into the sitting-room
and speak to grandfather,” said Beatrice smiling;
“and if you do go to the woods, I should
like to go with you. I have not seen the
woods this whole winter.”
“Well, you can if you're a mind to, and I
suppose you'll be for riding home on the load,
so I'll carry along a buffalo for you to set on,”
replied Jacob, with composure; and Beatrice,
thanking him as politely as she ever thanked
Messrs. Laforét et Cie for less genuine courtesies,
ran into the house and up-stairs with her
light burden, soberly followed by Jacob with
his wood.
“Shan't I build the fire for you, ma'am?”
asked he, clumping carefully across the carpet,
and leaving a cake of half-melted snow at
every footfall.
“No, thank you, Jacob; I know how very
well myself. You had better speak to grandpapa;
and if you are going to the woods, send
me word by Nancy. You won't start just this
minute, will you?”
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“No ma'am; I suppose I must chop up
some kin'lin'-stuff for Nancy's oven, or she'll
be in my hair. They're going to bake
to-day.”
“Well, I shall be ready in half an hour,”
said Beatrice rather breathlessly, for the large
log she was adjusting at the back of the fireplace
required all her strength. Jacob
watched her movements admiringly for a
moment, and then clumping out as carefully
as he had clumped in, went down-stairs muttering:
“A smart gal that, and as pretty as a
picter'.”
The back-log adjusted, Beatrice pushed the
andirons close up against it, selected a solid
white-oak fore-stick to lay across them, filled
the interval between back and fore-stick with
small wood crowned with some of the dry pine-twigs
and cones, and then made a little heap
of shavings, chips, and twigs underneath.
“There,” said she, looking at the completed
edifice; “grandpapa couldn't have done it
better himself.”
Then she lighted a match, touched it to the
shavings, and seated á l'Orientale upon the
hearth-rug, watched, with well-satisfied gaze,
the flame as it devoured the shavings, then
caught upon the pine-twigs, and creeping upward
through the lattice-work of more solid
fuel, leaped hungrily upon the dried pine-needles
and fir-cones at the top, and feeding upon
them, grew strong enough to attack the heavier
sticks between the two.
“How lovely!” whispered Beatrice, selecting
half a dozen cones from the heap of kindling,
and placing them so artistically among
the sticks as to lead the flames from step to
step through the whole pyre; and then warming
her red-tipped fingers at the growing
blaze, she watched admiringly the play of the
flames, and remembered one of Mr. Chappelleford's
whimsical theories, to the effect that
every wood, in process of combustion, produces
a flame shaped like the leaf of its own
tree, and she tried to distinguish the pointed
needles of the pine, the sinuated leaves of
the oak, and the five-fingered palms of
the buttonwood, in the rustling river of
flame that now poured up the chimney. But
try as she might, the flame-leaves only reminded
her of the fantastic and airy forms of
the trees that grow in fairy-land; and after a
while, Beatrice, desisting from the effort, sat
gazing dreamily into the fire, and thinking
her own thoughts, or perhaps those of Cornelius
Agrippa, who tells us through a modern
poet:
“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in
the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of
Light, are augmented not only by the Divine
Light of the Sun, but also by our common
Wood Fire; and as the Celestial Fire drives
away dark spirits, so also this, our Fire of
Wood, doth the same.”
From this reverie she was startled by the
voice of Aunt Rachel.
“Well, I declare, Beatrice, you're just the
same careless girl you used to be—picking
up chips in that black silk apron, all trimmed
off with lace and beads and fal-lals, and all
but new, I dare say. And then those French
slippers right out in the snow, and silk stockings!
Well, Beatrice, you may laugh, but it
is no better than tempting Providence, and I
don't suppose you'll say you mean to do that.”
“Why, aunty, what do you think Providence
could be tempted to do to me? Don't
you believe Providence means our Father in
Heaven, who only wishes to make us happy
and well?” asked the girl, without removing
her eyes from the blaze, where, perhaps, she
had found the creed which filled Aunt Rachel's
good Calvinistic heart with dismay.
“Beatrice Wansted!” exclaimed she, “don't
tell me that you're going to turn Free-thinker
and Radical, and all that. You've been to
hear Parker, I know you have!”
“Why, Aunty Barstow! you cruel, cruel
dear, to go and call your little Trix a Free-thinker!
Aren't you horribly ashamed of
yourself?” And the girl, jumping up, threw
her arms about her aunt's neck with a laugh
and a kiss, whirled her sacrilegiously round
the room, and finally seated her in a great
wooden rocking-chair in front of the fire, while
she herself fell upon her knees before the
great trunk which she had caused to be placed
in her aunt's room instead of her own.
“Well, I believe I was wrong, and that you
are changed in some things, Trix,” said Miss
Rachel meditatively.
“How, aunty?” asked Beatrice, bending
over the open trunk to hide a smile.
“Why, you seem to have got a way of sliding
off from things you don't want to talk
about, and that once you'd have got provoked
over,” said Miss Barstow, and Beatrice bent
still lower into the trunk.
“There, aunty, there is a new dress for
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Nancy,” said she suddenly, as she drew out a
piece of woollen stuff, and laid it upon her
aunt's lap.
“For Nancy, child?”
“Yes, aunty. Uncle Israel gave me some
money to spend for wedding-finery, he said,
and I thought I would get Nancy a dress out
of it.”
“Why, it's too good. Merino, isn't it?”
“Yes, I thought it was not best to get silk
for her, although I could have bought it for
the same price as the thibet.”
“Silk indeed! I should think not!” exclaimed
Miss Barstow. “I don't desire to see
any one in my kitchen dressed out in silks or
satins. That is a pretty color; what do you
call it?”
“Bismarck-brown, aunty. It is very fashionable.”
“Just about the color I thought of for that
dress I asked you to get me. Where is that?”
And a tinge of red rose to Miss Rachel's
withered cheek as she thus betrayed her secret
impatience.
Beatrice took a huge parcel, carefully enveloped
in tissue-paper, from the trunk, and laying
it upon the bed, proceeded very deliberately
to unpin it, while she said:
“Now, Aunt Rachel, there is a good deal to
say upon the subject of that dress. In the
first place, cinnamon-brown, or chocolate, or
even Bismarck, are not the colors for a wedding-dress;
and you know you want to look
as a bride should—now, don't you?”
“Bride! At my time of life! Pho! child.”
And the reflection of the blaze or something
else glowed in a very becoming crimson upon
Miss Rachel's cheeks and lips, and danced
brightly in her eyes.
“Time of life, indeed! No one would take
you for a day over thirty to see you now,
aunty. But about the dress. I don't think
Miss Billings is quite so good a dressmaker as
we have in town, although she is a very nice
old lady; and, besides, you have so much to
do, you know. So the amount of the whole
is, that Uncle Israel told me to get a dress, and
have it made up and trimmed, as his present
to you, and here it is.”
With which summary introduction, Beatrice,
a little flushed herself—for what woman is
quite iron-clad against the cunningly feathered
arrows of the genius of Dress?—unfolded and
shook out upon the bed the folds of a moire
silk, tinted like the soft gray clouds that float
so lovingly across the blue of a June sky. The
dress was fashioned in a quiet modification of
the style of the day, and was doubtfully pronounced
by the modiste who wrought under
Miss Wansted's directions—“Very, very plain
indeed, although of splendid material.”
Miss Barstow's verdict was different:
“Why, Beatrice - Beatrice Wansted!” exclaimed
she, holding up both hands, and staring
at the shining folds of moire with a look
divided between awe and admiration.
“It is fit for Eugeny with her crown on!”
“I hope it will fit you even better, aunty
dear; and that the day when you first wear it
will make you happier than any queen,” said
Beatrice, kissing her aunt with dewy eyes.
“And here,” continued she, bringing forth a
carton tied across with blue ribbons, “here is
a little present from me to go with the dress.”
And with dexterous fingers she drew forth
and adjusted upon the silk a collar, sleeves,
and head-dress of fine Mechlin lace ornamented
with knots of blue ribbon.
“Blue ribbons for me, Trix?” exclaimed
Miss Barstow feebly.
“Yes, aunty, they make such a lovely contrast
with the pearl-gray of the dress, and you
know you must not be married all in gray.
You asked me about a bonnet, or a veil, and
so I thought perhaps you would fancy this
head-dress, which has, you see, a sort of veil
hanging at the back, and for other occasions
you can alter it a little, or take off the veil.”
“That dress cost a great deal more than
twenty dollars, Beatrice!” said Miss Barstow
severely; and her niece could not restrain a
little laugh.
“It isn't pretty to ask the price of a present,
you know, dearie,” said she; “and I thought
perhaps you would like to spend the twenty
dollars in something for grandmamma; so I
bought this nice black silk for her to wear at
the wedding, and this cap to go with it. But
Uncle Israel rather scolded me for doing it,
because he said it was not business-like to
spend the money sent us for a certain purpose
in another way. So if you would prefer the
money, I have it all ready; or if you would
like to make the present to grandmamma, you
can do that.”
“I should like to make the present to grandmamma,
and you were a very thoughtful,
good girl to think of it,” said Miss Rachel,
well pleased, as Beatrice had foreseen that she
would be.
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“And what will you wear yourself?” pursued
she, glancing at the nearly - emptied
trunk.
“Oh! I brought down two dresses, and you
must tell me which you like best,” said Beatrice
carelessly; and produced from the depths
of the box a mauve silk, and one of sky-blue,
both of them fresh and handsome.
“Two silk gowns at once, Beatrice!” exclaimed
her aunt reprovingly. “I am afraid
your uncle is teaching you extravagance and
a love of dress.”
“Oh! no, aunty; but we went out so much,
I had to have a variety, you know,” said Beatrice
apologetically; and while her aunt still
examined the dresses with disapproving admiration,
Nancy opened the door to say:
“Jacob wants to know if you're going into
the woods with him, Beatrice. He's 'most
ready.”
“Say Miss Beatrice, Nancy,” suggested her
mistress sharply; “and don't wait with your
oven cooling. I heard you taking out the fire
ten minutes ago. What about the woods,
Trix?”
“Oh! I am going, certainly,” said Beatrice,
hastily bundling the packages back into the
trunk.
“Not in that dress, Beatrice!”
“No, indeed, aunty. I saw one of my last
winter's poplins in the closet of my chamber.”
And Miss Wansted, disappearing before further
disapproval could be spoken, presently
returned, dressed in a simple short dress and
a warm coat.
“See here, aunty,” said she, mischievously
raising her skirts high enough to show a very
jaunty pair of Knickerbockers nearly meeting
the tops of her high Polish boots.
“Well, I never! Why, Beatrice Wansted,
if I shouldn't be ashamed!” exclaimed the
spinster, turning nearly as scarlet as the obnoxious
garments.
“Why, aunty! why should I be ashamed?”
laughed Beatrice.
“Why, to wear those things. Almost like—
really, now, they do remind me—”
“Of what, aunty?”
“Why, child, a gentleman's pantaloons,”
whispered Miss Barstow, the scarlet turning
crimson.
“Not a bit of it, aunty! Pantaloons are
tight to the leg and tie with strings round the
ankles; and what gentlemen wear are called
trowsers; and these are nothing like either,
and are called Knickerbockers.”
“Beatrice! say limbs, and not legs; and
don't talk so glibly about things no young
woman should ever mention,” said Miss Barstow
severely.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE CAPTAIN'S PURCHASE.
“All ready, Jacob?”
“Yes, ma'am, all ready,” said Jacob, who
was adjusting an inverted soap-box upon the
middle of his ox-sled, and covering it with a
warmly-lined buffalo-robe.
“There, that's for you to set on,” said he,
when all was ready.
“How charming! I expected to stand up
and hold on to one of the stakes,” laughed
Beatrice, seating herself upon her extempore
throne, and looking more than ever lovely,
with the bright color of the frosty morning
upon cheek and lip, and her eyes sparkling
like sunbeams beneath the brim of the little
round hat whose black plumes contrasted so
charmingly with the gold-brown braids they
shaded.
So dimly perceived Jacob, standing a moment
beside the sled, to draw on his blue and
white mittens, patriotically fringed with red,
Mrs. Barstow's handiwork; but Jacob would
have thought it unpardonably “sarcy” to have
intimated his admiration in the most distant
manner, and so went silently forward to his
oxen's heads, and with a jerk and a creak the
sled started, cutting its way through the
softened snow with a dull, crunching sound,
quite different from the crisp crackle of midwinter
drifts, or the sharp creak made by
passing over a snow-road in the coldest and
heaviest of frozen weather.
“Where are you cutting wood now?” asked
Miss Wansted, when, after piloting his team
into the road, Jacob stepped upon the sled
and stood there, Colossus-like.
“I've been cutting up to the Captain's Purchase.
I a'n't cutting now—I'm hauling. You
wouldn't have wanted to go and see me chop
all day, I reckon,” said Jacob, with a laugh.
“All I've got to do now is to load up and
turn right round. We'll be home to dinner.”
Beatrice did not reply. A sudden cloud
had come over both face and mood, and she
sat looking straight before her with wide,
sad eyes.
The Captain's Purchase, a tract of wood
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land so named in the old records, and so
called to-day, although tradition has no story
to tell of either captain or purchase—not so
much as the name of the one, or the price of the
other—the Captain's Purchase was the place
where the May-flowers bloomed earliest, the
lovely, pink-flushed, odorous Epigœa repens,
which a perverse world will call trailing arbutus,
and thither to gather them had she
gone with Marston Brent in the sweet days
that were no more.
“No more, no more forever,” whispered
Beatrice, her sad eyes searching field and
wood and sky for a contradiction to the
mournful prophecy, and finding none. And
then pressing in at the door thus set ajar
came trooping the memories she had believed
at rest—memories of tender words, of loving
looks, of sweet hopes, and half-formed plans
of life, of all the joy that might have been,
and now should never be. And whose fault
that it should never be? “Not mine,” said the
girl's softened heart. “For did I not humble
myself, and give up all for love of him? Did
I not even ask him to let me come to him in the
home he had chosen?” “And,” asked Pride,
“what did he say? Did he not thrust me back
and refuse the love I offered him, and hold me
to my word in my own despite? And is it for
such a man that I am mourning now, and
feeling that because he is lost, all else is valuless?
O shame, shame! that any woman
should so forget woman's value! If Marston
Brent cared more for his own will than for
me, I care more for those late leaves whirling
to the ground than for Marston Brent.”
And wrenching herself away from even
memory of him, Beatrice turned to her companion,
who, softly whistling and holding to
one of the stakes of the ox-sled, viewed the
rapidly clouding skies with a speculative eye.
“Going to have a change o' weather, sudden,”
said Jacob, perceiving that Miss Wansted
was ready for conversation.
“More snow?” asked she languidly.
“I guess more like we shall have rain.
The air's most too soft for snow. Rain 'll
play the very old mischief with the goin',
there's such a heft o' snow on the ground.”
“Yes. I am afraid it would prevent my
aunt's party to-morrow,” said Beatrice, raising
her eyes to the soft white clouds fast
shutting out the blue of heaven.
“Quiltin'-bee, a'n't it?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“They'll come fast enough, women-folks
will,” said Jacob, laughing a little, and rolling
his eyes quizzically upon the face of his companion.
“You see they don't stir about so
much as men-folks, and toward the end o'
winter they get so sort o' stalled stopping in
the house, that they'd go anywhere's for a
change. I declare I think sometimes, if Old
Nick was to give a tea-party on top of Moloch
Mountain in Febooary, he'd get as many to
set down as he'd find cups and saucers for.
You'll see there won't no one stop away from
the bee to-morrer, rain or shine, except them
as can't get their men-folks to bring 'em, and
can't hitch on to no one else's team.”
“Why, Jacob, it isn't a bit polite to me to
make fun of women-folks,” said Beatrice with
dancing eyes.
“Land o' Goshen, ma'am, I don't mean you
when I talk about women-folks. You're altogether
different,” said Jacob gravely; and,
after considering the point, added:
“You see, ma'am, you've had advantages,
and been round, and haven't had to buckle
to't, and work for a living, same as they
have; and I don't see, for my part, why a
woman, if she has advantages, and improves'
em, a'n't ekil to men—some men.”
“Why, yes—some men, as you say, Jacob;
and, Jacob, I'm very much obliged to you for
your favorable opinion, and will present you
with a vote of thanks in behalf of the rest of
the sisterhood; and the first woman's-rights
convention that I attend I will nominate you
as chairman. And now, Jacob, I want to
know how much of the Captain's Purchase
you have cut over this winter, and what the
wood is worth a cord, and how much you
have hauled to market, and how much home,
and how much remains upon the ground.”
“Well, that's a good many questions to
answer all to once,” said Jacob, scratching his
head beneath his fur-cap, and glancing a little
uneasily at the sparkling and satirical face
upraised toward him.
“However, I'll try: I've cut well on to three
acres of the Purchase, and have corded up
about a hundred cord, may be a hundred and
a quarter, and —”
“How much is that to each acre, Jacob?”
“Each acre? Well, it's about — about—
why say forty cord to each acre.”
“Oh! no, Jacob! A third of a hundred is not
forty, and a third of a hundred and twenty-five
is more than forty.”
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“Here we be at the Captain's Purchase.”
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“I said about that; forty's nigh enough,”
said Jacob with dignity.
And Beatrice pursued her inquiries, the
smile she banished from her lips dancing in
her eyes:
“Well, how much is it worth a cord,
Jacob?”
“Why, that's accordin' as how the wood
is. First-rate hard wood, white-oak, with a
sprinklin' o' walnut 's worth six dollars, and
pine's worth four, and oak-trash's worth two,
and pine-trash's worth one.”
“And if the hundred or a hundred and a
quarter cords you've cut this winter are about
equally divided into those four kinds, how
much are they all worth?” asked Beatrice
demurely.
But a dim suspicion that he was being unfairly
dealt by entered with the question into
Jacob's brain, and, after a moment's consideration,
he replied dryly:
“That sum's in Green leaf's first part, a'n't
it? We'll drive round by the school-house
coming home, and I'll get my little brother to
do it for you.”
“Thank you, Jacob; but I don't think you
need your little brother to help you through,”
said Beatrice, laughing so heartily at her own
expense that even the sensitive pride of the
New-England yeoman, the most sensitive of
all mankind, was soothed, and Jacob joined
in the laugh.
“Here we be at the Captain's Purchase,”
said he, jumping off the sled, and throwing
down some bars closing the entrance to a
wood road, deep embowered in greenery when
Beatrice last beheld it, and though the scene
was “now changed to winter frore,” it held
too close a likeness to that she so well remembered
to be denied at least its moment of
silent recognition. So, Beatrice, her face suddenly
pale and still, sat silent, fighting down
those memories laid but now, and again arisen,
until Jacob halted his oxen at the edge of a
large clearing covered with corded piles of
wood, while the ground between was strewn
with limbs and leaves, and splinters and
chips, as a battle-field with the smaller relies
of the strife, after the bodies have been removed.
“Guess you'd better get off now, ma'am,”
said he very kindly, for the honest fellow had
noted the sudden change in his companion's
mood, and attributed it to mortification at his
rebuff.
“I'm a going to turn the team in among the
brush, and it'll be awful jolty, and then ag'in
I've got to begin to load right away. Sorry to
disturb you.”
“Oh! not at all, Jacob; don't apologize,”
said Beatrice absently; and, accepting Jacob's
offered hand, she stepped lightly to the ground,
and stood looking about her, while the man
arranged the box and buffalo robe close beside
her.
“There, you can set right down again, and
make believe you're riding,” said he soothingly.
“Or, if you'd rather, you can walk
about a little. There a'n't much to see in the
woods this time o' year, but maybe you can
find some checkerberries where the snow has
melted off, or maybe a squirrel-hole with
some nuts in it. I'll be as quick as I can.”
“Oh! don't trouble about me, Jacob,” replied
Beatrice, rousing herself with an effort; “I
am used to the woods, and know how to amuse
myself, winter or summer. I shall run about
and get warm while you are loading, unless
you want my help.”
“Your help, ma'am! Lord love you, no,”
laughed Jacob, picking up his ox-goad, and
bawling directions to his team, Calvin and
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Luther, whom the deacon had so named because
he said he would make those two eminent
personages draw together somehow.
Left to herself, Beatrice strolled along the
road, until, having crossed the clearing, it
struck into the woods at the other side, and
so soon as she was out of sight, perched herself
upon the stump of a monster pine, and
stood like a statue upon its pedestal, admiring
the scene before her, and resolutely banishing
once more all thoughts but those connected
with it. From her position, near the top of a
high hill, she commanded the valley below,
with its little frozen pond, where in summer
bloomed the whitest lilies ever known, and
around whose margin grew the sweet, white
swamp azalia, and its rarer rose-colored sister,
and as she saw the spot, Beatrice remembered
the great bouquets that she had received—
No, that memory was among the forbidden,
and she turned to admire, instead, the smokelike
tracery of the birch-trees fringing the border
of the swamp below the chestnut wood—
the chestnut wood where she had nutted many
a day in those by-gone years; and Beatrice,
stepping impatiently from her pedestal, hastened
on through the wood, intent only now
upon escape from that army of phantoms
which environed her.
She saw no longer the strange, still beauty
of the winter woods, forgot to note the soft
shades of color upon twig, and trunk, and
clinging withered leaves, the beauty of form,
hidden in summer, and now displayed so
vividly, as the naked tree-tops cut the sky,
and long arcades lengthened through the
forest, impenetrable to the eye in summertime.
The saucy squirrel crossed her path,
or stood chattering upon the branches close
above her head; the rabbit peered from his
burrow, with round, startled eyes; the partridge
rose with startling whir-r-r-r from almost
beneath her feet; the fox, stealing
through the coverts of the wood, peered at
her from beneath sheltering twigs—but Beatrice
heard not, saw not, felt only that the
past was present still, and that the future held
no hope of forgetfulness.
CHAPTER XXV. THE GUEST OF THE OLD GARRISON.
“Be you ready, ma'am? If you be, I be.”
It was Jacob's voice; and Beatrice, raising
her eyes from the ground, discovered that she
had returned in a circle to the point whence
she had started, and was just entering the
clearing when met by Jacob, who had set out
to look for her.
“What! have you loaded your sled already?”
asked she, in some surprise.
“Sartain I have, and didn't work so dreadful
smart, neither. Now, be you going to ride
on the load?”
“Oh! yes. That was what I came for, you
know.”
“Well, I've driven the steers out into the
road, and fixed the buffalo on as well as I
could. The box we'll leave up here till another
time. Strange if we get home before the
rain comes on.”
“I am afraid I have kept you waiting.”
“Oh! that a'n't of no account if you don't
mind the resk of a wetting. I am sorry we
haven't got no umberill. There, set your foot
right in there; I left a kind of a step on purpose,
and—there you be!—you're spry on your
feet, any way, ma'am.”
“All right, Jacob. This is a very nice seat,
and I can see the whole country around.”
“Yes, it's ekil to being on top of a stage-coach,
and some folks won't never go inside if
they can help it.”
“I am one of those folks, Jacob. I always
ride over from Bloom on the top of the coach
when they will let me.”
“Do! Well, I've heerd so, but I didn't
know. They say they'll lay the railroad from
Bloom to Milvorhaven some time, and then
there won't be no stage-coach travel.”
“Oh! I hope not! I hope no railway will
ever come nearer to the Old Garrison House
than now,” said Beatrice, with energy.
“Waal now; why not?”
“Oh! because there are driving, growing
places enough all over the country; and Milvor
is just as it has always been, and just as I
should like to have it always remain. I don't
want the march of improvement to trample
down the quiet old ways, and slow, sleepy
fashions of the place.”
Jacob considered the point in silence for
several moments, and then, with a comical
twist of his dry face, slowly said:
“That reminds me of something I read in
a book Miss Rachel loaned me a while ago.
It was the History of England, I believe, and
it told about a king that liked every thing
just as it always was; and so he turned a lot
of folks out of their housen, and pulled up
their improvements, and put the whole
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deestric' back into wild land, as nigh as he could
get it; and had a lot of deer and varmint
turned in, and then he used to go in and hunt
them, just as folks has to in a wild country to
clear the way for a settlement. Your idee
about not letting the railroad come through
Milvor is suthin' like that king's, a'n't it?”
“No; he was a revolutionist, and I am a
conservative—two quite opposite creatures.
However, I do not imagine that my fancies or
wishes will have much effect upon the progress
of civilization and the iron-horse. You
will have your railway, I don't doubt.”
“Hi, Calvin! Gee, Luther! Gee! There's
a team coming up behind, and they think they
must swerve out to make room for it. I never
see critters think as quick as this yoke o'
steers—never. There! now that feller can
pass if he's handy with his horse.”
The jingle of sleigh-bells, which for some
moments had been growing louder and louder
as the swift horse overtook the ox-team,
suddenly ceased, and a voice close behind the
load called out pleasantly enough:
“Can I pass there, my man?”
“Yes, I reckon you can,” replied Jacob,
with slightly surly independence; and Beatrice,
startled at the voice, looked down from
her elevation to meet the wondering eyes of
Mr. Monckton.
“Miss Wansted!”
“Yes, Mr. Monckton, it is really I.”
“You should have invited your friends to
your coronation—or rather to your enthronement.”
“I am afraid Milvor would not have contained
them.”
“What you say sarcastically we should say
seriously; but having asserted yourself, won't
you descend and accept a share of my humble
equipage?”
“Oh! no, thank you. I don't believe in
descending when one can remain elevated.
Will you pass us?”
“Why, no, thank you, I will follow—that
is, if you will permit me to accompany you
home. I was on my way to call upon you.”
“We shall be most happy, certainly. Drive
on, if you please, Jacob.”
And Beatrice, not attempting to conceal her
dissatisfaction, turned her head away from the
self-invited guest, and fixed her attention upon
the oxen.
Mr. Monckton, too much a man of the world
to be discomfited, or to appear conscious of any
annoyance, entered into an animated conversation
with the youth who drove him; and
nothing further passed between the lately familiar
friends, until both equipages stopped in
the open space at the southern front of the
old house.
“Now, ma'am, I'll help you down,” began
Jacob, pulling off his mittens, wiping his nose,
and settling his fur cap firmly upon his head.
“Permit me, Miss Wansted,” interposed Mr.
Monckton.
“Thank you, but Jacob is the cavalier of
this occasion,” said Beatrice, deftly placing one
foot in the interstices of the load, and resting
her little hands upon the shoulders of the
woodman, who, grasping her slender waist,
swung her lightly to the ground.
“I must congratulate Jacob both upon his
opportunities and his mode of improving them,”
laughed Mr. Monckton, meeting Beatrice, as
she regained her feet, with a hand so cordially
extended that she could not have refused it
had she tried.
“Yes, he is a capital escort. Jacob, I have
had a very nice drive and pleasant time. I
shall go with you again some time.”
“Any time that suits you, ma'am. It'll always
be agreeable to me,” said Jacob, with
grave courtesy; and Miss Wansted led the
way to the house.
In the east room, before the brightly-blazing
fire, sat the old people, while Rachel, just appearing
at the inner door, drew hastily back
at sight of a stranger.
“This is Mr. Monckton, grandfather, a
friend of Uncle Israel's; my grandfather,
Deacon Barstow, Mr. Monckton. My grandmother.”
“I am glad to see any friend of my son's.
Take off your coat, sir, and sit to the fire.
Beatrice, will you please tell Jacob to put up
the gentleman's horse?”
“Thank you, sir, thank you extremely, but
I do not think it worth while to put up the
horse for the little while I have to stay,” began
Mr. Monckton; but Mrs. Barstow broke
in upon his excuses with voluble hospitality.
“You must stay the night, sir—of course
you must stay the night. Nobody ever comes
to Milvor for less than one night, for it would
not be worth the journey, especially in wintertime.
Did you drive over from Bloom, Mr.
Monckton?”
“Yes, madam. Finding myself in this part
of the country, I thought I would run over
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and see the Old Garrison House, of which I
have heard so much—make the acquaintance
of my friend Barstow's family, and call upon
Miss Wansted.”
“That's right, and I'm real glad you came,”
said the grandmother, glancing around to see
that Beatrice had left the room before she added:
“Nor I don't blame any body for wanting
to see our Trix, for she's just about as nice
a little girl as you'll find anywhere.”
To this expression of opinion, Mr. Monckton
was spared the perplexity of reply by the
entrance of Miss Barstow, who, like her parents,
welcomed the unexpected guest with a
cordial hospitality more often found, perhaps,
upon stage-routes than railroad-lines.
Mr. Monckton, well pleased, and equal to the
occasion, seated himself between the patriarch
and his wife; talked ethics, politics, traditions,
with the former; parried pleasantly enough
the downright questions of the latter upon his
personal affairs, and repaid them with bits of
gossip disguised as news. Miss Rachel, coming
and going upon her household affairs, felt
grateful in her heart to the guest who gave
“the old folks” so pleasant an hour with so
little apparent effort; and when Mr. Monckton
suddenly appealed to herself upon some
question of taste, she was ready to respond
with her most gracious smile.
Matters were in this prosperous condition
when the sound of the dinner-bell summoned
the family to the long low-ceiled room at the
back of the house, once used as a kitchen, but
converted by Miss Rachel into a dining-room.
“The Lord make us all truly thankful for
the bounty we are about to receive,” said the
deacon, reverently bowing his silvered head;
and then Mr. Monckton seated himself beside
Beatrice, who, somewhat paler and stiller than
her wont, awaited the family in the dining-room.
“Perhaps you don't like b'iled dish, Mr.
Monckton?” said Mrs. Barstow, hospitably
piling her guest's plate; “but it's our regular
Wednesday dinner, and has been for fifty
years. Beef and pork, and turnips, and potatoes,
and cabbage, and carrots, and onions—
we've had 'em all every Wednesday, the year
through, for fifty years, and I suppose we
shall every Wednesday—well, for as many
years as we have to live.”
“And may they be many,” replied Monckton,
receiving his loaded plate with an admiring
gesture. “Oh! yes,” added he, “I think
this is rather our national dish, after all—inherited,
to be sure, from English rural fashion;
but the English pot is never so generously
filled or so often replenished as ours.
I remember a story of my grandmother's,
about one of her own boiled dinners. My
grandfather was an ambitious sort of man,
whose whole heart was given to raising immense
crops, and carrying on more land than
his neighbors, so that he was rather apt to
neglect the smaller details of household management,
and leave to my grandmother and
her woman more than their share of labor.
One morning, just as he was setting off for
the fields with his laborers, my grandmother
called him back.
“`Mr. Monckton,' said she, `I have no wood
to burn to-day. What shall I do?'
“`Oh! send Lois round to pick up some,'
said the good man, making a stride toward
the door.
“`But she has picked up all she can find.'
“`Then let her break up some old stuff.'
“`But she has broken up every thing already.'
“`Oh! well, then, do the next best thing—
I must be off,' said the farmer; and off he
was, whistling as he went, and no doubt wondering
in his heart what that next best thing
would turn out to be.
“Noon came, and with it came my grandfather
and his four hungry laborers. My
grandmother stood in the kitchen, spinning on
her great wheel, and singing a pleasant little
ditty; Lois was scouring tins in the backroom,
and the cat sat purring on the hearth,
before a black and fireless chimney, while the
table sat in the middle of the room, spread for
dinner, but with empty dishes.
“`Well, wife, here we are,' said my grandfather
cheerily.
“`So I see,' replied she placidly. `Have
you had a good morning in the corn-field?'
“`Why, yes, so-so. But where is the dinner?'
“`In the pot on the door-step. Won't you
see if it is done?'
“And on the door-step, to be sure, sat the
great iron pot, nicely covered, but not looking
particularly steamy. My grandfather raised
the cover, and there lay all the ingredients of
such a dinner as we have before us—every
thing prepared in the nicest manner, and the
pot filled with the clearest of water, and all as
raw as they had ever been. My grandfather
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stared, and my grandmother joined another
roll to the yarn upon her distaff, and began
another verse of her song.
“`Why, woman, what does this mean?' began
my grandfather indignantly. `This dinner
isn't cooked at all!'
“`Dear me! is it not?' asked the good wife
in pretended astonishment. `Why, it has set
in the sun this four hours.'
“`Set in the sun!'
“`Yes, you told me to try the next best
thing to having a fire, and I thought setting
my dinner in the sun was about that.'
“My grandfather stood doubtful for a moment;
but finally his sense of humor overcame
his sense of injury, and he laughed
aloud. Then picking up his hat, he said:
“`Come, boys, we might as well start for
the woods. We shall have no dinner till
we've earned it, I perceive.'
“`Won't you have some bread and cheese
before you go?' asked my grandmother, generous
in her victory, as women almost always
are. And so she won the day.”
“So that was your grandfather and grandmother,
Mr. Monckton,” said Mrs. Barstow,
when the laugh which chorused the story
was over; “and they were farmers?”
“Yes, madam, I am proud to say so.”
“Then you think well of farming?”
“It was the condition of man next to Paradise,
madam.”
“But imposed upon man as a punishment
and a curse,” said the deacon dryly.
“Your grandmother was a real smart woman,”
pursued Mrs. Barstow opportunely.
“Can't you tell us some more of her doings?”
“One more anecdote of the same sort occurs
to me,” said Mr. Monckton, smiling complacently.
“The cellar-stairs in the old farm-house
had become broken and so unsafe that my
grandmother besieged her husband, early and
late, to repair them, lest some accident should
happen. He always promised to do so, and
always forgot to fulfil the promise. At last,
one day, my grandmother fell in going down,
and spilled the milk she was carrying.
“`Are you hurt?' asked my grandfather,
smoking his pipe beside the fire.
“`No matter whether I am or not,' returned
the angry housewife, reäppearing with her
empty pan. `That is the last time I carry
milk down those stairs until they are mended!'
“`Please yourself, and find the next best
way to get it down,' said the husband, a little
vexed at her tone.
“`I will,' said my grandmother, and was as
good as her word. The next evening, my
grandfather went down cellar to draw some
cider.
“`What in thunder!' exclaimed he—nothing
worse, I assure you, madam, for he was
not a profane man. `What in thunder is the
matter here? Why, woman, your milk is all
over the cellar-bottom!'
“`Is it?' replied my grandmother tranquilly.
`Well, I think that is likely enough, falling
so far.'
“`Falling so far! What do you mean?'
“`Why, you know I said I shouldn't carry
the milk over those broken stairs again, and
you told me to try the next best way of getting
it down, so I took up a board in the
kitchen-floor, threw down the pans, and then
strained the milk down into them.'
“The cellar-stairs were mended next day.”
CHAPTER XXVI. RECONCILIATION.
The eight-day clock in the corner of the
east room was on the stroke of ten, and the
old people were already deep in their punctual
slumbers. Miss Rachel, aided by Nancy,
was engaged in some last preparation for the
morrow, and Beatrice remained alone with
Mr. Monckton for the first time since his
arrival.
“Do you know why I came here to-day?”
asked he, after five minutes' silence had divided
his words from the gay jest he had last uttered.
“To try your adaptive powers in a new direction,
perhaps.”
“Why are you so bitter with me? I came
because you would not see me the last time
I called at your uncle's house. You have not
seen me since the evening when I displeased
you.”
“Not displeased me so much as —”
“Well?”
“Shocked me, disillusionized me — why
should I fear to say it?—told me a lie.”
“Your words are something more than cordial,
Miss Wansted, and they humiliate me,
as you mean that they should. Still, I thank
you for speaking them, for any thing is less
deadly to friendship than silent displeasure.”
“Friendship?”
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“Yes; you gave me yours.”
“Cannot I reclaim it?”
“Not if it was true friendship. My theory
is that friendship means the complete harmony
of two natures—not to be discovered in
a moment, or perhaps in a year of study, but
once perceived, not to be disallowed without
some such convulsion of being as separates
soul and body. I have explained to you before
how sacred and holy a thing I felt this to
be, and with what incredulous joy I accepted
it at your hands. Can you deprive me of this
great joy? Will you try to do so?”
“Perfect friendship means perfect confidence,”
said Beatrice sadly. “You and
Juanita deceived me into thinking you almost
strangers, and I suddenly discovered you to
be—I know not what—confidents, lovers, conspirators—
at any rate, other than you had
taught me to believe. I asked you frankly
for an explanation, and you gave me —”
“A conventional answer, which I did not
expect or wish you to believe. Do you not
know that one of the first principles in social
ethics is to avoid betraying or forcing others
to betray emotions not to be publicly dealt
with?—in other words, to avoid `scenes,' and
keep the surface of matters smooth until the
time arrives when they may properly be disturbed?”
“That is not sincerity.”
“No; but it is good manners, and, like
paper-money, as good as what it represents so
long as we all agree to receive it as such. But
you and I, Beatrice—if you will allow me still
to call you by that name—you and I found in
each other something better than conventionality,
something truer than the life we both
were leading; you allowed me to call you my
friend, you gave me faith, and confidence, and
esteem. I cannot lose those gifts without a
struggle.”
“But still you offer no explanation,” murmured
Beatrice, half ashamed of her own
persistency.
“No; nor can I offer one. There is a secret
between Mrs. Charlton and myself—I do not
deny it; but the secret is not mine, and I cannot
reveal it. I saw her after your departure,
and asked her either to explain the matter to
you or allow me to do so. She would consent
to neither course, and I have come to you with
no means of exculpation in my hand, no
peace offering of confession or explanation.
