The Old Homestead Part 41

All the time Mrs. Farnham had been standing by the carriage, with her shawl and travelling satchel on one arm. She refused to surrender them to Enoch Sharp, and stood swelling with indignation because the housekeeper did not offer to relieve her. She might as well have expected the cupola to descend from its roof, as any of these menial attentions from Salina Bowles, who possessed very original ideas of her duties as a housekeeper.

"Gracious me! I hadn't the least notion that you had children along!"

cried the good woman, totally oblivious of Mrs. Farnham's flushed face, and pressing closely up to the carriage.

"But allow me to hope that you will grant permission, now that they have come!" said the widow with an attempt at biting satire, which Salina received in solemn good faith.

"It ain't the custom hereabouts to turn any thing out of doors, ma'am, expected or not; and I calcurlate there'll be room in the house for a young 'un or two if they ain't over noisy. Come, little gal, give a jump, and let's see how spry you are."

Isabel obeyed, and impelled by Miss Bowles' vigorous arm, made a swinging leap out of the carriage.

"Gracious sakes, but she's as hornsome as a pictur, ain't she though?

Not your own darter, marm. I calcurlate."

The flush deepened on the widow's face, and she began to bite her nether lip furiously, a sure sign that rage was approaching to white heat with her. For occasionally Mrs. Farnham found it difficult to retain a just medium, when her temper was up.

"Come, child, move on, let us go into the house, if this woman will get out of the way and permit us"---

"Out of the way, goodness knows I ain't in it by a long chance," cried Salina, waving her hand toward the house; "as for permitting, why the path is open straight to the front door; and the house just as much yours as it is mine, I reckon."

"Is it indeed?" sneered the lady, lifting a fold of her travelling skirt, as she prepared to ascend the first terrace; "we shall decide that to-morrow."

But Salina Bowles sent an admiring glance after them, directed at the beautiful child rather than the lady.

"Well, now, she is a purty critter, ain't she, Judge? them long curls do beat all."

But the Judge was at Mrs. Farnham's side a.s.sisting her to mount the terrace. When Salina became aware of this, her glance fell inside the carriage again, and she saw Mary Fuller leaning forward and gazing after Isabel with her eyes full of tears. Instantly a change came over the rough manner of the woman--she remembered her encomiums on Isabel's beauty with a quick sense of shame, and leaning forward reached out both hands.

"Come, little gal, let me lift you out; harnsome is as harnsome does, you know. I hope you ain't tired, nor nothing."

Mary began to weep outright. She tried to smile and force the tears back with her eyelids; but the woman's kind words had unlocked her little grateful heart, and she could only sob out--

"Thank you--thank you very much; but I suppose I'm not to stop here, it's only Isabel."

"And is she your sister?"

"No; but we've been together so long, and now she's gone; and--and"--

"Gone without speaking a word, or saying good bye?--well, I never did!"

Away darted Miss Bowles up the terraces, leaping from step to step like an old greyhound till she seized on Isabel, and giving her a light shake, bore her back in triumph, much to the terror of both children and the astonishment of the widow, who stood regarding them from the upper terrace in impatient wrath; while the Judge softly rubbed his hands and wondered what would come next.

"There now, just act like a Christian, and say good-bye to the little gal that's left behind," cried Salina, hissing out a long breath as she plumped little Isabel down into the carriage. "What's the use of long curls and fine feathers if there's no feeling under them? There, there, have a good kiss and a genuine long cry together; it'll be a refreshment to you both."

Without another word the house-keeper marched away and ascended the terraces, her freckled face glowing with rude kindness, and the sunbeams glancing around her red hair as we see it around some of the ugly saints, that the old masters stiffened on canvas before Raphael gave ease of movement and freedom of drapery to these heavenly subjects.

"What have you done with the child?" almost shrieked Mrs. Farnham, as the house-keeper drew near with a broad smile on her broader mouth.

"Just put her in her place, that's all," replied Salina; "she was a coming off without bidding t'other little thing good-bye. There she sot with her two eyes as wet as periwinkles, looking--looking after you all so wishful. I couldn't stand it; n.o.body about these parts could. We ain't wolves and bears, if we were brought up under the hemlocks. 'Little children should love one another,' that's genuine Scripter, or ought to be if it ain't."

