Not Pretty, but Precious; And Other Short Stories Part 8

He told her I was too good, too lovable to quarrel with their bliss, and held her to his heart while he looked up to the flaxed-haired, baby-faced mother for a blessing with quite a glow of feeling on his face and real tears in his eyes.

There was something in mine I suppose, for when I looked too I could scarcely believe them: the portrait seemed to show a different face entirely. The blue eyes bent down on those upturned to meet them with a look I had never beheld in them before, and the delicate little pink mouth seemed to tremble with a blessing.

"Am I dreaming?" I almost asked it aloud, and the question and the sound of Uncle Pennyman's voice in the book-room gave me a new idea. Softly I slipped from my place and out at the open door, leaving the absorbed ones to themselves, and joined my uncle and Mr. Haines where they were preparing for another conflict with the commentators.

"I have had a dream," I said solemnly.

"A dream!" repeated they.

"Yes, and it was so lifelike that I must tell it to you, for I am convinced it is no common warning, but one full of meaning and truth."

They gazed at me blankly, and I went on, fearing to stop an instant lest I should lose my courage:

"I was lying on the sofa opposite Mrs. Haines' portrait--"

"The very place where I lay when last I dreamed," murmured her husband.

"And I saw Bessie and a gentleman hand in hand beneath it, looking up into the sweet face for a blessing; and oh such a heavenly smile lighted it while the beautiful lips seemed to murmur, 'She will marry wisely, dear Thomas!'"

Mr. Haines was so shaken by my words that my heart misgave me. He covered his face with his hands. "She used to call me dear Thomas," he said, and the tears ran through his fingers.

"Then the name was _yours_" said Uncle Pennyman with weighty consideration. "You remember I said it was capable of a double application: those things are wonderful, and interpret each other. Winnie, my dear girl, could you distinguish this person's face?"

Before I could answer, Mrs. Tanner at the door said, "Here's Mr. Tom, bless his heart! I never can learn to call him anything else."

Tom was _so_ glad to see me! Yes, I may as well tell it, for it told itself: dear Tom never seemed so glad before.

"Was it his face, Winnie?" whispered Mr. Haines.

If ever _No_ was said with energy and decision, it was in my reply. The parlor door opened just as we were about to go in all together, shaking hands and making kind speeches over Tom, and Bessie and the Rev. Charles appeared in the act of taking leave of each other.

"That's the face!" I cried dramatically; and then I really and truly did faint--stone dead, as Mrs. Tanner said afterward--for I was not used to telling lies, and even white ones were exciting things to tell, and scarcely justified themselves to my conscience by the magnitude of the good they were to do.

When I came to myself, Bessie was hanging over me with all the love she had left from Mr. Charles, I suppose; and I heard Mr. Haines and Uncle Pennyman talking with Tom, and trying to explain to him the remarkable nature of the vision that had overcome me. I sat up, and tried to laugh and declare that it was nothing at all, though my heart kept throbbing.

"You have all had dreams," said Tom: "you have yet to hear mine. Uncle, I dreamed that Winnie and I loved each other, and that I asked you for her and you said yes."

"No, Thomas," said Uncle Pennyman gravely, but with a kind of breaking about his mouth: "your eyes were open when you had that vision, and you must not jest with serious subjects. But it is well you mentioned it, dear boy, and it is well our child Winnie received such a remarkable direction, since it throws light on friend Haines' visitation, and apparently the happiness of that excellent young minister and our dear Bessie here."

"The young man has just expressed himself in corroboration of the vision,"

said Mr. Haines, much affected.

Bessie threw her arms round her father, then round me, and then she ran away. Mr. Haines and Uncle Pennyman went out to their commentaries, Mrs.

Tanner to see to her buns: Tom and I were alone.

"What is this about, Winnie darling?" he said.

"Tom," said I, "we are all the victims of dreams."

MARGARET HOSMER.

The Cold Hand.