I come, Beatrice, simply because I could not
rest away from you, knowing you to be displeased
with me.”
“It has been a sorrow to me also, for our
friendship was one of my most valued possessions,”
said Beatrice sadly.
“Do not speak of it as a thing in the past—
do not withdraw it from me,” pleaded Monckton.
“O Beatrice! if you knew how dry
and arid my life was before it felt this gracious
dew, and how all good things were springing
up under its influence! Beatrice, you do not
know the depths and darkness of a man's
heart who has no woman to make a link
between him and heaven.”
Never in all their intercourse had Monckton
spoken with such fervor and unreserve; never
before had he betrayed how much value he
attached to the friendship she had granted
him; and Beatrice was conscious of a thrill
of pride as well as joy. She turned her eyes
upon him with a shy smile.
“How can you care so much, you who have
seen all the wonders of the world, for a simple
girl like me?” asked she.
“No matter how, it is enough that I do,”
said Monckton eagerly. “Tell me, Beatrice,
will you still be my friend, will you forgive
me, trust me, believe in me again; or do you
send me forth, the hopeless, homeless wanderer
you found me?”
“And am I to trust you again as I did before,
with no pretence of explanation?” asked
Beatrice, arching her eyebrows and curving
her lips in mock disdain.
“Yes; for that is friendship.”
“Then you must promise that you will tell
me no more—what do you call them?—conventional
answers.”
“Well, I will promise you that, and run the
risk of appearing as a boor, or a lunatic escaped
from Madame de Genlis's Palace of
Truth, before the world,” said Monckton, leaning
toward Beatrice and taking her hand.
At this moment, Miss Rachel hastily opened
the door, noted the condition of affairs, without
appearing to look beyond the loaf of cake
she carried, and, crossing the room, opened
the door of a store-closet beside the fire, from
whose recesses came a rich odor of spices, tea,
coffee, syrup, and all the choicest treasures of
the housewife.
“You must excuse my going right on as if
you were not here, Mr. Monckton,” said she,
returning without the cake. “I hope Beatrice
is entertaining you.”
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“The bees began to arrive”
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“Admirably, Miss Rachel,” said Monckton
with a smile; and Miss Rachel discovered
that Beatrice had fled
CHAPTER XXVII. BUSY BEES.
The morning proved Jacob a true prophet,
for it broke with a steady downpour of rain,
of the soft, quiet description, as little likely to
change as the will of those smiling, serene
women, than whom the mountains are less
obstinate
“Now, Mr. Monckton,” said Aunt Rachel, as
the traveller after breakfast approached the
window, “you might as well consent to what
you can't help. The going will be miserable
to-day, and the rain will soak through that
coat of yours like brown paper. Send back
your sleigh to Bloom and make yourself contented
here until to-morrow, when you can
take the stage. We are going to have a bee
to-day, and there will be some gentlemen to
tea; and Beatrice, she isn't of much account
for quilting, and she will keep you company
through the day. You'd better stay.”
“I think so too, sir, and I should be glad of
some one to keep me in countenance among
so many of the more powerful sex,” said the
deacon, with the quiet smile that always suggested
a little good-humored satire in his remarks
upon womankind, and reminded his
hearers that the opinions formed sixty years
ago were less liberal in their appreciation of
the fairer half of mankind than those of to-day
“Oh! yes, he'll stay,” chimed in grandmamma.
“There'll be a plenty of pretty girls
here, even if we hadn't one of our own.”
“And we shall be edified in watching some
new proofs of universal adaptiveness,” said
Beatrice softly.
“How can I choose but stay with so many
temptations, even if my own wishes were not
too powerful to be denied?” said Monckton
gayly; and Miss Rachel slipped out of the
room to give the stable-lad from Bloom a substantial
breakfast, and bid him make ready to
depart alone.
A few hours later the bees began to arrive
in spite of the continued and increasing bad
weather.
“I told you how it'd be,” said Jacob, as he
approached the doorstep where Beatrice was
lingering to enjoy the soft, moist air, while
the guests she had just welcomed were piloted
up-stairs by Miss Rachel.
“Yes, but how will they get home again?”
murmured the young lady, as Jacob took the
horse by the head and began to lead him
toward the barn.
“Oh! that's of no account,” replied he scoffingly.
“They're here, and they a'n't to home,
and that's all they care for.”
“How unlikely such a servant would be in
England!” said Mr. Monckton, who had quietly
approached the open door.
“So familiar, and yet so truly respectful,”
said Beatrice.
“Yes. Here in New-England, a servant is
merely a man who for wages consents to perform
certain service for another man. He retains
his self-respect, and commands the respect
of his employer, and both of them tacitly
confess that some day the employed may
become employer, and even rise to a rank far
above that of his present master. There is
nothing servile, nothing presuming in this
man's manners, but a servant who is born and
will die a servant cannot cease to be servile
without becoming presuming.”
“`My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,”
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[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]
sung Beatrice with a smile; and as another
sleigh, heavily loaded with women, old and
young, one small boy, and several umbrellas,
toiled up to the door, the friends, now really
friends once more, withdrew to the east room,
which was to be left undisturbed for the occupancy
of the old people, and whoever chose to
join them.
“Maybe, Mr. Monckton, if you are not wanted
at the quilting, you would like to look over
some old records and curious papers saved
through two hundred years in our family,”
said the deacon, feebly rising and unlocking
the great brass-bound secretary, whose deep
drawers and pigeon-holed recesses contained
antiquarian wealth enough to set a whole college
mad.
Mr. Monckton, who had the taste to relish
and the training to appreciate these treasures,
accepted the offer with a cordiality which evidently
raised him in the opinion of the old
man, who seldom vouchsafed such an offer to
a stranger, and who valued his family treasures
to their full extent.
With a smile of quiet amusement, Beatrice
watched the preparations of the two convives
as they seated themselves to their feast, and
so soon as they were fairly engrossed, left the
room and joined the throng of workers already
busy in the great parlor.
“How d'y do, Beatryce? How's your health
since you've been to the city?” asked Mrs.
Green, the sturdy, comfortable wife of Doctor
Bliss's rival in Milvor.
“Very good, thank you, Mrs. Green. Let me
help you with that bar.”
“Thanky. You see we thought we'd set up
the best quilt in this room, because it's the
parlor, and birds of a feather had oughter flock
together—don't you see?”
And Mrs. Green looked round upon her coadjutors
for the approving laugh, of which
they did not disappoint her, it being a fortunate
illustration of the law of demand and supply,
that to any persons of small intellectual
average a very little wit goes a great way, or
even no wit at all supplies the place of that
stimulant better than the genuine article.
Beatrice politely joined in the laugh, and
also with more interest in the labor of raising
the heavy quilting-bars upon the backs of four
chairs, and securing them in the form of a
hollow square by means of gimlets kept for
that purpose. Next, the lining of the quilt—
economically composed of a worn and faded
counterpane—was sewed to the border of cloth
tacked to the inner edges of the bars; then
the rolls of cotton-wool were laid upon it, and
a warm discussion as to the proper amount to
be used went round the circle of ladies gathered
about the frame like a congress of crows
considering a prey fallen into their midst.
“Well, every body has their own notions;
but for my part, I don't never want more than
two pound of cotton in a quilt that's going to
lay over me. If you get in more, it's more
heft than warmth,” said Mrs. Green.
“What I say is, if you're going to have a
quilt, why have it, and let it be of some use. I
don't think four pound of cotton a mite too
much, and I haven't got a quilt in the world
with less in, and one I've got for the boys'
bed has got six in it.”
“I should think your boys would be
smashed down flat under it, Miss Williams,”
suggested another matron,slightly flushed with
the heat of argument; and at this moment, fortunately
for the harmony of her party, Miss
Rachel entered the room. The question was at
once referred to her, and decided with a dove-and-serpent
wisdom which excited the admiration
of her niece, who had become a little
alarmed.
“Why, to my mind, it depends altogether
on where the quilt is to be used,” said Miss
Rachel. “For a cold, windy room—up garret,
say—I like a good thick quilt, or may be a comforter,
and if the wool is good and clean, I
don't believe four or five pounds would be
too heavy; but in a warm room, I think it is
better to have your quilts lighter and more of
them, so that you can throw them off and put
them on, as you like. My mother, now, has
four quilts on her bed besides the blankets,
and I don't believe there is more than a pound
apiece in them. So, seems to me, I wouldn't
put more than two pounds in this quilt, and
after we get it out, we'll tack a comforter, and
put five pounds in. Then they could go on
one bed together, and whoever slept there
could turn one or the other off as they were a
mind to.”
“Yes, it's well to suit all tastes when you
can; and some folks like to lie warm, and
some not so warm,” said an old lady soothingly.
And the two pounds of cotton were
laid in, with no more discussion.
The next operation was to adjust the cover
or upper crust of this cotton-wool pie. This
was patchwork, composed of small octagonal
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squares of brightly-colored calico, alternated
with large octagons of solid colored cambrics,
and had been Miss Rachel's fancy-work during
the last month.
It now received many encomiums and a
minute examination, sweet to the vanity of
the laborious artist.
“There's a piece of your lilac calico,” and
“Where did you get that rosy piece?” or
“These pretty cambrics was your morning-gowns,
Beatryce, wasn't they?” and “What
a lot of work to get them all together, and how
nice you set off the colors one against another!”
were some of the ejaculations. And
Miss Rachel modestly deprecating the praise
she felt richly merited, helped to lay the
cover evenly upon the cotton, and to sew it to
the edges of the bars.
“Now, what pattern be we going to do it
in?” asked Mrs. Green, producing a ball of
hard white cord and a piece of chalk from
her pocket
“Herring-bone is about as pretty as any
way, a'n't it?” asked Mrs. Williams.
“I like di'monds, inch-square di'monds,”
said another lady positively.
“Shell-pattern is pretty,” remarked one.
“Waves are prettier,” suggested another.
“How do you do waves?”
“Why, lay down a small plate or a saucer,
if you want them small, and chalk round half
the edge. Just like shell-pattern, only you
do that with a teacup”
“It's pretty to have double parallel lines,
each pair about ten inches from the next, and
then waves in between each pair,” said quiet
Mrs. Phelps, the minister's wife.
“Like skeins of yarn drying on a clothes-horse,”
whispered Mrs. Green, who never approved
any other person's suggestion, and yet
dared not openly contradict the minister's
wife, whose proposed pattern was at once
adopted by Miss Rachel.
“First we must mark out the lines,” said
Mrs. Phelps, looking about her. “Mrs. Green,
will you chalk your cord, and lay it on where
you think it ought to go?”
Mrs. Green thus called to the front, graciously
obeyed, and first drawing the cord
over the lump of chalk, laid it across one
side of the quilt, and held it firmly at one end,
while Mrs. Phelps drew the other tight.
“Now, Miss Rachel, you must snap it, for
the sake of the sign,” said Mrs. Green; and
Rachel, with a prim smile, took the middle of
the cord between her thumb and forefinger,
raised it a little, and let it fall with a smart
snap, striking out a line of chalk-dust.
“What is the sign?” asked Beatrice.
“Why, the one that snaps the first line on a
bed-quilt will lay under a wedding bed-quilt
first of any one in the room,” said Mrs. Green
mysteriously, as she and the minister's wife
moved their chalked cord about an inch, had
a line snapped there, and then removed it ten
inches further inlaid, and chalked another pair
of parallel lines, while Mrs. Bruce, with an inverted
breakfast-plate and a piece of chalk
sharpened to a crayon, proceeded to draw the
“waves” between the two.
Leaving them thus engaged, Beatrice stole
away and up-stairs, where in the room overhead
she found another group of ladies similarly
employed over a “comforter,” already in the
frame, and ready to be “tied” in diamonds, a
process effected by pushing a needle filled
with soft thread down through cover, cotton,
and lining, and drawing it up again nearly
in the same place, a little bunch of bright
colored wools being tied into the knot thus
formed. But in the other front chamber, the
guest-chamber, a knot of matrons, working in
secrect conclave, were preparing the crowning
glory of the day—Miss Rachel herself being
rigidly excluded from the room, and Beatrice
only allowed to enter under promise of inviolable
secrecy.
This was an album bed-quilt, the gift of
Miss Barstow's widest circle of Milvor acquaintance,
each octagon composed by a different
person—the only point of harmony insisted
upon being the size, and a small white square
in the middle, bearing the name of the donor,
either written in indelible ink, or fairly
wrought in cross-stitch, according to her taste
or ability. Below the name was generally a
date, and frequently a couplet, either original
or selected—as:
“When this you see,
Remember me.”
“The rose is red, the violet blue.
Pinks are pretty, and so are you.”
“Of your dreams just when you wake,
Special notice you should take.”
“Your hand and heart
Shall never part.”
“I send this square to Miss Rachel,
To show that I wish her well.”
“As soon as you're married, dear Miss,
You'll surely be living in bliss.”
“This pretty piece of bedding
Is to grace Miss Barstow's wedding.”
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Beatrice gravely read these and many
similar effusions, admired the taste displayed
in the various squares, some of which were
very pretty, and was just about to assume her
place among the needle-women already busily
at work, when her aunt's voice summoned
her into the hall, and she obeyed, first renewing
her promise of secrecy.
CHAPTER XXVIII. STINGING BEES.
“Beatrice, it's just struck twelve, and
don't you think we'd better call 'em out to
luncheon?” whispered Miss Barstow, drawing
her niece into her own chamber, at the moment
deserted, although the bed was piled up
with outer garments, and a small baby slumbered
peacefully in a basket upon the hearth.
“Why, aren't we going to have dinner
pretty soon?” asked Beatrice, stooping to
touch the velvety cheek of the little sleeper
with her lips.
“Dinner! Why, Trix, have you forgotten?
We are going to give them luncheon now, and
by and by, about five o'clock, when it gets too
dark to quilt, and the gentlemen come, we're
going to have dinner and supper all in
one.”
“Oh! yes, I remember, aunty. They must
have some tea with their luncheon, mustn't
they? Old ladies always like tea when they
are at work, I notice.”
“Yes, they will have tea, and coffee, and
bread, and butter, and cake, and cheese, and
apple-tarts,” said Miss Rachel, checking off
each article upon her fingers. “And I want
you to carry round the cream and sugar on
that little silver waiter that brother Israel
gave me last New-Year's, and just see that
every body is getting enough to eat, and sort
of urge them to take more, or something else,
you know. Some people always say no the
first time, and mean yes all the while.”
“I know it, aunty. Yes, I will see that
they are all properly urged. Where shall I
find the salver?” asked Beatrice, smiling
roguishly at her aunt's directions.
“It's in the buttery, with the silver creampot
and sugar-bowl on it, all ready. You
needn't put any napkin over the waiter, Beatrice.
I am going to carry in a little hot dinner
to grandpa and grandma in the east room,
because they hate to be put out of their ways
you know, and I suppose Mr. Monckton will
eat with them. I'm afraid he's dreadful lonesome,
Beatrice.”
“Not a bit, aunty. He is having the nicest
time you can imagine, with grandfather and
the old records. I peeped in there just now.”
“I dare say you did,” said Miss Rachel
grimly, touching her niece's rosy cheek with
her forefinger. “Well, Trix, I think he is as
nice a man as I have seen for a great while.
I like him ever so much.”
“So do I, aunty; but don't go to building
air castles with me for Chatelaine; although
it is natural enough that your thoughts should
run on matrimony.”
“You saucy girl—” began Miss Rachel;
but Beatrice with a merry laugh was already
running down stairs to look for the silver
salver.
Long afterward, both she and her aunt remembered
that merry laugh and that light-hearted
audacity, and wondered that no
shadow of the clouds sweeping across that
brilliant sky should have warned them of its
coming.
The luncheon was served, and Beatrice, flitting
from group to group, the pretty salver,
with its cream-ewer and sugar-basin, in her
hand, and her face bright with cordial interest
in those whose wants she supplied, presented
a more attractive picture to the eyes of a
reasonable man than even Beatrice in all the
luxury of her gala robes, and the plenitude
of her social power.
So thought at least Mr. Monckton, standing
unobserved in the hall of the old house, sipping
his coffee, and watching the groups in
the various rooms with the attentive eye of a
practiced observer. As Beatrice approached,
he, wishing her to remain unconscious of his
presence, lest she should lose the simple
earnestness which charmed him so much in
her present manner, seated himself quietly
behind a group of thick-set matrons close at
hand, and so became most unintentionally
auditor of their conversation.
“Zilpah says she's real comfortable,” pursued
Zilpah's sister-in-law. “They don't have
no great variety, nor no company, and it's so
seldom that they any of them go out of the
woods, that she hadn't had a chance to write
before, since they got there; and I don't believe
she'd have written now, only she wanted
to tell about some things that Marston Brent
gave her when he broke up here, and she left
them with Samooel to sell for her, and I
-- 076 --
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suppose she thought it was time to hear from
them. She was always dreadful sharp after
money, Zilpah was, and that's a complaint
folks don't get better of as they get older.”
“Marston Brent and his folks thought a
sight of Zilpah,” said another matron meditatively.
“Yes, and she of them. She has a lot to
say about Marston in her letter. He's going
to be married.”
“Is? Why, who to, up there in the woods?”
“Well, a girl that's living with him someway
now. Zilpah don't say much about it;
only that evenings, they all sit round, and he
teaches Comfort all sorts of things. Zilpah
says that nobody here needn't think he's feeling
any way bad about what's past and gone,
for she never see a man more taken up in a
girl than he is in this Comfort, and they'll be
married soon.”
“He's got over the breaking off with—”
“S—h! here she is,” whispered another
voice; and between the portly forms of the
matrons, Monckton saw the glitter of the silver
salver, and heard a low voice saying:
“Will you have some more sugar or cream,
ladies?”
It was not five minutes since he had heard
that voice so free, so sweet, so ringing with
innocent mirth, and hardly his own eyes or
ears could persuade him that this was the
same. He stole a look at Beatrice, more careful
now than before not to let her perceive
him. Yes, face as well as voice had met a
change so great as to be almost incredible.
Those blanched cheeks—those lips, straight,
hard, and colorless—those eyes, vacant, yet
burning—that constrained, mechanical manner!
Ah! was this the light-hearted Beatrice
he had stolen away from his appointed place
to admire?
And then he fell to speculating upon the
sudden change. The talk of those women—it
must be that; and this Marston Brent was
the man she had loved, and from whom she
had been separated. A lover's quarrel, which
she had thought some day to reconcile, and
now he loved another woman! And she, so
proud, so sensitive, so—yes, she was jealous
in her friendship, as their late difference
proved; and still more would she be jealous
in her love—not meanly jealous, not desiring
to harm or wound either faithless lover or
successful rival, but disdaining a divided
reign, resigning all without a struggle the
moment a struggle became necessary. This
was the temper of the woman whom Monckton
read as easily as that morning he had
read the old Saxon Bible brought from England
by her ancestor.
Passing quietly behind the matrons, and
out of the room, he waited in the hall until
she should come out, meaning he knew not
what, but to comfort her in some way. Presently
she came; and even Monckton, practiced
societist as he was, stood confounded before
her. The change wrought by those idle
words was not more absolute than this—so
different from both the other moods; and who
but he, who knew the whole, could have distinguished
between the girlish glee of the
first and the practiced persiflage of the present
manner?
He looked at her curiously. Yes, her eyes
were bright, her lips smiling, her cheeks
flushed, her tone gay and unconcerned, and
the slight pallor about her mouth and the
slighter tremor of the jesting voice were so
faintly marked that no observer less acute
than he could have distinguished them.
“And she could hardly forgive me for the
transparent lie told in self-defence. That is
woman,” said he softly to himself. Beatrice
paused before him.
“Why, Mr. Monckton! A drone among
the bees! Aren't you afraid of being stung
to death?”
“Not while the queen-bee is my friend,”
said Monckton significantly, and making a
show of helping himself from the salver, he
detained her long enough to see that the allusion
had shaken somewhat her desperate mood.
“I am glad that we were reconciled last
night,” said she, suffering her face to fall for
one moment into an expression of such piteous
suffering that all the manhood of Monckton's
heart was stirred.
“So am I. I want to see you alone, when
all these people are gone,” said he.
“For what?”
“I will tell you then. Nothing that will
trouble or annoy you—be sure of that.”
“Sure? I am sure of nothing now.” And
with this one cry, wrung from the sharp
agony of her heart by his sympathetic tone,
Beatrice passed quickly on.
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CHAPTER XXIX. FEEDING THE BEES.
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The afternoon passed much as the morning—
the usual conversation, varied by occasional
remarks upon the weather, which continued
“soft” and threatening for the homeward
flight of the bees. Needles, however,
flew as actively as tongues, and by five o'clock
three bed-quilts, including the famous albumquilt,
and four comforters lay completed upon
the floor of the guest-chamber: the frames
were rapidly dismembered and taken to the
garret, the rooms cleared of litter, and the ladies
requested to amuse themselves for half
an hour, when supper would be served. Complying
with this invitation, the elders, after
smoothing their black silk or alpaca dresses,
and adjusting their cap-ribbons, repaired in
squads of two and three to the east room, to
pay their respects to the patriarchs, while the
younger women, after devoting a little more
time and pains to the renovation of their toilets,
collected in groups, gossiping in low
voices and with much-suppressed giggle, or
hanging around the window to watch the arrival
of the gentlemen who had been invited
for the supper and evening frolic offered to the
bees by way of recompense for the toils of the
day.
This supper, as it was justly styled—for certainly
it was neither breakfast, dinner, nor tea—
was a feast such as never perhaps is spread
out of New-England, and, alas! is rarely seen
in these degenerate days even in that favored
region. It was spread upon two extempore tables
extending the length of the dining-room,
and crowded upon both sides with plates; for
Miss Rachel strongly condemned the inhospitable
fashion of “stand-up teas,” and declared
that if she was to have any thing to eat, she
also wished a comfortable place to eat it in, or
wanting that, had rather go unfed. Upon these
tables, then, were set the dishes, including an
enormous round of spiced beef at either end,
roasted turkeys and geese as central ornaments,
and such trifles as roasted and boiled
fowls, hams, tongues, headcheese, and smoked
beef between. Varying these meats were
plates of smoking-hot fried doughnuts, hot
biscuit, brown bread, dipped toast, and shortcakes,
and to succeed them upon the bill of
fare came pies of every imaginable variety,
cake of every hue and description, sweetmeats,
pickles, cheese, custards, and fruit.
At a smaller table across the head of the
room stood Miss Barstow and Beatrice, pouring
cups of coffee and tea, which Nancy smilingly
distributed; while Dr. Bliss, Mr. Monckton,
and a few other gentlemen, waited upon
the fair guests at the tables, carving the pièces
de resistance, and urging them upon the delicate
creatures whose creed of manners peremptorily
inculcated resistance to all such
overtures, however much exhausted nature
might crave support. This point, however,
being thoroughly understood among the jocund
swains of these shy Daphnes, was easily
disposed of, and somewhat in this fashion:
“Have a piece of the turkey, Miss Welch?”
“No; I'm obliged to you, Mr. Snell; I can't
get through what I've got on my plate.”
“You ha'n't got nothing but a piece of
bread, as I see. Better have some turkey, it's
first-rate.”
“La! no, I couldn't eat it if I was to take
it.”
“Well, if you don't, maybe it'll eat you, for
one of you's got to suffer, and there it is.”
“O my! Mr. Snell, what be you doing?
Well, then, I shall leave it on my plate.”
Which she did not do.
Mr. Monckton, everywhere at once, attentive
to every one, rather preferring the older
and less attractive of the guests to the younger
and prettier ones, proved an invaluable auxiliary,
and won for himself more golden opinions
than have often crowned more real selfsacrifice.
The admiration excited by his fine face and
polished manner among the younger ladies
might, indeed, have become dangerous to the
peace of their respective swains, had it not
been tempered by the information, dropped
early in the day by Miss Rachel, and industriously
circulated ever since, to the effect that
this was “Beatrice Wansted's beau,” and
therefore not available for any other aspirant.
At a later day, Miss Barstow defended herself
with considerable skill from the charge of
setting a false rumor in circulation, with the
remark:
“Well, if he wasn't, he ought to have been,
unless my eyes deceived me when I came in
with that loaf of cake.”
But with all Mr. Monckton's efforts, he never
lost sight or thought of the friend whose
grief was to him as his own. He saw that
the exertions she forced herself to make were
too great to be sustained; he was sure that
presently she must fail utterly, either in
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[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]
muscle or nerve—must faint or burst into hysterical
weeping; and he well knew how cruelly
she would afterward reproach herself for either
betrayal.
Watching her with ever-increasing anxiety,
he saw her eyes glazing with the inward fever
that burned upon her cheeks and lips—wander
about the room with the appealing gaze of
some timid creature trapped and doomed to
death, yet seeking despairingly an impossible
escape. He saw her totter and grasp at the
back of a chair for support, and in the next
moment he was at her side, her hand within
his arm.
“One last effort—look about you and try to
smile—don't fail now—remember all these
people!” murmured he in her ear, supporting
her as well as he could without attracting attention,
and leading her rapidly from the
room. In the hall she tottered, and would have
fallen, but with his arm around her waist, he
raised and carried her into the deserted parlor
and laid her upon a sofa. The cool air and
tender twilight of the place revived her, and
opening her eyes, she whispered:
“Thank you. I am so glad—”
“I did not mean to let you spoil all your
effort by breaking down at the last. You have
done nobly.”
Beatrice opened her eyes more consciously,
and fixed them upon his face. Then she said
half defiantly:
“Yes, I have been growing tired for some
time.”
Mr. Monckton bowed with a face which
neither denied nor accepted the proposition,
and Beatrice blushed scarlet.
“You should teach me how to say those
things better,” said she bitterly.
“You need first some food; then warmth
and rest,” replied Monckton quietly. “Go
to your own room, and I will send you something
to eat and drink. You have taken nothing
since breakfast.”
“How do you know?”
“Am I not your friend?”
“I do not like surveillance.”
“You like nothing to-night; but after eating
you will wrap yourself very warmly, and
go to sleep—to oblige me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I cannot be happy unless you are
at least physically comfortable—because I am
your friend.”
“Ah!” shivered Beatrice, as if the word
had hurt her; and with a sudden, uncontrollable
impulse, she laid both her hands in his,
and fixed those piteous, eloquent eyes upon
his face.
“My friend! Are you indeed my friend?”
moaned she. “Then pray that I may die to-night.”
“Beatrice! No, child, you shall not be
alone through the sharpness of this agony—
you could not bear it yet. Come into the other
room, and sit beside that saintly old man;
the peace and perfectness of his calm will
soothe you, and the thought of the battles he
has fought and conquered will give you
strength for your own. Come.”
She suffered him to raise and lead her from
the room, just as the advance guard of the
devastating army in the dining-room appeared
at the lower end of the hall, returning upon
their footsteps. Monckton quickly opened
the door of the east room, entered with Beatrice,
and closed it behind them. The grandparents,
sitting placidly at either side the fire,
with a little tea-table between them, looked
up and smiled.
“Miss Wansted is so much fatigued with
her hospitable efforts that I persuaded her to
come in and rest a little, and, if I might venture,
I should suggest to Mrs. Barstow to
make her drink a cup of tea.”
So speaking, with the easy manner of one
who knows his presence and his proposition
sure to be favorably received, Mr. Monckton
seated Beatrice in a comfortable chair near her
grandmother, left the room in search of a cup
and saucer, and brought back with them a
plate containing some bits of chicken and a
piece of bread.
“Now, Miss Beatrice, if you will allow me,
I shall recommend as much chicken and
bread as you can possibly dispose of; and to
show that I really believe in my own prescription,
I shall go and bring yet another plate,
cup and saucer, and set you a good example.
You see, Mrs. Barstow, we have been so busy
in waiting upon other people that we have as
yet done nothing for ourselves, and I fear
this young lady is quite exhausted.”
“I haven't a doubt of it.” replied the old
lady, with emphasis. “It was always the way
with her from a child; if she got excited, or
tired, or any thing, she wouldn't eat perhaps
not a mouthful in a day, and then, of course,
she'd break down. She isn't very rugged at
the best of times, nor her mother wasn't
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“The Bees going home.”
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snowy forest, their path lit by hand-held lanterns.[end figure description]
before her. Somehow, these pretty creters don't
seem to wear so well as the plain, home-spun
ones—like Rachel, say.”
“My wife probably wishes to say, sir, that,
without unnaturally giving the preference to
either of her daughters, she values each for
her own peculiar gifts,” said the patriarch,
somewhat severely; and his wife, stirring her
tea, vehemently exclaimed:
“Certain, certain; that is what I meant.”
Mr. Monckton, replying to both with a smile
that conveyed every thing or nothing, as the
receiver chose, left the room, and presently returning
with his own supper, drew a chair to
the table; and while eating and drinking
with unfeigned relish, contrived to insist upon
Beatrice's doing the same. When she would
take no more, he contrived that her grandmother
should suggest her reclining upon the
soft, old-fashioned couch, and himself threw a
shawl across her feet. Then, returning with
a smile her look of gratitude, he set aside the
little tea-table, and devoted himself to conversation
with the deacon and his wife upon
topics which he knew to be especially interesting
to his silent auditor.
Thus was he still engaged when the jingle
of sleigh-bells announced that the guests were
about to depart; and Mr. Monckton feeling
that he also owed a duty to Miss Rachel, rose
to fulfil it, seeing, with quiet satisfaction, as
he passed the couch, that Beatrice had fallen
fast asleep.
“Ef there a'n't some hosses' legs broke 'fore we
all get home, why I lose my guess,” remarked
the father of a family, standing rather discontentedly
upon the doorstep, and examining
the gray, watery sky, the plashy and uneven
road, and the erratic movements of the sleigh
just driving from the door.
“Now, look out, girls, for some fun. If you
don't get upset before you reach Four Corners,
it won't be my fault!” exclaimed a jolly
young farmer, escorting a bevy of shrieking,
exclamatory girls to the same point. And half
an hour later the last guest had said good-night,
and the Old Garrison returned to its
usual condition of quiet and repose.
CHAPTER XXX. BEATRICE LOSES HER FRIEND.
The rain continued all night, and by morning
the roads had become so bad that Aaron
Bunce decided that the risk to his horse's
legs and the integrity of his coach was greater
than any hope of gain in prosecuting his
usual journey, and therefore remained quietly
at home. Whether Mr. Manckton would
have gone with him had he driven to Bloom
remains an open question; but at all events,
he acquiesced very amiably in the necessity
of remaining at Milvor, and divided his time
through the day between fireside conversations
with the old people, good-humored aid
to Miss Barstow, who pervaded the house like
a revolution, setting right the wrongs of the
past, at expense of the peace of the present,
and unobtrusive watchfulness of Beatrice,
who went languidly about her various duties,
and alternated in her mood between fictitious
gayety and undisguised depression.
In the evening twilight, he saw her steal
softly into the empty parlor, and as quietly
followed her.
Beatrice looked round at the opening door
with obvious annoyance.
Monckton quietly approached, and seated
himself upon the sofa beside her.
“I know that you came here to be alone,
and that you regard my presence as an intrusion,”
said he. “But you will remember that
-- 080 --
[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]
I told you yesterday, I wished to see you for a
few moments alone, and this, my first opportunity,
will probably be my last, as I leave
Milvor early in the morning.”
“We shall be very sorry to lose you,” murmured
Beatrice, courteous amid all the suffering
she controlled so painfully.
“Thanks. You reproached me bitterly a
little while ago, Beatrice, for want of candor
to you, who have a right, as my intimate
friend, to claim my utmost truth. Now, you
will be tempted to reproach me for over-much
candor, and meddling with affairs which are
not for the touch of any hand save your own.
Shall I speak, or may I keep silence, and yet
preserve our compact of perfect sincerity?”
“Speak,” whispered Beatrice, averting her
head.
“Well, then, I heard that woman's words.
I heard that Marston Brent, in his forest solitudes,
is training to his own liking a wife to
take the place of a lost love, and that this
lost love is no longer regretted. Now, tell
me, Beatrice—that is, if you will—was this
report the blow that prostrated you so suddenly
yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Then you still love this Marston Brent?”
“No.”
“Forgive me if I trespass, but I wish to
help you. This report may be false—very
possibly it is; at any rate, before you fully
credit it, allow me to go and ascertain the
facts. Will you?”
“What, go to Wahtahree? It is five hundred
miles from here.”
“If it were five thousand, I would go, if,
by going, I could set your heart at rest.”
“Then friendship is something better worth
than love.”
“That is another question, and, besides, you
overrate my offer. Travelling is my profession,
and I have been quiet too long. Shall I
go to Wahtahree?”
“No, not for me.”
“But why do you refuse?”
“I do not wish news of Marston Brent.”
“But you believe this old wives' tale, and it
distresses you.”
“I believe it, and I am indifferent to it.”
“Indifference does not show like this.”
“Mr. Monckton, your inquisition partakes
of the nature of torture. You have passed
the question ordinary, and reached the question
extraordinary.”
“You shall not discourage me by a petulance
that arises from overwrought nerves.
I wish to serve you, even in your own despite.
Is it to be done by clearing away this cloud between
you and Marston Brent?”
“No, a thousand times no. Were this story
proved the most baseless fiction, you can
bring us no nearer together. We are separated
forever.”
“By your will, or his, or circumstance?”
“Both—all—every thing. Must I tell you
the whole story before you will let me rest?
Six months ago, we two were compelled to
settle our future paths through life; he asked
me to follow his—I bid him follow mine; both
refused, and so we separated, and every step
since has led us farther apart. Stop, I have
not told you the greatest final barrier: I, setting
forth alone, would have faltered and
turned back to join him; and he—he bid me
hold to my determination, and respect my
own word, or he should cease to respect me.
What more can be said between us? The
shock of hearing that he loved another woman,
and already made himself happy with her,
was, as you too clearly perceived, a severe
one; but it is over now, and it has never for
one moment meant regret—that is, not a regret
that softens my resolution never to yield one
half inch to any temptation such as you place
before me.”
“The temptation to recall yourself to his
mind?”
“Yes, or to recall him to mine. All I desire
is to place an impassable barrier between
those days and these — to forget Marston
Brent and the life we lived together—to blot
out the past.”
Monckton rose and paced the dusky room
up and down, his arms folded, his head bent
upon his breast. Beatrice, watching his lithe
figure and dark face, passing and re-passing—
now shrouded in the gloom filling the farther
end of the apartment, now showing in the
gray light near the windows—thought of that
maniac ancestor of hers who, not yet mad
enough to wear the fetters, whose scar she
had so often traced upon the beam in the east
parlor, may thus have paced the gloomy twilight
rooms, fighting down the crowd of visionary
enemies who, at the last, conquered
him.
“I wonder if I shall go mad too,” whispered
she, shivering down in the corner of
the great sofa.
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Just then, Monckton paused before her.
“Beatrice, I have turned coward all at once.
I wish to speak to you, and I dare not,” said
he.
“Afraid of me! Your friend, as you have
liked to call me!”
“It is just because I have called you so,
and because you have for that name's sake
given me your confidence, and showed me
the wound you hide from others—just for that
reason, I dread to speak.”
“What can you mean?”
“I fear lest you should call me false to my
own professions, lest you should deem me a
traitor, who, having the key of the treasurecasket
given him, uses it to possess himself of
the jewels he was sworn to guard. Beatrice,
you have granted me your friendship, and
from that fair height I see the Paradise of
your love, and, man-like, I wish to attain the
best. Have you one word of hope for me?”
But Beatrice, spreading both hands before
her, as to ward off a blow, could only cry:
“No, no, no! Do not say it, do not think
it! Must I lose you too?”
“Beatrice, you said you desired only to place
an impassable barrier between yourself and
Brent, to prove to him that you have forgotten
him, as he you. How could you do this more
surely than by marriage?”
“No, a thousand times no. You were right,
Mr. Monckton, when you feared to make this
proposition to me, and I was weaker than
weak to believe that any man is capable
of a pure and disinterested friendship. Oh!
why could not you have been content? for already
I was turning to this friendship as my
comfort and my refuge against utter desolation.
I believed in you, and you have deceived
me.”
“I deceived myself as well, for until within
this last four-and-twenty hours I believed as
fully as yourself that my feeling was one of
purest friendship. Your distress, your helplessness,
your unmerited mortification changed
every thing at a blow.”
“And I have lost my friend, and gained
nothing in his place.”
“If you would accept him, you have gained
a true and tender lover in his place.”
“I do not want your love, Mr. Monckton—I
have none to give in place of it, no room for
it in my heart. I asked you for bread and
water, and you offer me spices and wine.”
“I have committed a great mistake, and I
felt it to be such even while yielding to the
temptation,” said Monckton bitterly. “And
yet, God knows, Beatrice, I never intended to
deceive you.”
“Well, well, it is of small importance now.
All is alike wearisome and disheartening.
Let all pass together.”
And Beatrice, with a gesture of sullen despair,
turned her face toward the pillow, shutting
out sight and sound, and, if she might,
all-memory of the world whose fair fruit had
already turned to ashes upon her lips.
Monckton stood looking at her, the vast
pity in his heart gradually absorbing the mortification
he had endured, and even the disappointment
of his love. Then he said:
“Beatrice, forget this hour. Fancy that,
sleeping here in the dusky room, you have
dreamed a dream, and, waking, smile and let
it pass. Look upon me with the coming daylight
as your firm, fast friend, steadfast for the
future against even the tempting of his own
heart, and true to you through all the chances
of both our lives. Beatrice, will you do this?”
