THE snows of ten winters had powdered the nameless stranger's grave in the servant's burial-ground of the Ridgeley plantation. For nine years the wallet taken from his person had lain unopened in a hidden drawer of Mabel Dorrance's escritoire, and the half-guessed secret been hidden in her breast. Mammy Phillis had followed her mistress to the tomb, six months after her removal from her beloved cottage to the despised “quarters.” She never held up her head from the day of her degradation, died from a broken heart, murmured those who best knew her—of a “fit of spleen,” said Mrs. Aylett, in cool reprehension of her unmannerly vassal.
Mabel had guarded the mystery well. Her husband examined her—covertly, as he thought; awkwardly, according to her ideas—with regard to the vagaries of her delirium, and was foiled by the grave simplicity of her manner and replies.
“All she knows or remembers is substantially this,” Herbert jotted down in his notes for his sister's perusal: “she has associated in some way—she cannot tell exactly how or why—the name with the tramp who died in the garret. She is not sure that it was his designation. Thinks it was not, or that, if used by him, it was an alias. Has an impression that it was marked upon his clothing, or upon a paper found in his pocket. Showed no agitation and little interest in the subject, except when she inquired if I saw the stranger at all—living or dead. Was glad I could reply truly, 'No.' Answer seemed to gratify her, which you may consider a disagreeable augury. Am convinced that her illness resulted from natural and unavoidable causes—that neither F—-C—-nor J——L—-had any connection with it. It will be months before mind and body recover their tone.”
“Lawyerly! ergo, absurd and unsatisfactory!” pronounced the reader, to whom the foregoing leaf had been committed on the morning of her brother's departure with his slowly-convalescing wife for their Albany home. “But until the nettle pricks more nearly, I shall continue to enjoy my roses.”
They had blossomed thickly about her path during this decade. Her matronly beauty was the wonder and praise of the community. The changing seasons that had bleached the locks upon her husband's temples and heightened his forehead had spared the bronzed chestnut of her luxuriant tresses. Her figure was larger and fuller, but graceful, and more queenly than of yore—if that could be. There was not an untuneful inflection in her voice, or a furrow between her brows. Under her careful management the homestead wore every year an air of increased elegance. No other furniture for many miles on both sides of the river could compare with hers; no other servants were so well-trained, no grounds so beautifully ornamented and trimly kept.
“But for all that Ridgeley is a lonely, desolate place to me,” said Mrs. Sutton, one early spring morning to her niece and crony, Mrs. William Sutton. “A house without children is worse than a last year's bird's nest. It is a riddle to me how Clara Aylett contrives to occupy her time.”
“She should have some of these socks to darn, if it hangs upon her hands,” replied Mrs. William, humorously, running her five fingers through the toe of one she had just picked up from the great willow basket set between the two upon the porch-floor.
“The Lord isn't very apt to make mothers out of that sort of material,” said the elder lady. “Nor fathers out of Winston Ayletts. They are so wrapped up in their self-consequence as to have no thought for others.”
“Yet they say Mr. Aylett regrets that he has no heir. It is a great pity Mabel lost her only child as she did. The family will become extinct in another generation. It is such a noble estate, too!”
“Large families were never the rule among the Ayletts,” responded Aunt Rachel. “But I did hope my dear Mabel would be an exception to the rest in this respect. She would adopt a little girl, but her husband will not consent. Those Dorrances are a cold-hearted race. He, too, is heaping up riches, without knowing who shall gather them. Heigh-ho!”
Her darning-needle quilted the yawning heel of Tommy Sutton's sock with precision and celerity, and she ruminated silently upon the vicissitudes and failures of mortal life until she was interrupted by Mrs. William's exclamation:
“There is Mrs. Tazewell's carriage at the gate, and the driver has a letter in his hand. I hope the old lady is not worse!”
Aunt Rachel met the man at the steps, with neighborly anxiety.
“How is your mistress, Jack?”
“'Bout the same, ma'am. But Miss Rosa—she came last night very unexpected, and it kinder worsted Mistis to see her so poorly. This note is from Miss Rosa, ma'am, and I am to take back an answer.”
Mrs. Sutton read it standing in the porch—the scented leaflet that had a look of the writer all over it, from the scarlet monogram at the top of the sheet and upon the envelope, to the flourish of the signature—“Rosa T. C.”—the curl of the C carried around the rest like a medallion frame:
“DEAR, GOOD AUNT RACHEL,—I have come to Old Virginia to try and shake off an uncomfortable cough which has haunted me all winter. The Northern quacks can do nothing for me. One ray of this delicious sunshine is worth all their nostrums. I was not prepared to find mamma helpless, or I should not have descended upon her so unceremoniously. Being here, I cannot retreat in good order or with safety to my health, nor without wounding her. Frederic must return to Philadelphia next week, by which time I hope to be quite invigorated. Now for my audacious proposal. Can you come over and tell me how to get well in the quickest and least troublesome way? Dear Auntie! you loved me once. When you see what a poor, spiritless shadow I have grown—or lessened—to be, you will care a little bit for me again, for the sake of lang syne.”
