What Can She Do? Part 16

His face changed instantly to its usual hard sullen aspect, and he said briefly:

"I did knock."

"The landlady has told her all about us," he thought, "and she rejects sympathy and fellowship from such as we are."

But Edith's feeling had only been annoyance that a stranger had seen her emotion, so she said quickly, "I beg your pardon. We have had trouble, but I don't give way in this manner often. Have you brought a load?"

"Yes. If your servant will help me I will bring the things in."

As he and Hannibal carried in heavy rolls of carpet and other articles, Edith removed as far as possible the traces of her grief, and soon began to scan by the light of day with some curiosity her acquaintance of the previous evening. He was the very opposite to herself in appearance. Her eyes were large and dark. He had a rather small but piercing blue eye. His locks were light and curly, and his beard sandy. Her hair was brown and straight. He was fully six feet tall, while she was only of medium height. And yet Edith was not a brunette, but possessed a complexion of transparent delicacy which gave her the fragile appearance characteristic of so many American girls. His face was much tamed by exposure to March winds, but his brow was as white as hers. In his morbid tendency to shun every one, he usually kept his eyes fixed on the ground so as to appear not to see people, and this, with his habitual frown, gave a rather heavy and repelling expression to his face.

"He would make a very good representative of the laboring cla.s.ses,"

she thought, "if he hadn't so disagreeable an expression."

It had only dimly dawned upon poor Edith as yet that she now belonged to the "laboring cla.s.ses."

But her energetic nature soon reacted against idle grieving, and her pale cheeks grew rosy, and her face full of eager life as she a.s.sisted and directed.

"If I only had one or two women to help me we could soon get things settled," she said, "and I have so little time before the rest come."

Then she added suddenly to Arden, "Haven't you sisters?"

"My sister does not go out to service," said Arden proudly.

"Neither do I," said the shrewd Edith, "but I would be willing to help any one in such an emergency as I am in," and she glanced keenly to see the effect of this speech, while she thought, "What airs these people put on!"

Arden's face changed instantly. Her words seemed like a ray of sunlight falling on a place before shadowed, for the sullen frowning expression pa.s.sed into one almost of gentleness, as he said:

"That puts things in a different light. I am sure Rose and mother both will be willing to help you as neighbors," and he started for another load, going around by the way of his home and readily obtaining from his mother and sister a promise to a.s.sist Edith after dinner.

Edith smiled to herself and said, "I have found the key to his surly nature already." She had, and to many other natures also. Kindness and human fellowship will unbar and unbolt where all other forces may clamor in vain.

Arden went away in a maze of new sensations. This one woman of all the world beside his mother and sister that he had come to know somewhat was to him a strange, beautiful mystery. Edith was in many respects conventional, as all society girls are, but it was the conventionality of a sphere of life that Arden knew only through books, and she seemed to him utterly different from the ladies of Pushton as he understood them from his slight acquaintance. This difference was all in her favor, for he cherished a bitter and unreasonable prejudice against the young girls of his neighborhood as vain, shallow creatures who never read, and thought of nothing save dress and beaux. His own sister in fact had helped to confirm these impressions, for while he was fond of her and kind, he had no great admiration for her, saying in his sweeping cynicism, "She is like the rest of them." If he had met Edith only in the street and in conventional ways, stylishly dressed, he would scarcely have noticed her. But her half-indignant, half-pathetic appeal to him on the dock, the lonely ride in which she had clung to his arm for safety, her tears, and the manner in which she had last spoken to him, had all combined to pierce thoroughly his sh.e.l.l of sullen reserve; and, as we have said, his vivid imagination had taken fire.

Edith and Hannibal worked hard the rest of the forenoon, and her experienced old attendant was invaluable. Edith herself, though having little practical knowledge of work of any kind, had vigor and natural judgment, and her small white hands accomplished more than one would suppose.

So Arden wonderingly thought on his return with a second load, as he saw her lift and handle things that he knew to be heavy. Her short, close-fitting working-dress outlined her fine figure to advantage, and with complexion bright and dazzling with exercise, she seemed to him some frail fairylike creature doomed by a cruel fate to unsuited toil and sorrows. But Edith was very matter-of-fact, and had never in all her life thought of herself as a fairy.

Arden went home to dinner, and by one o'clock Edith said to Hannibal:

"There is one good thing about the place if no other. It gives one a savage appet.i.te. What have you got in the basket?"

"A scrumptious lunch, Miss Edie. I told de landlady you'se used to havin' things mighty nice, and den I found a hen's nest in de barn dis mornin'."

"I hope you didn't take the eggs, Hannibal," said Edith slyly.

"Sartin I did, Miss Edie, cause if I didn't de rats would."

"Perhaps the landlady would also if you had shown them to her."

"Miss Edie," said Hannibal solemnly, "findin' a hen's nest is like findin' a gold mine. It belongs to de one dat finds it."

"I am afraid that wouldn't stand in law. Suppose we were arrested for robbing hens' nests. That wouldn't be a good introduction to our new neighbors."

"Now, Miss Edie," said Hannibal, with an injured air, "you don't spec I do a job like dat so bungly as to get cotched at it?"

"Oh, very well," said Edith, laughing, "since you have conformed to the morality of the age, it must be all right, and a fresh egg would be a rich treat now that it can be eaten with a clear conscience. But, Hannibal, I wish you would find a gold mine out in the garden."

"I guess you'se find dat with all your readin' about strawberries and other yarbs."

"I hope so," said Edith with a sigh, "for I don't see how we are going to live here year after year."