“How can I, how can I? How shall I forget,
or, remembering, how shall I trust myself
not to recall these feelings which you
banish now? I should be afraid to speak
or look or behave toward you with the unguarded
confidence that friendship should
permit. I never could be sure that you forget.
I never could forget myself.”
“Oh! fool that I was, and traitor—not to you
alone, but to the whole tenor of my life!” exclaimed
Monckton bitterly. “What had I
to do with woman's love, and the tender hope
and peace that make gardens in the desert of
other men's lives? Have I not known it and
felt it since consciousness began, and from that
day to this have cheated fate by denying my
heart all interest in man or woman? And
now, one moment of weakness has destroyed
the care of years; for, Beatrice, I shall not forget
you, I shall not cease to love you while I
live.”
“Stay! Where are you going? What do
you mean?” exclaimed Beatrice, as Monckton
turned abruptly from her side.
“I am going to leave you for the moment.
To-morrow, I return to the city, and from
thence I go — where the wind goes. Good-by.”
“No, no, I cannot bid you good-by thus.
I did not know that you felt so deeply, so
bitterly—”
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“Child, do you think a man, in the vigor of
his manhood, uncloses his grasp of the one
thing he prizes on earth as easily as a girl
drops a withered flower? Because this love
of mine is the idlest of all follies, it is none
the less a real thing to me, and the heart
that has never been touched until now will
not heal easily over its wound.”
“But wait one moment. You said but now
that you would forget it, that you would return
to yesterday, and be again my true, calm
friend, and nothing more. If that were possible!”
“It is not. The effort would be a fresh
treachery, and would end as this has done. I
might hide the true feeling for months, for
years perhaps, but it would always be there,
and some day the volcano would burst forth
afresh. I am glad your eyes were clear
enough to read the proposition rightly.”
“Then I have lost my friend, as before I
lost my love, and now must set my face toward
the end, unguided, unaided, alone.”
“Hush, for God's sake, hush! You bring
my selfish folly too hideously to light. Had
I contented myself with friendship, you never
need have uttered that lament. O Beatrice!
try to forgive me, for I never can forgive myself.”
He hastened from her presence, and Beatrice,
alone in the darkness and the gloom, fell upon
her knees crying: “God help me! God help
me, for I have no other friend!”
CHAPTER XXXI. A DISAGREEABLE SURPRISE.
The day before the wedding, arrived Mr.
Israel Barstow, and was received with sober
joy by his parents, with fluttering cordiality
by the bride-elect, and with a feverish eagerness
by Beatrice, who, with the instinctive
desire most of us have felt to hide our sorrows
in a crowd, was longing to return to her
city home.
Uncle Israel received all these demonstrations
gratefully, and yet in a strangely preöccupied
manner very different from his usual hearty
fashion, and so marked that each of his friends
noticed and put a different construction upon
it—his father fearing that his business had become
involved; his mother watching for symptoms
of illness; Rachel concluding that her
own marriage had reäwakened some long-past
tender memories; and Beatrice dreading lest
he had learned Mr. Monckton's rejection.
But when at the stroke of nine o'clock, the
old-people prepared to retire, and their son
dutifully rose to bid them good-night, the
mystery was suddenly solved.
“Before you go, father and mother,” said
Mr. Israel Barstow in a strangely confused
voice, “I should like to tell you something—
something which I hope you will like to know,
or at least not take unkindly. The fact is,
that I'm going to be married too.”
“You married! Why, Israel Barstow,
what do you mean? What sort of a girl have
you picked out at last?” exclaimed the mother;
and Rachel added approvingly:
“`Better late than never;' and you're not so
much older than I, Israel.”
“Who is it, uncle?” asked Beatrice, with a
sudden terror seizing upon her heart.
“Some one you know, and can't but like, after
all the time you've been together. Mrs.
Charlton, Beatrice,” said Mr. Barstow, growing
very red in the face, and avoiding his niece's
grieved and astonished eyes.
“A Southern woman!” exclaimed the Puritan
father.
“A widow!” ejaculated his wife.
“A regular fashionable!” added Miss
Rachel; while Beatrice, without remark, removed
her hand from her uncle's arm and
turned away.
“Well, you, each of you, seem to find a
separate fault, and none of you any thing
pleasant to say,” remarked the lover rather
bitterly.
“I hope you have judged wisely for yourself,
son, and I trust that your future life will
be made a happy one,” said the father mildly.
“This is a matter in which every mature man
should judge for himself. I shall be glad to
see the woman you have selected as your wife
whenever you see fit to bring her here; and
now I will wish you a good-night.”
“Of course we shall be glad to see her, and
if she makes you a good wife, she shan't complain
that her husband's folks don't notice her
enough. Why didn't you bring her down
with you this time, Israel?”
“Thank you, father and mother. I know
you will like her when you see her; but I
thought it would be better to come some quiet
time after the wedding,” said Israel, with an
air of relief at having gotten over the announcement.
“You see we shall not make
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such a parade as Rachel and the doctor are
doing. We are to be married quietly in
church some morning, slip away to Washington
for a few weeks, and then settle down at
home. Well, good-night. You're not off too,
Rachel?”
“Yes, I have to help mother a little about
undressing, but I will be back in a minute,”
said Miss Barstow; and closing the door, she
left her brother alone with his niece, who for
the first time in her life felt embarrassed in
his presence. The constraint was mutual,
but Mr. Barstow was the first to overcome it.
“Trix,” said he, approaching her as she
leaned upon the high back of her grandfather's
chair and stared dreamily into the fire,
“you seem out of spirits about something.
I hope it is not because your friend is going
to become your aunt.”
“O Uncle Israel! don't!” exclaimed the girl
with involuntary dismay.
“Don't what, child?”
“Don't speak of Mrs. Charlton as my
aunt.”
“But she will be. Of course your uncle's
wife will be your aunt, and I don't take it
kindly of you, Beatrice, to show this dislike
to a step that I am sure will add so much to
my happiness, as well as to that of a very
charming and very lovely woman.”
“Of course, uncle, I have no right to show
or to feel disapproval of your action. Only I
was so —”
“Well, so what?” asked Mr. Barstow a little
harshly.
“Shocked, I was going to say,” murmured
his niece.
“That is a strange word to use about such
an affair. Pray what is there so shocking in
it?”
“Do not be angry with me, uncle—I have
not been well since I was here, and I am tired
and nervous. Don't mind what I say at all.”
And Beatrice, crossing her arms upon the
chair-back, leaned her head upon them, and
wondered bitterly if so desolate a creature as
herself lived.
The expression of the drooping figure was
more eloquent than speech, and went straight
to the kindly heart of Mr. Israel Barstow, already
tingling with a little remorse, as he remembered
his openly avowed intention of
adopting Beatrice as his daughter and heiress.
“Come, come, my little girl,” said he, tenderly
drawing her to his embrace, and
smoothing with a familiar gesture the beautiful
hair he had so often praised. “You are
not to suppose this makes any change to you.
My house is your house, and I shall insist upon
you making a home of it; and as for money, why
I fancy there will be enough for all of us, both
now and by and by. Nothing will be changed
from what it has been, except that you will be
nearer and dearer to both of us. She told me
to give her love to you, and I have a little note
in my pocket that I was to hand you after you
had heard the news.”
“After I had been prepared,” thought Beatrice,
and then casting the bitter feeling resolutely
behind her, she put her arms about her
uncle's neck and kissed him tenderly.
“Dear Uncle Israel,” said she, “unless you
wish to make me feel like the most ungrateful
and degraded creature in the world, never
talk so to me again. Did you, could you think
that I remembered money, or that I was afraid
I should not have all that I ever enjoyed in
your house? I do not deserve, I never have
deserved your kindness, but at least I am not
ungrateful.”
“Nor I either, Trix, and it's I that am the
debtor. But you'll come home with me, won't
you, dear? The fact is, I am a little lonely
after all our pleasant times, and miss you
sorely. Of course, June has not been with us
since you left, and the house seems dull
enough.”
“Certainly I will come, if you need me, uncle.
Mrs. Charlton will not return until after—
after you are married, I suppose.”
“No, oh! no. She is terribly rigid on all
points of propriety, you know.”
“Yes,” replied Beatrice faintly
“We are proposing to be married quite
soon—in fact, next Thursday, the day after I
get home from here, and we start upon our
tour the same day,” said Mr. Barstow, a little
nervously; “and I should be very glad to have
you go with us, Trixie, but—”
“Oh! no, uncle,” interposed Beatrice hastily,
“that would be quite out of the question.
Don't think of it!”
“Well, so June said,” replied Mr. Barstow
innocently. “And I suppose it might be a
little odd; but then, you know, we are not very
young, or very romantic, either of us, and I
thought it would be pleasant— However, if
you will stay quietly in Midas Avenue with
Mrs. Grey, and just overlook a little some new
furnishing and decorating that is to be done
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in our absence, I can't tell you how much
obliged I shall be. Besides, Trix, you must
remember these turtle-doves here will want
their nest to themselves, and we shall both of
us be better out of the way than in it after
to-morrow.”
Beatrice did not reply. The bitter waters
in which she seemed sinking closed her lips,
and had she unclosed them it would be to
say:
“Yes, you make your home no home for
me, and in the same moment remind me that
I am no longer needed or wanted in the only
other home open to me.”
But she did not say it, and before Mr. Barstow
could pursue the subject, Miss Rachel
entered, her momentary annoyance at her
brother's marriage past, and her tongue voluble
with questions, information, sly jests at
her own and his late romance, and all the
pleasant flutter natural to a bride upon her
marriage eve, and a secluded woman in possession
of an exciting piece of news.
CHAPTER XXXII. MRS. CHARLTON'S SECRET.
The next morning, after her return to town,
Mr. Barstow accompanied his niece in a formal
call upon Mrs. Charlton.
Beatrice, who had nervously dreaded this
visit—more, however, upon Juanita's account
than her own—smiled at her own tremors before
the first five minutes were over. Mrs.
Charlton's perfect breeding answered the exigencies
of the occasion better even than sincerity,
which involves emotion, and opens the
way for awkward situations—edge-tools not
to be handled without serious risk to the fingers
of the handler. But awkwardness, absurdities,
embarrassment, were unknown ingredients
in any of Juanita Charlton's combinations,
and this interview, apparently so
natural and free from all constraint, had been
the subject of her deepest thought from the
moment it had been announced by Mr. Barstow's
hastily-pencilled note.
Toward Beatrice her manner was precisely
what it had been before they separated—kind,
familiar, a little protecting and indulgent, as
far removed from fondness as from formality,
and with no shade of consciousness that any
new relation existed or was about to exist
between them. Toward Mr. Barstow she was,
perhaps, a little more familiar than formerly,
and there might be perceived a slight tone of
deference and of dependence upon his judgment
and opinion, not to be noticed before;
and yet, as Beatrice acknowledged to herself,
the keenest satirist could have found no room
for a sneer, either in the manner she adopted
upon her own part or the manner she permitted
upon that of the mature adorer, who evidently
only waited her sanction to display his passion
in the most decided manner.
At the end of half an hour, Beatrice rose to
take leave with a feeling blended of admiration
and gratitude toward the woman whose
social talent had rendered easy, and even pleasant,
an interview that might have been so exceedingly
disagreeable.
But, in parting, Mrs. Charlton slightly detained
her future niece, while, with a smiling
gesture, she intimated to her lover that he was
to proceed down-stairs alone.
“I want to see you, Beatrice. I have a
message for you.”
“From whom?”
“No matter just yet. Will you wait now,
or call again after you set down your uncle?
I will go for a little drive with you, if you will
take me.”
“Certainly,” said Beatrice, smiling at
thought of how soon carriage and horses
would be Mrs. Charlton's own; and then she
hurried down-stairs, only anxious just then to
part from her companion, and almost forgetting
to wonder what the mysterious message
could be.
“Now, Trix, you may take me down-town,
if you don't dislike the drive, and then go
home, or wherever you choose,” said Mr.
Barstow, handing his niece into the carriage
with the ceremonious politeness natural to
him.
“Yes, uncle, we will drive down-town, certainly;
and then Mrs. Charlton asked me to
come back and take her out for a little. She
has something to say to me,” said Beatrice,
determined to become entangled in no concealments.
“Has she? Poor girl, I suppose she thinks
you are not reconciled to the marriage, and
she wants to explain a little. You'll be kind
and gentle with her, won't you, Trix?”
“I will try, uncle,” said Beatrice demurely,
and almost laughed aloud at the idea of Mrs.
Charlton's needing indulgence and encouragement
at her hands, or feeling any desire to
apologize for her course.
An hour later, Mr. Barstow's handsome
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carriage again stopped at the private entrance of
the Grandarc Hotel; and, in answer to Miss
Wansted's card, Mrs. Charlton came rustling
down the stairs, elegantly dressed, and with
a contented smile upon her lips, presenting
the picture of a fresh and care free woman, in
the prime of her life and her beauty.
Beatrice looked at her more kindly than she
yet had done, and while she seated herself beside
her, said almost affectionately:
“How well you look, Juanita, and how
happy! I am so glad if you really love my
kind, good uncle.”
“I shall make him happy, do not be afraid,
Trix; although, confess you have been horribly
frightened,” laughed Mrs. Charlton; and
Beatrice, vexed at feeling the blood burn
guiltily in her cheeks, could not reply.
Mrs. Charlton pursued the subject no further,
but occupied herself in arranging her
draperies for some moments. Then she said
abruptly:
“Yes, Beatrice, I have a message for you,
and a package, and I promised Mr. Monckton
that I would tell you something.”
“Mr. Monckton!” echoed Beatrice.
“Yes; he came to see me after you refused
him.”
“Did he tell you that?” interrupted Beatrice.
“No, dear, not precisely; but I inferred it
from what he said, and he did not attempt to
deny it.”
“You should not have tried to surprise me
into acknowledging your inference, however,”
said Beatrice indignantly.
“Do you think so? Well, he came to see
me, and was inclined to revenge the affront he
had received from you upon me, because he
said the annoyance you experienced, in finding
that he and I kept a secret from you, was the
primary cause of a quarrel, or a misunderstanding
rather, which had separated you.
Then he said that he was going abroad directly.
The fact is, my dear, the man has a perpetual
motion inside him somewhere, and
nothing would have kept him long; but he
said that he was going, and might never return—
should not for a very long time, at any
rate; and he thought I owed it to him to set
him right with you after he was gone—on
the principle of `De mortuis nil nisi bonum,'
you know—and after a while I consented.
But, Beatrice, you must promise me, upon
your sacred word of honor, that you will never
repeat what I am going to tell you to any living
soul.”
“It is not necessary to promise so solemnly—
I am no tale-bearer,” said Beatrice rather
contemptuously.
“We none of us know what we are until
we are tempted. A remark trite perhaps, but
none the less true,” said Mrs. Charlton sententiously.
“And what I am going to tell you
is, as somebody said of his head, not valuable
to the world at large, but very important to the
owner. So, promise.”
“Very well. I promise not to betray your
confidence,” said Beatrice coldly.
And Juanita looked at her with a malicious
smile as she replied:
“Remember, you have promised, and I hold
you to it through every thing—so here is my
story:
“While Mr. Charlton lived, I met my first
love.”
“Excuse me. You mean to say that Mr.
Charlton was your first love?” asked Beatrice,
a little perplexed.
“Not at all,” replied her companion with
admirable coolness. “What I mean to say is,
that about six months after I became Mrs.
Charlton I met Major Strangford, an officer in
the United States army, and that he was my
-- 086 --
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first love. Now, Beatrice, it is by no wish of
my own that I am telling you this story. Had
you been a confiding, simple-hearted woman,
who would have accepted Mr. Monckton's assurance
that the mystery between him and
myself was nothing to you, I should have
been spared the necessity of telling and you
of hearing any thing farther; but since your
own suspicious and Mr. Monckton's doctrine
of compensation have forced this issue upon
us both, let us accept it manfully, and with as
few womanish complications of deceit, spite,
and malice as possible; which episodical
piece of advice please take in reply to the
contemptuous smile and look of indignant
virtue with which you have already favored
me, and which I beg may not be repeated.”
“I can turn my face away if its expression
annoys you,” said Beatrice quietly.
“Try, instead, to cultivate a wider scope of
moral vision, and look beyond the blue laws
in which you have been bred,” retorted Mrs.
Charlton. “However, the story is to be told,
and I shall fulfil my compact with Mr. Monckton,
however you receive the communication:
Major Strangford and I then fell in love at
first sight, if you will pardon the platitude—
which in this case, however, was any thing
but a platitude, for in both our hearts throbbed
the fiery blood of the South, and both our
temperaments were of the vivid and sympathetic
order which recognizes destiny at a
glance, and follows its dictates with blind
confidence. But crime is a stupidity, and loss
of social position is worse than annihilation.
We recognized this truth, and separated. A
few months later, he married; his heart of
fire and brain of quicksilver were incapable
of quiet inaction, and he could not wait. A
year later, I was a widow. He heard of it,
and travelled a thousand miles from his distant
frontier post to see me. Fancy that
meeting! No, you cannot fancy it; it is not
in you to imagine the fury of remorse, despair,
hopelessness, which raged in both our
hearts. That one short day eat the pith out
of my life and killed him, although we neither
of us felt then the full force of the ruin that
had come upon us. We parted once more,
but now more hopefully than the first time,
for we both believed that the volcano force of
our passion must conquer every obstacle, and
that could we but wait, fate would once more
grant us the possibility of bliss.”
“That is to say, that Major Strangford's
wife might die, as Mr. Charlton had already
died,” said Beatrice, her face resolutely turned
from her companion.
“Yes, if you choose to put it so coarsely.
Too restless to remain at his post, the Major
resigned his commission, and went abroad
with the woman he had married. She had
always been delicate in health, and now
showed symptoms of a decline. The Major
was a man of high-toned Southern honor,
and he omitted no measure for her recovery—”
“She probably had discovered his relations
with you,” suggested Beatrice in the same
resolutely calm voice.
“Very possibly,” replied Mrs. Charlton with
composure. “At any rate, she sickened, and
the Major's constant letters to me spoke always
of her failing health. They went to the
East, and after that I knew nothing, for his
letters failed to reach me. I became desperate
with anxiety; and the necessity of concealing
my anxiety—for it was this very last winter,
while I was here with you—and the appearance
of gayety, at least, must be kept up, or I
did not earn the home your uncle was giving
me.
“Then came the night when you found
Mr. Monckton speaking to me, and your mad
jealousy forced on this explanation. He
brought me a package and a letter—just a few
lines, but oh! what wealth would buy them
from me? For, in the interior of Persia, his
wife had died; he had buried her, and was
hastening home to me, when a sudden fatal
sickness seized him. He knew it was fatal
from the first, and he wrote with his dying
hand those lines to me, and another note to
Mr. Monckton, an old friend, or rather travelling
companion, who knew all our sad story,
although a stranger to me. He sent him the
amulet which I had hung around his neck at
our last parting, and the letter, bidding him
break the news to me gently, and to shield
me from observation and suspicion. He would
not send to me directly, because he feared to
compromise me. You saw Monckton hang
the amulet around my neck, and thought it
was a love-token—so it was, so it is, and shall
go with me to my grave; but it is a token of a
love in which neither he nor you have any
part—a love that defies death, as it has already
defied life, and exists to-day in all the
fervor, all the omnipotence of its earliest
maturity.”
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“And you have engaged to marry my uncle!”
exclaimed Beatrice, turning her horrorstricken
and indignant face full upon the
speaker.
Mrs. Charlton shrugged her shoulders.
“Why not?” asked she. “I give him all
he asks or can appreciate—my society, my
beauty, my social position; he does not expect
love, and I shall not fail in the duty and
attention of a wife toward him. It is his right
by purchase.”
“Have you, or will you tell him this story?”
“Did you ever know me to commit a stupidity?”
“If you do not, I will.”
“You promised me that you would not, if
you will take the trouble to remember.”
“Oh! but this is infamous! You cannot
do it!”
“We shall see. But what do you mean,
after all? Where is the infamy?” asked Mrs.
Charlton patiently.
“Where? Why in marrying one man with
your heart filled with love for another; in deceiving
and insulting so grossly a generous
heart that has given itself to you, believing
that it received yours in return.”
And Beatrice, trembling, pale, almost choking
with emotion, fixed ler clear eyes upon
Mrs. Charlton's unflinching face.
The latter smiled disdainfully.
“Your argument is apt. Mr. Barstow has
paid the price of a heart—and has a right to
expect a heart—for that is the law of trade, and
he is a trader. But I am no defrauder; Mr
Barstow will receive at my hands all, and more
than all that he has bargained for. I have told
him that the fire and passion of love were not
to be expected from him to me, or me to him; I
have promised him the affection, duty, and respect
of a wife, and I will give them to him.
What right have you or any one to interfere?”
“No right, perhaps, and yet I must speak.
How can I see this go on, and keep silence?”
exclaimed Beatrice in great agitation. Mrs.
Charlton looked at her unmoved.
“Again, I say, I do not understand your
horror, or your desire to annoy and bore your
uncle with this story,” said sle. “Major
Strangford is dead, and the memory I retain
of him lies too far below the surface to be
reached by any plummet in Mr. Barstow's
hand. Let it sink out of your sight also, and
forget what I have said to-day, as I shall certainly
appear to forget it myself.”
Beatrice looked at her doubtfully.
“Do you still wear this amulet he sent
you?” asked she.
“Certainly.”
“And will continue to do so after you are
married?”
“Until I die.”
“That in itself is enough to condemn you,
for it shows that you intend to perpetuate the
memory you affect to bury. Can you retain
the gift, and forget the giver?”
“I never announced the slightest intention
of forgetting the giver,” said Mrs. Charlton
coldly. “I only said that his memory would
remain buried in my heart.”
“With his epitaph blazoned upon your
bosom,” said Beatrice bitterly.
“You become epigrammatic, which shows
that you are losing your temper,” said Mrs.
Charlton.
Beatrice looked at her in astonishment.
“How can a woman speak of a life-long love,
and yet be utterly heartless?” asked she, half
aloud.
“Love is a passion, and what you call heart
is emotion, prejudice, weakness. The two are
seldom united,” said Juanita, in precisely the
tone of good-humored patience with which
she had hitherto instructed Beatrice in the
science of society. But this conversation, and
perhaps her own experience of the last week,
had changed the neophyte to an adept, and
she answered coldly:
“Our theories differ so essentially upon
most points, that it is not best for either to try
to convert the other. The only question we
have to solve at present is, what action you
will adopt toward my uncle.”
“I have already solved that question,” said
Mrs. Charlton in the same tone. “I shall
marry your uncle, and I shall behave toward
him with kindness and propriety. He will be
very happy, and never miss what he never
had, or expected to have, or could comprehend,
if it were given him. The revelation you
would make to him, in the way you would
make it, would nearly destroy his present happiness,
and give him no other. As for the
rest, `let the dead past bury its dead,' and let
you and I be good friends, and harmonious
companions, as it is our mutual interest to be.
And, above all things, Beatrice, never refer by
word or look, or silence, to this conversation
between us two. Close the chamber I have
shown you, lock the door and let the ivy
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grow over it—or, if you like it better, hide it
behind the French flowers, the spangles, the
gaslight, and drop-curtain of society. At any
rate, forget it.”
“Why did you ever show me this chamber?”
“I promised Mr. Monckton that I would do
so!”
“How did he extort this promise?”
“Extort?”
“Excuse me. How did he persuade you to
make it?”
“Excuse me in turn, but I never promised
that I would tell that, and I do not intend to
do so.”
“It is not my affair, certainly,” said Beatrice,
pulling the check rein, and through
the speaking-tube giving James directions to
return to the Grandarc Hotel.
“But here is something which is your
affair,” said Mrs. Charlton, drawing from beneath
her muff and placing in Beatrice's
hand a packet, closely sealed, and addressed
to herself.
“Mr. Monckton left it with me to give you
after this conversation,” said she. “And now
tell me if this chilly spring weather is not detestable?”
Beatrice bowed her head, and Mrs. Charlton
kept up a cheerful monologue, until, at the
door of her hotel, she alighted with the remark
that she had enjoyed her drive exceedingly.
CHAPTER XXXIII. A GRAND CLIMAX.
So soon as she was alone, Beatrice opened
with some curiosity and a little apprehension
the package Mrs. Charlton had left in her
hands. Beneath the closely-sealed envelope
of wrapping-paper appeared a box of ebony,
inlaid with gold, in a rich arabesque pattern.
A little golden key lay upon the top, and Beatrice,
hastily applying it to the lock, raised
the cover, and sat appalled at the sight before
her. Upon a cushion of white satin lay a set
of Oriental turquoise enriched with pearls, a
crescent and band for the hair, a chain of
stars for the neck, and bracelets of the same
device, with golden pendants wrought in various
cabalistic forms.
“Oh! I cannot take them!” exclaimed Beatrice
aloud; and just then perceived a little
folded slip of paper among the jewels. Opening
it, she read:
“I know that you will feel remorseful, because, even
without fault of your own, you have done me an injustice
by your suspicions; and, later on, have dealt me a
blow whose wound will endure for years. To natures
ike yours, there is no comfort like reparation and
atonement. I offer you the opportunity for both in
this set of trinkets, brought from India by me for the
unknown lady of my love. If you will take them and
wear them, I shall feel that we are friends once more,
and that you have forgiven yourself and me for the injury
that friendship has sustained. Do not refuse me
this amends; and believe me always while I live,
“Yours, most faithfully.
“Reginald Monckton.”
“Mine, most faithfully,” murmured Beatrice;
“and the man whom I loved so well
that I sacrificed pride, delicacy, resolve to
him, was faithful half a year, and then took
comfort in another woman! I wish I had
loved Reginald Monckton as I did Marston
Brent.”
And then—for such is woman—she examined
the jewels, appreciating their beauty, recognizing
the rare purity of the pearls, the deep
color of the turquoise, and the unique style of
the setting.
Monckton, wily even in his sincerest display
of emotion, had struck the right chord in
the manner of offering his gift. Had it been
laid at her feet as a tribute to her charms, or as
the memorial of as absent and despairing
lover, Beatrice would have refused it without
question or regret; but Monckton bid her accept
and wear the jewels in token that she repented
the involuntary injustice she had done
him, and she frankly complied with his request,
feeling, as he intended, that the obligation
was from her to him.
But when she reached home, Beatrice laid
aside both gift and giver, and sought painfully
and eagerly for her own path of duty in the
matter of Mrs. Charlton's marriage with her
uncle. True, her promise bound her from repeating
the secret she had learned; but could
she allow the marriage to go on without opposition?
Could she see her single-hearted,
generous, confiding uncle blindly walk into
the snare this woman, disappointed in her
love, had laid for him, or rather for his worldly
advantages?
These were questions that Beatrice found
herself unable to answer, and she still sat
pondering there in the early twilight when a
slow step ascended the stairs, and Mr. Chappelleford
appeared at the door of the drawing-room.
Beatrice rose to meet him with some
embarrassment, for in her thoughts she had
unconsciously linked him with his niece, and
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felt as if her unfavorable opinion must be
written upon her face.
The cynic was in his least cynical mood;
and the first greetings over, began a conversation
upon the topics of the day, in which, while
affecting to despise them, he always contrived
to be well informed.
But Beatrice, although polite and cordial,
found it impossible to interest herself in what
he was saying—a fact soon perceived by Chappelleford,
who closed his account of a recent
political pageant with the remark:
“You offer poor encouragement, Miss Wansted,
for me to assume cap and bells in your behalf.
You remind me of some story I have read,
where Rowena, or Ermengarde, or Yolande
says to the zany who tries to charm away her
love-sick melancholy: `Go to, fool! Thy jesting
is sadder than a sermon, and I will have
thee whipped for a false fool, who knows not
even folly!”'
“Your mediæval beauty was unreasonable;
but you say she was suffering from a disease
I never yet experienced. Perhaps that was
one of the symptoms,” said Beatrice, a little
vexed at the suggestion.
“What! love-sickness? No, I did not suppose
you were love-sick,” said Mr. Chappelleford
with composure.
“Thank you; I should be very sorry if you
had.”
“No, your complaint is an ocular one,” pursued
the philosopher.
“What do you mean, Mr. Chappelleford?”
“Why, like a young kitten, you are just
getting your eyes open, and the operation is a
painful one.”
“I suppose I must accept the kitten, since
you just compared yourself to a fool,” said Beatrice,
smiling languidly.
“I am sorry for you, but it is what we all
go through, sooner or later; and when it is
once over, you have no idea how comfortable
you will find yourself.”
“Please tell me, without metaphor, exactly
what you mean, and I then will answer you.”
“What I mean? Why, that you are a good
deal shocked to find that Juanita Charlton has
decided to sell herself to your uncle, and that
he is idiot enough to pay his hard-won treasure
for so damaged a piece of goods. You are also
shocked at the sudden downfall of the fine
cloud-palace of friendship in which you had
elected to dwell with Mr. Monckton, and you
are a little desolate in losing the stimulus of
his presence. Also, you are dissatisfied with
your own prospects, as a supernumerary in the
houses of Mrs. Israel Barstow and Mrs. Wyman
Bliss. Finally, there is the old grievance of
the faithless lover, whom you believe you no
longer love, but whom you do not forget.
Now, every one of these disappointments and
annoyances would have been foreseen and
prevented had your eyes been open wide
enough to see their approach. I could have
warned you of several of them.”
“Which?” asked Beatrice faintly.
“Why, Mrs. Charlton's designs upon Mr.
Barstow, and the termination of your friendship
with Mr. Monckton.”
“Why did you not warn me?”
“Twenty years ago, I should probably have
done so, and have made enemies of four persons
with whom I do not wish to enter into
such intimate relations as enmity. Now I am
wiser.”
“A selfish wisdom, it seems to me, that prevents
your saving the man for whom you profess
friendship.”
Beatrice paused, perceiving to what discourtesy
her impulsive remark was leading. Mr.
Chappelleford grimly smiled.
“Saving him from my niece, you were
about to add,” said he. “The remark is frank
and youthful. But, in the first place, I profess
friendship for no man; and in the next, I
am by no means certain that it is a bad thing
for Mr. Barstow to marry Mrs. Charlton. He
gives money and a settled position in exchange
for beauty, wit, and a facility in society,
which he mistakes for talent. Nobody
says any thing about love, faith, or sincerity—
the myths upon which your theories of marriage
are based. The parties to the bargain
are content—why should you or I grumble?”
“If the matter is fairly understood by both,
perhaps we should not,” said Beatrice, hesitatingly.
“But I fear that my uncle is deceived.”
“In the matter of Mr. Monckton's communication
from Major Strangford?” asked
Chappelleford coolly; and then, as Beatrice,
coloring scarlet with surprise, sat blankly
looking at him, he added, with a laugh:
“Oh! yes, I know it all. I knew of the affair
from its commencement, and warned Juanita
that I should not permit her to make a family
scandal, even if she chose to throw away the
worldly position, which is the only thing in
the world for which she cares. Then, when
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you took her confidences with Monckton to
heart, I compelled her to repeat them to me.
She is always submissive in my hands, because
I neither admire nor love her, and do understand
her thoroughly. She told me the
whole, and had already promised me to set
you right upon the matter when Monckton
returned from his fruitless visit to Milvor, and
she was shrewd enough to make a separate
bargain with him. He used a bribe, and I a
threat, and she was equally open to both.
Neither would have succeeded with you, but
hers is a meaner nature.”
“Is it right that you should tell me what
the bribe and the threat were?” asked Beatrice.
“Why not? I threatened to lay the matter
before both Mr. Barstow and you, and Monckton
gave her a set of jewels. The provident
fellow came home from the heart of India, resolved
to find a wife, and not knowing whether
she would be blonde or brown, brought a
set of turquoise and a set of garnet as his betrothal
present. You disappointed his hopes,
and Juanita failed to secure him, but he gave
you two his two gifts, and has gone away
fancying himself heart-broken. That is the
way the plans men lay are apt to terminate.”
“How do you know every thing?” asked
Beatrice, looking in terror at the cold, impassive
face of this man, who, without emotion,
sympathy, or curiosity, succeeded in reading
the lives of those about him like an open
book.
“How do I? Oh! my eyes were opened a
good many years ago, as yours are opening
to-day. After the process is complete, you
also will see what is about you.”
“I do not wish to, if, like you, I am to find
deceit, selfishness, and folly upon every side,”
said Beatrice sadly. “What do you leave me
to found any confidence upon?”
“Not men, certainly, nor yet women,” replied
the cynic. “Put them out of the question
once for all, and turn your mind to more
important matters. Read Hugh Miller, and
found your confidence upon the `Old Red
Sandstone;' read Ruskin, and expand your
imaginative powers in following out his theories;
read Hegel, and strengthen your thinking
powers by trying to follow his; and then
go to Nature, and you will find sympathy and
healing in her manifold forms of beauty. The
trees will not deceive you; the sky and water
profess no constancy; the stars ask not your
secrets, nor reveal their own. These are the
only safe friends, and to these you yet will
turn for comfort.”
He spoke with an earnestness that carried
conviction, and Beatrice raised her melancholy
eyes appealingly to his.
“These are your friends, I see it,” said she.
“Bring me to them, teach me how to know
them. It is so desolute to set forth all alone
upon a new path. O Mr. Chappelleford! if
you would say that you were my friend, I
would believe you.”
“Foolish child! Have I not this moment
finished telling you that human friendship is
naught, and less than naught? and for answer
you beg me to help you cheat yourself yet
once more. Have you not just tried the experiment
with this man Monckton, and failed most
signally? There is no such thing as friendship
between man and woman—either it is
companionship founded on mutual interests,
or it is mere acquaintanceship, or it is a Jesuitical
love—sure, sooner or later, to throw off the
mask and claim its reward. Monckton's was
of this nature, and I knew it from the first.
No, Miss Wansted, I will not pretend to be
your friend, for it would be a pretence without
rational foundation; but I will, if you wish
it, be your tutor, your adviser, your companion.
I will introduce you to those friends of mine
of whom I spoke but now, and teach you how
to know them. I will give you fruit of the
tree of knowledge, instead of the husks upon
which you so far have fed, and I will help you
climb the heights of thought and reason,
where alone peace dwells serene. Shall I do
this?”
“Yes, yes!” cried Beatrice, with feverish
eagerness. “All that I thought to find in life
has failed me: love, friendship, the world—
they are all alike hollow and deceitful. Give
me knowledge, teach me philosophy, lead me
to those cold heights where you find peace—
all else I leave behind.”
“Come, then, poor, ruffled, storm-beat bird—
poor, lost child, come and be my pupil, my
charges and at least I will never deceive you,”
said Chappelleford, with a most unwonted
tenderness shining in his eyes, ordinarily so
sad and so severe. “But, Beatrice, to make
this companionship practicable, you must become
my wife. I shall not continue to visit
familiarly in this house after my niece becomes
its mistress, nor could I see you elsewhere.
You must come to me in the only
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manner in which man and woman are allowed
to live together.”
“Marry you, Mr. Chappelleford!” exclaimed
Beatrice in dismay. “But I do not love you—
I cannot!”
“Have I asked you to love me? Have I
professed to love you? Have I ever alluded
to any such weak and stupid delusion upon
either side? Is not the very foundation of the
education I propose for you an emancipation
from all such romantic credulity as you now
evince? What I wish is to make a rational
being out of a woman; and, to do this, the
woman must be directly and constantly under
my influence, and this can only be effected by
making her my wife. This is my motive, and
yours is immunity from deception, increased
knowledge, and a content—or at least a calm—
infinitely superior to what you call happiness.
You see I do not deceive you. What
is your answer?”
“I will marry you, Mr. Chappelleford, just
as, under other circumstances, I would enter a
convent.”
“Yes, either course is the refuge of a sick
heart—the one dictated by reason, the other
by superstition,” said Mr. Chappelleford.
Beatrice made no reply; and so, in the
deepening twilight sat the betrothed pair—
she, her head bent upon her breast, her hands
idly folded in her lap, gazing drearily into the
glowing coals—he, shading his eyes with his
hand as he leaned upon the chimney-piece,
and steadfastly regarded her.
So passed a half hour, and then Mr. Barstow
entered, to whom spoke Vezey Chappelleford
half kindly, half in disdain of himself
and all men:
“Mr. Barstow, I have given you my niece in
marriage, and now compensate myself by taking
yours. Miss Wansted kindly promises to
become my wife.”
“Why, why, Trix! this isn't true, surely!
Have you promised to marry Chappelleford,
Trix?”
“Yes, uncle, and shall keep the promise,”
said Miss Wansted in a voice of icy calm; and
rising, she left the room before another word
was spoken.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE OMEN IN THE AIR.
High above the crests of the hemlocks hung
the June sky, deep, clear, and soft; the heat
of noon-day brought out the balsamic odors
of fir and spruce; just within reach of eye
and ear the full-bosomed Sachawissa sang
her song of life and love, as she hastened to
her marriage with the sea; all sights and
sounds spoke harmoniously of free and joyous
existence, and of fullest content in being; and
man, God's last and greatest work, might well
be joyous when all beneath him was so glad.
So thought Marston Brent, standing with
bowed head beneath the arches of the wood,
and feeling a new life stirring in the heart
that so long had lain cold and dead within
him.
