Six Girls Part 14

They did not read the letter until after supper, and on the evenings when mother was with them, this meal was always a long one, for there was so much to talk about, and somehow it seemed so natural and old-time like, to linger about the table, that they invariably did so.

After awhile they went into the sitting-room, leaving the dishes until later, when mama said they would all help; and seating themselves, with many smiles and nods of satisfaction, about the fire, prepared to hear all that Jean had to say about her new home.

_Congreve Hall, Staunton, Virginia, November, 29th, 18--._

"DEAR PRECIOUS MAMA AND SISTERS:

"I promised to write you a long letter, and tell you all about Congreve Hall, as soon as I had seen everything about it, and felt well enough acquainted to tell it well. It is so beautiful and big that I hardly know how to begin; I do wish the girls could see it, especially Ernestine; she likes splendid, grand things so much.

"We came out of Staunton, which is a lovely city, in a beautiful carriage, which was waiting for us at the train. It was a lovely day, and the sunshine was so warm that Uncle Ridley had the top all put back, so that I could see everything. The road was so wide and very smooth that the carriage just rolled along like we were on a floor, and the horses were such splendid big black ones, with harness all covered with shiny things, and they acted as if they were as proud as could be. The driver was dressed beautifully, nicer than the gentlemen dress at home for every day, and when I got into the carriage he lifted his tall hat, and called me 'Miss Dering.' It sounded so funny I pretty nearly laughed; but Uncle Ridley looked as if it was all right, so I thought perhaps I had better not.

"Pretty soon we began to go up hill, and I thought we must have come very far because the horses went so fast; but we had only come half-way. The leaves had not fallen then, and the mountains reaching up so high, way ahead of us, did look like some beautiful pictures that we used to see when papa took us to the city with him. After awhile we came to a big gate, oh, so tall, and such high posts, with figures on top of them, holding big lamps with ever so many globes, and Uncle Ridley says some night, he will light them, so I can see how bright it makes it all around, and way down the road. We went through, and then the road began to wind around, and it was perfectly lovely; we went up and up, under the grandest trees, and after a little ways, there began to be statuary sitting around under them, and beautiful seats made like the limbs of trees, all twisted together. I saw a flight of stone steps, and they came up the hill from another gate, for people that walk, and they look as white as snow in the green gra.s.s. All of a sudden we turned around a big curve, and I just screamed right out; I was so surprised, and Uncle Ridley said that was Congreve Hall. Why, mama, it is big enough to be a hotel in the city, and ever so many people could go in the front door all at once, it is so wide, and such lovely marble steps go up to it. There are two big towers, and two funny little squatty ones, with a big stone railing around the top, and there are porches, terraces Uncle Ridley says they call them, all of stone. They go pretty near around the house, and then end in steps, broad ones, that make a big curve and come down to the ground. I think that's a mighty funny way to build them. The house is such a pretty grey color, and some places there is moss growing all over the sides, and there are ever so many vines too, that Uncle Ridley says would hold me up, they are so old and strong. Inside everything is so big and grand and dark, that I was afraid at first, and never went around anywhere unless uncle went with me; but I'm getting more used to it now, and like to hunt around, in the big rooms, and walk around in the splendid halls. My rooms, I have four you know, are all furnished so sweet in blue and white, with the dearest little easy chairs and sofas, and the cunningest little bed, with an angel on top holding the pretty curtains that come down all around. I just thought at first that I would want to stay in bed all the time. My maid has a little room just off my bath room, and she is such a funny girl. She combs my hair and dresses me, and all that, and talks all the time just like a monkey. Her name is Bettine, and she always calls me Miss Jean.

My governess, Miss Serle, is such a dear, kind lady, and I'm going to study awful hard, so as to know lots and make you happy, dear mama, when I come home. Uncle Ridley is just the dearest, nicest, kindest uncle that ever lived, I'm sure. He is so good to me, and I love him like everything. Sometimes he tells me about Mabel, and then he takes out his big red handkerchief and cries; and I'm almost glad I'm lame so I can look like her, and make him happier. Mabel Congreve must have been a very sweet little girl, and very pretty; there are pictures of her all over the house, but the one in the library is the prettiest. She is all dressed in white, with such lovely yellow curls, and sitting in the very little blue velvet chair that I ride around in now. Uncle Ridley always sits in there, and I do believe he talks to her. I have all of her things, except her pony; he died, and mine is a new white one; such a darling, and I go to ride every pleasant day in her little buggy, with beautiful soft cushions and silk curtains. Her chair is on wheels, and I can ride all over the house by myself, or have Bettine draw me, whichever I want. All of her things are just as nice as new, because Uncle Ridley has been so careful of them. Yesterday he brought me her crutch, and said he wanted me to use it. It is such a shiny, beautiful black wood, with a silver rim and pad on the bottom, so it don't make any noise, and a soft top covered with blue velvet.