Mrs. Sutton wiped her spectacles and gave the note to her niece.
“There is but one thing for me to do, you see, my dear. Jack! I shall be ready in twenty minutes.”
If the line of duty wavered before her sight during the three-mile drive, it lay straight and distinct ahead of her when she stood in Rosa's chamber.
“My child!” she ejaculated, upon the threshold “you did not tell me that you were confined to your bed!”
“I ought not to be!”
The rebellious pout and tone were Rosa's, as were also the black eyes—unnaturally large and bright though they were—but the pretty lips were wan, and strained by lines of pain; the pomegranate flush was no longer variable, and was nestled in hollows, and the hands were wasted to translucency.
“I am quite strong enough to be up, and would be, if my tyrannical doctors and their tractable tool, my lord and master, had not decreed that I shall lie here until midday, if I am very obedient; eat my meals; take their poisonous medicines, and abstain from coughing. If I offend in any of these particulars I am not to rise until three o'clock—when they are in an especially glum humor—not at all that day. But now you are here, we shall combat them valorously. Dear Auntie!” putting the thin arms about the old lady's plump neck, and laughing through a spring rain of tears, “how good and safe it is to be with you again! And you are the same kind, lovely darling! no older by a day—no uglier by a solitary wrinkle! I couldn't sleep last night, for fearing you would not come to me!”
“You should not have doubted it, dear!” said the motherly voice, blithe as affectionate, while soft, agile fingers undid the tight embrace, and commenced, from the force of habit, to arrange the tumbled bed-clothes. “Wherever I can be of most use is the place in which I wish to be.”
“I know you have always lived for others,” answered Rosa, with an involuntary sigh, a shadow glooming her eyes.
“For whom else should I live and work?” laughed Mrs. Sutton, in her cheerful, guileless fashion. “My personal wants are few and easily supplied, and I like to be busy. I account it a privilege to be able to fuss about my friends when they are ailing.”
By way of doing as she liked, she attacked the disorderly room. Rosa's three trunks stood in a row against the wall—all of them open—the tray of the largest lying beside it upon the carpet, the lid of this thrown back and the contents in utter confusion; laces hanging over the sides and trailing upon the floor. A casket of medicines was uppermost in the next trunk, crushing a confused medley of collars, ribbons, gloves, and handkerchiefs. A dressing-gown lay upon the seat of one chair, a skirt over the back of another; boots and slippers peeped from the valance of the antique bedstead; there was a formidable array of bottles upon mantel and bureau—conspicuous among them cod-liver oil, cologne, and laudanum—incongruous appendages to the various appliances of the toilette scattered between them.
Mrs. Sutton understood it all—the hurry and agitation of the unlooked-for arrival; the faintness and prostration of the consumptive; the restless night, and the well-meant but inefficient ministrations of negroes in an establishment where the mistress had been feeble for years, and was now chained to her room and chair by paralysis.
“And Rosa was always an indolent flyabout in health; accustomed to have a score of servants at her heels to pick up whatever she dropped or threw aside,” she said to herself. “My Mabel was a pink of neatness and order compared with her. Dear me! here is a bottle of oil, cracked, and an immense grease-spot in the front breadth of a splendid silk dress! I hope these things do not annoy her as they would me!”
Whether the universal disarray made Rosa uncomfortable or not, she enjoyed the aspect of the tidy apartment, when her nurse brought her noiseless labors to a close by exchanging her night-gown for a flannel wrapper; putting clean linen upon her and the bed; combing the tangled hair and washing her hands, wrists, and face in tepid water, interfused with cologne.
“It prevents a sick person from taking cold when bathed, and freshens her up wonderfully, I think,” was her explanation of the fragrant preparation.
“YOU freshen me more than all things else combined!” said Rosa, gratefully. “Ah, auntie! how often I have thought of, and wished for you this tedious and dismal winter! I used to spend entire weeks in bed, attended by a horrid hired nurse, who took snuff and drank—ugh! and snubbed and terrified me whenever I—as she described it—'took a notion into my head;' that is, when I asked for something she thought was too troublesome for her ladyship to prepare, or wanted Fred to stay all night in my room, or sit by me in the evening, and pet me. She 'couldn't bear to have men around, cluttering up everything!' she would growl the instant his back was turned, with a deal more of the same talk, until I was afraid to ask him to take a seat the next time he came in. He was continually bringing home baskets of fruit, and game, and bouquets for me. She let me have the flowers, but she ate nine-tenths of the nice things herself, I never suspecting her, and he was too delicate to ask if I enjoyed his presents. At length he surprised her in the act of devouring a bunch of hot-house grapes, for which he had paid almost their weight in gold, and then all came to light, and he sent her off in a hurry. Poor Fred, there were great tears in his eyes when he learned what persecution I had undergone, rather than vex him by complaints.”