"You'se be rich again. De men wid de long p.u.s.s.es ain't agoin' to look at your black eyes for nothin'," and Hannibal chuckled knowingly.

The color faintly deepened in Edith's cheeks, but she said with some scorn, "Men with long purses want girls with the same. But who are these?"

Coming up the path they saw a tall middle-aged woman, and by her side a young girl of about eighteen who was a marked contrast to her in appearance.

"Dey's his moder and sister. You will drive tings dis arternoon."

Mrs. Lacey and her daughter entered with some little hesitancy and embarra.s.sment, but Edith, with the poise of an accomplished lady, at once put them at ease by saying:

"It is exceedingly kind of you to come and help, and I appreciate it very much."

"No one should refuse to be neighborly," said Mrs. Lacey quietly.

"And to tell the truth I was delighted to come," said Rose, "the winter has been so long and dull."

"Oh, dear!" thought Edith, "if you find them so, what will be our fate?"

Mrs. Lacey undid a bundle and took out a teapot from which the steam yet oozed faintly, and Rose undid another containing some warm b.u.t.tered biscuits, Mrs. Lacey saying, "I thought your lunch might seem a little cold and cheerless, so I brought these along."

"Now that _is_ kind," said Edith, so cordially that their faces flushed with that natural pleasure which we all feel when our little efforts for others are appreciated. To them it was intensified, for Edith was a grand city lady, and the inroads that she made on the biscuits, and the zest with which she sipped her tea, showed that her words had the ring of truth.

"Do sit down and eat, while things are nice and warm," she said to Hannibal. "There's no use in our putting on airs now," but Hannibal insisted on waiting upon her as when he was butler in the great dining-room on the avenue, and when she was through, carried the things off to the empty kitchen, and took his "bite" on a packing box, prefacing it as his nearest approach to grace by an indignant grunt and profession of his faith.

"Dis ole n.i.g.g.ah eat before her? Not much! She's quality now as much as eber."

But the world and Hannibal were at variance on account of a sum of subtraction which had taken away from Edith's name the dollar symbol.

Edith set to work, her helpers now increased to three, with renewed zest, and from time to time stole glances at the mother and daughter to see what the natives were like.

They were very different in appearance: the mother looking prematurely old, and she also seemed bent and stooping under the heavy burdens of life. Her dark blue eyes had a weary, pathetic look, as if some sorrow was ever before them. Her cheek bones were prominent and her cheeks sunken, and the thin hair, brushed plainly under her cap, was streaked with gray. Her quietness and reserve seemed rather the result of a crushed, sad heart than of natural lack of feeling.

The daughter was in the freshest bloom of youth, and was not unlike the flower she was named after, when, as a dewy bud, it begins to develop under the morning sun. Though not a beautiful girl, there was a prettiness, a rural breeziness about her, that would cause any one to look twice as she pa.s.sed. The wind ever seemed to be in her light flaxen curls, and her full rounded figure suggested superabundant vitality, an impression increased by her quick, restless motions. Her complexion reminded you of strawberries and cream, and her blue eyes had a slightly bold and defiant expression. She felt the blight of her father's course also, but it acted differently on her temperament.

Instead of timidly shrinking from the world like her mother, or sullenly ignoring it like her brother, she was for going into society and compelling it to recognize and respect her.

"I have done nothing wrong," she said; "I insist on people treating me in view of what I am myself," and in the sanguine spirit of youth she hoped to carry her point. Therefore her manner was a little self-a.s.serting, which would not have been the case had she not felt that she had prejudice to overcome. Unlike her brother, she cared little for books, and had no ideal world, but lived vividly in her immediate surroundings. The older she grew, the duller and more monotonous did her home life seem. She had little sympathy from her brother; her mother was a sad, silent woman, and her father a daily source of trouble and shame. Her education was very imperfect, and she had no resource in this, while her daily work seemed a tiresome round that brought little return. Her mother attended to the more important duties and gave to her the lighter tasks, which left her a good deal of leisure. She had no work that stimulated her, no training that made her thorough in any department of labor, however humble. From a friend, a dressmaker in the village, she obtained a little fancy work and sewing, and the proceeds resulting, and all her brother gave her, she spent in dress. The sums were small enough in all truth, and yet with the marvellous ingenuity that some girls, fond of dress, acquire, she made a very little go a great way, and she would often appear in toilets that were quite effective. With those of her own age and s.e.x in her narrow little circle, she was not a special favorite, but she was with the young men, for she was bright, chatty, and had the knack of putting awkward fellows at ease. She kept her little parlor as pretty and inviting as her limited materials permitted, and with a growing imperiousness gave the rest of the family, and especially her father, to understand that this parlor was her domain, and that she would permit no intrusion. Clerks from the village and farmers' sons would occasionally drop in of an evening, though they preferred taking her out to ride where they could see her away from her home. But the more respectable young men, with anxious mothers and sisters, were rather shy of poor Rose, and none seemed to care to go beyond a mild flirtation with a girl whose father was "on the rampage," as they expressed it, most of the time. On one occasion, when she had two young friends spending the evening, her father came home reckless and wild with drink, and his language toward the young men was so shocking, and his manner in general so outrageous, that they were glad to get away. If Arden had not come home and collared his father, carrying him off to his room by his almost irresistible strength, Rose's parlor might have become a sad wreck, literally as well as socially. As it was, it seemed deserted for a long time, and she felt very bitter about it. In her fearless frankness, her determination not to succ.u.mb to her sinister surroundings (and perhaps from the lack of a sensitive delicacy), she reproached the same young men when she met them for staying away, saying, "It's a shame to treat a girl as if she were to blame for what she can't help."