There is a rocky hill in what was till recently the town of Dorchester, looking out over Boston Bay. It takes its name from the stiff black savins with which it is covered, and which contrive to find nourishment and support in the rock to which they cling. Some of these trees show their great age by their gnarled and knotted trunks and boughs. Black and impa.s.sive they stand, alike in the brightest summer or the grayest winter, sighing restlessly in the breeze, but wailing piteously when the sea-winds sweep over the hill. Partway up the little rocky eminence stands an old house, now fast falling to pieces. It is a low building, with a gambrel roof and a huge chimney. It has stood there many years, for it was built not long after the Revolution, and it might have stood many years more had it not been suffered to go to decay with a carelessness which seemed to belie the general thrift of the town.

Wandering over the hill one bright winter day, with no companion but a large dog, I stopped to look in at the window of the old house. The gla.s.s was gone from the sash, and the sash itself was broken in many places; but the obscurity was so deep within that I obtained only a partial glimpse of an interior which to my fancy had a peculiarly deserted and eerie look. I felt a desire to explore the place, attracted rather than repelled by its forlorn look of falling age; for I came from a part of the country where the most ancient relic dates back only forty years, and the aspect of everything old and quaint in the place had a charm for me which I suspect it offers to few of the natives. The front door was locked, but I obtained an entrance without difficulty at the back, and made my way through a little shed, which was evidently of more modern construction than the main part of the building. I came first into the kitchen, where was a large fireplace blackened with the smoke of long-dead fires, and a narrow, high mantelpiece. A little cupboard was let into the side of the great chimney, which projected far across the floor. The room was long and narrow, running the whole length of the house, with a window at each end. The blackened plaster was dropping from the walls and ceiling, exposing in some places the heavy beams, and the floor was dark and discolored with age and dust, although quite firm to the tread. By a low door I pa.s.sed into a small room lighted by two windows--one in front, the other at the end of the house, and presenting the same appearance of desolate decay.

There were four doors in this room--the one through which I had just entered, another leading to the rooms above, a third, secured by a bolt, which I did not then open, and a fourth leading into a narrow pa.s.sage, in which was the locked front door. I crossed this pa.s.sage, and found myself in a room of the same size as the one I had just left. It was that into which I had attempted to look from the outside. Here I missed the dog, who had hitherto followed me, though with seeming reluctance, and no persuasion could induce him to cross the threshold. This room was in rather better repair than were the other two. There was the same high mantelpiece, rather less narrow, and the same little cupboard let into the ma.s.sive chimney. The floor was less discolored, but there was a deep burnt spot on it near the fireplace, as if some one had dropped a shovelful of hot coals, or rather as if some corrosive fluid had been spilled. I remained here a few moments, idly wondering what might have been the history of the former tenants, and what could have induced any one to build a house in a spot so bleak and exposed, where scarcely a pretence of soil offered itself for a garden. As I stood there, a singular impression came upon me that I was not alone. For a moment, and a moment only, I became conscious of another presence in the room. The impression pa.s.sed as suddenly as it had come, but, transient as it was, it awoke me from my reverie. Smiling at myself for the fancy, I recrossed the pa.s.sage and ascended the steep, narrow winding stairs to the chambers above. There were four small rooms, opening one into the other, with a closet part.i.tioned off in each, and so low that in the highest part a tall man could but just have stood upright. Here the ruin was farther advanced. The floor creaked under my foot, the plaster had nearly all fallen from the ceiling and was peeling from the walls, while deep stains on the remaining portion showed that the rain and thawing snow had made their way through the roof. The place had a lonesome, forlorn look, even more than usually belongs to a deserted house, though such might not have been its aspect to other than my unaccustomed Western eyes.

Turning, I made my way down the short staircase, and was about to leave the house when the third door, as yet unopened, caught my eye. I drew with some difficulty the rusted bolt, and found myself at the head of a steep flight of stairs, seemingly longer than that which I had just descended.

It led to the cellar, and though the afternoon was getting on, I thought I would finish my exploration, and therefore went down, though repelled by the close and peculiarly damp air. The cellar was blasted and hewn in the solid rock to a depth which, considering the extreme hardness of the stone, seemed remarkable in a house so unpretending. A dim light made its way through a narrow window at each end and fell upon the stone floor. I walked forward, looking up at the windows, but I had not taken ten steps before I recoiled with a start. At my feet lay a pit, seemingly of considerable depth, and filled with water to within four feet of the top.