“It would have been better had you told him sooner, dear! It would have spared you and him much suffering.”
“I knew how engrossed he was by his business, and how ignorant he was of household or medical matters, and I saved him all the bother I could. I have tried, in some things and some times, to be a good wife, Aunt Rachel! But often I have failed, O, how egregiously! and”—beginning to weep—“the thought pierces my heart by day and by night. What if I never have an opportunity of doing any better, of covering up the traces of my footsteps?”
Mrs. Sutton patted the wasted hand with her cool one, but essayed no other soothing.
“Where is your husband now? I understood from your note that he was with you.”
“He rode over to Dr. Ritchie's this morning, directly he had given me my breakfast. He thinks highly of his skill, and he would not be contented without bringing him to see me. I really believe he is anxious I should get well! Strange—isn't it? when I am such a burden upon his mind and hands.”
Aunt Rachel smiled.
“Not at all strange, you ridiculous child! Two of the most dearly-loved wives I ever knew were invalids, and bedridden, not for weeks only, but for years. You can best show your gratitude for his affection and kindness by getting better rapidly while he is here, that he may leave you with a lighter heart.”
“He is kind! too kind!” murmured Rosa, composing herself among the cushions, as if to sleep.
She was quiet so long that Mrs. Button had leisure for some reflections relating to her own personal action in the somewhat embarrassing position she occupied. She had never seen Frederic Chrlton from the day he left Ridgeley as Mabel's betrothed. His visits to the neighborhood since his marriage had been few and brief, and she had studied to avoid him whenever she happened to be with the William Suttons during one of these. He might have guessed her design, or unwittingly favored it on his own account. The meeting would not be more pleasant to him than to her. But why had he allowed his wife to send for her? The alteration in him must indeed be great, if he could, without a conflict with resentful and painful memories, bow his pride to sue for the services of a relative of the Ayletts, and formerly one of their household, even in such a cause as that which now commanded her sympathies.
At this point of her cogitation she became aware that Rosa's eyes were wide open, and staring at her with a whimsical blending of curiosity, melancholy, and gratification.
“Aunt Rachel!” she said, bluntly, “you are a very good woman! the best and most forgiving human being I ever heard of. I should not feel one particle of surprise to see you float up gently through the roof, at any minute—cap, spectacles, and all—translated to the society of your sister angels—and no questions asked by St. Peter at the gate of Paradise!”
“My love!”
Well as she knew her erratic disposition and wild style of speech, Mrs. Sutton moved her hand toward the patient's pulse.
“I am not raving! I speak the words of truth and soberness—very sad soberness, too! Believing as you do that Frederic was once the cause of much sorrow to you and to one you loved, and having no reason to care one iota for me, but rather to distrust me, you nevertheless obey my call upon you for service, as if I had every right to make it. And when here, you treat me just as you would Mabel, were her situation as deplorable, her need equal to mine.”
“Why shouldn't I?” questioned Mrs. Sutton, simply. “I have no ground for a quarrel with you. And if I had—well, the truth is, my dear, I have a poor memory for such things!”
Rosa caught at the scarcely perceptible emphasis upon the “YOU,” and disregarded the remainder of the remark.
“You cannot yet acquit Frederic of wrong-doing! Indeed, Mrs. Sutton, he has been foully wronged among you. It is not because he is my husband that I say this. Mabel's name has never passed his lips—-nor mine in his hearing, since I became his wife. And every one of the family has been equally guarded when he was by. I doubt, sometimes, if he has ever heard whom she married or where she lives—so carefully has he shunned every reference to her or any of the Ridgeley people. During the nine years we have lived together, he has given me no cause to suspect that he ever thinks of her, or laments the broken engagement. If I have made myself wretched by imagining the contrary, it was my fault, not his—my foolish, wicked jealousy. I would scorn to imply a doubt of his integrity, by reminding him of the charges proferred against him by Winston Aylett, and believed by his sister—much less ask him to contradict them. I never put any faith in them from the outset. It comforts me to recollect that my confidence in him stood fast when everybody else distrusted him—my noble, slandered darling! But my declaration of his innocence is founded upon his blameless life and upright principles. No one could be with him as I have been, and doubt him. He is a perfect man—if there was ever a sinless mortal—great-hearted, gentle, and sincere. Do not I know this? Have I not proved him to the utmost?”
Her rapid, impassioned declamation was ended by a copious flood of grief that provoked a frightful fit of coughing. When this was subdued she was weaker than a year-old infant, and lay between stupor and dreaming for so long a time, that Mrs. Sutton became alarmed.
