St. Elmo Part 47

"Samson and the Philistines! Little Edna--so you are! What was I thinking about, that I didn't know you right away? G.o.d bless your pretty white face!"

She caught the orphan in her strong arms and kissed her, and cried and laughed alternately.

A young girl, apparently about Edna's age, and a tall, lank young man, with yellow hair full of meal dust, came out of the house, and looked on in stupid wonder.

"Why, children! don't you know little Edna that lived at Aaron Hunt's--his granddaughter? This is my Tabitha and my son Willis, that tends the mill and takes care of us, now my poor Peter--G.o.d rest his soul!--is dead and buried these three years. Bring some seats, Willis. Sit down here by me, Edna, and take off your bonnet, child, and let me see you. Umph! umph! Who'd have thought it? What a powerful handsome woman you have made, to be sure! to be sure! Well!

well! The very saints up in glory can't begin to tell what children will turn out! Lean your face this way. Why, you a'n't no more like that little bare-footed, tangle-haired, rosy-faced Edna that used to run around these woods in striped homespun, hunting the cows, than I, Dorothy Elmira Wood, am like the Queen of Sheba when she went up visiting to Jerusalem to call on Solomon. How wonderful pretty you are! And how soft and white your hands are! Now I look at you good I see you are like your mother, Hester Earl; and she was the loveliest, mild little pink in the county. You are taller than your mother, and prouder-looking; but you have got her big, soft, shining, black eyes; and your mouth is sweet and sorrowful, and patient as hers always was, after your father fell off that frosty roof and broke his neck. Little Edna came back a fine, handsome woman, looking like a queen! But, honey, you don't seem healthy, like my Tabitha. See what a bright red she has in her face. You are too pale; you look as if you had just been bled. A'n't you well, child?"

Mrs. Wood felt the girl's arms and shoulders, and found them thinner than her standard of health demanded.

"I am very well, thank you, but tired from my journey, and from walking all about the old place."

"And like enough you've cried a deal. Your eyes are heavy. You know, honey, the old house burnt down one bl.u.s.try night in March, and so we sold the place; for when my old man died we were hard-pressed, we were, and a man by the name of Simmons, he bought it and planted it in corn. Edna, have you been to your Grandpa's grave?"

"Yes, ma'am, I was there a long time to-day."

"Oh! a'n't it beautiful! It would be a real comfort to die, if folks knew such lovely gravestones would cover 'em. I think your Grandpa's grave is the prettiest place I ever saw, and I wonder, sometimes, what Aaron Hunt would say if he could rise out of his coffin and see what is over him. Poor thing! You haven't got over it yet, I see. I thought we should have buried you, too, when he died; for never did I see a child grieve so."

"Mrs. Wood, who keeps the walks so clean, and the evergreens so nicely cut?"

"My Willis, to be sure. The gentleman that came here and fixed everything last December, paid Willis one hundred dollars to attend to it, and keep the weeds down. He said he might come back unexpectedly almost any time, and that he did not want to see so much as a blade of gra.s.s in the walks; so you see Willis goes there every Sat.u.r.day and straightens up things. What is his name, and who is he anyhow? He only told us he was a friend of yours, and that his mother had adopted you."

"What sort of a looking person was he, Mrs. Wood?"

"Oh, child! if he is so good to you, I ought not to say; but he was a powerful, grim-looking man, with fierce eyes and a thick mustache, and hair almost pepper-and-salt; and bless your soul, honey! his shoulders were as broad as a barn-door. While he talked I didn't like his countenance, it was dark like a pirate's, or one of those prowling cattle-thieves over in the coves. He asked a power of questions about you and your Grandpa, and when I said you had no kin on earth, that I ever heard of, he laughed, that is, he showed his teeth, and said, 'So much the better! so much the better!' What is his name?"

"Mr. Murray, and he has been very kind to me."

"But, Edna, I thought you went to the factory to work? Do tell me how you fell into the hands of such rich people?"

Edna briefly acquainted her with what had occurred during her long absence, and informed her of her plans for the future; and while she listened Mrs. Wood lighted her pipe, and resting her elbow on her knee, dropped her face on her hands, and watched her visitor's countenance.