"What on earth shall I do with this creature?" cried Mrs. Farnham, half overpowered by the higher and stronger character with which she had to deal. "She almost frightens me!"

"Still she seems to me about right in her ideas, if a little rough in her way of enforcing them. Believe me, madam, Salina Bowles will prove a faithful and true friend."

"Friend! Mr. Sharp, I do not hire my friends!"

The Judge made a slightly impatient movement. He was becoming weary of throwing away ideas on the well-dressed sh.e.l.l of humanity before him.

"You will find the prospect very delightful," he said, casting a glance toward the mountains, at whose feet the river wound brightening in the sunshine, and seeming deeper where the shadows lengthened over it from the hills. "See, the spires and cupolas are just visible at the left; though not close together, we shall be near enough for good neighbors."

The lady looked discontentedly around on the hills, covered with the golden sunset, the river sleeping beneath them, and the distant village rising from ma.s.ses of foliage, and pencilling its spires against the blue sky, where it fell down in soft, wreathing clouds at the mouth of the valley.

"I dare say it is what you call fine scenery, and all that; but really I cannot see what tempted Mr. Farnham to think of forbidding the sale of this place; and, above all, to make it a condition that I should live here now and then while Fred is in college."

"Your husband started life here, madam," answered the Judge, almost sternly; "and we love the places where our first struggles were made."

"Yes, but then I didn't start life here with him, you know. Poor, dear Mr. Farnham was so much older, and his tastes so different, I sometimes wonder how he managed to win me, so young, so--so--but you comprehend, Judge!"

"He had managed to get a handsome property together before that, I believe," said the Judge, with a demure smile.

"But what is property without taste, and a just idea of style? Mr.

Farnham became quite aware of his deficiency in these points when he married me."

"There does seem to have been a deficiency," muttered the Judge, and having appeased himself with this bit of internal malice, he turned an attentive ear to the end of her speech.

"His mother you know, was a commonish sort of person"

Here Salina, who stood upon the broad door-step with the front door open, strode down and confronted Mrs. Farnham. She remained thus with those little grey eyes searching the lady's face, and with her long, bony hand tightly clenched, as if she waited for something else before her wrath would be permitted to reach the fighting point. But Mrs.

Farnham remained silent, only muttering over "a very commonish sort of person indeed," and with hound-like reluctance, Salina retreated backward, step by step, to her position at the door.

CHAPTER XXVII.

NEW PEOPLE AND NEW HOMES

There was energy and strength in her, A heart to will, with a hand to do; Like the fruit that lies in a chestnut bur That honest soul was fresh and true.

Meantime Mary Fuller and Isabel had remained in the carriage, locked in each others arms, murmuring out their fondness and their grief, with promises of faithful remembrance amid broken sob; and tears, such as they had never shed before, even in their first poverty stricken orphanage.

Something of that deep, unconscious spirit of prophecy, which sometimes haunts the souls of children G.o.d-loving like Mary Fuller, whispered her that this separation would be for years. She had reasoned with this presentiment all the way from the Alms House, which had so lately been their home, to this the place of their future residence. In the innocence of her heart she had taxed this feeling as a selfish one, and had covered herself with self-reproach, for having fallen into envy of the brighter destiny which awaited Isabel, in comparison with her own prospects. But the child had done herself injustice, and mistook the holiest intuition of a pure heart for a feeling of which that heart was incapable.

Isabel merely knew that they were to be parted, that the young creature whose care had been that of a mother, whose patience and gentle love had given a home feeling even to the Alms House, would no longer share her room, curl her hair, and arrange her dress with kindly devotion, or in any way soothe her life as she had done.

She did not comprehend, as Mary did, the great evil which this separation would bring upon her moral nature; but her affectionate heart was touched, and the pa.s.sionate grief that she felt at parting, was more violent by far than the deeper and more solemn feeling that shook Mary's heart to the centre, but made no violent outcry, as lighter grief might have done.

Both Salina and Mary herself had done the child injustice, when they supposed her going heartlessly away from her old companion. Confused by the meeting of Mrs. Farnham and the housekeeper, and puzzled by the strangeness of everything around, she had followed her benefactress, or adopted mother, without a thought that Mary would not join them; and her grief was violent, indeed, when she learned that then and there she must separate from the only creature on earth, that her warm, young heart could entirely love.