“When all else feels God's beneficent kindness,
why should we two be miserable?” said
he aloud. “In some way, we shall yet be
brought together, and without falsehood to
each other or to ourselves. Then comes happiness,
which shall compensate a hundred-fold for
all these weary months, or even years. I feel
it in the air to-day that I am to receive good
news of my darling—none the less mine that
her mistaken will divides us for the present.
In all the manifold and unexpected developments
of life, one is approaching which shall
bring us again together—”
“Mr. Brent!”
“What, Comfort, is that you? Here am I.”
Down the long arches of the wood came
running a light girlish figure, a bright and
blooming face, two eager eyes searching for
him, and a voice breathless with delight and
haste.
“O Mr. Brent! Richard has come home, and
he got you a newspaper, and I knew you would
be so glad, for you were wishing this morning
you had told him to try and get one, and none
of us supposed he would. So I ran right out
to find you, and bring it.”
“Thanks, my little Comfort. You are always
ready to run when you think you can do
me a service,” said Brent kindly, and Ruth,
looking frankly up into his face, said with a
smile:
“Of course I am glad to do a little for you
who do so much for me.”
“Nonsense, child, and nonsense again.
Aren't you my Comfort?” said Brent, half
jestingly, half tenderly, and seating himself
upon a felled hemlock trunk beside the path,
he opened his week-old newspaper with the
hungry haste of a man who has been too long
divided from the world, whose affairs are still
his own.
Ruth—if this blithe, rosy, smiling maiden,
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whose every motion spoke health and light-hearted
content, could indeed be the Ruth
whom we last saw a pallid and tremulous
fugitive from a horrible accusation—Ruth
went singing through the wood, stopping now
to pluck a berry or a flower, now to mimic
the strains of linnet or blackbird in the tree-tops,
now to drink in the beauty of the day and
scene. At last, when she thought he might
be ready to speak to her, she returned to
Brent. He still was sitting as she had left
him upon the hemlock-log, the paper hanging
idly from one hand, the other supporting his
chin, while his eyes were fixed upon the
ground with such a look of white despair as
Ruth had never seen in her life before.
Half terrified, half eager to console her
friend, the girl drew near and stood beside
him. He neither moved nor spoke.
“Mr. Brent!” said she softly.
No answer, for, indeed, he had not heard
her; and the child, growing bold in her alarm,
seated herself beside him, and laid a hand
upon his arm.
“Please tell me what has happened,” said
she tremulously. Brent started, and raised
such wild, fierce eyes to hers that she shrunk
from his side, and then crept yet closer to it.
“Something has happened! Oh! tell me
what it is, dear, dear Mr. Brent,” moaned she.
“Something! Well, yes; it might be called
something here in the woods, although in the
world, I suppose, it would be called nothing,”
replied Brent huskily; and then he snatched
the paper from the ground, laid his finger
upon a paragraph, and thrust it before Ruth's
tearful eyes.
“Read that!”
She meekly obeyed. It was this:
“Oh, Wednesday last, Vezey Chappelleford, Esq.,
the distinguished antiquarian, philologist, and historian,
was united in marriage to Miss Beatrice Wansted,
niece of our respected fellow-citizen, Israel Barstow,
Esq., at whose house the strictly private ceremony
took place. The happy pair, after a breakfast proportioned
rather to the means of the host than the number
of the guests, went directly on board the Ethiopia,
and sailed within the hour for Europe, and still more
distant points. It is to be hoped that Mr. Chappelleford
will enrich the public mind with the fruit of his
travels, either through the press, or from the rostrum,
soon after his return, and that all foreigners not yet
converted to faith in the preeminent loveliness of
American ladies may have an opportunity of seeing
this fair bride, and judging from her as a specimen.”
Ruth read this paragraph attentively, and
laid the paper down with a puzzled face.
“Did you know Mr. or Mrs. Chappelleford?”
asked she.
“Did I know her? Child! I had no more
doubt that she and I should stand together
hand in hand before God's throne, if not before
His earthly altar, than I had that we
both breathed. I never once dreamed that
she could do this thing. O Beatrice! How
little one life seems in comparison with the
eternity I had hoped to pass with you, and
now, now— O my God! I cannot think!”
And starting to his feet, Brent raised to
Heaven a face so wild, so ghastly, so despairing,
that the tender girl watching him hid her
own in terror, while he, glaring about him for
a moment as doubtful where to turn for refuge,
dashed away into the wood, and was presently
lost to sight and hearing.
Ruth watched him so long as she could follow
his course, and then taking the crumpled
paper from the ground, she folded it carefully,
and hid it in her pocket.
“He will come back after a while, and I
will wait for him,” said she softly, and sat patiently
until he slowly approached through
the forest, his bent figure, painful steps, and
haggard face showing the work that years
should not have done.
He came straight toward the place where
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she sat, and yet had so forgotten her presence
there, that he started back in recognizing
it.
“I was looking— I left a paper here,”
said he in a low voice.
Ruth handed it to him, glancing sadly, yet
not inquiringly, into his face as she did so.
“I thought you would come to look for it
here, and I waited to give it to you,” said she.
“Thank you. Oh! yes; I remember you
were here.”
And Brent was turning away when a new
idea crossed his mind, and he returned.
“Comfort!”
“Yes, sir.”
“You like to help me, to make me happy,
do you not?”
“You know that I do, sir. I like it better
than any thing.”
“That is the reason I call you Comfort.
Well, dear little girl, remember that you
never can do half so much to help me in any
other way as you can by keeping this secret—
what you know of it.”
“I will keep it, sir, and I should have kept
it, if you had not spoken.”
“I do not doubt you would, Comfort, I do
not doubt it, if you saw that it was a secret,
but I did not know that you understood. I
cannot tell you any thing more than you saw
for yourself; but I dare say you guess the
whole. It is not a thing of which I shall ever
speak after this moment, and it is a thing I
shall never forget. But we will appear to
forget it, both of us, and perhaps you will—it
is nothing to you, but to me—”
And he wandered down the path muttering
to himself—the broken tone, the uneven
gait, the crushed look of the whole proud
figure, more like those of some luckless fugitive
from a torture-chamber than the free,
noble bearing of Marston Brent.
Ruth rose, and slowly followed until she
saw him close beside the shanty, and then she
turned back a few paces into the wood.
“O Beatrice Wansted, Beatrice Chappelleford,
how I hate and detest you?” cried she,
clenching her slender hands, and shaking
them in the air.
“What are you, or any woman in the world,
compared with such a man as this! And he
said it was nothing to me, and that I should
soon forget it, and he told me not to betray
his secret! How little he knows me, after all!
But I hope that hateful woman will have to
suffer yet, two pains for every one she has given
him to-day! I hope she will, and if I could
give them to her, I would.”
And then Ruth, her mind slightly relieved
of its burning anger and grief, returned slowly
to the house, where Zilpah had long since prepared
a reprimand for her.
CHAPTER XXXV. ALMOST A DEATH-BLOW.
The next morning, Ruth watched for
Brent's appearance with an anxiety almost
impossible to conceal, but to her infinite
relief, the night had brought him at least
the semblance of peace, and although a little
paler, a little brighter-eyed, and graver than
his wont, there was nothing in his looks or his
demeanor that would have attracted the attention
of an observer.
Breakfast over, he followed his men out of
doors.
“You will finish that clump at the east side
of the hill where you were yesterday,” said
he, “and I will come along too.”
“That's right, Cap'n. The fellers work just
twice as smart when you're'round,” said Richard
aside; and Ruth, creeping up at the other
hand, softly asked:
“May I go too?”
“What, into the woods, Comfort? Why,
yes, if you like, and Zilpah will spare you,”
said Brent, looking kindly down at the girl,
who darted back into the house.
“I am going out for a little while, Zilpah—
Mr. Brent said that I might—and I will do my
work when I come back; you can leave it all
for me,” said she, snatching her hat from the
wooden peg where it hung, and hurrying away
before the old woman could remonstrate.
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed she, following
as far as the door, and standing there with
arms akimbo, to watch the procession of oxen
and drags—accompanied by the lumberers in
the picturesque costume of the woods, and
followed by Brent's stately form, with Ruth
tripping lightly beside him—as it wound slowly
in among the trees, which presently hid all
but now the glimpse of a scarlet shirt, now
the glint of an axe-blade, or the polished balls
upon the oxen's horns, now Brent's towering
head, or his Comfort's floating skirts.
“Well, I declare!” repeated Zilpah. “Trapseing
off to the woods again, and leaving me
with all the work to do! And Marston won't
let any one say a word to her, more than if
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she was a feather and would blow away in the
wind. I don't see what Paul Freeman's thinking
on, if he calc'lates to have the charge of
her, to let her be following round after Brent
this fashion. Any way, I didn't stretch it
much, only just a leetle mite, when I wrote
Nancy that they was going to be married some
time, for I shouldn't be took aback any day to
hear that it was so. She's most fifteen, and
my aunt Polly Jane's sister was married when
she was sixteen. All I hope is, them stuck-up
Barstow folks and Beatrice Wansted heard of
it. That's all I want.”
So Zilpah went back to the dishes, and the
procession, winding through the wood, fresh
with the cool purity of the summer morning,
came at last to the hillside, already half stripped
of timber, where the day's work had been
appointed. The ground above was strewn
with felled timber, chips, branches, and sheets
of bark, left as the men had abandoned them
upon the previous evening; and while a certain
number of choppers attacked fresh trees,
others applied themselves to peeling those already
felled, cutting them into lengths, and
hauling away the logs to be piled beside the
principal road of the forest, there to lie until
the next winter's snow afforded facility for
sledding them to the river.
Ruth watched all these operations with interest—
always, however, keeping close to
Brent, who superintended every thing with a
sharp decision of manner which induced from
Richard the remark:
“Tell you what, Paul, the old man's wide
awake to-day. There a'n't no chance for
shirking, I can tell you.”
“I don't know as any one wants to shirk,”
replied Paul rather sullenly. “I don't, for
one; nor I don't want to be drove round as if
I was a nigger, neither.”
“Seems to me you got out o' bed wrong foot
foremost, young one,” replied Richard good-naturedly;
and shouldering his axe, he walked
from the tree he had just felled to the next
one, a monster hemlock, three feet in diameter
and at least two hundred in height.
“Four, maybe five market-logs in you, old
fellow, if there's an inch,” remarked Richard,
softly whistling as he measured the giant with
his eye, and calculated its contents.
“Here, Jebson,” continued he, calling to his
especial mate, who was still busy with the last
tree. “You come and peel a section of bark
off this thumper, while I fix a bed for him to
tumble into.”
Jebson, obedient to the call, approached, silently
measured the tree as the other had done,
and then shortening his keen axe in his
hand, cut a ring through the bark of the hemlock
close to its roots, and another four feet
above it; the next movement was to connect
these by a perpendicular line; and then throwing
down his axe, Jebson took up a spud, an
instrument resembling a chisel, but curved to
fit the boll of a tree, and proceeded to loosen
the bark, which he did so nicely that it presently
fell, an entire sheet, beside the tree, and
was carefully removed to a pile of similar
sheets close at hand.
Richard meantime had felled and laid side by
side a couple of middling-sized birch-trees,
growing near the hemlock, and now so disposed
as to receive it in its fall and prevent its
imbedding itself in the earth, as it otherwise
would have done.
“All ready now Jebson,” said Richard briefly,
and swinging his axe high above his head,
he buried it in the bared trunk of the hemlock;
as he withdrew it, Jebson's fell; and so
with swift alternation, the murderers, as Ruth
mentally styled them, pursued their work
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until the slender tip of the hemlock, lying like
a finger upon the sky, trembled visibly, and a
shiver ran through the stately trunk to its remotest
plumy branch.
“Hold on, Jebson! She wants trimming a
little; we aren't falling her square on the
bed,” said Richard, pausing to wipe his streaming
brow and glance anxiously aloft. Then
while Jebson waited, the experter woodsman
cut deeper into the heart of the tree in the
desired direction, hesitated, looked aloft, and
then dropping his axe-head to the ground,
stood leaning upon the handle, attentively regarding
the tree, whose topmost branches, still
thrilling as if with their death-agony, slowly
began to describe upon the cloudless sky the
first line of the great are in which they were
to sweep earthward; at the same moment, the
sharp sound of rending the fibres knit by
years of deliberate growth became audible,
and its heart-strings snapped at last, the great
tree came plunging and crashing to the earth,
tearing through the branches of such smaller
growth as stood in its path, and falling fairly
at the last upon the bed prepared for it.
“A good stick of timber that, Cap'n; five
good markets if there's one, as I said before
I struck it,” said Richard, viewing his work
complacently, while Ruth, hardly yet able to
draw a full breath after the emotion of the
scene, came timidly forward, and looked at the
great stump with its fresh-cut wounds.
“Poor tree! It had been so long growing,
and maybe knew that it was growing, and
now it is nothing but wood for burning,” said
she in a low voice.
“Not wood for burning, Ruthie,” said Paul
Freeman, who, with a spud in one hand and an
axe in the other, was approaching the tree on
the same side with herself. “These hemlocks
are cut full as much for the bark as any thing
else; they use it at the tannery, you know,
and the logs are floated down the river and
sawed into boards. It wouldn't pay to cut
such timber as this for firewood.”
“And what part do you do, Paul?” asked
the girl, feeling with a little remorse that she
had not been as attentive of late to her old
friend as he had a right to expect.
“I'm a peeler. First come the fellers—that's
the ones that cut down the tree, you know—
and then the peelers cut the bark into lengths
and peel it off, just as Jebson did before he
and Richard felled this tree; and then the
hewers cut the trunk into logs about fifteen
foot long; and then the teamsters carry off logs
and bark, and skid them up, ready to be sleded
off next winter.”
“Yes, I have seen almost all those things
done this morning,” said Ruth, “and I always
wanted to come out with the men before, but
Zilpah never would let me. I only come now
because I asked Mr. Brent first.”
“You might have come with me most any
time,” said Paul jealously, and just then Brent
approached the spot, saying:
“Comfort, I am going to look at the new
skids the men are laying up on the road to
the river: do you want to come? It is about
half a mile from here.”
“Oh! yes, sir,” said Ruth hastily; and Paul,
looking after her as she followed Brent with
glad alacrity, threw down his tools, and
snatched the goad from the hand of a teamster
just guiding his oxen with the faintly
traced path the drags had worn.
“Here, Jim,” said he hurriedly. “You
help those fellows get their loads aboard, and
I'll team this to the skids for you. You said
you didn't want to walk on that sore foot.”
“All right, mate, no more I don't,” said the
man, a little astonished, but well content; and
resigning his place to Paul, he picked up an
iron bar and turned to help his comrades roll
the logs prepared for transportation upon their
drags.
“I don't know as you'll be able to help up
these logs, Freeman; it's man's work, I can
tell you,” said the brawny fellow who
slouched along at the other side of the drag.
“I've rolled logs before to-day,” said Paul,
rather contemptuously, as he hurried the oxen
down the road Brent and Ruth had taken.
“Yes, but there a'n't much roll to these, I
can tell you. They've got to be h'isted up on
top of the pile. I tell you, we've got a harnsome
skid, me and my mate have, about
twenty logs, and these will just top it off
pooty. It's the biggest one in the job, I
reckon.”
“I heard the Cap'n say he didn't like those
great skids, and wouldn't have them,” said
Paul. “It does make awful hard work, getting
the logs on and off.”
“Yes, there's some lift in it, I tell you, and
I reckon you'd better go back now, and send
Jim along. I'm dog sure you can't handle'
em.”
“You see,” replied Paul briefly; and the
other, sinking his hands deeper into the
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waistband of his trowsers, and whistling softly as
he went, slouched along without farther remark.
Through the forest-path, flecked here and
there with sunshine, but for the most part
lying in the heavy shadow of the hemlocks,
through the clearing whence one might look
far over valley and stream to the majestic
morntains upon the horizon, wound the wood-path,
until, near the brow of the hill, where
the road descended to the valley, Paul halted
his oxen beside a pile of great logs laid across
a platform of small sticks, technically called
skids, and designed to raise the logs above
the deep snow, in which they would otherwise
be hidden. Some twenty logs already were
piled upon these skids, and the four now to
be added would, as Paul's companion remarked,
just make up two dozen, which was
“a pooty lot to see together.”
“Now, I tell you what, boy,” continued the
woodsman, taking his hands out of his waistband,
and suddenly a wakening to full activity
and energy, “we've got to fly round and get
these logs h'isted to the top of the pile before
the Cap'n comes along. He took the other
road by the brook, and will go to the lower
skids first, and if we're spry, we'll finish and
be off before he reaches here. If we don't,
he'll let out the worst kind at us for building
so big a skid.”
“Let him. I a'n't afraid of what he'll
say,” replied Paul, whose temper was in its
worst condition this morning.
“Yes, but he's boss, and there a'n't any
getting away from it, he means to stay boss,”
said the other, whose name was Bevis.
Without reply, Paul backed his oxen a step,
so that the sled lay immediately beneath the
towering pile of logs, and seizing one of the
iron bars or handspikes, lashed upon the top
of the load, placed the point of it beneath
the upper stick, and signed to Bevis to imitate
his example. Bevis obeyed as silently, and
the two men, with prodigious effort, much
skill, and a judicious use of the principle of
leverage, succeeded presently in elevating the
great log inch by inch to the top of the pile,
and rolling it to the farther side of the platform
made by the tier below.
“Now the next,” exclaimed Paul, leaping
down the instant this object was effected.
“Don't you want to catch your breath?”
asked Bevis, panting a little.
“No. He'll be along,” said Paul doggedly;
and Bevis resumed the handspike he had just
thrown down. The second log was larger
than the first, and the men less able to manage
it, through need of the moment of rest
they had omitted to take; so that, although
it reached the top of the pile, it was by efforts
that both felt were too severe for prudence.
“Tell you what, boy,” panted Bevis, sinking
down upon the top of the pile. “This
sort of thing don't pay. You and me a'n't
stout enough to handle such logs as these on
such a skid. We'll have to go fetch Jim.”
“There's Brent,” replied Paul in a low
voice, and both men, looking from their elevation,
saw the tall form of the master coming
up the path, with Ruth beside him.
“What is this? Why, men, what under
the sun are you about here?” commenced
he sharply. “Haven't I said, time and again,
that I won't have these immense wood-piles
laid up in place of decent skids? And, Paul
Freeman, what are you doing here? Your
business is peeling, and I won't have you
mixing up in this way. Bevis how came you
to lay up these logs in this fashion, after what
I have said?”
“Well, I don't know, Cap'n,” replied Bevis
slowly. “Jim and me, we're two-fisted fellers,
we are, and we just liked to see what we
could do.”
“Well, I should just like to see what you
can do toward minding what I say,' replied
Brent angrily. “You two get those logs off
again in a hurry, and load them on to your
drag. Then haul them a dozen feet further
on, lay some new skids, and begin a new pile.
Freeman, since you like to meddle with another
man's work, let me see if you can undo
as well as do.”
“I wish't I could undo one job that I was
a fool for doing,” said Paul sullenly; and seizing
his handspike without waiting for Bevis,
he lifted the end of the log nearest to him,
and sent it crashing down upon the load
below, with such force that it rebounded several
feet, and the smaller end springing outward,
struck Brent a heavy blow upon the
breast, felling him to the ground, and toppling
over beside him, but fortunately not upon
him.
“O Paul! You wicked, wicked monster.
You have killed him! You have killed my
darling friend!” cried Ruth, throwing herself
down beside Brent, who, to the astonishment
of all, was already struggling into a sitting
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posture. The girl, throwing her arms about
him, with some wild idea of supporting or
raising him, would have poured forth a torrent
of questions, ejaculations, sympathy; but
Brent, with one hand laid heavily upon her
shoulder, silenced her with the one word
“Hush!” and then in a strange, hoarse voice,
hardly louder than a whisper, briefly ordered:
“Get that log upon the drag, then roll
down the other, and do as I told you. If it
isn't done in half an hour, you'll both leave
Wahtahree to-night.”
Without a word, and with white, awe-stricken
faces, the men obeyed; and Brent,
without moving from his position, relaxing
his hold of Ruth's shoulder, or again essaying
to speak, watched their movements with glittering
eyes, set in a face paler than death,
until in less than the prescribed time his
orders were obeyed to the full. Then, while
Bevis turned the oxen into the path, Paul
Freeman approached his wounded employer.
“Mr. Brent,” said he, “I am very sorry you
are hurt. I never meant to do it. Can't we
carry you home on the drag, or won't you let
me help you?”
“Go back to your work, and remember that
you are a peeler, and not a teamster,” whispered
Brent, waving his hand so imperiously
toward the road, that Freeman obeyed without
another word.
CHAPTER XXXVI. FIGHTING FOR LIFE.
“And now, Comfort,” whispered Brent, as
the retreating footsteps of the men died away,
“now we will see what is left for me in this
world. I think that was my death-blow, but
I was resolved those men should see that I
was master while I lived. Can you stand firm,
poor child, and let me raise myself by you?”
“Let me raise you! Oh! dear, dear master,
let me help you in any way,” cried the girl, unheeded
tears streaming down her face, and her
whole puny strength exerted in the effort to
raise the stalwart figure of the injured man in
her arms.
“Stop, stop, child!” gasped Brent in agony.
“You will injure yourself, and you torture me.
Wait a moment and I can raise myself.”
“Cling round my waist then—I am very
strong, you have no idea how strong—and pull
yourself up that way,” said Ruth, bracing herself
like a young birch emulating an oak.
Brent smiled faintly, and adopting the plan
she suggested, succeeded in raising himself to
his feet, stood for a moment, his arm about her
shoulders, his form swaying backward and
forward in a vain attempt to gain its equilibrium,
his face growing more ghastly in its
pallor, his eyes rolling wildly upon an earth
and heaven that seemed to have broke their
bonds and joined in chaos, and then he fell
prone to earth, the blood gushing in a torrent
from his lips.
Ruth, too utterly terror-stricken for any
action, sank down beside him, and presently
summoned courage to raise his head and lay
it upon her lap, all ghastly and gory as it was,
and so they remained for moments that grew
to hours—the man stricken down in the splendor
of his strength, more helpless and more
defenceless than the feeble child who watched
him, and who thought him dead or dying.
But at last Brent opened his eyes.
“Darling! No, you are not mine now.—
What is it? What did they tell me?—Beatrice—
Oh! it is you, little Comfort. Where
are we?—So cold. Why is it so cold?”
“Oh! you are not dead, dear, dear Mr.
Brent! I am so glad!”
And Ruth's tears fell hot and fast, dripping
upon the white face in her lap.
“No, I am not dead,” repeated Brent dreamily.
“Why do you cry, Comfort? Because I
am not dead?—I remember those logs. When
did I see them before? Ah! now I have it!
Yes, yes! Those men and the great log, and
the whirl of the woods and sky! Yes, I have
it now. And you have been sitting here to
hold me, Comfort, and never thought of deserting
me for a moment? Well, it is a Comfort
truly named. Now let us try again.
Stand up and let me cling to you. So—that is
it, that is brave! Now walk on, slowly, softly—
do not hurry. Can you pick up one of those
sticks and give me? Here, I can cling to this
tree while you stoop. Now then, let us get
on!”
“O Mr. Brent! let me run and call some
of the men to help you home. You will certainly
fall—you will kill yourself doing so
much. They can carry you in their arms!”
exclaimed Ruth, watching the faltering steps
and uncertain, swaying motions of her charge
with tremulous anxiety.
“No, Comfort, no,” muttered Brent, leaning
yet more heavily upon his stick, and conquering
the growing faintness that seized him by an
effort of his resistless will. “I will not have
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the men—they shall not see me in this fashion—
I must be master of myself, or I cannot
be their master. No; we are getting on toward
home, and you and Zilpah will take care of
me. We won't have the men.”
So muttering at intervals, leaning now upon
his staff, now upon the shoulders of the girl
who watched his every step with such agonized
solicitude, Brent struggled on, with many
a pause, many an alternation of deadly faintness
and heroic effort, many a whispered word
of encouragement and apology to his Comfort,
who replied not a syllable, her whole soul being
absorbed in sustaining those faltering
steps which promised each one to be the last
possible before exhausted nature failed.
But at last came the clearing, the open sky,
the shanty, with Zilpah at the door, feeding
the poultry she had with infinite pains established
in her new home. Zilpah, seeing
at a glance the position of affairs, rushed forward,
eager, clamorous, inquisitive, and yet
most efficient and eager to be of use.
Ruth told the story in brief, tremulous
words, and between them they led Brent to
his own room and laid him upon the bed.
Then, while Ruth ran for water, cloths, restoratives
of various sorts, the old woman tenderly
undressed him and examined the frightful
bruise upon his chest.
“Do you think there's any ribs broke,
dear?” asked she tenderly. “Or is it an in'ard
hurt? I wish 't I had some sage to make you
a tea, though there's nothing like sparmecity-candles
scraped in merlasses for an in'ard
bruise. Yes; you can come right in, Ruthie.
There now, Marsie sonny, let me wash your
face—same as I used to. Lor, it seems as if
we'd gone clear back to the day you clim'
the big nut-tree to shake it for Beatrice Wansted,
and tumbled down, and was took up for
dead. That was the year afore your ma died,
and she was so scared at seeing you all white
and bloody — just as you are now — that it
gave her a turn, and I don't think she ever
got over it. Yes; it seems as if you was no
more than that same boy over again. There,
you look a little better; and now you drink
some of this hot whiskey and sugar to keep
up your strength; and, Ruth, you come here
to the door.”
Ruth obeyed in the same dazed way in
which she had moved and spoken ever since
the terrible shock of seeing Brent fall lifeless
at her feet.
“Wake up, child! Wake up, and think
what you're about!” said Zilpah, shaking her
by one shoulder somewhat impatiently. “It
a'n't going to help him any to act that way.
There's got to be a doctor sent for right
away; it's too big a hurt for me to handle all
alone—though I know as much as any woman
you'll fetch about roots and yarbs and
sech stuff, but of course that a'n't like a
doctor. Now, Ruth, you know where the
men be, and you slip out quiet, and find Richard,
or maybe Paul Freeman would do, and
tell 'em to take the Cap'n's horse and ride
for the doctor, lickety-split. Maybe five minutes
will be the saving of his life, for I don't
know but he's bleeding in'ardly, and I don't
know how to stop that. Run, now!”
But there was no need to bid her hasten.
So soon as she comprehended the service required
of her, the wind could hardly have
outstripped her speed to perform it; and almost
before Zilpah knew that she was gone
she was out of sight, and fifteen minutes
later stood breathless, pallid, and excited in
the path of the men, who were returning
homeward for their dinner.
“Richard, come here quick, I want to speak
to you,” called she impatiently; and as Paul
also darted forward, she waved him imperiously
back.
“No, Paul Freeman, I don't want you,” said
she, turning her back upon him, while she
whispered to Richard:
“Mr. Brent is dreadfully hurt—dreadfully;
and Zilpah says we must have the doctor just
as soon as we can get him. She says take
Kitty and ride down to the Ford, and tell
him to hurry all he can. Oh! do hurry, Richard,
do!”
“How'd he get hurt?” asked Richard,
already hastening toward the stable, while the
other men, except Paul, turned toward the
shanty.
“A log rolled down and struck him; but
oh! do, do hurry!” said Ruth, following the
man for a short distance, and then standing,
with clasped hands and white face, breathlessly
watching his movements.
As she thus stood, a slow and reluctant step
approached her from behind.
“Ruthie!”
“What do you want, Paul Freeman?”
“Why do you speak so short, Ruthie? and
why won't you look at me? You don't think
I meant to roll the log down on him, do you?”
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“I hope you didn't, for your own sake as
much as any thing, Paul,” said the girl, never
moving her eyes from Richard, who was
rapidly saddling the sure-footed mountain-nag
Brent had selected for his own use over roads
where a horse accustomed to travelling a settled
country would probably have broken his
own legs and his master's neck in the first
day.
“Is he much hurt?” asked Paul in a low
voice.
“Killed, maybe.”
“O Ruthie! don't say that.”
“Well, it's true. And what killed him?”
“Not I, Ruth. I solemnly swear to you
that when I gave that h'ist to the log I had
no more idea of hitting him than you with it.
Don't you believe me?”
“Yes; if you say so, I believe it, Paul.
But if Mr. Brent dies, I never can bear to look
at you, or speak to you, or hear your voice or
your name again.”
“Even when I didn't mean to hurt him?”
“Yes; even then, because you did hurt him
if you didn't mean it.”
“Then you care a great deal about Mr.
Brent, Ruthie?”
“A great deal! I shouldn't think you'd
ask such a question, Paul.”
“More than you do about me, Ruthie?”
“Why, of course I do. More than I do
about any body,” said Ruth impatiently.
And Paul turned away without another
word.
CHAPTER XXXVII. DOCTORS DISAGREE.
“Well, doctor, what do you think about
him?” asked Zilpah impatiently, as the doctor
finished the ample dinner with which the
housekeeper had hospitably provided him
before she asked any questions.
“Well, ma'am, if you want my candid, outright,
and downright opinion about Mr.
Brent—”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Well, ma'am, it is that he is a dead man!”
And the doctor, adjusting his spectacles to his
nose, tilted his chair against the wall, thrust
his hands in his pockets, and steadily regard
ed the little junta composed of Zilpah, Richard,
Paul Freeman, and Ruth, who breathlessly
waited for his words.
As they met her ear, Ruth turned, and hiding
her face upon Zilpah's bosom, burst into
hysterical sobs; and the old woman, with
tears streaming down her withered cheeks,
found no word of comfort to whisper to her.
Paul Freeman turned miserably toward the
open door, yet lingered, hoping for some alleviating
word to this terrible sentence; and
Richard pursed up his lips as if to whistle;
then glanced uneasily at the women, and
doubtfully at the doctor, while he slowly
said:
“Sho! it a'n't so bad as all that, I guess.”
“It couldn't well be worse,” replied the
doctor dogmatically. “The man is injured
very bad inwardly, and there's no way of getting
at an inward wound to see what it is.
There's a couple of ribs broken, too, but
they'll heal of themselves in a week or so. It
was walking with them ribs playing against
the vital organs inside of him that did the
mischief, I expect. They sort of tore him all
to pieces, and I don't see how he's going to
get mended.”
“You can't do any thing more about it?”
asked Richard, still whistling softly as he
eyed the doctor with increasing disfavor.
“I don't see as I can, young man, really. I
have no objection to coming into the woods
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again—say day after to-morrow; but its pretty
hard on a horse, and I really don't see what
I can do.”
“Well, now, doctor, I'm an ignorant sort
of man alongside of you; but it's my opinion
that the boss is going to get over it, and I'll
tell you what he'd ought to take to help him
over.”
“Well, sir, what?” asked the doctor, much
in the tone ordinarily assumed by the master
of the ring toward the clown at a circus.
“French brandy and loaf-sugar,” replied
Richard undauntedly, and meeting the doctor's
sneering laugh with good-humored indifference.
“Well, that's a new cure for broken bones,”
said the man of science at last.
“It a'n't broken bones—you said they'd
heal of themselves in a week or two,” replied
Richard sententiously.
“Well, what's your brandy and loaf-sugar
going to do anyhow?”
“Why, the brandy keeps the blood a-circulating
lively, so that the bruised parts won't
die before they heal, and the loaf-sugar makes'
em heal.”
“Sugar's dreadful healing, every body
knows,” said Zilpah corroboratively.
“Now, doctor, you think I'm a fool, but
you just hear what I've seen in my day,” pursued
Richard, rising and marhing up and
down the room, pausing now and then to
confront the doctor with some sentence more
emphatic than the rest, and speaking with
the eloquence of conviction, and an earnest
purpose.
“Three years ago, I was on a job with a
man named Sparks. It was down in the State
of Maine, where the lumbering is carried on a
little different from what it is here, but is full
as dangerous. This man was a great fellow
for taking hold of every thing himself, though
he was the boss; and in the spring, when it
came to rafting the lumber down the river, he
was here, there, and everywhere. The end
of it was that, one day, there was a jam just
above the rapids, and not a fellow on hand
man enough to go out on the raft and break
the lock, till Sparks himself seized up an axe,
tossed off his jacket and boots, and just waiting
to have a rope tied round his waist, sprung
out on the logs that were bobbing up and
down, piling one over another, and grinding
away like as they were alive, and in a hurry
to chaw him all up. Out he went, found the
lock, hit right and left, knocked out the key-log,
and then sprung for it like a man that feels
the devil close on his heels, and the church-door
open all ready for him. We fellers hurrahed
and cheered him on, and pulled away
at the line, keeping it just taut and not pulling
a bit; and well was it for him that we
did, for, just at the church-door as it were, the
devil caught up with him, and over he went,
down among the dead men, we all thought
and said; but while there's life there's hope,
and we hauled away at the line, and after five
minutes or so, up he came, looking more like
the pieces of a man than a whole one, and
hanging to the end of the rope with no more
force about him than a dish-cloth.
“We got him ashore, and carried him up to
the shanty, which wasn't far from the river.
The only one to take care of him was an old
Indian squaw we had picked up to help cook
and wash for us while we stayed in that camp,
and with her we left him, while we went back
to the logs; for the man we worked for
wouldn't have thought it much of an excuse
if we'd let all his lumber slide just because
one man got killed.
“When we got home at night, the first
thing we said was:
“ `Is the boss gone under?' and the old
squaw up and made answer:
“ `He no go under, never; me makey well.'
And sure enough, there was Sparks lying on
his bed, as happy as a lord, and alongside of
him a cupful of white sugar just wet with
brandy, while he had a bottle of it for medicine,
though it hadn't never been opened till
that day, and the white sugar he'd fetched up
when the man that owned the job came to
spend a day or two on it.
“Well, where that old woman got her idee, or
how she knew the brandy and sugar was in
the shanty, is more than I can tell; but she
seemed so sartain sure she was right that we
just let her go ahead, and when the brandy
was gone, one of us fellers went all the way
to Bangor to get some more.
“Well, sir, that was all there was to it.
The cup of brandy and sugar didn't never get
empty; and about once in five minutes, either
Sparks for himself, or some body else for him,
would tuck a spoonful into his mouth. It
kept him about half drunk, I do suppose, and
he slept right straight along, day and night,
most all the time. When he got a little better,
we used to carry him out on a sort of bed
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we made for him, and set him in the sun a
little while; and when it came midsummer,
we laid him where he'd get the good smell of
the spruces and fir-balsams. Then we fed
him on thin slices of raw pork, sprinkled with
red pepper; and the amount of it was that by
early fall he was a well man, and it was
brandy and sugar that cured him.”
“Brandy and sugar, and the smell of pinewoods,
and raw pork and red pepper!” repeated
the doctor contemptuously. “Well, young
man, if you think you're competent to manage
this case on those principles, I am quite ready
to leave it in your hands, for I confess that I
don't understand that style of treatment.”
“Nor no other that'll haul Brent through,
do you?” asked Richard, much in the same
tone.
“No, I can't say I do. A man that's injured
as he's injured had ought to die, and I don't
doubt he will die,” said the doctor, allowing
his chair to resume its quadrupedal position,
while rising to his own feet, he buttoned his
coat, finished packing and strapping his saddle-bags,
and showed symptoms of a dignified
departure.
“All right, doctor. You say he'll die, and
you can't help it, and I say he shan't die, not
if we can hender it; shall he, Ma'am Zilpah?”
“No, Richard, he shan't; and I don't doubt
but what we can hender it, if all you say is
true,” replied the old woman, jerking her
chin into the air, with a defiant glance at the
doctor.
“Very well, then, I leave the case in your
hands—only mind and don't you blame me
when the man dies,” said that worthy practitioner,
putting on his hat and approaching
the door.
“No, we won't; but maybe you'll tell me
if you've got any first-rate French brandy
among your physic down to the Ford?” said
Richard, accompanyng him.
“Yes, I've got some worth eighteen dollars
a gallon, if that is good enough,” said the doctor
with a grim smile.
“Who cares for the price if the stuff is
first-rate! I'll buy a bottle anyhow out of my
own pocket.”
“And I'll go down with the doctor and
bring it back,” said Paul eagerly, looking
toward Ruth for approval; but she was whispering
to Zilpah:
“Let us go back to Mr. Brent now.”
“You go, and I'll come as soon as I put
these dishes together,” said the old woman
kindly; and the girl, waiting for no further
permission, flew back to the post beside Marston's
pillow, which she had unwillingly
quitted half an hour before, at Zilpah's call.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. A GHOST.
“Mr. Monckton! Is it possible? This is
indeed a delightful surprise.”
“I may echo the delight, but not the surprise,
for that would have been in finding
Mrs. Barstow less charming than I left Mrs.
Charlton,” said the traveller, touching the
finger-tips extended to him, and bowing profoundly.
“Still a courtier,” said the lady, lightly
laughing as she glanced toward a chair and
resumed her own.
“No satire, pray. Remember that I am but
just off a journey, and more than usually
powerless in your hands.”
“You have but just arrived in town?”
“Or in the country either. I landed upon
republican soil just four days ago.”
“After an absence of—how long?”
“Four years.”
“And you have explored during that time
how large a proportion of the habitable
globe?”
“Ah! one's ideas of habitable become so
vague in the course of extended travel that I
cannot answer your question, especially in
comparing this apartment with the hut of my
friend Eric Jakell, the Icelander, where I
spent a week last summer.”