Finally she nodded to her daughter, saying: "Do you hear that, Bitha? She can write for the papers and get paid for it! And she is smart enough to teach! Well! well! that makes me say what I do say, and I stick to it, where there's a will there's a way! and where there's no hearty will, all the ways in creation won't take folks to an education! Some children can't be kicked and kept down; spite of all the world they will manage to scuffle up somehow; and then again, some can't be cuffed and coaxed and dragged up by the ears!

Here's Edna, that always had a hankering after books, and she has made something of herself; and here's my girl, that I wanted to get book-learning, and I slaved and I saved to send her to school, and sure enough she has got no more use for reading, and knows as little as her poor mother, who never had a chance to learn. It is no earthly use to fly in the face of blood and nature! 'What is bred in the bone, won't come out in the flesh!' Some are cut out for one thing and some for another! Jerusalem artichokes won't bear hops, and persimmons don't grow on blackjacks!"

She put her brawny brown hand on Edna's forehead, and smoothed the bands of hair, and sighed heavily.

"Mrs. Wood, I should like to see Brindle once more."

"Lord bless your soul, honey! she has been dead these three years!

Why, you forget cows don't hang on as long as Methuselah, and Brindle was no yearling when we took her. She mired down in the swamp, back of the millpond, and before we could find her she was dead. But her calf is as pretty a young thing as ever you saw; speckled all over, most as thick as a guinea, and the children call her 'Speckle.' Willis, step out and see if the heifer is in sight.

Edna, a'n't you going to stay with me to-night?"

"Thank you, Mrs. Wood, I should like very much to do so, but have not time, and must get back to Chattanooga before the train leaves, for I am obliged to go on to-night."

"Well, any how, lay off your bonnet and stay and let me give you some supper, and then we will all go back with you, that is, if you a'n't too proud to ride to town in our cart? We have got a new cart, but it is only a miller's cart, and may be it won't suit your fine fashionable clothes."

"I shall be very glad to stay, and I only wish it was the same old cart that took me to the depot, more than five years ago. Please give me some water."

Mrs. Wood rolled up her sleeves, put away her pretty peppers, and talking vigorously all the time, prepared some refreshments for her guest.

A table was set under the apple-tree, a snowy cotton cloth spread over it, and yellow b.u.t.ter, tempting as Goshen's, and a loaf of fresh bread, and honey amber-hued, and b.u.t.termilk, and cider, and stewed pears, and a dish of ripe red apples crowned the board.

The air was laden with the fragrance it stole in crossing a hayfield beyond the road, the bees darted in and out of their hives, and a peac.o.c.k spread his iridescent feathers to catch the level yellow rays of the setting sun, and from the distant millpond came the gabble of geese, as the noisy fleet breasted the ripples.

Speckle, who had been driven to the gate for Edna's inspection, stood close to the paling, thrusting her pearly horns through the cracks, and watching the party at the table with her large, liquid, beautiful, earnest eyes; and afar off Lookout rose solemn and sombre.

"Edna, you eat nothing. What ails you, child! They say too much brainwork is not healthy, and I reckon you study too hard. Better stay here with me, honey, and run around the woods and get some red in your face, and churn and spin and drink b.u.t.termilk, and get plump, and go chestnutting with my children. Goodness knows they are strong enough and hearty enough, and too much study will never make shads of them: for they won't work their brains, even to learn the multiplication table. See here, Edna, if you will stay a while with me, I will give Speckle to you."

"Thank you, dear Mrs. Wood, I wish I could; but the lady who engaged me to teach her children, wrote that I was very much needed; and, consequently, I must hurry on. Speckle is a perfect little beauty, but I would not be so selfish as to take her away from you."

Clouds began to gather in the southwest, and as the covered cart was brought to the gate, a distant mutter of thunder told that a storm was brewing.

Mrs. Wood and her two children accompanied the orphan, and as they drove through the woods, myriads of fireflies starred the gloom. It was dark when they reached the station, and Willis brought the trunks from the hotel, and found seats for the party in the cars, which were rapidly filling with pa.s.sengers. Presently the down-train from Knoxville came thundering in, and the usual rush and bustle ensued.

