The Old Homestead Part 54

Still he pressed toward her, grieved and anxious. He had not observed the words of the music, and her change of manner was inexplicable.

"Listen to me, Isabel!"

She waved him back, and walking toward the high altar fell upon her knees before it, and there, touching the sculptured leaves that had occupied a human life five hundred years before, she uttered a solemn vow. The words fell in whispers from her white lips, her forehead was one moment uplifted to heaven. She arose and stood before her lover, cold and pale as the marble she had touched.

Then the music swelled out again in a slow, plaintive strain, as if it were moaning over the burial of a dead hope. Those who had gathered for worship in the chapel, glided away; the tapers were extinguished, and through the gathering darkness Frederick Farnham and Isabel Chester walked forth into the world again.

Isabel had made a vow never to marry the son of her father's murderer.

It was a rash act, for even then she had not the courage to tell Frederick of the oath she had taken. Oh, Isabel! that vow may prove like that of Jepthah yet--only it is your own hand that gives, and your own heart that receives the blow.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

SISTER ANNA

Ah, we never could resist her, Since the day that she was born; For we loved that winsome sister As we loved the opening morn.

Four years!--yes, I think it was a little over four years, after the scene in our last chapter, when we bring our readers to the Old Homestead again.

It was the evening of a disagreeable, chilly day. Everything was gloomy inside and out. Salina had come up from the Farnham's deserted mansion to spend the evening with aunt Hannah, and arrange the preliminaries for a "husking frolic," which was to take place on the morrow in uncle Nathan's barn. But she found the good lady so taciturn and gloomy, that even her active spirit was awed into stillness. So the two women remained almost in silence, knitting steadily, with a round candle-stand between them.

Uncle Nathan, notwithstanding the cold and the storm, occupied his great chair in the porch. I think the old man must have grown a trifle stouter since the reader saw him, and his face had a still more benevolent look; something of serene goodness, mellowing in the sunshine of his genial nature, was perceptible there, as the tints of a golden pippin, ripened in the autumn sun.

But you could see nothing of this, as the old man sat in his easy-chair that night. Everything was dark around him. Black clouds hung overhead, broken now and then with gleams of pale blue lightning.

Once or twice these flashes were bright enough to reveal his features, which were strangely troubled and thoughtful. Since nightfall, he had been sitting there almost in silence, watching the storm gather overhead, and the black shadows as they crowded down from the hills and choked up the garden. He listened to the wind as it rose and swelled down the valley, rushing through the orchard boughs, and tossing them up and down in the darkness. The old man was not reposing; thoughtful and aroused he took a clear retrospection of those phases of life that had left scars even on his placid heart.

A shadow, for it seemed nothing more, lingered by his side.

It moved now and then, and amid the hushes of the wind you might have known that two persons breathed close together in the old porch.

At length what seemed the shadow spoke.

"Shall we go in, uncle Nathan? The wind is getting high, here. How the rain beats on the porch--you will catch cold."

"No, I'd rather sit out here yet awhile. But go in yourself, Mary; it is getting rather chilly for you."

"No," answered Mary, in her old gentle way, "I'd rather sit with you, uncle Nat."

"I'm bad company," said the old man, "somehow I can't feel like talking to-night."

"Nor I," said Mary Fuller, leaning her cheek against the arm-chair, "something is the matter with us both. I wonder what it is!"

"My heart is full," said uncle Nathan, mournfully.

Mary crept close to him.

"Tell me, uncle Nat, is it about Mr. Ritner's note that you feel so bad?"

"That may have set me to thinking of--of other things. I seem to remember everything that ever happened to-night, I never saw clouds exactly like them before, or heard the wind howl so, but once."

"When was that, uncle Nathan?" inquired his companion, in a whisper.

"The night our sister Anna died," answered the old man in the same hushed tone.

"Uncle Nathan, do tell me about her, I want to hear it so much, it seems as if I must ask you now, though I never dared before."

Uncle Nathan remained silent a minute or two, then turning in his chair, he said, in a low, husky voice,

"See what they are doing in there. Hannah must not hear what we are talking about."

Mary opened the kitchen-door and looked through.