And Mr. Monckton suffered his eyes to wander
admiringly through the elegant drawing-room,
its charms, like those of its mistress,
heightened by the softened and tinted light
alone suffered to enter the heavily shaded
windows.
Mrs. Barstow noted the glance, and felt an
added kindliness toward so delicate an appreciator
of the taste displayed in her surroundings.
“It is a pity you should waste four years
upon the Eric Jakells of the world when so
many of your more civilized friends are wishing
for your society,” said she, with a smile so
becoming that Mr. Monckton, doing a little
sum in mental arithmetic, decided that eight
and thirty must be the grand climacteric of
woman's beauty.
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“I did not spend all my time in Iceland,”
said he slowly. “I travelled in various quarters
of the globe beside, and met many persons
whom I knew.”
“The Chappellefords, for instance,” said
Mrs. Barstow with a slightly malicious smile.
“Beatrice told me that they met you in London,
quite by accident.”
“Yes,” said Monckton gravely. “But a
very happy accident for me, as I enjoyed their
society exceedingly during the few days I was
able to remain with them.”
The reserve of his manner checked the jest
Mrs. Barstow wished to utter upon the subject
of Beatrice, and she asked instead:
“Did you share Mr. Chappelleford's triumphs
among the English savans?”
“Not at all. The Oriental Club were hospitable
enough to give me a chair, and I belong
to the Travellers', but otherwise I saw
nothing of society. I was only passing
through London on my way to Scotland. But
Mrs. Chappelleford's success was even greater
than her husband's.”
“Indeed—in what direction?” asked Mrs.
Barstow coldly.
“As a belle esprit, almost a bas bleu. In
fact, had she been less beautiful, less elegant,
older, and more stereotyped, she might have
been consigned to the ranks of learned women,
and lost to the general society which
eagerly claimed her.”
“Indeed! I did not know she had become
such a paragon. I shall be quite afraid of her
when I find time to appreciate her.”
“Pray, do not delay that period, for I assure
you that you are losing a great deal,” said Mr.
Monckton, smiling ever so little. “You have
not seen much of your friends then since
their return?” added he directly.
“No; they only came in the last steamer,
the one just before yours, by the way, and I
have hardly found time for a call, and to see
them once at dinner. They will be here to-morrow
evening, however, at a little gathering
in their honor, and I trust we shall have
the pleasure of welcoming Mr. Monckton also.
Mr. Barstow will be most happy to call upon
you in the morning, although, you know, society
is not his favorite occupation.”
“Thanks—I shall be most happy. Mr. Barstow
is quite well, I hope.”
“Oh! quite, and just as devoted to business
as ever. I hardly see him except at dinner,
for he is not fond of going out, and I am un
able to avoid so many engagements that they
quite absorb me.”
She raised her eyes with such an air of pathetic
protest against her fate, that Monckton
would certainly have laughed had he not been
absorbed at the moment in contriving an
opening for the one thing he had entered that
house to say.
“I dare say you are thinking that Mrs.
Monckton shall be more domestic,” continued
the lady with an arch smile; and the traveller
replied in the same tone:
“ `Bachelors' wives,' you know, are perfect,
and I am afraid I never shall have any other.
But you were asking of my travels, Mrs.
Barstow. Among other places, I visited Persia
again.”
“Indeed!” and Mrs. Barstow turned pale
beneath the nuance of rouge upon her cheek;
but recovering herself by a rapid and violent
effort, she boldly picked up the gage which she
imagined thrown down to her.
“Then I dare say you heard further news
of an old friend, Major Strangford,” said she
carelessly.
“Yes, Mrs. Barstow, very singular, very
startling news,” said Monckton earnestly.
“What is it, pray? He was always original.”
“This time extremely so, for after dispatching
a letter and parcel which I transmitted to
you four years ago, he recovered from the fever
supposed to be fatal, and in the course of
several months resumed the use both of his
body and mind, which, as I understand, had
been nearly equally affected by his illness.”
“He recovered!” gasped Mrs. Barstow, too
deeply agitated now for concealment.
“Yes, and was about to proceed upon his
journey homeward, when, in looking over a
file of American newspapers at some consulate
upon the route, he met with the announcement
of your marriage. It was a great shock
to him, as he had formed his own plans with
regard to your future. You will excuse this
freedom, I trust, as both you and Major Strangford
have honored me with your confidence
in times past.”
“Yes, yes: go on, please!”
“The Major was, as I have said, much
shocked, and also very angry, and in the first
heat of his emotions, he did a very foolish
thing.”
“Shot himself?”
“Oh! no, much worse than that: married
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himself to a woman for whom he never pretended
to care, and whose devotion to him
only serves to render his indifference more apparent.
She was an English widow, very rich
and very vulgar; he met her somewhere in
Italy—Naples, I think—and they were married
in ten days from their first introduction.”
“I thought you said you met him in Persia.”
“No; I only mentioned Persia by way of introducing
this subject. I met them in Paris.”
Mr. Monckton paused, and Mrs. Barstow
sat for a moment, her face covered with her
hand, then raised it, pale and haughty, to
say:
“Your account of my former friend is interesting,
Mr. Monckton, for one never ceases
to feel an interest in the fate of one's intimate
associates, but as I shall probably never meet
or hear again of either Major or Mrs. Strangford,
the news is hardly as important as you
seem to think.”
“Pardon, madam,” said the traveller coldly.
“It is precisely because it is important that I
have intruded it upon you. Major and Mrs.
Strangford were passengers with me in the
Phœnix, and I know that it is his intention to
call upon you to-morrow—which is New-Year's
day, you will remember—in hopes of giving
you as painful a shock as he experienced in
hearing of your marriage. I know this, for
he told me.”
“And you came here to warn me! That is
real kindness, real friendship, Mr. Monckton,”
and Mrs. Barstow, rising, offered her white and
jewelled hand to her guest with more sincerity
of feeling than she had experienced before
in many years.
“You repay my slight service a hundred-fold,”
said Monckton, returning the cordial
pressure of the hand he held. “But you will
remember you did me a service long ago, and
although I never have thanked you, I felt none
the less grateful.”
“That was simple justice,” said Mrs. Barstow
with a very becoming air of proud rectitude,
and a convenient oblivion of the garnets.
“And although the confession caused
a breach between Mrs. Chappelleford and myself,
not yet healed, I have never regretted
making it.”
“Thank you. And you will be ready for
Major Strangford?”
“I shall be ready, and will even ask him to
waive all ceremony and bring his wife to me
to morrow evening,” said Mrs. Barstow with a
smile of honeyed malice.
“Ah! I see that forewarned is forearmed
in this case, and I need interfere no further,”
said Mr. Monckton, taking his leave.
Going down the stairs, he proposed to himself
this little problem, and left it unsolved:
“Which is meaner, for a man to stand by
and see a woman ill used, or to turn traitor to
another man?”
CHAPTER XXXIX. A COUNCIL OF WAR.
“Madame begs that you will come up to
her dressing-room, if it is not too much fatigue,”
said the soubrette; and Mrs. Chappelleford,
with a silent inclination of the head,
followed to the suite of apartments that had
once been her own, and were now Mrs. Barstow's.
That lady, standing en grande toilette
between two mirrors, watched a little anxiously
the first expression of her guest's face in entering
the room, and felt a thrill of satisfaction
at its cordial approval.
“You look magnificently, Juanita. Nothing
can be better for you than black velvet
and diamonds.”
“I am so glad you think me properly
dressed. Fresh from Paris as you are, we all
must look to you as an authority.”
“I pray that you will do no such thing, for
I am the least reliable of women in such
matters. I have such a habit of altering and
adapting every thing, that I am no guide at
all in the way of fashion.”
And Mrs. Chappelleford, suffering the loose
fur-lined wrap she wore to drop into the hands
of Pauline, stood forth the living personification
of one of those rich, dusky old pictures
before which we stand for hours, silently
praying the mocking lips to open, the fathomless
eyes to return our imploring gaze, the
dead canvas to give up the story and the
passion it half reveals, yet half conceals.
Such a picture, full of the romance and
mystery of the past, mingled with the gracious
and graceful womanhood of to-day, looked
Beatrice, standing so serenely unconscious in
her quaintly fashioned robe of violet silk, soft
and lustreless, the ivory whiteness of her
neck and arms heightened by the yellow hue
of the old point-lace shading them, her beautiful
hair coiffed in a style all her own and
Titian's, and ornamented with sapphires of
inestimable value, for they had been wrought
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in the unremembered years to deck perhaps
an empress, perhaps some simpler yet nobler
woman, and then had returned to the bosom
of the earth to wait through centuries, until
they again should see the light of day, and
again serve as beauty's foil.
Mrs. Barstow looked at her guest with
envy and dismay, thinly veiled by admiration.
“My dearest Beatrice! How odd, and how
thoroughly charming! Where did you get
that dress?”
“I bought the silk in Constantinople, and it
was made in Naples. Do you like it?” asked
Beatrice simply.
“It is lovely. But the fashion is so odd!
Are they wearing those square necks in Paris
now?”
“I don't know, I am sure. It is a fashion
I am fond of, and I have all my evening
dresses made in that way. I believe I was
guilty of a little plagiarism in this, and gave
the modiste a sketch to work by, which I had
taken from a picture in the Pitti. Don't expose
my presumption, will you?”
“I shall be very good if I refrain, for every
thing and every body in my rooms will be
thrown into the shadow by that toilette and
that wearer,” said Mrs. Barstow with a constrained
smile.
“How sorry I should be to believe you, for
it is so vulgar to be conspicuous,” said Beatrice
with unaffected dismay. “And I have
been away so long that I dare say I may have
grown too bizarre in my style. Shall I throw
a shawl over this dress?”
“Nonsense, my dear. No, indeed,” said the
hostess with a magnanimous effort greatly to
her credit. “Is it your fault that you are
charming? But now, sit down a moment,
please, I have something to say to you, something
very serious.”
With a look of some surprise, Beatrice took
the offered chair, and fixed her clear eyes
upon the face of her hostess, who continued
with some embarrassment:
“It is a subject upon which we spoke once
before, and did not agree very well, but I
know you will be willing to help me, when I
really need help.”
“Certainly, Juanita, if I can.”
“Mr. Monckton was with me yesterday,”
pursued Mrs. Barstow with a visible effort,
“and he told me very strange news. You remember
Major Strangford, Beatrice?”
“I remember what you told me of him just
before your marriage with my uncle.”
“Well, my dear, do but fancy that this
man is not dead, that he recovered from his
fever, heard of my marriage, and took it so
to heart that he actually married again for
spite, and now has absolutely come home, is
in town at this moment, and intends calling
here to-day.”
“Intends calling here?”
“Exactly, and with the avowed purpose of
annoying and confusing me. He confessed
as much to Monckton, who with real kindness
came to warn me. Now, Beatrice, what
can I do?”
“It is a very painful situation, certainly,”
said Beatrice gravely. “And I do not see
any thing that you can do except to assert
your position as a wife and a matron with
quiet dignity, and by showing Major Strangford
that the past is really past to you: make
it impossible for him to annoy you by bringing
it up.”
“Ah! but, Beatrice, suppose it is not really
past,” exclaimed Juanita, clasping her hands
in an agitated manner, while her very lips
turned white.
“I do not understand you,” said Beatrice,
raising her eyes to the other's face with a look
of shame and surprise. “You cannot mean
that you still cherish any feeling of love for
this man, and are afraid of betraying it?”
“But remember, Beatrice, all that he has
been to me; remember how much he has suffered
on my account; remember the weakness
of a woman's heart.”
“I remember only, Mrs. Barstow, that you
are my uncle's trusted wife, that you assumed
that position quite of your own wish—I may
say, by your own effort, and that the only tolerable
excuse you found at that time for not
revealing the whole truth to your future husband
was that it was a matter of the past altogether,
and that with Major Strangford had
died all possibility of your swerving from the
affection you professed for my uncle. But if
you intend to say that, in finding this man
alive, you find that you still love him, and
dread to see him on that account, and are
asking me to help and shield you in this disgraceful
position, all I can say is, that I am
very much surprised at your selection of a
confidante, and that I shall return immediately
home.”
She rose as she spoke, and stood upright
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before the cowed and trembling woman, who,
looking up at her majestic figure, and face
severe and beautiful as that of an offended
Diana, felt a sudden sickening at the heart, in
recognizing a height to which she might
never hope to climb, which she had never
even imagined until that moment.
She caught at the soft, shining drapery
flowing around the stately figure, and fell upon
her knees before it.
“O Beatrice, Beatrice! I am a poor, weak,
simple woman! Help me, save me while
there is yet time.”
Beatrice stooped in an instant, and took
both the clinging hands in hers, a great pity
softening the disdainful lines of her face, and
her eyes filling with tears.
“Don't do that, Juanita,” said she in a low
voice. “Get up, I implore you. Indeed, I
will help you, if I can—or rather I will help
you to help yourself, for it is you who must
do the work, after all. There, let us sit quietly
down again, and consider the matter. Major
Strangford is coming here to-day professedly
to annoy and embarrass you. That proves
him no gentleman to begin with, and proves,
too, that his feeling toward you is more one
of enmity than good-will. It seems to me
that you are not called upon to treat such a
person with much ceremony. Why do you
not tell the servant to refuse you to him?”
“That would be almost impossible on New-Year's
Day, when gentlemen come in such
numbers, and altogether as it were. They do
not give their names very often.”
“Well, then, if we cannot keep him out,
let us consider how to deal with him after he
is in,” said Beatrice almost gayly; for, like
most proud and sensitive persons, she felt the
humiliation she had inflicted more keenly
than even the sufferer herself.
“And, after all,” continued she, “it is
better that you should see this person once,
to convince yourself how indifferent you have
become to him. We all change so rapidly
that it is very seldom we find ourselves in the
same position to any other person after a separation
of years. We have to begin actually
a new acquaintance, if we wish to renew
broken ties, and it is ten chances to one but
we find our new friend entirely a different
person from our old one, and altogether uncongenial
to our new selves. But one can
avoid this shock by refraining from remaking
the acquaintance, and just laying away the
past memory in one's cabinet of curious antiques,
properly numbered and classified;
and, after all, a cabinet of minerals or shells,
or even butterflies, is better worth collecting.”
“You are talking to yourself now, instead
of to me,” said Juanita, half petulantly, and
Beatrice colored to the waves of her shining
hair.
“That is true,” said she frankly. “I too
married from unworthy motives, and I too
had memories to subdue, but I replaced them
so thoroughly with other and better things
that they soon ceased to trouble me, and it is
now far beyond the power of man to revive
them.”
“And you would not be afraid to meet that
old lover of yours, ever so suddenly, or ever
so unreservedly?” asked Juanita curiously.
“I could not meet him so suddenly as to
make me forget our mutual position, and as
for unreserve, it seems to me that every wife
should live in an atmosphere of reserve,
within which no man can penetrate,” said
Beatrice so gravely that Juanita could not
pursue the subject.
“Well, what are we to do in this matter?”
asked she, after a moment of awkward silence.
“Why, since you are prepared for the attack,
it seems to me to have lost all its danger,” replied
Beatrice. “You will, I suppose, receive
Major Strangford precisely as you would any
other gentleman; forget, if you can, that you
ever knew him more intimately than you do
to-day, and let him perceive that you acknowledge
no secret understanding whatever between
you.”
“I shall turn him over to you, Beatrice.
You can make him understand better than I
that he is not welcome here. I am, after all,
the hostess, and must not be rude, you know.”
“There is not the slightest occasion for
rudeness,” said Beatrice a little impatiently.
“Your proper manner toward this man is polite
formality, verging on indifference. Rudeness
would be almost as objectionable as
emotion. Let him see that you have no feeling
of any sort toward him. Nothing will
discourage him like that.”
“But if you have an opportunity, I wish
you would let him see that you know all
about him, and that you mean to stand between
me and harm.”
“O Juanita! it is you who must feel and
show that such harm as this cannot come
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near you. You must not depend upon me or
any one, or you will certainly be disappointed
in the end.”
“Hark! There is the bell. We must go
down,” exclaimed Mrs. Barstow, giving one
slow, comprehensive glance at her figure in
the mirror, and then sweeping out of the
room, sadly followed by Beatrice.
CHAPTER XL. ALL THE WORLD.
“I made eighty-two calls yesterday, between
eleven o'clock in the morning and
eleven at night, sir,” said Mr. Laforét upon
the second of January in the year of which we
write, “and I give you my honor, sir, that
I did not find a handsomer drawing-room, or
two women any thing near as handsome as at
Israel Barstow's. I give you my honor, Mrs.
Chappelleford, since her return, is enough to
take the breath right out of a man; and Mrs.
Barstow, when she gets herself up in black
velvet, with just a touch of rouge, and the
right shade under her eyelids, and sits with
her back to the light, I tell you she is stunning.
As for the spread, it was perfect—just
enough, and nothing too much: sherry and
sweet wines, but no champagne, no punchbowl—
nothing loud. No occasion for fellows
to carry olives in their pockets to that house, or
to come out of it noisy—just the best house in
town, sir, I give you my honor.”
And having the opinion of such an authority
as Mr. Laforét, we need not doubt that Mrs.
Barstow's New-Year's at home was perfectly
successful, or go farther into the details of
the occasion.
The day wore on until about five o'clock in
the afternoon, and Mrs. Barstow had just
smiled acceptance of Mr. Monckton's compliments,
when Beatrice saw a slight, nervous
tremor run through her figure, and at once
turned her own eyes toward the door.
A gentleman stood just within it, looking
with peculiar earnestness toward the hostess—
a gentleman in middle life, of military figure
and bearing, and with a face once singularly
handsome, but now wasted and haggard with
a life of fatigue, exposure, and unrestrained
passions.
“A volcano almost burned out,” thought
Beatrice, as she watched the new-comer advancing
slowly up the room, his eyes still intently
fixed upon his hostess, who, pretending
not to observe him, jested flippantly with Mr.
Monckton.
“Juanita!” said Beatrice in a low voice,
and full of meaning.
Mrs. Barstow turned her head, smiled with
a very tolerable imitation of indifferent surprise,
and said:
“Is it possible, Major Strangford! Did you
drop from the heavens among us?”
“No, I have come `up from the under
world,' as your favorite Tennyson has it.
You see, I remember your tastes, Mrs. Barstow.”
“So good of you. But then you have been
out of the world, and so have had time for
the pleasures of memory. We of the town
are too busy for that luxury,” said Mrs. Barstow
with admirable sangfroid.
“Beatrice, allow me to present Major Strangford,
a gentleman I used to see in New-Orleans.
Mrs. Chappelleford, Major Strangford; Mr.
Monckton, I believe, you know.”
“Your servant, Mrs. Chappelleford. How are
you, Monckton,” said the Major, acknowledging
the presence of those whom he addressed
with brief courtesy, and turning again to
Juanita with a malicious smile.
“Yes, Mrs. Barstow, I have just arrived in
town, and my wife has hardly recovered from
her journey; but when she does I hope she
will see you among her first visitors. You
and she should be good friends.”
“You are married, then? You forget that
we have all been ignorant of your movements,
your very existence, I may say, for so long,
that we hardly know where to place you.
There was even a rumor of your death some
time ago. Did you not tell me so, Mr. Monckton?”
“Yes, several years ago, before I went
abroad.”
“So I was thinking; but one lives so fast in
these days,” said Mrs. Barstow, with a little
sigh of protest against the heartlessness of the
age.
“And one's dearest friends are soon forgotten,”
said Major Strangford bitterly.
“Is that your experience, Major? Well,
now, I don't find it so. Delusions and fancies
pass away, but I don't find that real friendships
do. How is it with you, Beatrice?”
“One certainly sees more clearly as one gets
on in life,” said Beatrice quietly. “And the
certainty that things are at last reduced to
their true limits is a consolation in seeing
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them lose the magnificent proportions with
which we first invested them.”
“Some things reduced to their true limits
become so insignificant as to disappear altogether,”
replied Major Strangford with a sneer.
“Lovers' vows, for instance.”
“Or mean revenge,” added Beatrice coolly.
“Yes, most small and false matters become
extinct with time. The world has only room
for truth and nobility of purpose.”
“What a peculiar world you must live in,
Mrs. Chappelleford,” said Major Strangford,
turning to stare her almost rudely in the face.
“And what a delightful sympathy must exist
between Mrs. Barstow and yourself!”
“Such an one should exist, since we are
kinswomen, or at least close connections,”
said Beatrice, unmoved by look or tone.
“Indeed! May I ask how?'
“Mrs. Barstow married my uncle, and I
hers; so we are naturally much together.”
“I see; and you are educating your niece in
your own way of thinking, are you not?”
“Juanita, will not the gentleman take some
refreshments?” asked Beatrice as quietly as
if she had not heard the taunting question:
and Mrs. Barstow, aroused to a memory of her
duties, hastily replied:
“Oh! certainly. Mr. Monckton, will you do
the honors of the dining-room to Major Strangford?”
Both gentlemen rose, and the entrance of
another party most opportunely offered cover
for a retreat, which might otherwise have
become very awkward; but Mrs. Barstow,
smiling and bowing welcome to Messieurs
Rein and Grahame, could smile and bow adieu
to Messieurs Monckton and Strangford in the
same breath and with precisely the same
manner.
An hour later, the ladies withdrew to rest
for a short period before dinner, and had to prepare
for the fatigues of the evening, which
was to be celebrated by a “little gathering”
of Mrs. Barstow's dear five hundred friends.
“That will do, Pauline; you may go now,”
said Mrs. Barstow impatiently, as the maid
lingered after inspecting and repairing the
fabric of her mistress's toilet.
“O my dear, dear Beatrice!” continued she
as the door closed. “I am so obliged to you,
and how splendidly you stood by me!”
“I am sure I do not see how,” replied Beatrice
with a smile. “You treated Major
Strangford as a lady should treat a gentle
man, and he treated both of us as a boor
treats women of whom he is not afraid. That
is all there is to say.”
“Well, he is a boor, although I used to
think him the most polished gentleman of
my acquaintance,” said Mrs. Barstow reflectively.
“But I was entirely disappointed in
him—entirely shocked, I may say. Did you
notice how broken and ugly his teeth are?”
“I noticed how false and malicious his eyes
are, and how tremulous and dissipated his
hands,” said Beatrice with lofty scorn.
CHAPTER XLI. A LEAF FROM MRS. CHAPPELLEFORD'S DIARY.
“April 15th.—This is my twenty fifth birthday,
speaking after Babbage—my thousandth,
judging by my own consciousness, for it seems
to me that the days when I was what I remember
to have been float backward faster
than the other current carries me forward, so
that youth retreats while age does not advance;
for I am not old yet, I suppose. And
yet, if life is a condition of progress, what is
left for me to learn? I mean, of course, personally;
for of intellectual growth and attainment,
there is no end. But without wishing
to be weak or sentimental, I cannot but wonder
if science and metaphysics, mathematics
and philosophy, are the highest aims of our
being. Suppose we heap our individual
mound of sand a few grains higher than that
of our brother-ant next door, what then? Is
it large enough to hold us, after all? Or, on
the other hand, is it worth while to heap so
toilfully a mound beneath which to bury ourselves?
Cheops always seemed to me a victim
of Almighty irony. He erected the Pyramid,
and his atom of mummy was lost in the immensity
of his memorial.
“The pyramid of acquirement these men
about me are piling for themselves will not
last as long as the stones, and it is so much
harder to build it.
“Well, then, what do we live for? To learn,
is the best answer, and that is but poor. Five
years ago, I should have said, to love; but
what puerile trash that all becomes as one
gets on a little! To be happy? It is only
another form of the same childish dream.
How can a rational, thinking being, with a
mind and reasoning powers properly developed,
talk of being happy, when the very fundamental
principle of existence is
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disappointment? The child enters life with hopes
amounting to certainties, with ardent friendships,
loves, theories. He travels on and sees
them drop away, or, remaining, change like
fairy gold to worthless rubbish in his hands,
until, at the last, he stands beggared of all
but the experience he has bought, the knowledge
he has won. But is this experience the
end of life? Is the means also the result?
Must we give the price of the candle and
play the game through, however little worth
we find it?
“And then? What comes next? Mr. Chappelleford
tells me, resolution into the elements,
and reproduction in other forms; but what a
trivial idea that seems as the grand motive of
creation! Like the games of everlasting I
used to play with grandmamma, when we
always put the cards we gained at the back of
those in our hands, and so never came to the
end. Is eternity one grand game of everlasting,
with the same stupid kings, and simpering
queens, and contemptible knaves, always
recurring without variation or amendment?
But my grandfather and the rest of his genus
tell me that after life and death come heaven
and hell, and so describe a sort of vaporous,
gaseous existence for the good, and a Mumbojumbo
punishment for the wicked; the one too
tedious, the other too absurd for belief. Pious
people of more modern education promulgate
various theories—some tolerably interesting,
others tedious, none of them vital—at least to
me. It may be that it is this “me” that is
wrong, and yet how? To return to the pleasant
places where these people dwell would
be like returning to bread and milk, the
Arabian Nights, and my belief that heaven
was to be scaled from the top of Moloch
Mountain. I cannot go back, and to go on
looks inexpressibly dreary and tedious.
“I will study Sanscrit, and help Mr. Chappelleford
in his new work upon the mother of
languages. But that is only a way of passing
time; and how idle to invent ways of passing
time when we are waiting for nothing!
“I never talked of these matters with Marston
Brent. I wonder what convictions he
has arrived at, for he will not fail to have
wrought some answer to the eternal problem?
I should like to see that man again, and study
him as a specimen of human nature. I hope
he, like me, has forgotten all that foolish past,
and either has married the girl of whom they
told me or contented himself with marrying
no one. I am glad I married. Mr. Chappelleford
has fulfilled his promises to the letter.
He has taught me much that is worth knowing,
and untaught me more that was best
abandoned. He says now that I am more
personal than womanly, and he congratulates
himself and me upon the improvement.
Well, I suppose it is one; but I sometimes
envy Juanita with her milliners, and upholsterers,
and cosmetics, and Laforéts. There
is no danger of her exhausting her world, or
asking herself `Cui bono?' Well, I will study
Sanscrit—”
The opening door made Beatrice glance
round, and the sentence was not finished, for
Mr. Chappelleford entered with an open letter
in his hand.
“My good child, prepare for sad news,”
said he kindly. “I have here a letter from
Dr. Bliss, who tells me that your grandfather—
you know, Beatrice, that he has been failing
for months—”
“And he is dead?” asked Beatrice calmly.
“Yes, my dear. He died yesterday about
noon, quietly, and without suffering, Bliss
says. You will wish to go to Milvor, I suppose.”
“Certainly, at once.”
“I have already ordered a carriage and
some lunch, for you must eat before we set
out.”
“We?”
“Of course, I shall go with you; I am your
husband.”
“True, I had forgotten.”
And Beatrice locked her desk, and left the
room quietly, and without a tear. Mr. Chappelleford
looked after her thoughtfully.
“I am glad of this,” said he at last. “She
has lived upon the heights long enough for
once. A little human emotion will be a relief,
and she will return by and by with fresh
ardor to the region of abstractions. The atmosphere
is too thin for a woman to breathe
without occasional relief. After this, we will
go to the West to make those mound explorations.”
CHAPTER XLII. CHILDISH.
“You're welcome home, Beatrice, though
you've grown such a stranger,” said Mrs.
Bliss, embracing her niece with a sort of reproachful
fondness. “You've only been down
once since you got back from Europe.”
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“I know it, aunt. I should have come
oftener,” said Beatrice wearily.
Mrs. Bliss looked sharply into her face a
moment, then laying both hands upon her
shoulders, as she had often done when charging
her with some childish sin, she said interrogatively:
“You're not happy, Trix?”
Beatrice winced.
“Don't call me Trix, please, aunt. Or, no,
why should I not like it? But it belongs to
the old times, you know, and I have changed
so much that —”
“That what, Beatrice? Are you happy?”
“I suppose so, aunt. But grandpapa—”
“Yes; you shall see him in a moment.
That is, unless you had rather wait.”
“I—I do not think I want to see him,”
stammered Beatrice, turning very pale.
“Not see him at all! Why Beatrice Wansted!”
exclaimed Mrs. Bliss with such genuine
horror and surprise that Beatrice hastened
to add:
“That is, not to-night, aunt. I feel rather
tired and faint after my journey, and you know
I never saw any thing of that sort, and —”
“`Thing of that sort!”' interrupted Rachel,
more and more displeased. “What are you
talking of, Beatrice? Because your grandfather
has died, and his spirit gone to eternal
glory and happiness, has his body become
something to be afraid of and disgusted at?
Just fancy that he's asleep instead of dead—
and in point of fact, it's nothing more; for he
is asleep, and will wake up at the last day
just as good as new.”
“I will see him by-and-by. Aunt Rachel,”
said Beatrice, putting by with dignity the argument
she felt hopeless of supporting. “How
is grandmamma?”
“Poor, dear old lady, she is in a very distressing
condition, too,” said Mrs. Bliss, shaking
her head hopelessly. “She is quite
childish now—has been for a month or more,
and she don't understand any thing about
father's being dead. She thinks he's away
somewhere, and she keeps mourning for him
the whole time. We showed her the body,
and all, but it didn't seem to convince her.
She looked at it, and then hushed us with her
finger, and tiptoed out of the room for fear of
waking him up. But the next minute she
began moaning again just the same way.
She'd forgotten, you see. Hush! she's coming
up-stairs now!”
And Mrs. Bliss, followed by her niece, hastened
out into the passage to meet the widowed
mother, who stood clinging to the railing
beside the stairs, looking about her in a
bewildered manner.
“O Rachel! is that you? And who else is
up here?”
“Only Beatrice, mother — our Trix, you
know. We were just coming down to see
you,” said Rachel very gently.
“Beatrice—oh! yes—Beatrice. Where is
Alice?”
“Why, mother, she is dead long ago. She
died when Beatrice was born; don't you remember?”
“And Arthur—no, Arthur was married to
you—he didn't die, did he?”
“Yes, mother,” said Rachel softly.
“Dear grandmamma, you remember me,
don't you?” asked Beatrice, tenderly leading
the bewildered woman into the chamber they
had just quitted, and seating her in the great
square easy-chair before the fire. “I will stay
here and talk with her a little while, aunt;
and you can go and see after the others,” said
Mrs. Chappelleford aside; and as Rachel softly
left the room, she seated herself upon a low
stool at her grandmother's feet.
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“You remember me, dear, don't you?”
asked she again.
And the old lady laid a tremulous hand upon
her bright head, and stooped to look into her
face with the anxious scrutiny of failing
sight.
“Why, of course I remember you, Alice.
What should ail me not to know my own
child?” said she presently, with a little crackling
laugh. “And my favoright child, too; though
the deacon he always said there shouldn't be
any favorights in families. But then, Alice,
you always was so winning and pretty, how
could we help it? And though I knew Rachel
was disappointed, I couldn't blame Arthur
not one mite, not one mite; and then, again,
Rachel married—let me see, she married—
well, I forget his name; but she was married
some time before she died. Have you seen
father, Alice?”
“No, dear grandmamma. My father is in
heaven, they say. Where is heaven, grandmother?”
“Heaven? Why, Alice Barstow, a great
girl like you ask such a simple question!
Heaven is where the whole air is made up of
love, and nothing to hinder or harm love.
God loves men; but somehow we're so far off
down here that we don't always seem to feel
the love; and then again, there's so much
going on in the world that half the time we
forget to love each other with all our might,
same as we're told we ought to. Well, now,
in heaven, you see, close up to God, we shall
breathe in His love, just as we do the common
air here, and so we shall act it out to each
other just as here we act out nater', because
love will be nater' then, don't you see?”
But Beatrice, with her head bowed between
her hands, did not reply, and the old woman
went on:
“Now, there's father and me. When we
were young I don't suppose there ever were
two sweethearts set more by each other than
we did. He'd have given up all the world
for me, and I'd—well, I'd be afraid to say
what I'd have given up for him. And so it
was along for a while after we got married.
But then came the children, and the farm,
and a whole grist of work and trouble and
care, and then he and me sort of fell off, not
from loving, but from talking about it and
showing it out. And then we got old; and
old folks they get sort of crusted over—like
Rachel's preserves, I think. The sweet's all
there just the same, only it can't get through
the snell, and any one that didn't know
would think 'twas sp'ilt. That's the way it
is with old folks like father and me. But,
Alice, when once we get into that heaven full
of love I was telling you of, the crust will
melt right off in the fire of God's love for us
both, and we shall know that we're just the
same to each other that we were in those
young days. Just the same? No! a thousand
times better, and dearer, and worthier;
for then we shall be angels instead of men.
I wonder if father thinks about that? I forgot
to say any thing to him about it. I'll go talk
with him now a little.”
And the old lady rose from her chair almost
with the vigor of youth, stood a moment
looking about her in a bewildered way, then
turned to Beatrice, while over her face, but
now clear and bright as with the reflection of
heavenly light, dropped a sudden veil of human
infirmity and decrepitude.
“Rachel! No—Alice, where's father? I
want father. Where has he gone?” said she
piteously.
“Let us go and see, dear grandmother.
Lean upon me, for I know you are tired.
Won't you come and lie down for a little
while before we look for him?” asked Beatrice
soothingly; and passing her arm around
her grandmother's waist, she led her gently
down-stairs.
“Maybe he's lying down. He has been
rather poorly along back. I'm afraid he hurt
himself haying. Reuben and Israel were
both away, and the heft of the work came
upon the deacon. I guess he's lying down a
spell.”
So maundering, she allowed herself to be
gently led to her bedroom, and persuaded to
lie down and rest a little while waiting for
the object of her ceaseless questioning to appear.
Beatrice sat beside her, pale, sad, and
thoughtful. Once she raised the poor, wasted
hand she held to her lips, and murmured:
“O mother! make me believe as you believe.”
But in the other room Mrs. Bliss was saying
to her brother, who had come without his
wife to attend his father's funeral:
“Poor mother! She is perfectly childish
now. You cannot rely upon a word she
says.”
“She's been a good mother to us, Rachel.
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She made a happy home and a good one for
us when we were growing up,” said Israel
Barstow a little reprovingly.
And Rachel mournfully assented.
“You're right, brother. She's been the best
of mothers to us, and now that she's old and
childish, she shall want for nothing that I can
do for her.”
Mr. Barstow was silent. His sister's tone
jarred unpleasantly upon some hidden chord,
but just where or what, he could not tell.
Perhaps the successful merchant, the admiring
husband, the respected citizen had found
nothing since so sweet or so dear as his
mother's love and pride in him. Perhaps
this mother-love, confined in some hearts to a
narrow cell, had been forced by the emptiness
of the other chambers in Israel Barstow's
heart to expand beyond its usual dimensions.
However it may have been, it hurt him sorely
to hear his sister speak, even as kindly and
protectingly as she did, of their mother's
state of second childhood, and he presently
stole away to the bedroom where she lay,
dozing lightly, her hand in that of Beatrice's.
Nodding to his niece, he seated himself
beside her, his strong, broad hand lightly laid
upon his mother's dress; and so they sat together,
silent, and each absorbed in thought,
while the soft April twilight stole into the
room, and the last ray of sunlight quivered
like a glory upon the white hair of the
sleeper, as she murmured in her dream of
“Father, dear!”
CHAPTER XLIII. HUSBAND AND WIFE.
Presently, when Mrs. Bliss came to
prepare her mother for tea, and then for
bed, Beatrice glided quietly away, and, after
lingering a moment at the door, entered the
great parlor, where she knew that her grandfather
was lying.
She had not been in the room since that
time—now four years gone past—when she
heard that Marston Brent had forgotten her,
and when Monckton had vainly striven to
comfort her despair. As she closed the door,
she remembered it, and stood for a moment
with vacant eyes looking back into the past,
and pitying the Beatrice who had so suffered
in that almost forgotten time.
“It was her death-agony. She cannot suffer
any more, poor thing!” whispered she at
last, with a smile sadder than any tears; and
then she went softly forward, and stood beside
the quiet figure, stretched, as yet uncoffined,
upon a table in the centre of the room.
Dressed as she had often seen him, with his
shapely hands folded upon his breast—a placid
smile upon his lips, and his eyes naturally
closed, he looked as if indeed he slept, and
should presently awake refreshed and glad.
Or so Beatrice thought at first; but when she
had stood for many moments beside that motionless
form, had, as it were, gathered into
her inmost consciousness the awful calm, the
utter silence of that presence, had tried and
failed to comprehend the suggestions of vastness,
of immeasurable distance, which seemed
to pervade the icy atmosphere of the chamber—
when she touched that brow, so serene in its
white calm, so unlike any thing human in its
feeling—then, for the first time, the shadow of
death fell upon Beatrice Chappelleford's life—
then, for the first time, she knew how puny, how
idle, how impious were the theories and actions
by which she and her teachers had tried
to measure eternity.
Sinking upon her knees, as if crushed by
the weight of that mighty conviction, she hid
her face between her trembling hands, and
murmured:
“O God! I acknowledge thee in death!—
teach me to know thee in life.”
It was the only prayer she had breathed for
years; and the heart she had thought dead
stirred in its slumber as the holy words reechoed
through its silent chambers.
She still knelt, wrapped in strange yet
sweetly familiar reverie, when the door opened
softly, and her aunt's hushed voice summoned
her forth.