Mrs. Wood gave the orphan a hearty kiss and warm embrace, and bidding her "Be sure to write soon, and say how you are getting along!" the kind-hearted woman left the cars, wiping her eyes with the corner of her ap.r.o.n.

At last the locomotive signalled that all was ready; and as the train moved on, Edna caught a glimpse of a form standing under a lamp, leaning with folded arms against the post--a form strangely like Mr. Murray's. She leaned out and watched it till the cars swept round a curve, and lamp and figure and village vanished. How could he possibly be in Chattanooga? The conjecture was absurd; she was the victim of some optical illusion. With a long, heavily-drawn sigh, she leaned against the window-frame and looked at the dark mountain ma.s.s looming behind her; and after a time, when the storm drew nearer, she saw it only now and then, as

"A vivid, vindictive, and serpentine flash Gored the darkness, and sh.o.r.e it across with a gash."

CHAPTER XXV.

In one of those brown-stone, palatial houses on Fifth Avenue, which make the name of the street a synonym for almost royal luxury and magnificence, sat Mrs. Andrews's "new governess," a week after her arrival in New York. Her reception, though cold and formal, had been punctiliously courteous; and a few days sufficed to give the stranger an accurate insight into the characters and customs of the family with whom she was now domesticated.

Though good-natured, intelligent, and charitable, Mrs. Andrews was devoted to society, and gave to the demands of fashion much of the time which had been better expended at home in training her children, and making her hearth-stone rival the attractions of the club, where Mr. Andrews generally spent his leisure hours. She was much younger than her husband, was handsome, gay, and ambitious, and the polished hauteur of her bearing often reminded Edna of Mrs.

Murray; while Mr. Andrews seemed immersed in business during the day, and was rarely at home except at his meals.

Felix, the eldest of the two children, was a peevish, spoiled, exacting boy of twelve years of age, endowed with a remarkably active intellect, but pitiably dwarfed in body and hopelessly lame in consequence of a deformed foot. His sister Hattie was only eight years old, a bright, pretty, affectionate girl, over whom Felix tyrannized unmercifully, and whom from earliest recollection had been accustomed to yield both her rights and privileges to the fretful invalid.

The room occupied by the governess was small but beautifully furnished, and as it was situated in the fourth story, the windows commanded a view of the trees in a neighboring park, and the waving outline of Long Island.

On the day of her arrival Mrs. Andrews entered into a minute a.n.a.lysis of the characters of the children, indicated the course which she wished pursued toward them, and, impressing upon Edna the grave responsibility of her position, the mother gave her children to the stranger's guardianship and seemed to consider her maternal duties fully discharged.

Edna soon ascertained that her predecessors had found the path intolerably th.o.r.n.y, and abandoned it in consequence of Felix's uncontrollable fits of sullenness and pa.s.sion. Tutors and governesses had quickly alternated, and as the cripple finally declared he would not tolerate the former, his mother resolved to humor his caprice in the choice of a teacher.

Fortunately the boy was exceedingly fond of his books, and as the physicians forbade the constant use of his eyes, the governess was called on to read aloud at least one half of the day. From eight o'clock in the morning till eight at night the whole care of these children devolved on Edna; who ate, talked, drove with them, accompanied them wherever their inclination led, and had not one quiet moment from breakfast until her pupils went to sleep.

Sometimes Felix was restless and wakeful, and on such occasions he insisted that his governess should come and read him to sleep.

Notwithstanding the boy's imperious nature, he possessed some redeeming traits, and Edna soon became much attached to him; while his affection for his new keeper astonished and delighted his mother.

For a week after Edna's arrival, inclement weather prevented the customary daily drive which contributed largely to the happiness of the little cripple; but one afternoon as the three sat in the schoolroom, Felix threw his Latin grammar against the wall and exclaimed:

"I want to see the swans in Central Park, and I mean to go, even if it does rain! Hattie, ring for Patrick to bring the coupe round to the door. Miss Earl, don't you want to go?"