"I always take my breakfast in my room, because Uncle Ridley does not get up until so late, and it would be very dreary in the big dining-room for me. After breakfast I take a ride either in the house or out, then play awhile, or do as I please until ten; then Miss Serle comes to my room, and my lessons last until twelve. Dinner is gloomy. There is a servant stands behind Uncle Ridley, and he is so tall and solemn looking in his white vest and necktie, that I don't feel comfortable at all. After dinner I play or ride until two o'clock, then I have my lessons and my music 'till four, and after that Miss Serle almost always reads to me awhile. I practice from five o'clock for a half an hour, then play 'till eight o'clock, and that is time for me to go to bed. Some days Uncle Ridley takes me into Staunton with him.

"I believe I have told you everything now that you asked me about, and I've tried hard to write a nice letter, because you were always so particular about it, I've looked in the dictionary for all the words I wasn't sure of, and I hope you will not find many mistakes. Do please, dear mama and girls, write me long, long letters, because I get so lonesome and homesick for you all. Every night when I say my prayers and ask G.o.d to take care of you all, I can hardly keep from crying, and sometimes I do, and then Bettine looks so sorry and most like she wanted to cry too.

"The doctor that Uncle Ridley wants to have me see first, is very sick, you know I told you, but he is getting better, and perhaps I will not have to wait so long. Oh, my dear mama, I know you ask G.o.d to let me grow straight, but please ask Him a very great many times, so that He will be quite sure to hear. I do.

"I am going into Staunton with Uncle Ridley to put this in the office myself, so you will know it came right from me with a kiss on it.

"Good-bye, my dear, darling mama and sisters, "Your own "JEANIE."

CHAPTER IX.

WHAT OLIVE HEARD.

Mr. Dane had closed his office at four o'clock. n.o.body cared why he did so, and when he informed his book-keeper that she could go home, she never stopped to wonder why, but wiped her pens, straightened her desk, got into her wrappings and went, with her mind fixed on a certain picture that needed much that these two vacation hours could give.

It was snowing very hard, great blinding flakes that came whirling defiantly into your eyes, nose, and mouth; almost preventing a necessary amount of sight and breath: and they had collected to such depth, that walking was a matter of much labor, and only a few plucky pedestrians were out to enliven the quiet shrouded streets. Olive plunged rapidly along with her head down and seemed more engrossed with her own thoughts, than with any contemplation of the weather, for she whisked the impudent flakes aside and seemed to be looking down at something that was neither of earth, earthy, or of snow, snowy, but quite beyond the realm of either. She was scowling much the same as usual only in something of a puzzled way, that had less of the impatient dissatisfied tinge to it than was customary. In fact she was thinking of that last talk she had had with her mother, before Mr. Congreve went back to Virginia, when she had resolved in a vague hasty way, that she was going to do differently; and really, how little good, or change, had come from the resolution. She didn't think, to begin with, that she was any worse than the rest, or that she needed changing any more, but rather any thing, than be like Mr. Congreve! So she summed up all she knew of him, resolved on what was disagreeable, and began to model herself accordingly. So to begin with she was no longer so hasty or bitter, in speech I mean, for her inner-self was not touched, she only kept it all to herself now, instead of speaking it out as formerly, but if she thought herself changed there, she was the only one deceived, for our inner minds do not always require the aid of language to photograph themselves before the world. Next, instead of staying with the girls out of store hours, and running the risk of losing her temper, she held herself sternly aloof, always in the security of her own room, and at the end of a week was apt to say to herself with some satisfaction:

"There, I surely have done well; haven't been mad with any one this week, which is more than the other girls can say;" and there never came any thought that the sisters were hurt over her manner, for, indeed, she had worked herself up to the bitter belief, that they did not want her, she was so ugly, and so unlike them in all ways.

Now what puzzled her was the girls. Here she had worked (yes, she thought she had worked), she certainly ought to be improved, and yet they seemed to think no more of her than before. Way down in Olive's heart, was a longing,--choked and starved, that was beginning to a.s.sert itself. When home held mother and father and everything that could make a girl contented, she had not felt, or rather, listened to it; she compelled herself to be without it; but now, when they were left alone, when their daily life and happiness was so utterly dependent upon each other, she began to realize how she was out of the loving circle that bound her sisters together, and what a gulf of her own make, seemed to lie between them. She stood beside it in frequent contemplation, but never recognized her own handiwork, so she eyed it bitterly, and thought them cruelly unkind.