“He looks natural, don't he?” whispered
she, as Beatrice silently passed her. “I wonder
how much of him is left in that body, after
all. It don't seem as if he and it could
become strangers all at once, does it?”
“O Aunt Rachel! I dare not think or
speak of such matters,” moaned Beatrice,
gliding past her aunt and hiding from herself
in the lighted, warmed, and human eastern
room.
In the gray twilight of the next morning,
Mrs. Bliss stood beside her niece and laid a
hand upon her shoulder.
“Beatrice! do you know where your grandmother
has gone?” said she in a frightened
voice.
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“Gone! No, indeed. Has she gone?” exclaimed
Beatrice, rising hastily.
“Yes. I slept with her because she seemed
so restless and queer, I was afraid she was going
to be sick; and when I woke just now
she was gone. My first thought was that she
might have come up to see you, because she
seemed so pleased yesterday.”
“No, she has not been here. Let us go and
look for her. Can she have gone out of the
house?”
“It may be. Why, where is your husband,
Beatrice?”
“He sleeps upon the couch in the dressingroom.
Come, aunt.”
And Beatrice hastily left the room, followed
by Mrs. Bliss, in whose breast anxiety for her
mother struggled with a curiosity almost as
strong.
The house was hastily searched—the outside
doors tried and found fast, and the rest
of the family roused and alarmed; but still
the childish, bereaved old mother was not
found.
At last, Beatrice laid her hand upon the
door of the great parlor.
“We have not looked here,” said she.
“That door is locked all the time; and before
I went to bed, I took out the key and
put it in my pocket,” said Rachel positively.
“Is it there now?”
“I suppose so.” And Mrs. Bliss thrust her
hand into her pocket, withdrew it, and turned
very pale.
“No, it is not there. Try the door.”
“It is fastened, but I think only by the button
inside. It is not locked,” said Beatrice in
a low voice.
“Let us try.” And Mrs. Bliss, raising the
latch, applied a strong and steady pressure to
the only slightly resisting door, which presently
yielded with a low, rending sound.
The two women passed through and stood
beside the dead, over whose form and face his
daughter had reverently spread a fair linen
sheet before leaving him to his silent watch.
This she now turned down, and stood stricken
dumb at the piteous yet beautiful sight before
her.
The loving wife had found her husband—
the childish mother had passed to wisdom and
knowledge unutterable — the failing, faded
form lay cold and silent there, yet glorified
even to outward sense by the majesty and holiness
of the life to which its soul had passed.
She had crept close to her husband's side,
laid her head upon his breast, and her arm
around his neck, and so had fallen asleep with
a serene smile upon her lips, and a look of
sweet content upon her face, which seemed to
glorify it like that of a saint. Looking down
at her with loving awe, Beatrice remembered
her words of the day before:
“And then we shall know that we're just
the same to each other that we were in those
young days.”
“They know it now,” murmured she, reverently
smoothing away the silver tress of the
wife's hair which fell across the husband's
lips.
“They know it now, and more than that.”
And so, the next day, a double funeral went
out from the Old Garrison House; and they
who had been lovely in their lives were not
divided in their death, and sleep to-day side
by side in the little green churchyard, beneath
the shadow of Moloch.
They sleep? Oh! no, not they, but the
perishing forms that held them here; for they
wake eternally in a life to which this is but
death.
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CHAPTER XLIV. A STONE FOR BREAD.
“And now, Beatrice,” said Mr. Chappelleford
one day in May, “my preparations are
complete; and as soon as you are ready, we
will begin our Western journey.”
“I am ready at any time,” said Beatrice, without
raising her eyes from the book upon her lap,
although she had not read a word in it for at
least an hour.
Mr. Chappelleford looked at her speculatively.
“My objection to most things has been,”
said he at length, “that you come to the end
of them before they make an end of you. I
was in hopes that you would not prove so
transitory. Are you going to disappoint
me?”
“What do you mean?” asked Beatrice, raising
her heavy eyes.
“I found you five years ago, young, inexperienced,
with a mind framed for powerful
exertion, and at that time utterly empty and
untrained. What little of life you had seen
had disappointed and outraged your preconceived
notions, for you had no ideas worthy
of the name, and you were just in the mood
to turn to something new, larger, and higher
than you had yet found. I gave you this new
pabulum in the form of knowledge, and
through the door of science led you into a
new and inexhaustible region of discovery and
attainment. You followed me with the docility
and naïve delight of a child, accepted all
that I offered with unhesitating faith, and
avowed yourself overjoyed in the exchange
you had made from the old routine existence
of most women—yes, and of most men, too—to
this higher plane, where only man, at his
farthest remove from the monkey, can hope to
dwell. Do you follow me, and do I speak the
truth?”
“Perfectly. And how do I now disappoint
you?” asked Beatrice faintly.
“By coming to the end of your growth, and
beginning the retrogressive process which, in
man, follows maturity. You have been to me
a fellow-thinker—you threaten to become only
a woman. I thought you were past the
mourning for lost lives; the speculating upon
future existence; the pondering of creeds and
dogmas, which have absorbed you during the
last month. You could and would have pursued
this course at twenty. After five years
of growth, I expected higher results.”
“How do you know my thoughts? I have
not expressed them,” asked Beatrice, flushing
scarlet; but Mr. Chappelleford replied only by
a contemptuous gesture.
“Womanish, womanish!” muttered he,
turning away.
“Well, but now that you have found me
out, give me at least some counsel, if you can—
some comfort,” cried Beatrice bitterly. “I
have met with a loss, with a grief, none the
less keen because inevitable. My parents
have passed from my sight, full of faith and
hope in a life beyond the grave. Your philosophy
and your science refuse to recognize
the validity of such hope; they coldly ask for
proof, and there is no proof. But can I believe
those holy lives ended in the six feet of
earth where the venerable bodies were laid?
And if not, where have they gone—where are
we going—what conditions await us—how
shall we prepare for them? Are not we wandering
blindly in the dark with the light behind
us? Have not we too soon despised the
simple faith of unlearned minds, and substituted
the pride of human intellect for the
voice of God within our hearts? O Mr.
Chappelleford! you are wiser and far more
learned than I, but are you sure that you are
not the blind leading the blind toward the
verge of a terrible precipice?”
The philosopher shaded his eyes with his
hand, and from beneath that screen, regarded
with attentive scrutiny the beautiful face of his
wife, pale, haggard, and almost ghastly with
emotion.
“I have not sufficiently considered your
youth,” said he at last. “All this must come,
and I suppose no theorizing can take the place
of actual experience. But it passes, as every
thing passes, great and small—every thing
but the eternal laws of Nature—and who is to
say that Nature itself has no limit? Perhaps
the colophon of what we call the Book of Nature
is Annihilation.”
“You do not answer me.”
“How can I? When a child comes to me,
crying for the stars, what am I to do with
him? Put him off for a while; and when he
is calm, explain to him what the stars really
are. I know of no better course.”
“But I am no child.”
“You talk like one.”
“Well, then, instruct me, educate me, answer
as gravely as I ask them, these questions
which torment my soul.”
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“How can I answer rationally questions
which every reflecting mind answers to itself,
and in its own fashion? I can give you my
ideas, but I do not ask you to adopt them as
yours. Very wise men have been devotees—
even bigots; others as wise have been infidels,
as they are called. Take your own course;
but if you follow me, you will arrive at my
conclusions. I look about me, using first my
own eyes, my own brain, and afterward the
eyes and brains of other people. I see a vast
system called Nature—self-sustaining, immutable,
unsympathetic, irresponsible. It governs
men and things—creates, sustains, destroys, not
from motives of benevolence or of malevolence,
not to reward or to punish, but simply because
birth, death, life are its fundamental principles.
The acorn drops upon the earth, and is covered
by leaves and moss; it sprouts and grows
up into a promising tree; comes the north
wind and twists it off at the root; it dies and
becomes mould, wherein sprout other acorns.
Do the surrounding oaks cry: `Glory Hallelejah!
A miracle! a special dispensation!
a gift from Heaven!' when the oakling
sprouts; or do they abase themselves in the
dust when it dies, and demand of each other
why this terrible thing has happened, and
how they are to guard themselves against the
same fate? Nor do they waste time in inquiring
where the sap dried out of that dead
trunk has gone, or whether there may exist
some unknown limbo whither it has fled,
and become the ghost of its former self. The
oaks recognize and submit to the inevitable
law, simply because it is inevitable. Cannot
you be as wise?”
“But man is different from an oak. He is
the chief and crown of creation. All this
system operates for his use and benefit.”
“If he goes along with it, it does; if he
goes contrary to it, he gets run over and
smashed. Make a ship, and the ocean will
float it and the wind propel it; throw yourself
into the water bodily, and the sea will drown
you; go up in a balloon, and the wind will
carry you to the Mountains of the Moon, and
dash you to pieces there. People talk of governing
Nature, and they talk rubbish; the
most they can do is to submit to her laws,
and preserve their own devices subject to those
laws—never forgetting that one of the principal
of them is ultimate transmutation of
every form of material in her laboratory, man
among the rest.”
“But what is the end? For what purpose
is all this vast machinery put in motion?
Who created Nature, and for what, and what
is the grand result?' asked Beatrice wearily.
“Asking for the stars again? Your questions
are too childish, but I will try to answer
them. The end? There is none, but the necessity
of some form of existence. The purpose?
Nature knows no purpose, but simply
superadds effect upon cause because such sequence
is inevitable under her laws. Who created
her and her laws? She herself is Creator
and Eternal. And the grand result? The
perfect unison of man with Nature. Through
the ages, he is learning to understand and cooperate
with her more and more, to `flash the
lightnings, weigh the sun,' as some one of
these rhymsters has it, to work with her, and
in measuring his wishes by her will, gain her
powerful assistance instead of her fatal antagonism.
The grand result, as I fancy, will
be an earth where man is at last supreme,
where he will create and destroy life, rule the
seasons, sway the elements, command all the
forces of Nature—but always, mind you, subject
to her laws—and where, indeed, he shall
at last deserve the name of a god. You see,
child, I too indulge in dreams sometimes although
I do not often expose the weakness.”
“But in that millennium will the souls and
hearts of men also rise to the godlike level
of their minds? Will perfect happiness reign
then upon the earth?”
“I thought you had abandoned that senseless
cry. Happiness? It is the content of
fools. A wise man finding himself at the
highest attainable point of knowledge and
power, sees beyond him a thousand yet inaccessible
summits, and understands that effort,
like attainment, is limitless and eternal. No
man ever in the past has said, no man in the
future shall say: `I have conquered, I have finished!'
And until then I cannot conceive of
what you call happiness.”
“And there is no world beyond this, you
think?”
“Wait, my dear, until this one has been
thoroughly explained before you invite me to
another. When some one has verified Speke's
discovery of the Nile, and brought home
Franklin's remains from the North Pole, and
thoroughly surveyed the region about the
Southern one, then we will climb the Mountains
of the Moon, and so up to Paradise.”
“I ask for bread, and you give me a stone,”
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murmured Beatrice, her head drooping upon
her breast.
“I try to give you common-sense, but—”
and Mr. Chappelleford constrained himself
to finish the sentence by nothing more uncourteous
than a smile. Presently, however,
he resumed in his ordinary tone:
“As I was saying, Beatrice, I am now ready
to go to the West, and think you will enjoy
going with me. Certainly your assistance
will be most valuable to me, and important
to the report I am to make. You know you
entered into those matters in France and Switzerland
con amore, and fairly silenced the Parisian
savans, who could not hold their own
at all in the arguments they tried to sustain
against you.”
Beatrice smiled faintly, and raised her head
with an air of interest.
“If I can help you, I am very glad to go to
the West,” said she.
“You can help me very much. Bassthwaite
was telling me a few days ago of some
fossil remains found in a coal-bed somewhere
in the western part of Pennsylvania, which I
am sure will interest you. By the way, the
mine is owned and carried on by a man named
Brent, who I believe to be your old lover.
Do you know whether he lives in that part of
the country?”
“No; I have no idea. I have not heard of
him since our marriage,” replied Beatrice unmoved.
“I asked your uncle, who was present, and
he thought that this was the man. Marston
Brent, I think he is called.”
“The Mr. Brent I knew was called Marston.”
“No doubt the same. Your uncle said
that some one in Milvor had been inquiring
this Brent's present abiding-place and circumstances
of Mrs. Bliss, and the result was
to ascertain that he lived in Pennsylvania,
and was engaged in coal-mining.”
“I dare say. I wonder if he really married.”
“That I did not hear, but I shall certainly
go to him for information and assistance in
this fossil business. Would you like to go
there with me, or have you any sentimental
objections to meeting him?”
“Not any at all. On the contrary, I have
a curiosity to see Marston Brent again, and
find whether he has changed as much as I.”
And Beatrice drooped her head again with
a weary sigh.
Her husband looked keenly at her.
“Come then,” said he. “Even a relapse
into sentiment will be better than this maudlin
condition. We will go to visit Marston
Brent, and his coal-mine and his wife.”
CHAPTER XLV. TWICE WARNED.
Half way up the mountain, one of the
precipitous wooded mountains of Western
Pennsylvania, nature had fashioned a sunny
plateau, open to the south, with glimpses of
mountain scenery at the east and west, and ample
shelter at the north. Here Marston Brent
had built his simple home, and here lived, with
no thought of further change, a grave, silent
man, attentive to the business which was
pouring unmeasured wealth into his coffers,
a benefactor to the army of laborers with
their families in his employ, a kind and indulgent
head to his little household, and in
all else as much a hermit as if he had lived
alone in the cave, a thousand feet nearer to the
crest of the mountain. Of himself, he never
spoke, and that must have been a hardy explorer
who had ventured to intrude upon the
privacy so strictly guarded, so vigilantly maintained.
Even Ruth, who had so tenderly nursed
him through that long illness of crushed
body and wounded heart, who had seen him
in those desperate and unguarded moments
when the voice of nature, tried beyond endurance,
forced the barriers of pride and reserve,
and made itself audible in the anguished
cries so terrible when extorted from a strong
man's agony—even Ruth dared not now ask
whether those wounds had healed, whether
the past was forgotten, whether the timid
flower of hope yet survived the storm that
had prostrated so much of what was best and
sweetest in the life of the man she reverenced
and admired beyond all men.
It was of this very point that she was
thinking, seated in a favorite niche in the
mountain-side, with the bright waters of the
creek shining far beneath, and a magnificent
country of wood and mountain water, and
distant reaches of fertile intervale, outspread
before her. And here, breaking upon her
reverie, came Paul Freeman, now a stalwart
and handsome young man, and well to do in
the world, as Mr. Brent's foreman and overseer
well might be.
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Here he came, seeking Ruth, and here he
found her. Throwing himself upon the turf at
her feet, he looked out for a moment upon the
landscape, glorious in a sunset of unbroken
gold, and then he turned and looked yet more
admiringly into the beautiful face of the
young girl.
“Ruthie!”
“Well, Paul?”
“You promised me an answer to-night.”
“I know it, and I came out here to find it,
Paul, but I cannot.”
“Cannot tell whether you hate me who
have loved you all your life?”
“I know I do not hate you—but—”
“But you are not sure that you love me?”
“No, not sure in the way you mean.”
“Look at here, Ruth, I know what it all
means, even better than you do. You love
some one else better.”
“Some one else, Paul?” asked the young
girl, crimsoning all over her pale face.
“Yes, some one whom you have always admired
and looked up to, and believed in, so
that you cannot at this moment fairly tell
whether there is room for any one else in
your heart or not. And all the while, you
know that he does not care for you, or any
woman in the way of love and marriage, and
perhaps never will again. You know it, Ruth,
and yet you turn away from an honest love
that has always been faithful to you since
you were a poor little runaway child—”
“Paul, Paul!”
“Why, Ruthie, I don't think any the worse
of you for that, nor I don't mean to throw it
in your face; only that was what first drew me
close to you, and I always remember it when
I get to thinking of how much I love you.
And though you never have told, and I never
have known, the right of that matter, I never
have seen the minute yet when I doubted
that you were as innocent as I of any blame
whatever, from the first to the last of it.”
“Oh! I wish I knew, I wish I knew—”
murmured Ruth bitterly, as she hid her face
in her hands and bowed it upon her lap.
“Wish you knew what, Ruthie?” asked
Paul tenderly.
“Whether Mr. Brent would say as much
as that for me.”
“Oh!” And Paul withdrew the hand he
had tenderly laid upon that bowed head, and
sat looking moodily out upon the sunset.
A hasty step approached, and Brent's voice
was heard from the path below, calling:
“Ruth! Are you there?”
“Yes, sir.” And springing to her feet, the
girl hastily obeyed the summons, followed
more slowly by Paul.
They found Brent awaiting them, and looking
pale and anxious, as he had not looked in
years. He held a letter in his hand, and nervously
folded it while he spoke:
“Ruth, we are to have company, and you
must make preparation. Mr. Chappelleford
and his wife wish to visit the Northern Mine,
and will stay with us some days. They will
be here—perhaps to-morrow morning—perhaps
not till afternoon. You can arrange with
Matilda about accommodation, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir, I suppose so,” said Ruth in a stifled
voice, and, after a moment's hesitation,
she passed Brent, and rapidly descended the
path toward the house.
Brent, about to follow, was detained by
Paul: “May I speak to you a moment, sir?”
“What is it, Freeman?”
“I want to ask you a plain question, sir,
and I want a plain answer—not as from employer
to employé, but as from man to man.
Shall I have it?”
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“You shall have it, Freeman.” And Mr.
Brent, thrusting the letter into his breast-pocket,
folded his arms, and leaning against the
boulder beside him, turned an attentive face toward
his companion. The last rays of the
setting sun lighted the scene, and threw into
bold relief the faces and forms of the two men,
each a type of his class, each striking in appearance,
each worthy of attention, perhaps
of admiration.
Brent represented the Saxon element, almost
unmingled with other blood. Tall,
deep-chested, broad-shouldered, stalwart in
every proportion, with a round and somewhat
massive head, well set back, a proud and dignified
bearing, a steadfast and perhaps immobile
expression of face, crisp curling hair and
beard of reddish brown, keen blue eyes, and
a mouth affectionate or stern, as occasion warranted.
So stood Marston Brent, and confronting
him, the slighter, more flexible, more elegant
form of his workman and rival, from whose
passionate, swarthy face, glowing dark eyes,
and stormy mien, the sunlight seemed to
glance off repelled, leaving the shadows deepened,
and the lights untouched. No man's
son was Paul Freeman, and from no distinct
race had he sprung, but yet he was a representative
man, for embodied in his sinewy
frame was the haughty, progressive, ambitious
spirit of the new world, the element of
conquest and of encroachment, the ardor to
pursue, the determination to possess, the will
to retain.
Such men as he to cross the ocean and discover
the new continent, and wrest its gold
and jewels from hapless savages; such men
as Brent to follow with their household goods,
and reclaim the wilderness, and endure the
hardships of the pioneer, forcing the savage
to the wall—not by sudden raids and ruthless
torture, but by steady, persistent, and unrelenting
effort, the sword in one hand, and the
law in the other, until the land lay at his
feet—not desolated, scattered, and affrighted,
but a happy, peaceful home for him and his,
with a church on every hill, and a school-house
at every corner. But Brent is saying:
“You shall have your answer, Freeman.
What is the question?”
“Just this: Do you want to marry Ruth?”
“I marry Ruth! The idea has never crossed
my mind.”
“That is not the answer you promised me,
sir. If you have not thought of it before,
will you be so kind as to think now? I can
wait.”
And Freeman walked away a few steps
and seated himself deliberately. Brent
looked at him with troubled eyes, which presently
wandered to the wide landscape beyond,
while a sombre and introspective expression
settled upon his face. At last he spoke.
“Paul, I cannot give you the answer you
ask, to-night. You must explain yourself
also to some extent. Why should you mention
my marrying Ruth?”
“Because, sir, if you don't mean to, it would
be no more than fair to others that you should
let her understand so.”
“To others? To you?”
“Well, yes; I love her, and I know my
own mind, as I have known it for years, about
wanting to marry her.”
“Why don't you do it then?” asked Brent
bluntly.
“Because, sir, if you must be told it plainly,
she loves another man, and that man is you.”
“Did she say so, Freeman?”
“Certainly not, sir—what girl would say
such a thing? But I know it, and have
known it for long. I know too, sir, that you
have always loved another woman, and
though she's married and out of your reach,
I don't know why that should make you want
my poor little Ruth. It seems hard enough,
Mr. Brent, that you should have for nothing,
and without even wanting it, what I would
give ten years of my life to gain, and can't.”
“Poor boy! His ewe-lamb,” muttered
Brent, casting a friendly and compassionate
glance upon his rival, who returned it with
one of almost defiance.
“If you do not want her, sir, it would be
easy enough to show it, and a kindness in
the end, even to her.”
“But if your supposition is correct, and she
loves me, Paul, she cannot love you at any
rate; and I think she is too much a woman to
marry one man, loving another.”
“Leave that to her and to me, sir, if you
please. Only say that you do not wish or
intend to marry her,” said Freeman, in so
hard and defiant a manner that Brent replied
coldly:
“This is hardly the tone for a discussion
between us two, Paul Freeman. Let the
question rest for a few days until I have time
to consider it, and I will answer you definitely.
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Perhaps I shall first speak to Ruth upon the
subject.”
“And perhaps to Mrs. Chappelleford,” muttered
Freeman, turning away, and rapidly
ascending the hill.
The words reached Brent's ear, and with a
quick flush of anger mounting to his face, he
made a step in pursuit, but then restrained
himself, and turned in the opposite direction.
“He is smarting under a great disappointment,
and it may be overlooked,” muttered he,
striding down the path. “But if Ruth loves
me—it might be well to speak to her to-night
before—coward that I am, shall I need to
defend myself behind any other shield than
honor, from love of another man's wife? And
yet, Beatrice, Beatrice, you should not have
consented to try me thus!”
Entering the house, he was met by Zilpah,
whose duties in these days had become merely
nominal, but her privileges very positive.
“What's this, Mr. Marston? Ruth says,
Beatrice Wansted that was is coming to see
you. Is it so?”
“Yes, Zilpah. Her husband, Mr. Chappelleford,
is coming, and she accompanies him.
They are going to the West upon some scientific
errand.”
“What sort of an errand? But never
mind what name she puts to it. Marston
Brent, be warned in time, for the devil has
laid a trap for you. Go in there, and comfort
Ruth, who is crying her heart out for love of
you. Go!”
“You too!” muttered Brent, but instead of
entering the house, he turned away, and
plunged into the darkening forest.
CHAPTER XLVI. ASLEEP OR DEAD?
The next day, in the golden glory of such
another sunset, Marston Brent, with uncovered
head and grave, courteous face, stood beside
a carriage which had just toiled up the
mountain-road to the plateau where stood his
house.
“Mrs. Chappelleford! I am very glad to
see you,” said he, extending his hand to the
elegant woman, who threw back her veil and
looked scrutinizingly into his face as she replied:
“And I you, Mr. Brent. You are scarcely
changed in all these years. Let me present
my husband, Mr. Chappelleford.”
The host made courteous recognition of the
introduction, and the guest replied:
“Thank you, Mr. Brent: and before entering
your house I should apologize for taking
it by storm in this manner. Nothing but my
anxiety to see the curious remains of which I
wrote, and Mrs. Chappelleford's desire to meet
an old friend, can excuse us.”
“No excuse is needed, sir. In this new
country, hospitality is more an indulgence
than a duty. It is I who am obliged to you
and Mrs. Chappelleford for the honor you do
me.”
“And what a glorious situation you have
found here, Mr. Brent,” said the lady, lingering
upon the little porch, and glancing admiringly
over the wide view glittering and
smiling in the sunset light. “Such scenery
makes ours at home seem very tame.”
“Yes, Ironstone Mountain is somewhat
brighter than Moloch,” said Brent simply.
“And somewhat more valuable,” said Mr.
Chappelleford smiling.
“To one's pocket—yes,” replied Brent.
“What, have you the mal-du-pays, and do
you regret New-England and Milvor?” asked
Beatrice a little incredulously.
“I regret nothing that I have left behind
me, Mrs. Chappelleford. The life of a pioneer
must not be retrospective, if he is to retain
energy and interest.”
“Well spoken, Mr. Brent,” said the philosopher
heartily. “I like to see a man not
only possess the qualifications for his place,
but understand them, and cling to them voluntarily.”
“And all regrets, all hopes are so idle,”
said the lady softly, as she turned to enter the
house.
In the parlor, beside the prettily-laid tea-table,
stood a slender, fair-faced girl, whom
Brent simply introduced as Ruth, and whom
the guests consequently could greet only as
Miss Ruth, quietly wondering the while what
her position in the house could be, and if she
possessed no name, or relationship to Brent,
by which he could have designated her.
“It cannot be his wife,” thought Beatrice,
as the object of her wonder took the head of
the table. “And yet—”
“Will you have tea or chocolate, Mrs. Chappelleford?”
asked the hostess.
And Beatrice, quick at distinguishing semitones
of expression, felt that through this
sweet, low voice sharply vibrated something
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of pain, something of enmity to herself. She
wondered and waited, sipping her tea meantime,
and listening to the clear, forcible language
in which Brent replied to Mr. Chappelleford's
scientific inquiries, and the keen
apothegms which the cynical philosopher
never long restrained.
The next morning, Brent took Mr. Chappelleford
about his property, and into the
great smelting-house in the valley where the
iron mined by him was prepared for market.
Beatrice, weary with her journey, preferred
remaining in the house, and drawing a deepcushioned
chair to the window, sat looking
admiringly over the landscape, and trying to
calculate its influences upon a man like
Brent.
The door softly opened and closed, admitting
Ruth, who, with her little work-basket in
her hand, came to entertain, as a duty, the
guest of the house left in her charge.
Mrs. Chappelleford looked at her smilingly.
“I am admiring this view, Miss Ruth; I
suppose it is very familiar to you.”
“Yes, ma'am. We have lived here now
more than three years.”
“You came then with Mr. Brent? I thought
perhaps you had grown up among these mountains.”
“No, ma'am. I came with Mr. Brent,”
said Ruth, coloring slightly, and bending over
her work.
“Probably you can tell me, then, whether
there was any truth in the report of Mr.
Brent's marriage some years since. I did not
like to ask him, thinking perhaps Mrs. Brent
might have died, or —”
“She never lived; he was never married,”
exclaimed Ruth almost indignantly, and then,
with a great throb of pity, wonder, terror, she
hastily asked: “O Mrs. Chappelleford! did
you believe that?”
“Believe Mr. Brent to be married? Yes, I
hoped that he was,” said Beatrice, sweeping
one keen, bright glance over the girl's glowing
face.
“Hoped? Why, how could —”
And Ruth suddenly paused, and bent her
head lower and lower, until the calm, proud
eyes so fixedly watching her saw only the
soft brown hair coiled in rich masses at the
top of the head.
“And he was never married at all then?
But he was engaged?” asked Mrs. Chappelleford
at length.
“No, ma'am, never,” replied the girl without
looking up.
“That is strange. We all heard so at Milvor,”
said Beatrice meditatively, but with so
little emotion that Ruth forgot her own imprudence
and looked wonderingly up. Beatrice
read the look and smiled.
“My dear,” said she, “you know something
of my early history, I perceive, and per aps
some day I will explain what puzzles you so
sorely. Tell me now, what do you think of
Mr. Brent, yourself?”
“I think, ma'am, that he is—that I should—
that—that—I think, ma'am, he is a very,
a very nice gentleman.”
“Yes, and so do I,” replied Mrs. Chappelleford
without a smile. “And how long have
you known him?”
“About six years, ma'am.”
It is about six years since he left Milvor,”
said Beatrice quietly.
“Yes, ma'am. I came with him and Paul
Freeman from a town near Milvor, and have
been with him ever since.”
“And cannot you at all understand the report
that Mr. Brent was about to be married?”
asked Beatrice, smiling a little sarcastically.
“No, ma'am. There never has been any
woman in the family but old Zilpah and Matilda
Jennings, since we came here, and me.”
“And you, did you say?” pursued Mrs.
Chappelleford, presuming a little, as she felt
with shame, upon her position and self-command,
to draw this child's secret from her
lips. But she had her reward, for Ruth, raising
a quivering glowing face to hers, cried in
a tone of genuine alarm and surprise:
“Me, madam! Oh! no, he never thought
of me; how could he? Don't say such a
thing to him.”
“Certainly not, my dear. But why should
he not think of it? I wish he would.”
“You wish he would! Why, Mrs. Chappelleford,
he never has forgotten you, and how
could he love any one like me afterward?”
“Forgotten me! Why do you say that,
Ruth? Are you Mr. Brent's confidante then?”
asked Mrs. Chappelleford very coldly.
“No, indeed, ma'am, he is not the man to
tell such things to any one,” replied Ruth indignantly.
“He has never spoken your name
to me more than half a dozen times in his
life, and then only when he was so desperate
at the news of your marriage that he had to
speak or go crazy, or kill himself, and then
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when he got crushed with the tree, and one
night thought that he was dying, he gave
me a message for you, but afterward he told
me to forget it.”
“And you forgot it?”
“No, ma'am, I could not forget it, but I
will never repeat it.”
“I do not ask you to do so, Ruth. But what
are those events of which you speak? When
did Mr. Brent hear of my marriage, and when
was he crushed by a tree, and so near to death,
as you say?”
“Why, did you never hear of that, ma'am?”
And then Ruth, her hands clasped upon her
knee, her eyes downcast, as if she read the
story from a visible page, repeated the events
we know already—describing even better than
she, in her innocence, could understand Brent's
terrible anguish in learning of the unfaithfulness
of the woman to whom his whole life
clung, in spite of their estrangement—his reckless
behavior upon that day, the accident which
had so nearly cost him his life, and the lingering
illness which ensued, through which only
the devotion of his nurse and constant attendant
had brought him alive.
Mrs. Chappelleford, leaning back in the
cushioned chair, her eyes riveted upon the far
horizon line, one white hand supporting her
chin, the other toying idly with her watch-chain,
listened to all this recital in the profoundest
silence. When it was finished, she
said in her soft, sonorous tones:
“Thank you very much. Your story interests
me extremely, and it is something to be
interested for half an hour.”
Ruth turned and stared into the face of her
auditor with undisguised amazement. A feeling
of delicacy had hitherto restrained her
from even a glance.
“O Mrs. Chappelleford! Don't you care
at all, then?” exclaimed she with quite involuntary
horror.
Beatrice smiled sadly.
“You think me very heartless, do you not?
But, Ruth, it is so long since I left all this behind
me, all this heart-break and repining
and emotion of every sort, that your story cannot
even rouse their echoes. Love is the occupation
of very young, or very thoughtless,
or very unintellectual persons. Mr. Brent
himself, I dare say, would smile to-day at
these sorrows which to you seem still so real.
I am interested in the story, as I said, for Mr.
Brent was once a very dear friend of mine,
and I like to know what agencies have helped
to build up his character. It was all necessary,
I dare say, to develop his best qualities.
He would not regret it, nor should we.”
“And you don't care a bit for him, nor think
that he cares for you?” asked Ruth, all amazement.
Mrs. Chappelleford answered only by a superb
smile of self-reliance, of compassion for
the inexperience of her companion, of dismissal,
and Ruth, murmuring some excuse, rose
and left the room, half indignant, half bewildered.
Beatrice sat still, her eyes fixed upon the
distant mountains, glittering now with noon
day sunshine.
“So it was all a mistake,” said she at last.
“Well, what matter now? Fate so willed it,
Mr. Chappelleford would tell me, and we poor
puppets could not resist. I wonder what
view Marston would take of it?”
CHAPTER XLVII. THE BLUEBEARD CLOSET.
The fossil remains of Ironstone Mountain
proved even more interesting to Mr. Chappelleford
than he had expected, and as Brent's
coöperation in his researches and his hospitality
to both his guests were evidently a
great pleasure to himself as well as to them,
the period of their visit was extended day after
day, until it had reached nearly three
weeks. Mr. Chappelleford was now busily
engaged in making casts of some of the most
curious of the antediluvian relies which he
had discovered, and kept both himself and the
workmen Brent had placed at his disposal actively
employed. Brent helped him when
necessary, and when he found that the savant
preferred solitude, or the companionship only
of the laborers, he devoted himself to entertaining
Mrs. Chappelleford, who, either upon
foot or mounted upon Ruth's active little
pony, amused herself by exploring the mountain-passes,
points of view, and curious freaks
of nature, with which the region abounded.
In some of these excursions, she was escorted
by her husband—sometimes, when he and
Brent were engaged, by Paul Freeman, with
whom she liked to talk of old Milvor days,
and sometimes by her host only.
In the beginning of this intimate association,
Beatrice had vigilantly, although most
guardedly, watched every look, word, or
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intimation of feeling in her companion, determined
to repress all sentiment, or even allusion,
to the past, with unsparing scorn. But
she soon found she had no occasion for her
armor. Brent—always courteous, always
frank and cheerful, but never familiar, never
retrospective, never even silent and preoccupied—
appeared so little like a despondent
lover, so little like the despairing and desperate
man whom Ruth had pictured, that Mrs.
Chappelleford herself fell more and more often
into reverie in his presence, recalling the
old tender scenes that had passed between
them, recalling the constancy, the tenderness
of his nature as she had known him, wondering
if indeed he could have so completely
changed, or if this were only acting, until at
length the desire to penetrate beneath that
calm and debonair exterior, to the Bluebeard
chamber far within became almost irresistible,
and from dreading all allusion to the past,
avoiding all questions of sentiment or personality,
she came to seeking eagerly for the opportunity
of introducing them, and of leading the
conversation, when alone with Brent, to a confidential
turn.
But here, to her amazement and mortification,
she found herself foiled so quietly, and
apparently so unconsciously, that at first she
attributed her discomfiture to accident than to
want of comprehension, and finally to a too
fastidious honor. But in proportion to the difficulty
of discovering the secret feelings of this
heart she had so dreaded to still find her own.
Beatrice felt a growing desire to penetrate
this smooth but impervious veil, to force at
least confession of something hidden, and satisfy
herself that she had not been dreaming
when she believed that Brent had once loved
her truly.
“Only let me once know what he really
feels, and I am satisfied forever,” said she to
herself, and began to search for the key to
that locked door.
“Ruth was telling me of that terrible injury
you sustained in the woods,” said she one
day, as the two slowly climbed the crest of
Ironstone, and paused to look at the wonderful
panorama below.
“Yes, it was rather severe at the time. Do
you see that blue ribbon glittering among the
hills, Mrs. Chappelleford? That is the Alleghany.”
“Indeed. Yes, I see it quite plainly. But
tell me of that time in the woods, Marston.
Ruth says you were near dying, and very low
in spirits, too.”
“Did she tell you how I was cured?”
“By her tender care, I should think, from
her artless story.”
“By that certainly; but also by brandy,
sugar, and salt-pork. I must tell you about
it.”
And Beatrice found herself obliged to listen
with polite attention to a minute account of the
novel medical treatment prescribed by Richard,
with the doctor's indignation, and old Zilpah's
incredulity.
When the story was ended, Beatrice sat
silent and a little offended. Reserve was
very well, but this was rudeness. At last she
said:
“I find you very much changed, Mr. Brent.”
“That is natural, considering the laborious
and exposed life I have led here and in the
woods. Why, Mrs. Chappelleford, I have not
been idle, when I was able to work, so many
hours in five years as I have in the last three
weeks.”
“And do you regret the occasion?” asked
Beatrice, turning her head, “with eyes of
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sumptuous expectation fixt” upon the face of
her sometime lover, who promptly answered:
“No, indeed. It has been a great treat to
me to meet once more persons of cultivation
and—”
“Marston Brent, why do you perpetually
evade me thus?” cried Beatrice, with a touch
of her old petulant humor. “It is no compliment
to me to avoid so persistently a subject
upon which I am willing to speak. Are you
afraid for yourself or me?”
“For neither, Mrs. Chappelleford,” said
Brent in a low voice, while the expression of
his face changed so suddenly that Beatrice
felt her heart leap for joy. At last she had
conquered—at last he must speak, and she
would be satisfied once for all.
“Then why do you so pointedly avoid the
past?” asked she, more graciously. “That it
is quite past we neither of us doubt, and why
should we not discuss it as we would the
story of Hero and Leander, or Romeo and
Juliet?”
“We will, if you wish it,” replied Brent,
and his mouth grew white, and his eyes resolute,
as if he had just signified his assent to
the torture, resolving all the while that not
its fiercest extremity should extort confession
or complaint from his lips.
Beatrice, a little startled at her own success,
sat silent for a moment, but finally found
voice to say:
“I have one confession to make, Marston.
It was I who sent you the paper with the announcement
of my marriage.”
“Why do you call it a confession? Did you
mean to wound me?”
“Yes, I am afraid I did. Can you forgive
me?”
“Yes, I forgive you freely.”
“Could you have forgiven me before the
wound was quite healed?”
“I never felt resentment.”
The answer did not satisfy her, and she put
the question in a different form:
“You are content now, Marston?”
“I am content—yes.”
“And happy? You no longer remember
me?”
“I have not so many new friends that I
should forget the old ones very easily.”
“O Marston! you do not tell me what I
want to know. Why will not you speak out
for once?”
“What do you wish to know?”
“Do you—Marston, do you remember—do
you—love me still?”
She had asked it, and sat aghast. The silence
that befell seemed to her filled with accusing
voices — the air with scornful eyes.
