The Old Homestead Part 48

She took Mary by the hand, when she came down, with her plain mantilla and cottage bonnet on, surveyed her keenly from head to foot, and led her into the street.

They pa.s.sed down the village, the woman not deigning to notice that she was an object of curiosity, the child shrinking with that sensitive dread of observation, that always haunted her when among strangers. About the centre of the village stood a brick academy, with an open s.p.a.ce before it, and surrounded by a succession of wooden verandahs.

Aunt Hannah entered the lower story of this building, where some forty children were a.s.sembled under a female teacher, who came forward to receive her visitors.

"This little girl," said aunt Hannah, "we have adopted her. She must come to school."

"What branches do you wish her to study?" inquired the teacher.

"Reading, writing, cyphering, enough to reckon up a store bill, if she should ever have one, and enough of geography to keep her from losing her way in the world."

"Is that all?" said the teacher, "a girl of her age ought to know those things without further teaching."

"Like enough she does, ask her," said aunt Hannah.

The teacher looked at Mary, who smiled, blushed, and after a moment's hesitation, said, modestly,

"I know how to read and write, and a little of the rest."

"Very well, I will examine you presently," said the teacher, "yonder is an empty desk, you can take it."

Mary advanced up the school-room, blushing and trembling beneath the curious glances that followed her. So sensitively conscious was she that every movement, when strange eyes were upon her, brought its suffering. But, with true heroism, she subdued all appearance of the annoyance she felt, and, in her very meekness and fort.i.tude, there lay a charm that won more worthy affection than beauty could have done.

Thus she entered upon her school life, alone and among strangers, for aunt Hannah left her at the door. She looked around with a forlorn hope that Isabel might, like her, be sent to school, or that something might happen to take the sad weight of loneliness from her heart; but, all was new, cold and depressing, and leaning her head on the desk, she felt chilled in all her veins. There was no disposition to weep in little Mary now.

Sensitive as she was, no one ever saw her shed tears over her own sorrow; but kindness, poor child! _that_ always brought the dew sparkling up from her heart to her eyes.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

HOMESICK LONGINGS.

Oh, give me one clasp of her friendly hand, One tender glance from those gentle eyes; For my heart is alone in this mountain land, And every joy of my childhood dies.

Poor Isabel. She had found her new home dreary enough, notwithstanding its large airy rooms and elegant furniture, far too elegant for country uses, where magnificence is seldom in good taste. While nature is so beautiful, art should never appear, save to enhance its splendor.

In her whole life she had never been thoroughly homesick before, for never had her young heart been taken from all its loving support so completely as now.

Mrs. Farnham made a great effort to be kind, and to impress upon the child all the importance which she would henceforth derive from an a.s.sociation with herself, and the immense difference that must hereafter exist between her and Mary Fuller.

"Remember, my pet," said that lady, with bland self-complacency, "remember, my pet, that you are the protege of--of, as I may a.s.sert, of wealth and station, and though born I don't know where, and bred in the Poor-House, the fact that you have my protection is enough to overbalance that. You understand, Isabel--by the way, I think it best to call you Isabel Farnham now--with your beauty the thing will pa.s.s off without question; with that face, nothing would seem more natural than that I should be your real mamma; so, be a very good girl, and, who knows but I may have you called Miss Farnham!"

The color mounted into Isabel's face.

"No, ma'am, I would rather not; call me Isabel Chester, please, it was my father's name, and I love it, oh, how much!"

"You are a naughty, ungrateful little--well, well, I was a fool to expect anything else; Chester, as if I'd have a name in my house that has been registered on the Alms House books!"

"Is it a disgrace then, to be poor?" asked the child, innocently.

"A disgrace to be poor! certainly it is, and a great disgrace, too!"

answered the lady, speaking from her heart, "or else why are people ashamed to own it?"

"Are they ashamed to own it? I didn't know," answered the child. "My father was poor, at the last, but I don't think he was ever ashamed of it, or ever to blame for it either."

"I dare say not; poor people are always shameless."

Isabel's eyes kindled and her pa.s.sion rose.

"I won't hear my father abused--please, ma'am, I won't stand it; he wasn't poor till bad people made him so, and, and"--The child broke off, and burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.

Mrs. Farnham was gratified. She had worried the poor child out of her silent moodiness, and now fell to soothing her exactly as she would have pulled the ears of a lap-dog, till he was ready to bite, and then patted him into good humor again.