The cellar did not lie under the kitchen, but only under the two front rooms and the pa.s.sage, and this pit occupied the whole length and fully half the breadth of the s.p.a.ce of the rooms above, and, what was more peculiar, seemed to extend even farther forward than the house itself.

Another step, and I should have fallen into it. Curious to try its depth, I picked up a little fragment of stone and dropped it in. As the stone touched the water, and the circles on the sullen surface began to widen, a current of air rushed down the stairs, and the door above shut violently.

At that moment the impression which I had experienced in the room above came back upon me with tenfold distinctness, and was accompanied with a feeling of exceeding horror. It seemed as if there was closing around me some evil influence, from which I could only escape by instant flight. For one moment I resisted the unreasonable terror, and made an attempt to explain, or at least a.n.a.lyze, a sensation so unwonted: the next, the loathing dread grew too strong. I turned and hurried across the damp floor, up the narrow stairs, and, opening the door, made my way as quickly as possible into the outside air. The dog was waiting for me in the little shed, and seemed delighted at seeing me again. I closed the door, ashamed of my senseless fright, but nevertheless I was thankful that I had found no trouble in getting out. I am not quite prepared to say, however, that these sudden and apparently unreasonable starts are independent of external causes. The Vermont-bred horse will be thrown into an agony of fright when the closed cage of a lion pa.s.ses by, though he has never learned by experience that lions will kill horses, and though the lion himself is unseen.

I walked briskly home. I had some distance to go, and had quite lost the impression of my ghostly terror when I reached the house where I was staying, a modern shingle Gothic erection, which in vain endeavored to disguise its barny appearance with sundry wooden adornments modeled after crochet-work.

"Freda," said I to my friend after tea, when she and I were sitting comfortably by the fire in the library, "do you know anything about the old yellow-gray house up on the hill?"

"Why, what of it?"

"Nothing, only I went into it to-day. What is its history?"

"Nothing particular. It was built for a Doctor Haywood. Have you read Alp's last essay on the Semi-occasional?"

"Yes, and great stuff it is."

Freda looked inexpressibly shocked. I had better have condemned law and gospel together than made light of Alp; but she put up with it, probably considering it excusable as the utterance of a savage from the wilds of New York.

"Never mind him now. He shall proclaim his figs in the name of the Prophet for all time if you will tell me about the old house. I know it has a story."

She rose and took from the drawer an old ma.n.u.script volume, which she placed in my hands. It was a little note-book, in which the entries were made not from day to day, but at irregular intervals, in a singularly clear, precise hand:

"_Nov._ 3, 1784. This day my neighbor Ball's cow, getting out of the pasture and running on the highway, was put in the pound. Took her out, and cautioned my neighbor to have more care of the creature. _Mem.:_ To bespeak a pair of shoes for her eldest girl.

"_Jan._ 1, 1785. This day the wind very high.

"_Jan._ 10. Neighbor Ball's cow, getting among my wife's rosebushes, did do some damage, whereat she was much vexed. Caught the said cow, and begged my neighbor to keep her at home, which she promised to do, but in an hour back again. However, she is a widow.

"_Jan._ 13. Doctor Haywood, newly come to this place from the old country, has taken lodging with Neighbor Ball. Said to be a learned man--has much baggage, and they say some curious machines. Is curious about plants and the like. Neighbor Ball did hint to my wife that he knew about matters better let alone, whereat my wife did tell her that she wished he would give her a charm to keep her cow out of our yard.

"_Jan._ 15. Dr. Haywood has bought a lot on the hill, and is to build upon it. Has spoken to me about it. Have drawn the plan, and shall make the estimate.

"_Feb._ 1. Doctor Haywood hurries on the work--says he is in haste to get into his own house. Saw Indian Will to-day, quite drunk. With much trouble got him to our house, where my wife did let him lie in the kitchen all night. Had she not done so, the poor man might have frozen to death before morning, for it was a very cold night. Argued with him in the morning, whereat he promised amendment.