She covered her face with her hands, and sat
ashamed and silent.
At last he spoke, in a voice so low and stern
that she hardly recognized it.
“Mrs. Chappelleford, that is a question you
have no right to ask, or I to answer. Let us
forget it.”
“You find it very easy to forget,” said Beatrice
bitterly, and without raising her head.
“So be it,” replied Brent in the same tone.
“But, Marston, before we leave the subject,
I wish to tell you that I heard you were about
to marry. I never should have been married
myself if I had not thought—”
“Hush, Beatrice—hush! Whatever may
be now, you once were my ideal of womanhood.
Do not profane the sacred memories
which alone are left to me by representing
yourself as marrying from other motive than
the highest, or as bearing toward your husband
to-day less than an entire love and confidence.
You have made this inquiry into my
life, past and present, partly from the kind interest
of an old friendship—partly in a spirit
of psychological research. Here let it rest.”
“But, O Marston! help me, advise me,
comfort me! I thought I was content, and I
find myself most miserable. I thought my
heart was dead; and already the new life
coursing through it stings me with anguish
intolerable. Marston, I have slept through
these five long years, and now I begin to waken.
What shall I do? How shall I comfort myself
in my despair?”
She covered her face, and wept passionately.
Brent, pale and agitated, looked at her lovingly
for a moment; then turning half away,
said solemnly:
“You cannot comfort yourself, nor can I
comfort you. There is one Comforter, and
but one — His name is Christ: go to Him.
Forgive me for yielding so rashly and so
weakly to your request for open speech upon
this subject. I should have been strong for
both of us. It is my fault—only mine. Come,
we will go home.”
And without another word, he led the way
swiftly and steadily down the mountain-path,
where already slept the purple shadows of the
night, the misty wraith of the departed day.
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CHAPTER XLVIII. RUTH'S OGRE.
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She had never heard of Œnone, this poor
little Ruth, “mournful Œnone wandering
forlorn” upon the hills, nor could she so
melodiously phrase her grief, and yet the
burden of her song in those weary days, that
sad, sad song without words, sung in her
secret heart, was like the nymph's lament.
“My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love,
My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim,
And I am all aweary of my life.”
For Brent, who, if never a lover, had always
been the kindest of friends and companions,
ever ready to sympathize, instruct, or counsel,
now found but little time even to notice the
poor child, giving all his leisure to his guests,
and employing himself for the remainder with
almost desperate energy about his business.
And Paul, too, held aloof—Paul, whose devotion,
hardly valued while it was so freely and
constantly bestowed, became of sudden importance
now that it was withdrawn.
“Nobody loves me, nobody cares for me,
and why should I want to live? I will throw
myself down the old pit-hole, and make an
end of it,” moaned Ruth, and crept stealthily
out of the house and into the woods, until she
came to the deserted shaft. Several times, in
her rapid flight, she thought she heard footsteps
behind her, but looking round could see
no one; and when she paused in the lonely
glade beside the pit-hole, it seemed to her
that she must be the only living thing in all
the world, so intense was the stillness surrounding
her. But the black shadows of the
fir-trees fell across the mouth of the pit, and
the water oozing through the stones at the
side fell with a melancholy plash into the
pool at the bottom, and the blackberry-vines
clinging about the verge were red as if the
blood of a murdered man had fallen there;
and Ruth, chilled out of her desperate meaning,
stood shivering and looking about her,
feeling that, although life might be forlorn,
death was terrible, when a rustling footfall
close behind made her start and turn in sudden
fright.
Parting the underbrush away where he
stood, a man peered out at her, his face most
discordantly framed by the tender green
branches of the birches, and his stooping
figure dimly discernible behind them.
At first sight of face and figure, the girl
shrank back with no more than natural terror,
but presently the glance of terror turned to
one of horror, which slowly froze upon the
delicate features until they resembled a marble
mask of some Gorgon-victim, and step by
step the girl drew nearer to the mouth of the
pit, resolute to seek shelter there, if no better
might be found, from the awful doom which
menaced her.
But help was at hand; the sound of footsteps
and voices approached along the path,
and the head among the birches suddenly disappeared,
while Ruth, relieved from the horrible
fascination of those eyes, turned with a
stifled scream, and fled, passing Mr. and Mrs.
Chappelleford without a word, nor pausing
until she was securely hidden in her own
chamber at home.
“Why, what is the matter with the young
woman? It is too late for March madness,”
exclaimed Mr. Chappelleford, turning to look
after the retreating figure.
“I am sure I cannot tell. Perhaps she saw
some wild animal, or fancied a ghost among
the trees,” replied Beatrice, whose pale face
and nervous manner ill-supported the careless
tone she forced herself to assume. Presently
she resumed:
“Then you cannot go to-morrow?”
“No, I tell you, nor the next day. My
workmen are just preparing to take the
most important casts we have obtained yet,
and I think I shall discover something worth
more than all the rest before to-night. I
have said nothing yet to Brent, nor even set
the men at work, but I think that I have a
distinct impression of a gigantic ichthyosaurus
in a bed of slate just below a loose deposit of
shale, which I am picking away myself. I
don't want to say any thing until I am certain,
but if my supposition proves correct, I shall
have conferred a lasting benefit upon my
country and the Historical Society by my
Western journey. We have not such an impression—
in fact, I never have seen such an
impression in any part of the world as this.
It is really marvellous. You must come and
look at it.”
“Where is it?” asked Beatrice faintly.
“In a side-cutting of this old mine. My
men are at work in the main tunnel, and I
wandered away with my lantern yesterday to
see what discoveries I could make. This is
about half a mile from where they are at
work. By the way, Beatrice, you amused yourself
once by calling me Diogenes—”
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“How did you know it? I never said so,”
exclaimed Beatrice, a little confused.
“I knew it; my eyes and ears are tolerably
keen, and my mental perceptions not especially
dull. But what I was about to say was,
that, after Diogenes, I have taken to carrying a
lantern in the daylight, and I have discovered
what he did not—an honest man.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. It is your friend Brent. I don't
know when I have come so near liking any
one as I do him. It is very fortunate you did
not marry him, madam.”
“Why do you say so?”
“Because you would have been in love with
him, and that would have been the end of you.
Now you are something better than an affectionate,
sympathizing woman—you are a companion
for men, and a worthy friend and helpmate
for a seeker after knowledge. Beatrice,
I am glad you decided as you did that evening
in Barstow's drawing-room.”
“Are you, Mr. Chappelleford?”
“Well, what is it? Your eyes are full of
unspoken words, and your lips tremble with
repressed emotion. Speak it out, honestly
and fearlessly. Perhaps I can fancy half the
story beforehand.”
“I wish that we could leave this place to-morrow.
It is very hard for me to stay,” murmured
Beatrice, shrinking beneath the keen
glances shot at her from under the philosopher's
shaggy eyebrows.
“Well, go on. Speak it out.”
“There is nothing to speak. I want to
leave this place.”
“And Marston Brent? You find that the
old folly rises too vividly to memory, and
shames the calmer and wiser present? You
dislike to recall the stupidities you have outlived?
Is that it?”
“No, I dread to discover that I have not
outlived them,” said Beatrice desperately.
“I wish to leave this place before I add the
crime of living, present love to the anguish—
folly, if you will—of that which I believed
dead and buried.”
They had by this time reached the entrance
of the horizontal shaft of the deserted mine,
and Mr. Chappelleford paused, leaning against
the gray rocks, with an air of profound discomfiture,
while before him stood his wife,
her hands clasped together, her head drooping,
her whole attitude that of a criminal
awaiting sentence.
It came at last, sentence and punishment
in one:
“I once knew a man,” said the philosopher
slowly, “an ardent Darwinian, who undertook
the education of a very promising monkey,
hoping to develop in him the intelligence
of a man. The work went on, with
varying success, until one day, as the master
was giving a lesson in the alphabet,
and the monkey attending to it with the
most promising gravity of demeanor, a mischievous
boy rolled an apple across the floor,
at which sight, the monkey, uttering a cry
of delight, dropped upon all fours, pursued
and seized the prey, and when his master
would have snatched it from him, dealt
him a blow upon the head with his own ruler,
which nearly knocked him down. As he recovered
his balance, he saw the monkey scuttling
away across some sheds, holding fast to
the apple, and uttering wild cries of brutish
defiance and terror. My friend looked after
him a moment, then slowly shook his fist in
dismissal, crying: `Go! It is I that was a
fool in trying to make a man out of a monkey.'
Mrs. Chappelleford, amuse yourself
with whatever toys suit you best; but do not
concern yourself farther about my History of
the Saurian or Treatise upon Philology. I release
you from all such labors and interests.”
He turned as he spoke, and entered the
cave, leaving Beatrice to slowly and sadly
retrace her steps.
“To lose even the respect and friendship
of my husband! To feel myself shut out from
the pursuits that have been my life since I
lost all other hope! What will become of
me next? What is left—”
And Beatrice raised her sad and wistful
eyes to the trees, the sky, to nature, whom
her teacher had set for her in place of God.
But where was comfort?
“Could I speak with you a minute, lady?”
said a hoarse voice at her side, and Mrs.
Chappelleford turned to find herself face to
face with a rough and rugged man, whose
pale face and shaking limbs told of disease,
as plainly as his coward eyes and shrinking
manner did of guilt. A man whom a timid
woman would have feared to meet, alone and
unprotected; but Mrs. Chappelleford was not
timid at any time, and just now was too
deeply absorbed in her own unhappiness to
care much for danger from without.
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“You wish to speak to me?” asked she
coldly.
“Yes, ma'am. I think I've seen you before.
You was at Milvor, at old Deacon Barstow's
funeral, wa'n't you? You're she that was
Beatrice Wansted?”
“Very well. What then?”
“Well, ma'am, it's a long story, and a
pretty hard one for me to tell, but I've come
all the way here on purpose, and I'll do it, if
I can see my way clear to get away afterward.
You're stopping at Mr. Brent's, a'n't
you?”
“Yes.”
“And he's a justice, a'n't he?”
“Yes.”
“And there's a girl there, about eighteen or
so. What do they call her?”
“Ruth.”
“What other name?”
“I do not know.”
“Well, ma'am, I've got something to tell
that girl, or to tell a justice before her, and
Square Brent would do better than any one;
but I darsn't go anigh him, without somebody
to go surety that he won't touch me.”
“Touch you for what?”
“Why, there's something in my story that
would lay me in jail if it was acted on, but
I've got to tell it all out, or I can't settle to
nothing, and I don't know as I could die if I
set out to—not die comf'table anyhow. And
I want to tell it, but I want the Square's
promise, solemn, that he won't touch me for
it. Couldn't you get it for me, ma'am?”
“Perhaps. But why do you select Mr.
Brent as the most suitable person to hear
your deposition?”
“Because, ma'am, he's a sort of gardeen to
the girl, this Ruth. It's about her the story
is.”
“Something to her advantage, or to her
hurt?”
“Well, pretty consid'able to her advantage,
I should say.”
“Very well; I will speak to Mr. Brent, and
if he chooses to hear you, and to give you safe
conduct, he can send here for you. You had
better wait near that old well I just passed.”
“And how 'll I be sure, when I see some
one come after me, that it a'n't a trap?”
asked the man with a look of mingled cunning
and terror.
“You will have to leave that to me,” replied
Mrs. Chappelleford disdainfully. “I
shall not be likely to betray a person who has
trusted himself to me; but I can give you
no proof other than my word.”
“Very well, ma'am, I'll trust you, and I'll
wait by the old well. I was there this morning,
and saw Ruth herself, but she run as
soon as she saw me, and no wonder either.”
CHAPTER XLIX. THE MARK OF CAIN.
Finding Brent among his workmen at the
forge, Mrs. Chappelleford called him aside,
and in a few clear phrases told her errand.
He listened attentively, and when she had
finished said:
“Thank you very much. I can guess who
this man must be, and, I hope, his errand.
Certainly I will give him a safe conduct if
his confession is what I think, and I will go
myself to assure him of it. Ruth must be
present at the examination; and if it is not
asking too much of you, I should be glad that
you should give her the support of your presence.”
“Certainly. Arrange the whole as you
think best, and I will do whatever you desire,”
said Beatrice humbly, for since their conversation
upon the mountain-top she felt herself
bitterly humiliated in presence of this man,
and while ardently desiring to escape from it,
found somewhat of comfort in submission and
deference to him in all minor matters—thus asserting,
as it were, that he was not only her
superior in moral strength and worth, but the
superior of all men in all things, and, consequently,
that to be conquered by him was not
so much of a defeat as a necessity. Brent,
whose habit of thought was not analytical,
and who himself felt sorely hurtand troubled
by the conversation into which he had been
betrayed, noticed this manner with annoyance,
and did not seek to fathom its cause. He
felt, however, that renewed intercourse had
done harm both to Beatrice and himself, and
he earnestly wished that it might terminate
before either found deeper cause to regret it.
Perhaps, although he would not think it, he
felt in his inmost heart that the struggle between
his deepest and truest convictions of
right and the natural impulses of a strong and
loving nature was becoming too nearly equal
for safety, and he feared to lose self-respect as
well as peace should the contest continue
longer. “At any rate,” he murmured, striding
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along the woodland path toward the old shaft,
“I will tell Ruthie every thing, and if she
can love me then, we will be married.”
And then he sighed, or more nearly groaned,
and frowned and clenched his strong right
hand, muttering:
“Well, Brent, are you a villain or a fool?”
Deep in thought still, he reached the shaft,
and looked about him blankly. Then remembered
his errand, and called aloud:
“Joachim Brewster, where are you?'
At sound of that name, a stir became perceptible
in the bushes beyond the pit, and
presently the haggard face of the man appeared,
as it had done to Ruth, but now wearing
an expression of anxious distrust.
“Hallo, Square! How d'ye know my
name?”
“Guessed it from your errand. Come
out.”
“She said she'd promise for you that I
shouldn't be touched. D'ye agree, Square?”
“Yes, I promise you safe conduct as soon
as you like to depart. That is, if your confession
is worth any thing.”
“It's worth that girl Ruth's neck to her
anyway, and I reckon that makes it worth
something to you, Square, if what they say
is so.”
“Follow me to my house, and I will hear
what you have to say in the presence of witnesses,”
said Brent, staring a moment at the
speaker, and then turning upon his heel and
striding down the path.
Timidly as a wild animal leaving its lair for
the open country, the miserable man to whom
he spoke crept from his shelter and followed,
muttering:
“She said I shouldn't be touched, she did.”
Arrived at the house, Mr. Brent led the way
to a small room set apart as a study, or rather
office for the transaction of both private and
public business, and leaving his somewhat
reluctant guest seated there, went himself to
summon Mrs. Chappelleford, Ruth, and Paul
Freeman to meet him. Entering the room
rather suddenly, the guest was found softly
raising the window and looking to see what
lay beneath.
“You need not trouble yourself to contrive
a way to escape, Mr. Brewster,” said Brent
coldly. “The door is free for you at any
time you choose to use it. You requested this
interview yourself.”
“Yes, yes, Square, I know it. I was only
looking out to see what sort of a place you'd
got. The lady there said I shouldn't be touched
and I allow she knew your mind as well as
her own.”
“You are perfectly safe,” replied Brent contemptuously.
“What have you to say?”
“Where's Ruth? Oh! there she is. Don't
look so scared of me, girl. I a'n't going to
touch you now—and, in fact, I've come all this
way to clear you and set you in your right
place. You can have the farm and all, if
you've a mind to go and get it.”
Ruth, shivering with terror, and crouching
upon a low stool almost behind Mrs. Chappelleford,
made no reply, and Brent, seating
himself at his desk with pen and paper,
somewhat sternly said:
“Now, Mr. Brewster, if you have a deposition
to make, I am ready to take it, and wish
it given regularly and in order. You, of
course, are willing to swear to its truth, and
set your name, properly witnessed, at the
foot.”
“On conditions, Square—on conditions that
I a'n't a going to be touched for it. I'm a sick
man, Square—I won't say but what I'm a dying
man, and all I ask is to go off and lose
myself somewheres and die in peace. If so
be you can't promise that, why l'd rather not
put my name to nothing that's going to be
used agin me, maybe.”
“I shall take no proceedings against you, as
I have repeatedly promised you; and although
I shall use your confession to clear Ruth's
character of the horrible stain you have thrown
upon it, you will have ample time to escape,
and, if you are at all wise, to hide yourself so
well that you will never be heard from again
east of the Rocky Mountains at least.”
“Well, Square, it a'n't just as I meant to
have it, but I'm about tired out, and I a'n't
a well man, nor a cheerful man, and I don't
know as I care how it turns out. I'll go ahead
and do the right thing anyway. So this is
what I've got to say, and you can take it down
as fast as you've a mind to:
“Me and Peleg Brewster were brothers, but
after he married Semanthy the brother part
on't seemed to die out. I a'n't a going to tell
all about it now, for it don't matter much one
way or t'other, but I don't deny that Peleg
had his trials, and like enough we didn't do
jest right by him, me and Semanthy didn't.
And then Semanthy hated the child, Ruth
there—oh! how Semanthy did hate her—and
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Joachim Brewster waiting for his brother.
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treated her bad most every way that she could
think of. The worst was, setting her father
against her; but she did that for a reason she
had—two reasons, in fact. One was that Ruth
saw and told things that went on while Peleg
was away—that made him awful mad with us;
and another was that when Mary—that was his
first wife, you know—died, he made a will and
left all the money to Ruth—farm, house, stuff,
and every thing—and he hadn't never changed
that will, though Semanthy had asked him
often enough. But at last one night there
was an awful row in the house—no matter
what it was now—but Ruth she up and told
something to her father, and Semanthy said
she lied, and she told her own story, that put
all the blame onto Ruth, and I helped her out
in it, for Peleg had a knife in his hand, and
would have put it into me quicker'n a flash if
Semanthy and me hadn't stood it out that
Ruth was the liar and something worse.”
“Oh! it was so cruel, so cruel to make my
own father believe such things of me; and he
died, and never knew —” burst out Ruth;
and then hiding her face upon Beatrice's lap,
she fell into a passion of sobs and tears.
“Go on, Brewster,” said Brent sternly, and
never glancing toward the corner where the
women sat.
“Well, Peleg was awful mad, and the worst
of it to him was that he didn't know who to
believe or what to think, and finally he fixed
it that we was all banded together against
him, and that Ruth was jealous of Semanthy,
and so complained against her; for Semanthy
made it out that the girl, young as she was,
liked me most too well, and Ruth didn't know
enough about it to lay her in a lie, as she
might have easy enough. So, Peleg settled it
that we were a bad lot, the whole of us, and
he swore he would just quit for good and all,
sell out the farm, put Ruth to service, take
Semanthy home to her mother, and let me
shirk for myself. That was at night, and in
the morning, sure enough, Semanthy saw him
get the will he'd made out of his old secretary
and put it in his pocket with a lot of other
papers—the deeds of the homestead, and such
like, they turned out to be. Then he got up
the horse and harnessed him, and called Ruth
to come along.
“It was while he was sitting in the wagon
a waiting for her that he tied the rope round
his own neck, for he told Semanthy that he
was going to Bloom, or Milvorhaven, I most
forget which, for to sell the farm and all the
stock just as it stood, and that neither she nor
me nor Ruth was to have the money, if he
had to throw it away to keep it from us. And
he told her he'd carry her home next day, and
tell her folks the reason why; and he said a
lot of other things, some to her and some to
me, that was dreadful irritating, and dangerous
too, if he did as he said—and Peleg was a
man that was dreadful apt to hold to one
mind for quite a long spell.
“So he drove away from the door, and Semanthy
she stood ever so long looking at me
with the awfullest look that ever you see on
her face, and at last she said sort of quiet:
“`Joe Brewster, if that man gets to 'Haven
alive, it's all up with you and me.'
“`Maybe 'tis, but how am I going to help
it?' says I, feeling the goose-flesh rising up
all over me as she spoke, it was so sort of solemn.
Then she smiled, and that was worse
than all, and she said, pointing to my gun:
“`A'n't you going shooting to-day, Joe?'
“`O Lord! Semanthy,' says I, `you don't
mean that, do you?'
“And she says just in the same way:
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“`If you don't, I'll drown myself in the well
before that 'ere sun sets—I swear I will.'
“And she'd ha' done it—I know she would.
“So I cut across the wood-lot, and I waited
just where the road turns sudden and runs
by Blackbrier pond, and—and there I done it.”
And with the first touch of feeling he had
yet shown, the miserable man wiped his
clammy forehead, moistened his lips, and
glared about him as if he dreaded to see the
hangman approaching.
“Be more specific. What did you do?” demanded
Brent, fixing his eyes upon the wretch
before him with undisguised abhorrence.
“I shot him in the back from behind a tree,
and then I jumped into the wagon and held a
knife at the child's throat, and told her that
she'd killed her father, and I see her do it,
and I'd carry her straight on to Bloom and
put her in jail, and she'd be hung. The poor
little fool was so scared she didn't know at
first but what she had done it, and didn't
hardly know what to say, and then I made
her get down on her knees and swear solemn
that she never would say a word to man,
woman, nor child about the matter, nor an
swer any questions, nor even say yes or no if
she was asked if she'd done it.
“She took the oath, and she was just the
child that I knew would keep it if you skinned
her alive to get the story out of her; but
for all that I was calculating to take her right
off to the city and put her in an orphan asylum,
or lose her in the street, or some way get
rid of her. That was Semanthy's planning,
mind you, not mine, for I always liked the child
first-rate. I was always good to you, Ruth,
wasn't I now?”
The fawning, wheedling tone of the last
words was even more odious than the callous
brutality of the first part of the narrative, and
while Ruth shrank silently into her corner,
Brent peremptorily said:
“Go on with your story, Brewster, and address
yourself only to me.”
“Well, Square, there a'n't much more to
tell. When I'd got the gal's promise, I left
her and took the body and pitched it over into
the pool, thinking folks would say it had fell
there, and maybe it wouldn't be found at all. I
hardly seem to remember now how we did
plan it. Semanthy was to the head on't all,
and I only did as she told me. You see,
Square, I wa'n't nigh so much to blame as she
all along.”
“Go on with your story, Brewster.”
“Well, as I was saying, I hove the body
into the pool, and I fired off the gun, as Semanthy
told me—that is, Peleg's gun, for I had
my own beside—and I give the horses a good
cut, and set 'em off down the road—that nigh
one was always skittish enough, and I knew
it wouldn't be a trifle that would stop him—
and then I turned round to look after the
child, and she was gone. Look high and look
low, not a sign of her was to be seen, and,
Square, I wisht you'd just ask her yourself,
sence you won't let me speak to her, where did
she go that time?”
“Do you want to tell him, Ruth?”
“I crawled into a great hollow tree and
waited until he was gone, and then I came
out and ran ever so far, and fell down. I don't
know what happened afterward—I think I was
sort of crazy for a while; and the next I knew
Paul Freeman was with me, and crying as
hard as he could cry, and then he hid me in a
barn, and next day took me over to Bloom
and dressed me like a boy, and kept me at the
tavern till you were ready to go West.”
“You hear? Brewster,” said Mr. Brent, to
whom this hurried narrative was as new as to
any other of its auditors.
“Yes, Square, I hear; and it does beat all
what hindred me from looking into that holler
tree. Seems curious that I didn't,” replied
Joachim with an air of meditative regret.
CHAPTER L. AND HIS CURSE.
“Is that all?” demanded Brent, as the miserable
wretch before him seemed indisposed
to resume his narrative, but sat wiping
his forehead, furtively glancing at every member
of the little company in turn, and moving
uneasily upon his chair.
“Well, yes, Square, I b'lieve that's all.”
“And now, what is the purpose of this confession,
Brewster? Why do you make it, and
what do you wish done with it?”
“That's the very peth of the whole, Square,”
replied Brewster, his face lighting with more
expression than it yet had displayed. “It
does seem a simple sort of thing for a man to
do, to go and run his head right square into a
noose when he is well out of it—now don't it?
But the fact is. Square, I was drove to it.”
“By what?”
“By suthin' inside of me, Square. I don't
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justly know what,” replied the murderer in
an awe-stricken and mysterious voice. “It's
been a-working most ever sence I did it. Semanthy
felt it, too, and it made her awful—
right down awful. I declare for't, Square, I
was afraid to stop in the house with her, and
use to clear out whole days to a time. But
then if I went off alone, it was as bad, for I
seemed to see Peleg glimpsing out at me from
every tree in the wood-lot, and from behind
every stone in the fields; and then the child,
I expected she'd made way with herself, and
I was always looking out for her bones, and
maybe her nateral face a-staring up out of the
ground at me. I have heerd of such things,
Square. And then if I went amongst folks,
there it was agen: I didn't darst to open my
mouth for fear the secret would jump out of
it, unbeknownst to me, like. It seemed to me
sometimes as if l'd got to holler right out:
`I did it! I did it! 'Twas me killed my
brother, Peleg Brewster, and hove him in
Blackbrier Pool!'
“I declare for't, Square, I was clean afraid
to trust myself amongst folks, and I was
scaart to death of being alone; and to stop
along o' Semanthy was worst of the whole
What sort o' thoughts or what sort o' sperits
ha'n't that woman I don't know; but there's a
look on her face—'specially deep down in her
eyes—that makes a feller's flesh creep on his
bones to meet. It's been a-growing there all
these five year, and when she dies, it will be
the look she'll carry to her grave. I wouldn't
be the man to screw down her coffin-led, not
for no money—she'll look so awful when she's
dead. Along at first we used to talk about it,
and she'd sort o' set me up, telling how ugly
Peleg was to both of us, and how he was
going to turn me out upon the world and disgrace
her, and she'd laugh—though it wasn't
never a good laugh—and say we'd got the
best on't now, and pass it off as though she
was happy; but—O Lord! Then we got further
along, and left off talking about it, or, in
fact, about much of any thing. The neighbors
wouldn't come to see us, nor the women
wouldn't speak to Semanthy at meetin', or
sewing-circles, or such, and she left off going,
and then the look in her eyes began to grow.
“There was one thing I kept from her, and
I don't hardly know why, but I did. That
was the will leaving every thing to Ruth, I
told her it was gone, and that most likely
Peleg had torn it up; but I kept it, and hid it
in the barn, and she never knew. It used to
work her dreadfully at first, because the estate
couldn't be settled for want of a will or
knowing about Ruth; and finally we got some
bones — well, we got 'em out of the churchyard,
and dressed 'em in Ruth's clothes, and
put 'em in the water nigh where Peleg was
found, and then I fixed it so they was diskivered,
and we swore to the clothes, and nobody
cared much, any way, and so the property
was made over to me and Semanthy had her
thirds; but, by that time, we didn't neither
of us care for the property, nor nothing else.
I didn't do much about the farm, and it sort
o' run out, and Semanthy grew dreadful
slack about the house, and took to setting all
day in a chair, drawed up close in a corner of
the room, so as nothing couldn't get behind
her, and watching, watching all day, with
that strange, awful look a-growing on her
face, and seeming to come up into her eyes
from way down somewhere. I can't justly
tell you what I mean, Square, but I've stood
outside and peeked in the winder at that
woman till it seemed as if I looked out of her
eyes, and seen the devil a coming, ready to
catch her any minute.
“Bimeby we got dreadful poor, and I took
to drink; but that was no better, for I darsn't
drink in company, and when I was alone, I
had the horrors so bad I wonder I didn't
shoot myself. I should ha' done it time and
agen, only it seemed just as if Peleg was waiting
to catch me in the dark just as soon as I
got out o' life, and I darsn't meet him.
“Then at last it come inter my head that if
I was to find Ruth, supposing she was alive,
and clear up the charge agin her, and give
back the property, what's left of it, that Peleg
would be kind o' pacified, and I might get
rest. What set me thinking on't was hearing
that Marston Brent—that's you, Square, you
know—had got a gal he was going to marry,
and she was a sister to Paul Freeman, and her
name was Ruth. All that come out through
Zilpah Stone's folks; but nobody in Milvor
seemed to mistrust any thing. You see they
all swallered the story of them bones being
Ruth, and then forgot all about her. But I
knew better, and I knew, too, that Paul Freeman
hadn't got no sister, but he was always
mighty partial to our Ruth; so putting every
thing together, and working over it nights
and day-times—when I sot one side of the fire
and Semanthy the other, and neither of us
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speaking for hours at a time—I began to see
my way out of it pooty clear. So then I went
kind o' quiet and sold out the last of the
bank-stock that Peleg left, and crep' away
one night, leaving Semanthy setting up with
the fire all out, and the candle jest guttering
down, and the wind a-howling in the chimbly
like folks. I couldn't stand it no longer, and
she'd got sort of used to it, I s'pose, so I left
her.
“I'd inquired round some, of Dr. Bliss's folks
and the Stones', and I'd found out pretty nigh
where you was located, Square, and so came
right along; but when I got here, I kind o'
hung off till I found out how the land lay
First, I see Ruth in the wood; but as soon as
she got sight of me she run—I expect remembering
who it was, and thinking I was going
to serve her same as she see me serve Peleg;
and then pretty soon I see the other woman
and spoke to her, and she promised for you,
Square, that I shouldn't be touched; and so I
came.”
“And what are your future plans?” asked
Brent in a repressed voice, as he finished
writing.
“All I ask, Square, is a chance to die quiet—
that's all I want—so help me God,” replied
the man, with desperate earnestness in his
voice, and turning his haggard face and bloodshot
eyes from side to side of the room like
some maimed reptile seeking a crevice wherein
to hide and die.
“Let him go, Marston,” said Beatrice in a
low voice, as her eyes followed the motions of
the criminal with a look of mingled aversion
and contempt. “Let him creep away and
die.”
“He has my promise,” replied Brent in the
same tone; “although I do not know how far
the law would justify my action after this
confession. Still, he has my promise, and he
is safe.
“Joachim Brewster, sign your name to
this paper in presence of these witnesses;
give up the will of which you speak, and depart,
remembering that, should you ever reappear,
your confession will be used against
you without hesitation, and that though you
now escape the justice of man, the justice of
God still pursues, and will yet overtake you.”
“That's most too bad of you, Square, when
I'm a-doing all I can to set things straight
agen,” whimpered Joachim, signing his name
in a character so shaking and so crabbed as
hardly to be legible. “Don't you believe
that Peleg will be pacified with this day's
work, Square?”
“It is not your brother that you have to
dread,” said Brent in a low voice. “It is God
who will demand him at your hand, as He
demanded Abel of Cain.”
“O Lord! O Lord! a'n't there no getting
away from it nohow?” gasped the man, sinking
upon his knees, while the sweat of mortal
agony gathered upon his sordid brow, and his
eyes, filled with abject terror, wandered from
Brent's firm, unsympathizing face to meet the
look of satisfied hatred upon that of Paul
Freeman, and at last sought with piteous appeal
the two women, who had risen, and stood
looking down upon him—Mrs. Chappelleford
with close scrutiny, Ruth with terrible but
mingled emotion.
That look demanded words, and Beatrice
replied to it:
“It would be happier for you to believe
that there is no God,” said she calmly.
“That were to cast away the small remnant
of hope left possible. Do not counsel him
thus,” said Brent sternly; and then Ruth,
fluttering forward, fell upon her knees beside
her father's murderer and her own cruel
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enemy, and taking his poor, trembling hands in
hers, cried, while the tears ran down her
face:
“O uncle! there is a God, and there is no
escaping from Him or deceiving Him; but He
is the God of Love and Pardon as well as of
Justice, and He will forgive you if you truly,
truly repent—I know He will, for he puts it
in my heart to forgive you, and to promise you
that father will forgive you, too, if only you
will use every minute that is left of your life
in repenting and doing right.”
“Is that so, Ruth? Do you feel as if you'd
got a right to tell me that? O Ruthie! don't
you cheat your poor old uncle that's most
killed a'ready with what he's got to bear.”
“It is true, uncle—it is true! Oh! I am
just as sure as sure can be!” sobbed the girl,
her pale face glorified with the earnestness of
her faith. “It was a terrible sin; but nothing
is too bad to be forgiven if only you are sorry
enough, and do all you can to make up for it
in this world.”
“I'm glad I come here, Ruth. I thought it
were for your sake I was a-doing it, but it
were for my own. Ruth, you've give me the
first word of comfort I've felt in five long year.
I wish't you'd come along o'me and teach me
the way to repent; seems as if I could keep
up to it easier if I had you clos't by.”
But Ruth shrank back at this proposal, and
Brent spoke sharply and decidedly:
“That is out of the question. There lies
the door, Joachim Brewster. Go! and God
grant that His pardon may indeed reach you.”
Without a word, the broken man whom he
addressed rose to his feet, cast one tremulous
glance of gratitude and appeal upon his niece,
who could not meet it, and then slunk out of
the house and down the road, glancing behind
him and around him at every step, as one
who feels himself pursued by unseen avengers,
and so passed from their sight forever.
CHAPTER LI. THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.
But Beatrice stayed not to watch the departure
of the God-stricken sinner, nor to discuss
the story he had told with those who
remained behind. The few words of stern
reproof with which Brent had met her attempt
to soothe the culprit's terrors by suggesting a
doubt as to their foundation had smitten her
sorely, and while the attention of every one
was absorbed in Brewster's movements, she
stole softly from the room and the house.
“O Marston! if I have lost faith, and hope,
and all Christian graces, it is your fault, only
yours,” murmured she, gliding along the wood-path
where the shades of evening already lay.
“If you had but held me in your keeping, you
might have made of me what you would.
But cold reason, unwarmed by love, yields
only bitter fruit. Why should I believe in a
God who has denied me every thing?”
And then as if terrified at her own question,
she stood still, glancing timidly into the dusky
coverts of the wood, and hesitating whether
to venture farther from the human companionship
which was at once an accusation and a
protection.
While she stood thus hesitating, the miners
employed by her husband, under Brent's permission,
came trooping along the path, laughing
and singing with the boisterous mirth of
rude health and animal spirits. Any thing
so tangible restored the poise of Mrs. Chappelleford's
mind at once, and she moved
slowly forward to meet them. The foreman
stopped to speak to her.
“Good-evening, ma'am. Has Mr. Chappelleford
come out of the mine?”
“I have not seen him. Have not you been
with him?”
“No, ma'am. He said he didn't want any
one to come anigh him unless he called, and
as we didn't hear any thing, we concluded he'd
come out, and gone home. Was you going up
there, ma'am?”
“No—yes, I think I will go and meet him.
He is in the path to the right of the entrance,
is he not?”
“Yes, ma'am. Some ways in, I judge,
though he didn't want to be followed, and I
don't know justly where he is. Maybe you'd
like to have me go with you, ma'am, as it's
getting kind of latish for the mines.”
“No, thank you, I am not at all afraid; and
Mr. Chappelleford, you say, asked you not to
come?”
“Yes, ma'am, he said so; but, any way, you
had better take my lantern. It's dark as
Egypt after you get in a piece; long before
you'll see his light you will lose the daylight,
every glimpse of it.”
“Thank you, I will take the lantern,” said
Beatrice, with the courteous smile that won
for her the hearts of such men as this—too far
beneath her to feel the scorn and satire with
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which she too often visited the faults and
foibles of her equals.
“Say, Mike,” asked the foreman of one of
his companions, as they passed on, “don't the
Queen you're so fond of talking about look
something like that?”
“Only she a'n't so purty nor so ginteel in
her figger. This un 'ould make the better
queen of the two if she had the luck,” replied
the Irishman.
But Beatrice, moving swiftly on toward the
deserted mine, was thinking:
“Yes; I will go to him and ask him to pity
and help me; for what else have I left in
heaven or earth? His teachings have deprived
me of any faith in the love of God, and
my own folly has cut me off from the love of
man. What is left to me but the cold intellectual
companionship he has so far given me?
I cannot lose that too.” And hastily, as one
who fears to feel her purpose fail before it is
accomplished, she glided along the darkening
path beneath the rustling shadow of the firtrees,
past the broken well where the mur
derer had lain that morning concealed, and
up the steep and stony hill, until, breathless
and with palpitating heart, she stood in the
entrance of the mine, the daylight all behind
her, and impenetrably dark before.
Listening eagerly, she heard no sound except
the slow dripping of water oozing through
the loose slatestone and plashing upon the floor
beneath.
“Mr. Chappelleford!” called she timidly,
and an echo far within the arched passage returned
the cry in a strange, mocking tone, like
that of the demon of the mine daring her to
enter.
“Oh! I cannot go in,” whispered Beatrice,
shrinking back, and trembling nervously, and
then the bitter thought of a few moments before
returned upon her.
“He is my husband—he is all I have left for
this life or another. I must not shrink from
following where he leads; I must make my
peace with him before the sun sets.”
And with trembling fingers she lighted her
lantern, and with desperate courage pushed
forward into the dismal darkness and mocking
echoes of the mine. A hundred rods and
she had lost the daylight, and felt as if miles
of darkness and desolation separated her from
her fellow-men. Holding her breath with
terror, guarding her steps that they should
make no sound, glancing now at this side, now
at that, catching reflections of the light she
carried from the glittering surface of quartz
or mica, or from the brilliant eyes of some
bloated toad squatted beside her path, shrinking
from the spectral flight of bats and nightbirds
haunting the place, she hurried on, feeling
as if she was moving in a dream, in a
dismal nightmare which presently must culminate
in some fantastic horror never yet
imagined or experienced by human mind.