And this was the training which was to prepare poor Isabel for the great after-life of a soul, imbued with natural goodness, and yet possessed of great faults.

The lovely child, who from her infancy had been the subject of some superior care, was now at the mercy of a capricious, silly woman, selfish as such women usually are, and with a dash of malice in her nature, which more frequently accompanies a frivolous mind than we are disposed to admit.

But Isabel had a good heart, and an intellect so much superior to that of the woman who claimed to be her benefactress, that this constant irritation of a naturally high temper, was more likely to end in exciting her pa.s.sions than in really undermining her principles.

Mary Fuller, with her gentleness and her beautiful Christianity, had, up to this time, exercised the most worthy effect upon Isabel's character, and never in her after-life did she entirely lose the n.o.ble impressions thus obtained.

It is difficult to spoil a human being, entirely, who has spent the first ten years of life under pure domestic influences. Chester's daughter had carried a heart of gold to the Alms House, and she brought all this wealth away; but she was an impulsive, sensitive girl, and if Mrs. Farnham had no influence strong enough to pervert her nature, she had the power to thwart and annoy her beyond her capacities of patient endurance.

The truth was, Mrs. Farnham had no idea of the responsibility which she had taken upon herself. Isabel was to her a pet--a subject upon which to exercise her authority, and that promised to gratify her vanity--not a human soul which it was her solemn duty to guard, strengthen and develop. Benevolence in this woman amounted to nothing higher than a caprice.

The conversation we have repeated was a sample of many others that were constantly irritating the poor child, even amid her first hours of homesickness. Unlike Mary Fuller, she had no occupation, for Mrs.

Farnham considered usefulness of any kind the height of vulgarity.

Indeed! she was so remarkably sensitive on this subject that a very shrewd observer might have fancied that the lady had known a little more of labor, in her younger days, than she was willing to admit.

The great want of Isabel's life was the society of her friend. No child ever pined for the presence of its mother more longingly than she desired the society of Mary Fuller. This was the ground of her sadness. It was this want that kept her so restless. She was like a bird shut up in a cage calling for its mate and drooping when no reply came.

But with that distrust which a want of respect always produces, Isabel kept this longing to herself. Something told her that Mrs. Farnham would meet it with reproof to herself or insult to Mary, and she could not force herself to speak of this, as a cause of her sadness, or ask permission to visit her friend.

For two or three days she was compelled to follow Mrs. Farnham about her sumptuous home--sumptuous and yet replete with discomfort--to pick up her handkerchief, bring her eye-gla.s.s and listen to the confusion of commands with which the lady tormented her servants from morning till night. It was an irksome life, this forced companionship with a person whom she could neither respect nor even like.

The poor child's heart was famishing for love, and she began to grieve for her mother as if the mournful funeral of her last parent had taken place but yesterday.

Mrs. Farnham had fitted up a chamber next to her own for the little girl. Here intense selfishness seemed to have worked the effect of good taste. Isabel's room was superior to any thing in the neighborhood, but secondary to the gorgeous appointments of her own chamber. Her pretty rose-wood bed was hung with lace that seemed like frost-work, instead of the orange silk drapery that fell like an avalanche of gold over the couch on which Mrs. Farnham took her nightly repose. Everything around her was pure white, but the walls were covered with cl.u.s.tering roses, and the carpet under her feet glowed out with flowers like the turf in a forest-glade.

When the door stood open between this room and Mrs. Farnham's the contrast was striking. The cold white and green, warmed up only by a few rich flowers, seemed exquisitely cool as you turned to it for relief from the heavy drapery and costly furniture with which Mrs.

Farnham smothered the fresh mountain air that visited her apartment.

At first, Isabel was dazzled with this splendor; but after she had been all day long following Mrs. Farnham like a lap-dog, till the very sound of her voice became wearisome, it was an overtax on her patience when she was obliged to share almost the same chamber, and listen to that voice so long as the lady could keep herself awake.

But when her tormentress was once asleep, when Isabel could turn on her pillow and look upon the moonlight as it flooded her room, with a free spirit, she began to weep with a bitterness that had never fallen upon her straw cot at the Nursery Hospital. A spirit of utter loneliness possessed her, and while the delicate lace brooded over her couch like the wings of a spirit, she murmured out--