This was what she was thinking about as she plunged through the storm, looking like an animated snow-figure, so powdered was she; and regarding herself for a moment, Olive went round to the back door, so as to dispose of her ladened garments and brush off her shoes This done, she went into the kitchen, where a warm atmosphere still lingered, and, preferring to be alone, sat down there, with her feet in the oven and her chin in her hands, and once more fell into a brown study. Only a few minutes later, Kittie came into the dining-room for something, and on going back, failed to close the door, so that the murmur of voices came quite distinctly out to the quiet kitchen. A discussion was warmly in progress, and in a minute Olive started out of her reverie at hearing her name spoken.

"What's the use? Olive knows, or ought to know better." It was Ernestine's voice.

"But, mama says," interposed Bea, mildly persuasive, "that we don't try hard enough; we give up too soon."

"Bother," cried Kat, "would she have us always playing the 'gentle sister, meek and mild,' and go whining about Olive as though her company was a great honor. I'm sure we had a season of always begging her to go with us, and didn't she snap us up like a rat-trap?"

"She--well--she's very odd you know," said Bea, wondering if her quiver of defense would outlast the arrows of complaint.

"Yes, odd, as an odd shoe," laughed Kat with a yawn.

"What did mama say to you, Bea?" asked Ernestine.

"She said that Olive's greatest fault was being so nasty and sensitive, and that because she was rather plain and--"

"She isn't," interrupted Kittie, with much energy. "I think she has beautiful eyes, if she just wouldn't scowl so much, and when she laughs her mouth and teeth are just as pretty, only she never laughs more'n once a month, so people don't know it. Not one of us has such lovely thick hair as she has, and if she just would wave or crimp it a little bit in front, I think--well, I think she would be real pretty." And overcome with this valuable earnest defence, Kittie sat down and looked complacent.

"When I see Olive Dering crimping her hair, and laughing instead of scowling, I will look for the end of the world," said Ernestine, with some asperity, as she walked over to the gla.s.s and surveyed her own hair, which Kittie had intimated was inferior to Olive's. "She can't do it, she was made to frown and stay by herself and she better do it."

"You don't mean it, Ernestine, you know you don't," said Bea, in a tone of calm conviction, and beginning to feel that the duties of elder sister imposed a warmer defense of this abused one, upon her. "I want to tell you how I feel, though it may be nothing as you all do. I really believe Olive thinks we do not want her, because, for so long time lately, we have just let her alone, and she always goes----"

"None of us ever receive a special invitation to join this circle,"

interrupted Kat, briskly. "Why should she?"

"I don't know, but she is so strange," answered Bea, rather helplessly, but not giving up. "And because she is so, we have sort a' stayed together and let her alone. When we used to try to get her to go with us, I think she always refused, because she thought she was ugly, and we did not try long enough to overcome this feeling, and now she imagines we don't want her."

"Stuff," persisted Kat, "I wouldn't act that way if I was as ugly as a wilted pumpkin and cross-eyed. What's the use?"

"None," promptly responded Beatrice. "But if you were like her, very likely you'd feel as she does."

"Catch me," laughed Kat, jumping up and making a scornful spin on her heel. "What do you say, Kittie?"

"I had my say a minute ago," answered Kittie, who was evidently thinking out something over the flames.

"I wonder what makes her hate Uncle Ridley so?" was Ernestine's query, as she turned from the gla.s.s, having satisfied herself that Kittie was certainly wrong about Olive's hair.

"I never could imagine," answered Bea, with evident curiosity.

"She won't call him, uncle, and the dress he sent her is in mama's room, and Olive says, she'll never wear it."

"May be she would give it me," suggested Kat. "I think hers was prettier than any of the rest."

"Well, I don't," said Ernestine, taking exceptions to this remark also.

"Why hers is black?"

"I'm perfectly aware of that, also, that yours is purple, Bea's brown, mine and Kittie's grey; tell me something I don't know," said Kat flippantly. "I wish ours were black, it's so stylish."

That black was more stylish than purple, was an idea quite beneath Ernestine's notice, so she went back to her former query.

"I would like to know, anyhow, what makes Olive dislike him so." For Mrs. Dering had not thought it necessary that the girls should know of their father's final appeal, and Mr. Congreve's reception thereof; so they were all equally curious, and so, n.o.body being able to give an answer, Kat ventured an a.s.sertion.

"She hates him just because it's a part of her religion to hate everybody, and, to go around with her fist doubled up ready to fight. I believe she'd hate us with a little trying."

"Kat," cried Beatrice, with some severity. "You must not speak so, it is wrong, and you don't mean it Why, if any one else was to say such things about Olive, you'd pretty near fight."

"To be sure I would," said Kat with ready inconsistency. "I truly think Olive is a trump, and I'd cheerfully knock anybody down who said she wasn't. I don't know what we would have done without her in the trouble, and I do wish she wasn't so odd, and stayed away from us so."