On, and on, and on, until her limbs shook
with weariness, and her swimming brain
threatened to give way beneath the pressure
it sustained; and as she paused, leaning
against the slimy rock for support, and dimly
wondering, if she were to die there, what
Marston Brent would feel in finding her, her
straining ears caught a faint sound, and she
fancied a yet fainter gleam of light far down
the noisome tunnel she was traversing.
“Thank God, I have reached him!” was
the cry of the desolate woman's whole heart,
and then she hurried on, running now, and
never heeding the echoes that mocked and the
shadows which came crowding after her, never
heeding bruises, or soil, or fatigue, for every
moment the far light grew nearer and more
certain, and every moment Beatrice expected
to catch sight of her husband at his work or
coming toward her.
But the journey was over, the friendly
beacon reached, and still she could not see
him; only just opposite the light which stood
upon a projecting shelf of slate lay a great
mass of rock almost filling the passage, while
above it a corresponding chasm in the wall
of the gallery showed whence it had fallen.
Beatrice stood for a moment viewing this
scene in wonder and dismay, and then a sudden
horror seized upon her, and she called
sharply:
“Mr. Chappelleford! Oh! speak, if you are
here!”
“Who is it?” asked a voice dim with
anguish—a voice that seemed to come from
beneath the huge mass of rock, and to feel its
weight in every tone.
Her muscles tense with horror, her eyes
wild with dread of what they must behold,
Beatrice passed between the rock and the side
of the gallery, and came upon a sight that
had well-nigh killed her as she stood. Her
husband lay beneath that crushing weight,
only his head, his right arm, and a small portion
of his chest visible—the rest of his body
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mercifully hidden, save that a slow stream of
blood trickled out from beneath the rock, and
stagnated in a ghastly pool beside her feet.
Unable to stand, unable to speak, Beatrice
sank down beside that livid head, and felt
that the horror which had led her so far had
culminated here, and that the worst was upon
her.
“Is it you, Beatrice?” whispered the white
lips of the dying man.
“Yes. I must go for help. But what help
can move this rock?”
“None. Do not go. I should be dead long
before you could return. Sit quietly there,
and see me off. I have been thinking of you.
I am glad you came.”
“But something must be done—we must at
all events try,” gasped Beatrice, wringing her
hands and looking piteously at the tons of
torture piled upon that poor crushed body.
“Nothing can be done. Do not speak of
that again. It is the ichthyosaurus. He is
on this surface next me, and he is lost. The
roof is too low to admit of turning the rock,
and they cannot blast without burying it,
besides they will never take the trouble. I
wish you could have seen it, and then you
could describe it in the work upon Saurians.
I want you to finish that book, Beatrice. I
am afraid you could not manage the philology,
although you would have helped me amazingly.
You may give the papers collected for that
to Arnold, and let him see what he can do. I
won't play dog in the manger. It is getting
very cold here. Beatrice, I am sorry I told
the story of the monkey—it was not courteous,
and your manner toward me has always been
perfect—”
“Oh! sir, I wished my heart had been more
so,” sighed Beatrice, and she stooped to press
her cold lips upon the colder forehead of the
dying man.
“Nonsense. Your heart, child—it is a muscle,
nothing more. You have been all to me
that I wished or asked. I was vexed at you
to-day, because I thought you were past such
follies as you hinted, and when I am dead,
I suppose you will relapse completely, and
marry this man, and prattle of love and moonshine,
as you did at seventeen. Well, the
time grows short—finish the Saurians first.
Promise me that Beatrice.”
“I will finish it—I promise you.”
“Before you marry Brent?”
“I shall never marry again.”
“Pho! nonsense. And perhaps, after all,
Beatrice, perhaps it is as well for you women.
I thought I could place you above your sex,
and I have; but it is an isolation—love, kisses,
dress, cooking, babies, they are your natural
delights, and you miss them. It was an experiment,
and I shall make no more.”
“Dear friend and teacher! Forgive me
that I have not better rewarded your care—for-give
me that I have not held myself steadfast
in your path! But this is not the moment to
think of me. Tell me, have you no message,
no trust to confide to me?”
“None. My worldly affairs are in order,
and you know all my plans. If not what other
men call wife, you have been a dear and
valued comrade to me, Beatrice. I have not
cared to say how dear—”
“And, O my friend! how desolate you are
leaving me!” cried Beatrice, made selfish by
despair. “Oh! that I too were dying, that I
might follow you to that other world, as I have
through this.”
“Other world—do you believe it, dear? I
am sorry I uprooted that simple faith of yours,
for now I want it. Beatrice, is there no God?”
“Oh! sir, do you ask me?”
“And you dare not answer! It is my
own work, my own work, and it turns upon
me now. Woman, it is for you to hold your
faith steadfast and shining while man gropes
blindly through the labyrinth of reason. It
is my doing, but it is your disgrace that you
have not a word of comfort for me now. Oh! if
I could hear my mother praying beside me as
I heard her once when I was a child, and as
she thought dying. She begged my life of
God that night so piteously, so passionately,
that He gave it her. If she were here, she
would beg my soul's life even more fervently.”
“But you do not believe—you derided my
faith—you reasoned away my hope—you
rooted out all the pious teaching of my
youth,” moaned Beatrice, writhing beneath
the sense of her own powerlessness in this extremity.
“To reason, and deride, and uproot were
my gifts; yours should have been to cling fast
to your faith. If only I had my mother here—
my mother—how her eyes shone as she lifted
them heavenward! Where is she now? Do
you believe, do I believe, that saintly woman
is mere dust and daisies? O Beatrice, Beatrice!
speak a word of hope—tell me that dear
mother lives, and I shall see her—tell me I
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am not going to annihilation—what, lose all
that I have learned so painfully!—this mind,
this memory, these heaped thoughts, all going
to oblivion in one brief hour! O woman!
argue with me, force belief upon me—at the
least, pray for me—pray—pray—call upon
God to shine in upon the black despair which
overwhelms me! O woman! if you are a
woman indeed, like those who lay the night
through at the foot of the cross, say one word
of prayer to God, for I—I dare not!”
And kneeling there, her head humbly down
dropt, her voice choked with anguish and
terror for his soul and for her own, Beatrice
faintly murmured the words that she had
learned, an innocent child, long years before,
and had never spoken since her marriage.
“Amen!” whispered the white lips of the
dying man, and then death laid his finger
upon them, and they spoke no more.
CHAPTER LII. RUTH'S BETROTHAL.
She knew that he was dead, and yet she
sat there dumb and motionless, her face white
and still as his, her eyes fixed, her mind wandering
through time and eternity, she knew
not whither.
Through all the chaos into which her life
seemed of a sudden fallen, one thought alone
rose definite and undeniable. He, that dead
man there, the man toward whom she had
assumed such solemn and unending duties,
he had asked her for comfort in his dying
moments, for a word of faith, or promise, or
supplication, and she had none to give him,
not one. No comfort for him, none for herself
were she too dying—not even the poor cry
of unreasoning belief. And this was the result
then of life, this the end toward which
she had so arduously toiled, this the grand
result of philosophy, and intellect, and intelligent
theory as opposed to blind faith. He,
her teacher, and the most learned man she
had ever known, the profoundest thinker, the
clearest reasoner, the most fearless theorist
and analyzer, he had died longing to hear his
mother's voice interceding with God for the
soul of her unbelieving child. Was this the
end of such men? Must such an end be hers
ere long?
So she sat, while the minutes and the hours
went by, and the twilight gave place to night,
and the toad and bat and slimy creeping
things came softly up to glide about her feet,
and stare at the glittering pool of blood, and
flash their moist skins and evil eyes in the dim
light, and creep in beneath the stone which
had crushed out that life but now so full of
power and thought.
And she, never seeing them, sat motionless
beside her dead, and learned from his dumb
lips such teaching as, living, he never had
been capable of giving.
They found her there as the night wore on,
Marston Brent and the rest, and gathered
about her with broken exclamations of pity
and dismay. Brent it was who raised her in
his arms and carried her forth to the living
world once more. He did not speak, and she
said only:
“Bring me to your Ruth.”
And in Ruth's arms he left her.
With infinite labor they raised the great
stone, and drew the poor broken body from
beneath it, then let it fall, and shudderingly
left it, the imprint of the antediluvian monster
soaked in the blood of the man of latest
science who had sought to steal his secret.
The monster had conquered, and he lies there
to-day even more secure from molestation than
when the dead man first discovered him.
They bore the body forth, and the next day
buried it with the Christian ordinances which
the philosopher, despising in life, had clung
to in death, and let us hope that the sleep to
which they laid him shall end in the light of
clearest day.
A week passed away, and then Brent asked
an audience of his guest, who had never yet
left the room whither he had carried her from
the mine.
He found her calm, pale, and silent, receiving
such words of sympathy as he could offer
almost without reply, and seeming to half
forget his presence even while he spoke.
At last he said:
“I trust you will not doubt my pleasure in
retaining you beneath my roof, or my desire
to leave you time to recover from this great
shock before you are troubled with outward
matters, but I think it right to tell you that I
am about to journey to Milvor with Ruth,
that her affairs there may be permanently settled,
and if you think best to go with us—”
“Yes, I will go. I wish to go to Milvor,”
interrupted Beatrice, catching at the name.
“I thought it likely, and perhaps you will
suffer less in the journey now than after a
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while. The first effect of such a blow is apathy,
the anguish comes later.”
“How do you know, Marston Brent? You
never have suffered `such a blow,”' exclaimed
Beatrice almost fiercely.
“My life has not been desolated by death,
but I have suffered,” said Brent quietly, and
without waiting for a reply, he recounted the
preparations he had made for the journey, and
mentioned the day and hour in which he proposed
to set forth.
Beatrice listened to all without raising her
heavy eyes or making any remark. When he
had done, she only said:
“Do as you think best. All I wish is to be
at Milvor, and hidden from the world.”
“In another week you will be there, and
may you find the rest you seek. Poor Beatrice!”
said Brent softly, and so left her to the
solitude she seemed to crave.
In the passage he met Ruth, who hesitatingly
said:
“Can I speak with you a moment, sir?”
“Certainly. Come into the office,” said
Brent; and when the door was closed: “Well,
Ruthie?”
“I thought it best to tell you myself, sir,
that I have about concluded to marry Paul,”
said Ruth, turning very pale, and leaning
against the corner of the heavy table in the
centre of the room.
“Indeed! Why, Ruth, I thought—he told
me, in fact, that you had refused him, or nearly
so,” said Brent in sudden bewilderment, for
out of Paul Freeman's bitter revealings and
Ruth's own artless confessions, and the desperate
need of his own heart, he had built a
shadowy scheme for the future, hardly confessed
as yet even to himself, but growing
every day more clear and certain.
“I thought you did not love Paul, Ruthie,”
said he again as the girl stood mute and white
before him.
“He loves me very much indeed, sir, and
perhaps that is better than for me to love him,
and he not care any thing about me.” said
Ruth, with hidden fire.
“Why, yes, I suppose so; and yet, Ruth, if
you do not love him, or if you could love
some one else now, do not be in such haste.
Wait a little, and—'
“No, sir, I don't want to wait—that's just
what I had rather not do,” replied the girl, so
vehemently that even Brent suspected a hid
den meaning in her words, and after a moment's
thought took her hand, saying:
“Ruth, my dear, you must explain this.
What has happened to make you angry and
doubtful of me? What has Paul been saying
to you?”
“He says, sir, that you were going to—to
take pity on me — because — because — you
thought I liked you, and that now you will be
sorry, but you will keep to the promise you
have made yourself because you are so strict
in keeping your word; but—but I'd rather a
great deal that you should not, sir.”
“Paul has done very wrong, and has shown
himself dishonorable in putting such ideas in
your head,” said Brent in much displeasure.
“If I have for a moment dreamed of asking
you to be my wife, it was hoping to receive
as much happiness as I could give, but I have
never put the idea in words to Paul or to myself,
and—”
“And please don't do it now, sir, for indeed
I had rather not,” hastily interposed Ruth,
her cheeks aflame.
“Then I will not; but tell me why not now
as well as some weeks ago, when I spoke of
this matter with Paul?”
“Because, sir, Mrs. Chappelleford is a widow
now, and though you might ask me to
marry you, and try to feel contented, you
never would forget the chance you lost for me,
and I should know it, and I should suffer
more than—than—and I had rather marry
Paul, who loves me truly and wholly, and
never has loved any one else.”
She turned toward the door, and laid her
hand upon the latch, yet lingered with downcast
eyes and quick-throbbing heart, lingered
for his reply. It came:
“Ruth, can you believe that never until this
moment have I connected the thought of
Mrs. Chappelleford's widowhood with any
possible advantage to myself, never until you
yourself suggested it? And, Ruth, had you
accepted the offer I was about to make to you
I never should have associated the two ideas,
for having once given my faith to you, I humbly
trust that there is nothing in my nature
so base that I could have broken it, even in
thought. I say, Ruth, had I been your promised
husband, those words of yours would
have been of no effect. But now—”
“But now that I have suggested it, you see
that you love her, and only her,” cried Ruth
in a sharp, passionate voice.
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“No. I have so long and so resolutely disconnected
Beatrice Chappelleford, wife of another
man, from Beatrice Wansted, whom I
loved devotedly, that I may boldly say I do
not love her now, and had her husband lived,
or had I bound myself to you or another
woman, I never should have loved her, other
than as the angels love. But now, Ruth, were
I to become your husband, I cannot promise,
I cannot be sure that I should never remember
her. I do not wish to speak to her of love,
but the thought of her might come between
me and other love. I cannot be certain—
I dare not bind myself.”
“And you shall not to me, Mr. Brent. My
mind is quite made up, and I am going to give
Paul Freeman his answer this minute. I am
so sorry that you fancied I cared, for though
I am very, very grateful for all your kindness,
I never thought, I am sure—”
“There, child, there! Say no more. We
understand each other now, and for all our
lives you are my dear sister, friend, daughter,
in one. Perhaps all that I shall ever find of
woman's love is what Paul will spare to me
from the treasure you will bring him.”
And Ruth without reply, without turning
her face toward him, left the room, and finding
Paul, threw herself into his arms, sobbing:
“There, take me, Paul, take me and comfort
me.”
CHAPTER LIII. A LITTLE CREEPING FLAME.
Night fell sombre and starless—one of
the dark, breathless nights of summer, when
the perfume of the flowers seems to cling
close to the earth, too languid, too oppressed
by its own sweetness to rise heavenward;
when the straining eyes find themselves
unable to penetrate the dense blackness of
the atmosphere, and the ears, growing preternaturally
acute, seem to discover a strange
and mysterious meaning in the cries of insect
and night-bird—seem to listen to a half-revealed
secret in every sigh of the fitful wind,
every whisper among the invisible foliage of
the trees: nights filled with melancholy and
with electricity, when a sadness, equally without
explanation and without remedy, weighs
upon the spirit, and wakes in its profoundest
depths vague memories, regrets, longings, but
half understood, half believed, and yet more
real than the grossest realism of daylight, for
they are the voice of the soul struggling to assert
itself without the limitations of mind and
body; they are the utterances of the life that
lies hidden deep within the recesses of every
man's existence—hint of the life hereafter to
be developed from this germ which every one
of us carries within him, and yet so seldom
recognizes.
Sombre and starless fell the night, and the
dense shadow of Moloch Mountain, stretching
across the valley and the wood, touched the
distant hill-side and the lonely grave where
Mary Brewster lay asleep, with her murdered
husband at her side—that hill-side upon whose
green slope the farewell glance of that husband
had dwelt, as he rode forth from his
own door, and went to meet his doom; and
then the shadow crept on and clung about
the old house beyond, wrapping it close
and fatally as the veil is wrapped about the
head and shoulders of the doomed slave
led from her luxurious harem to her cold
bed beneath the Bosphorus. The old house,
dreary and lonely in its best estate, and in
these latter days showing a desolation and a
doom in its every faltering line, every unshuttered
and staring window, in the atmosphere
that seemed to cling like a visible
curse about it. Within, sat the wife of
Joachim Brewster, deserted now of him as of
all mankind, and left alone in that melancholy
house—alone, yet never alone, for the
memories of the past and the terrors of the
future were there, and never left her—sitting
beside her at hearth or board, lying down
with her upon the haunted couch, waking her
remorselessly to the dawning of a new day of
torment. She had not seen her thirtieth
birthday, this woman, and yet her hair was
white, her skin cadaverous, her limbs faltering
and distorted. She had lived fast with
these constant companions of hers, and the
life was telling upon her. But chief among her
torments was a shadowy horror—intangible,
yet none the less real; forever near, yet never
within her reach; never seen, yet never to be
eluded—a presence at her side, although
neither eye nor hand discovered other than
empty air—a something waiting just behind
each door she opened in the dreary house,
lurking in every shadow, waiting for her in
her chamber as she crept stealthily up-stairs
to bed, sitting close beside her in the darkness
of the night, mingling with the shadows
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of the dawn when the weary night was
through—a something tormenting her with a
sense of being just beyond her range of vision,
seeming, however sharply she might turn
upon it, to be just gone from the spot at which
she looked, just visible at some point behind
or beside her, if she could but reach it soon
enough; for here was the horrible fascination
of this horror—while dreading nothing so
much as to encounter it, she yet must spend
her whole life in its pursuit, waiting, watching,
with bated breath and staring eyes, now
wandering from room to room, now sitting
motionless—struggling, as a drowning man
struggles for breath, to overcome this forever
receding and invisible barrier behind which
her tormentor hid. So she sat sometimes the
whole night through, sleepless and vigilant,
her cars alive to the dim, uncertain sounds that
filled the remoter chambers of the empty house,
her unresting eyes following with fierce and
hungry glances that formless presence forever
eluding their pursuit.
So she sat, while the night fell sombre and
starless, while the shadow of the mountain
stretched across the valley and the wood
laid a finger upon the hill-side graves, and
then crept on, spreading itself like a black
pall around and above the doomed house, and
stealing shade by shade through the room
where she, the woman sat, crouched in the
farthest corner, watching and waiting, her
white face and gleaming eyes showing in
ghastly contrast upon the sombre background
of the wall.
A sullen fire was dying upon the hearth,
the last charred stick flickering and blackening
above the gray ashes of the rest, then
breaking in the centre, and falling, over half
extinguished by the fall, the other rolling
across the hearth, and resting upon the edge
of the boards beyond. Opposite the fireplace
stood the old brass-bound secretary where
Peleg Brewster had kept the will that his
wife had so often urged him to destroy, the
picture of his wife Mary, with the letters that
she had written him before their marriage.
So often she had seen him sit there, his head
upon his hand, his eyes fixed upon the little
drawer where she knew these treasures lay—
his sorrowful, introspective eyes, that never
had met her own with love, so often with reproof.
The picture and the letters were there
still—she never had dared look at them but
once—and the other things too lay just as he
had left them. She would almost as soon have
opened his coffin as open that secretary, for it
still was his, his very own.
His? Whose? That shadow's that flitted
over and past it, now seeming to sink through
the solid wood, now swiftly gliding aside or
upward, to lose itself in the obscure corners
of the room? What was it? Not a shadow,
for the night had fallen, and the room was
black-dark, save for a creeping bluish tongue
of flame fastening upon the floor where it
joined the hearth, and a strange light that
seemed to her to float about the old secretary—
the secretary, as much Peleg Brewster's own
possession still as was the coffin wherein his
murdered body mouldered. Was this light
then the thing that so long had troubled her?
Was it the light or something which it presently
would disclose? Was that a form just disappearing
behind the end of the secretary—no,
at the other side—where? Gone? No, but
coming, growing within that light, taking
form and shape, and then disappearing when
she turned to watch it. Disappearing and
again appearing, as it had always done through
all these weary years, the years since—well,
since what? She did not know now, but
it was no matter, for that thing was just
about to disclose itself—surely, surely it was
about to confront her at last, and what would
it be? Those sorrowful, stern eyes? Did
they look at her out of that shadow—nay, that
light? Well, light or shadow, what matter?
Why must even that remain a bewildering
doubt, vexing her with its unending question?
Light or shadow, IT was there, more
nearly visible than ever it had been before;
and now she could grapple with it, demand
its meaning, deny its accusations, retort its
reproaches. But no, no, it was gone again,
hiding in the farthest corner of the room,
creeping along the walls, brooding above her
head, wrapped in this cloud of hot, stifling
smoke, crouching behind her. Behind her?
Why, how could that be, when she was pressing
back against the wall with all her might?
for it must not get behind her, she could not
endure that—and, no, it was not near her now,
but flashing angry glances from behind this
cloud which wrapped it and the secretary,
and the room, and crowded down so fiercely
upon her breath, almost stifling her beneath its
awful pressure. Such red, fiery glances, such
consuming and withering wrath as they
flashed upon her! Was it coming at last
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then, coming in visible presence to seize upon
her, helpless and unheard, with no chance to
struggle or retort? And what were those
words the minister said the last time she ventured
within the church? Something about
the “worm that never dies, and the fire which
is not quenched.” The fire which is not
quenched, is this it—this scorching and devouring
flame which creeps along the floor,
and climbs the walls, and reaches out its long
tongues toward her? And now it sinks, and
now it rises, and she, huddled there in the
farthest corner, sits glaring at it, and drawing
her garments closer about her, and cowering
to the wall which shuts her in, yet opens to
shut out that Thing, which haunts her even
in the flames, until, as one long serpent-tongue
sweeps out and fastens upon her clothes, she
breaks into maddest frenzy, shouting, laughing,
screaming, rushing recklessly forward to
meet and defy the foe she thinks to have
found at last, and who wraps her about in his
fiery mantle, and scorches the breath upon her
lips, the blood within her veins!
When morning dawned, and old Moloch,
drawing toward himself the shadow that had
wrapped the scene, looked across valley and
forest to the grave upon the hill-side, he saw
beyond them a heap of smoking and smouldering
ruins which no human being had yet
approached, although the scene was not without
its mourners, for a gaunt hound sat beside
the blackened doorsteps, howling dismally,
and upon the blasted pine behind the house
hung, flapping and croaking, a pair of carrioncrows.
CHAPTER LIV. PENANCE.
To Beatrice, sheltered in her childhood's
home, safe and quiet in the guardianship of
her aunt, who, if she did not understand, at
least did not interfere with her, came after a
time her uncle's wife, with not insincere expressions
of sympathy and affection, and an
urgent request that Mrs. Chappelleford should
return with her to town, and accept a home
beneath her uncle's roof. But Beatrice shook
her head, smiling sadly:
“Thank you very much, Juanita, and thank
my dear uncle, too, but I cannot come at
present; I am busy here.”
“Busy, my dear child?” asked Mrs. Bar
stow, glancing around the quiet chamber
with incredulous surprise.
“Yes, busy in settling my life.”
“But that is just what we want to do for
you—to settle your life. Come to us, and that
will settle it.”
“I don't mean that sort of life,” said Beatrice
quietly. “I am trying to understand—
but no matter now.”
As her voice drearily died away, and her
eyes sought the distant hills where the sunshine
lay brightly, although the country
between was all in shadow, Mrs. Barstow
looked at her with quiet worldly scrutiny.
“My dear,” said she, “I would not do it.”
“Do what?”
“Either of the two things you have in
mind—either marry Marston Brent or become
devout. Neither will suit you as well as the
role of belle esprit you have so successfully
played since your marriage with my uncle
Chappelleford. You are too young, too handsome,
and too brilliant for a dévote; and as for
Mr. Brent— That reminds me to thank you,
Trix, for saving me from an awful stupidity.
If you had not been with me when Major
Strangford came home, I might have gone
into some sentimental nonsense with him—it
was quite on the cards. But you helped me
over the first danger, and after that I reflected—
why really it would have been very foolish—
and I found, on a second look, that he had
gone off immensely, quite broken up, and
passé indeed. And, that danger over, there
was no chance of another; for a good house,
as many carriages as I choose, and a husband
with a hundred thousand a year, are ever so
much better than moonlight and Tennyson,
as I dare say you knew when you advised
against the Major. And really Mr. Barstow
and I am very comfortable together; he is a
prince for generosity, and as indulgent as possible.
He has never spoken a cross word
since we were married, Beatrice.”
“Dear, good uncle Israel! And is he happy,
Juanita?”
“I mean to make him so, and I think I do.
I always consult him before ordering dinner,
and never object to his inviting his stupid old
merchants, and smoking in the library. And
actually, my dear, I find that I am growing
almost domestic in my tastes. Having no
girls to bring out, I have not the ties to society
that most married women have; and—
now don't you laugh—I positively enjoy a
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game of whist occasionally, and even a `hit
at backgammon,' as Mr. Barstow calls it. And
I make it a positive duty to give him a little
music after dinner, almost every evening, and
he likes going to the theatre with me. So, altogether,
Trix, I count myself a model wife—
quite a Grizelda in fact, and I think your uncle
would tell you the same story.”
“I am very glad, very glad indeed, Juanita,
for I never knew a man who deserved better
of his wife and his home than my uncle Israel,”
said Beatrice warmly.
And the elder matron, laughing slyly, inquired:
“Not even Marston Brent?”
“Don't, Juanita. I do not think of Mr.
Brent, or he of me. My mind is filled with
other matters, and he, I hope, will marry Ruth
Brewster.”
“Beatrice, I want to ask you a question;
will you answer it truly?”
“Truly, if at all.”
“Your old Jesuitical answer; but n'importe.
When I told you that I was afraid to meet
Major Strangford, because I fancied myself
still in love with him, you almost crushed me
with your virtuous indignation at the idea of
a married woman being in love with any one
but her husband, and, if I remember, you
vowed it would be impossible for you to even
imagine such a thing. Now, Trix, tell me,
after you had stayed three weeks under the
same roof with Marston Brent, did not you
change your mind?”
And as Mrs. Barstow asked her searching
question, she looked keenly into that pure,
pale face so steadily set toward the distant
hills, whose shining peace was reflected in the
eyes that watched them. The face did not
droop, the calm eyes did not quail, but a slow
wave of color mounted through cheek and
chin, even to the masses of bright hair coiled
away from the white brow—mounted, and
burned, and faded before Beatrice replied;
then she said:
“I will answer you, Juanita, and truly,
though to my own shame. The armor of
which I so presumptuously boasted to you
proved of no avail when the hour of trial
came, nor would the worldly shield which
saved you have proved sufficient for me.
Even while I assured myself that there was
no danger, the danger stood face to face with
me, and all my defences of philosophy, and
reason, and intellect dropped away like flax
within the fire, and left me simple, defenceless
woman.”
“Well, what then? What saved you?”
asked Mrs. Barstow breathlessly.
“The honor, the conscience, the Christian
principle of Marston Brent,” said Beatrice
with a sudden fervor in her voice. “I failed,
and he upheld me; I was simple, and he rebuked
me; I was despairing, and he, by the
noble example of his own life, taught me how
to live.”
“Then you acknowledged to each other
that you were still in love?”
“Certainly not.”
“But you are, aren't you?”
“Juanita, you are profane. You grasp at
matters of which you should not even speak.”
“Mercy on me! Beatrice, I cannot understand
you in the least,” exclaimed Mrs. Bar
stow pettishly.
“I know it—I do not understand myself as
yet, and I certainly should not have said what
I have to you, but that —”
“Well, what?”
“I considered it a fitting penance for my
arrogance when I spoke to you before. I was
right in my conclusions then, but all wrong
in my reasoning, and more than wrong in my
estimate of my own strength. Now, dear,
let us speak of something else, and lay this
aside forever.”
“And you will not come to town with me?”
“No thank you, Juanita.”
“Or join us in the winter?”
“No; I have done with life, such life as
that, and I shall stay in Milvor until —”
Juanita waited patiently, but the sentence
was not finished, and she left the room.
CHAPTER LV. REWARD.
The summer waned, and in the bright autumnal
days, Beatrice resumed the active
out-of-doors life she had so much enjoyed during
her girlhood. Many an hour she spent
upon old Moloch, climbing his topmost crest
to catch the first rays of sunrise, seeking new
points of view whence to admire the well-remembered,
well-beloved landscape, where
sparkles of the distant sea seemed glimpses
of another world, with promise of delights not
known of this.
But best she loved, in the melancholy, golden
light of afternoon—those autumn afternoons
which murmur, in their sleep upon the hills,
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of the long, dreamless sleep waiting for them
beneath the snows of winter—to sit beside the
rushing mill-brook, half choked now with
gold and scarlet and rich brown leaves whirled
down upon it from the trees above; and sitting
there, she dreamed—her wistful eyes
fixed upon those distant sparkles of the ocean,
or upon the sky stooping to meet it, almost
as blue, almost as bright, and holding no less
of promise, dared one accept it. These
dreams? Sometimes they were of the lands
beyond the sea, whither she had already wandered,
and might some day return—sometimes
of fairer possible worlds beyond that smiling
sky—sometimes of her own life, which seemed,
having rounded its circle of experience, to be
finishing here where it begun.
And then, with a stifled sigh, Beatrice would
sometimes look about her, and remember the
glow and glory of those early days, and the
unreflecting gayety with which she had so
often trod the mountain-paths, or sat here beside
the mill-brook, and not alone.
“But that was spring, and this is autumn,”
whispered she one day, and fell to thinking
of the two—spring, so full of promise and of
growth; crude, raw, and untaught, but glowing
with hope and possibilities that make
amends for all—autumn, strong, brilliant, mature,
bringing sheaves and fruit instead of
buds and flowers, and yet with an inexpressible
melancholy in its glory, tears beneath its
smiles, the hint of approaching death in all
its brilliant coloring.
“And this is autumn,” repeated Beatrice,
slowly rising and descending the hill, until in
the cloudy glory of sunset she passed between
the rows of box, holding her breath not to perceive
their fragrance, and entered the gray
old house which was now her home.
“Where have you been all the afternoon,
Beatrice?” asked her aunt from her seat beside
the fire in the eastern room. “We have
had company. Marston Brent has been here,
and waited until the last moment to see you.
He came East on business, and ran down here
for the afternoon. He was very sorry not to
see you.”
But Beatrice, with a sudden faintness upon
her, sat suddenly down beside her aunt, and
did not reply. Mrs. Bliss, busy with her
story, and a troublesome stitch in her knitting,
went on without looking up.
“He could not stay because he had to attend
a directors' meeting in the city to-morrow
early, and was to start for home in the afternoon
with some of the other directors. He
has got a company to take his mine—sold it,
I suppose; at any rate, he has made a great
deal of money, and don't mean to stay in
Pennsylvania always, he says; he thinks
some of going abroad.”
“Does he?” said Beatrice with an effort.
“Yes, as soon as he gets matters settled out
there. I believe he thinks he shall stay there
this winter. That Brewster girl and Paul
Freeman are going to be married at Christmas.”
“Did Mr. Brent say so?”
“Yes; and old Zilpah is dead. Marston
was over at her brother's this morning to tell
them about it, and arrange about some property
Zilpah left them.”
“Zilpah dead! Why did she?” asked Beatrice,
over whose pallid face had come a sudden
color.
“Why did she? What a queer question,
Beatrice! Because she couldn't help it, I suppose;
she had the lung-fever besides,” said
Mrs. Bliss dryly.
“Oh! yes, I dare say; but, aunt, I forgot to
ask you to begin some knitting for me. Can
you do it now?”
“I began this for you, child. You have
grown amazingly industrious lately. You
never did half so much work before you were
married as you do now, and I am sure you
didn't while you were married.”
“I like to be doing something,” said Beatrice
with a brilliant smile, whose meaning
her aunt could not define.
“Well, here it is then,” said she, holding
out the stupendous “tidy” she had commenced;
but Beatrice murmuring, “One minute,
aunty,” left the room, and appeared no
more until summoned from her chamber to
the tea-table.
“Seems to me your rage for knitting was
soon over this afternoon,” said Mrs. Bliss, as
she handed her a cup of tea.
“The knitting? Oh! dear me, aunty, I forgot
all about it!” exclaimed Beatrice with
such a laugh and such a blush as no one had
seen upon her face for many a month—nay,
year.
The autumn passed, and the winter, and the
spring. Then came summer, and the garden
of the Old Garrison House was gay with all
its homely, heartsome bloom, and the willow
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beside the river had donned its fullest verdure,
untouched as yet by dust, or worm, or decay,
when Beatrice one morning thither betook
herself and her book—a volume of sweet, rare
old Herbert.
Her days of mourning were over, yet faintly
remembered in her pure white dress, with a
violet ribbon threading her golden hair, and
knotted at her throat; and although there
was no mourning in her face, its beauty had
taken a pensive and thoughtful cast in this
last year, not farther removed from the light-hearted
grace of girlhood than from the cold
and somewhat haughty expression most often
seen upon the face of Vezey Chappelleford's
wife.
So sitting—the unopened book upon her
lap, her eyes fixed upon the shining, sunlit
brook—she heard a step coming down the
path — heard and knew it, and would not
turn until Marston Brent stood close beside
her—his hand outstretched—his frank eyes
full upon her face, with a meaning other than
ordinary greeting in their glance. Then she
rose, gave her hand—both hands indeed—and
while the words of courtesy died upon her
lips, she gave him welcome with all her glowing
face. At last, seated beside her upon the
rustic bench, so carefully kept in repair because
he had made it, Marston said
“Beatrice, we parted here six years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Parted forever, as we thought.”
“Yes; you said so.”
“I? But it was you who willed it!”
“I? No, you!”
“Oh! never, Beatrice!”
“Well, then, not you. But I wish I had
known you thought so through all these
years.”
“Beatrice, we two have suffered—”
“So much!”
“And erred, both of us—”
“Not you.”
“Yes, I; I might have yielded something in
that old time.”
“You could not, and remain true to yourself.”
“You have not blamed me, then?”
“No—no, indeed.”
And then he took her hand, and what would
next have been, who can say, when the sparrow
who all this time had watched these terrible
interlopers upon her domain with round
black eyes shining like little stars above the
edge of her nest, fled with a sudden whirr of
wings, which startled the lovers, and brought
a laugh to relieve the somewhat stringent
pressure of the moment.
“Beatrice, are `any birds in last year's
nest?”' asked Marston softly, as he glanced
up into the tree.
“Yes, for they are singing in my heart at
this moment,” whispered she.
“And then—”
But as they went back through the garden,
Beatrice paused beside the heart-shaped pansyplot,
and looking into her lover's face with a
shy smile, said:
“There were two large purple pansies and
one yellow one on the ground here, one morning,
and now they are pressed between the
leaves of a little Bible Beatrice Wansted used
to keep upon her dressing-table.”
“What! you found them and saved them,
darling!” exclaimed Marston in pleased surprise.
“I looked for them as I went back,
but could not find them. The willow staff I
cut that morning, however, is now a thriving
tree beside the Sachawissa. I wanted to carry
a cutting to Ironstone Mountain, but I dared
not.”
“You were always better than I,” said Beatrice,
smiling and blushing. “I kept the
pansies through every thing, although I pretended
to myself that I had forgotten them.”
Marston returned her smile, but absently,
and stood looking at her with all the love of
his great truthful heart, so long and painfully
repressed, shining in his eyes.
“I wonder if it is the summer sunshine or
if it is you that lights up this old garden so!”
said he at length. “Even the creeping shadow
of old Moloch seems full of brightness
and joy.”
“We have lived in his shadow six long
years, and it is time that it should turn to
sunshine,” whispered Beatrice tenderly; and so
they passed on through the garden and into
the dim and echoing old house, so full of
memories, and now so full of hope.
CHAPTER LVI. THE END.
Marston Brent and his wife went abroad,
and spent a happy year among scenes which
Beatrice had visited indeed, but had never
really seen until now, for inward happiness
possesses a wonderful power of opening the
eyes to all forms of outward beauty. She was
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pleased, too, to discover that, although Brent's
life had been more one of action than of study,
he had turned the enforced seclusion of his
forest and mountain homes to good account,
and was even better acquainted theoretically
than she was practically with that Old World
whose wondrous stories have been said and
sung from the days of Herodotus to this, when
books of travel seem to have superseded visiting-cards
as announcements of the return of
our friends and acquaintances from OutreMer.
But before she went abroad—nay, before she
married Brent—Beatrice fulfilled in its widest
spirit her promise to Mr. Chappelleford. The
book of Saurians was published, and although
no name but that of the philosopher appeared
upon the title-page, it was whispered among
the savans that at least half the credit of the
minute research, elaborate collocation, and
elegant and classic diction characterizing the
work was due to the unnamed editor.
The papers relating to the philological treatise
were also placed in the hands of the liter
ary friend whom Mr. Chappelleford had designated,
and we may yet expect a biography of
the “Mother of Languages,” which shall convert
us all into her devotees, although Mrs.
Brent's Sanscritian studies never have passed
beyond their most elemental stages.
Somewhere abroad, the Brents encountered
Monckton, who offered his congratulations,
and lingered some weeks in their society with
a friendly ease incompatible with bitterness if
not with constancy. If he could not forget,
he had certainly forgiven the keenest of all
wounds with which a man's self-love can be
wounded.
“All passeth but Goddis Will.” Yes, all
passeth, even the shadow; for although earthly
journeyings may fail to bring us to the sunny
places where other lives seem blooming
without pain or care, the shining hills lie full
in view beyond the shadow and beyond the
flood, and no feet are so tender, no heart so
weary, no strength so broken, that they may
not hope to win safely through, and scale
those glorious heights at last.
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