"They are sitting by the fire, both of them. Salina is talking. Aunt Hannah knitting hard, with her eyes on the fire, as if she didn't hear." And reseating herself she continued; "now tell me about _her_--she was very handsome, wasn't she?"

"She was like a picture, Mary. You think Isabel Chester handsome, but she don't more than compare with our Anna. She had the softest and most beautiful brown eyes you ever saw, bright as a star and soft as a rabbit's--and such hair, it was all in crinkles and waves, breaking out into curls let her braid and twist it as she would--brown when she sat by me at her sewing-work in the morning, and shining out like gold when the sun lay in the porch. I wish you could a-seen her as she was drawing out her thread of woolen yarn, and running it up on the spindle as bright and spry as a bird."

"I wasn't so old nor so heavy," continued uncle Nathan, with a sigh, "as I am now-a-days, but she always loved to wait on me just as you do; and when I came into the stoop, hot days in summer, tired with mowing or planting, away she would run after a pitcher of cool drink, holding it between her two little hands, and laughing till the dimples swarmed about her mouth like lady-bugs around a rose. I do really think, Mary Fuller, that our sister Anna was the handsomest gal I ever set eyes on, and so sweet tempered: you put me in mind of her every day, Mary."

Mary Fuller did not answer, she was afraid that uncle Nathan might detect the tears that swelled at her heart in her voice.

"I didn't like to part with Anna, she was so young, and both sister and I had promised our parents to take their place with her. We two were the children of their youth, but she was a sort of ewe lamb in the house, the child of their old age, and when they died we looked upon her as our own.

"We both gave up all ideas of marrying for her sake; that wasn't much for me you may think, but it was a good deal for Hannah; she was a tall, good-looking woman then, and might have done well in the world; she did give up a match that I knew her heart was set on. As for me--but no matter about that--I wasn't likely to make a promise to my own parents on their death-beds and only half keep it, by marrying and putting a sort of step-mother over Anna--no, Hannah and I just put away all thoughts of settling for life, except with one another, and gave ourselves up to little Anna, heart and soul."

The old man paused awhile, and bent his head as if overpowered by the fierce storm that raged around the house. The porch was sheltered, and though the rain rushed over its low eaves in sheets, nothing but the dampness reached the great easy-chair upon which uncle Nathan sat.

Still Mary felt three or four heavy drops fall upon her hand, too warm for rain and too sacred for comment.

"I couldn't help it," resumed uncle Nathan, in a broken voice. "From the first I was agin Anna's going out to work but she wanted a new silk dress, and we, in our old-fashioned ideas, objected to it--so in her pretty, willful fashion she determined to earn it for herself.

"I always thought Hannah had a hankering after the dress, too, for she never thought anything too good for the gal, but there was a good many debts left on the old place, and she knew well enough that we couldn't afford to indulge the child that way; but she sided with Anna agin me, and so the poor child went up to Farnham's to spin his wool. Old Mrs.

Farnham kept house for her son, and no one thought harm of it. I shall never forget how bright and pretty she looked that morning, in her pink calico dress and that little straw cottage. Her cheeks were rosy as the dress, and her eyes shone like diamonds, when she came out here to shake hands with me.

"I felt hurt, and couldn't help looking so. She saw how I took it, and tried to laugh in her old cheerful way, but it was of no use; the sound died on her open lips, and her eyes filled with tears.

"'Nathan, Nathan,' she said, 'I will give up the dress if you feel so about it,' and she began to untie her bonnet; 'I never had a silk dress in my life, but--but'---

"She sat down on a stool and fairly burst into sobs.

"'Anna,' says I, 'couldn't we make it out, and you stay at home, think? There is Hannah's orange silk gown, that mother gave her years ago, wouldn't that make over for you nicely now?'

"Anna threw herself back on the stool and laughed like a bird, while the tears sparkled in her eyes.

"'Oh, Nathan don't speak of it, I've tried it on a dozen times, and thought and thought how to make it do, but the waist is under my arms, the skirt gored like an umbrella cover, and so scant, why I couldn't get over a fence or jump a brook in it to save my life.'

"I answered, 'But you look so nice and pretty in that pink calico, Anna, I wish a silk dress had never come into your head. I'm afraid it'll be the ruin of you.'