There must be no repetition of this scene. She most ward off similar mishaps by whatever measures she could force or cajole her conscience into adopting. Rosa's state was more precarious than her account had led her friend to believe, or than the nurse's experienced eye had seen at their meeting. The main hope of her recovery was in the warmer climate and assiduous attendance. Above all, she should not be allowed to exhaust herself by talking, or hysterical paroxysms. She had no more self-control than a child, and she must be treated as such. Mrs. Sutton's jesuitical resolve was to humor her by every imaginable device, even to feigned friendship for Frederic Chilton.
Fortified by this resolution, she heard, without any show of pride or trepidation, the clatter of horses' hoofs in the yard; the sound of voices below stairs, as Mr. Chilton ushered the physician into the parlor, and the light, careful tread with which he mounted to his wife's apartment. His momentary pause at the entrance, and surprised look at beholding the other tenant of the chamber, were the best passport to her indulgence he could have desired. It was clear to her instantly that poor Rosa's passion for manoeuvring had survived the wreck of health and prostration of spirits. She had never chosen the straight path if she could find a crooked or a by-road, and her project for obtaining Mrs. Sutton's services and company had been put into execution, without consultation with her husband. However reprehensible this might be in the abstract, it was not in the kind old soul to betray her, as she advanced, placidly and civilly, to reassure the startled man.
“How are you, Mr. Chilton? You hardly expected to meet me here, I suppose? But I am a near neighbor of Mrs. Tazewell now, and hearing that Rosa was sick, I came over to see if I could do anything for her, knowing how infirm her mother is.”
“You are very kind!” He grasped her hand more tightly than he intended, or was conscious of. “We were ignorant ourselves of Mrs. Tazewell's true condition. Mrs. Chilton's sisters have forwarded more encouraging reports to her of her mother's illness than they would have been warranted in doing by anything except the fear that a faithful account would operate injuriously upon the daughter's health. I should have chosen some other home for my wife, had I known the actual state of affairs here. Change of scene and climate was imperatively demanded.”
He spoke low and rapidly—hardly above his breath; but the black eyes, unclosing, flashed upon him.
“So you have come back!” said Rosa's weak voice. “You stayed away an eternity!”
Her coquettish displeasure and the asperity of her accent contrasted so oddly with her vehemently expressed attachment for her husband and extolment of his virtues, that Mrs. Sutton regarded her in speechless amazement. She submitted to his kiss, without returning it—even raising her hand pettishly as to repel further endearments. “I should have died of the blue devils if Aunt Rachel hadn't, by the merest accident, heard that I was ailing, and driven over, like the Good Samaritan she is, to take pity upon me in my destitution; to pour oil—not cod-liver—into my wounds, and wine into my mouth. She is better than all the men-doctors that were ever created; so if you have brought your bearded Esculapius home with you, you may tell him, with my compliments, that I won't see him yet awhile. He was an old beau of mine, and I hope I have too much respect for what I used to be, to let him get a glimpse of me until Dr. Sutton has set me up in better flesh and looks. She brought me some enchanting jelly—one of her magical preparations for the amelioration of human misery, and I am to have a bowl of her unparalleled chicken-broth for dinner. I wish dinner-time were come! the very thought makes me ravenous. I am to do nothing for a week, but eat, drink, and sleep, at the end of which period I shall be dismissed as thoroughly cured. So, Mr. Chilton, you can go back to your beloved clients whenever you please!”
To Mrs. Sutton's apprehension this was an infelicitous introduction of herself to the husband's toleration. Certainly, she did not know many men who would have parried the thrusts at themselves with the dexterity he manifested, and acknowledged her merits and kindly offices willingly and gracefully. He did not apologize for his protracted absence, nor insist upon conveying his physician to the sick-chamber; but he chatted for five minutes or thereabouts upon such topics as he knew would entertain the captious invalid, and finally arose from the bed-side, where he had been sitting, fondling her hot hands, with a good-humored laugh.
“But all the while I am enjoying myself here, the hirsute Galen aforesaid is munching the invisible salad of the solitary in the parlor! I am to eject him incontinently, am I? My conscience will not let me withhold the admission, when I do this, that my wife's judgment in the matter of medical attendants is vastly superior to mine. While Mrs. Sutton is so good as to remain with you, you are right in thinking that you have need of no other physician.”
Aunt Rachel would have entered a disclaimer, but Rosa spoke before she could open her mouth.
“I didn't say that, Frederic! There was never such another impatient and inconsiderate creature upon the globe as yourself. It would be unpardonably rude in us to send the man away, if he is a charlatan, without letting him see me. Have him up, by all means, and let us hear what priggish nonsense he has to say. He will feel the easier when it is done.”
Dr. Ritchie's private report to Mrs. Sutton, who accompanied him to the lower floor, under color of seeing that he was served with luncheon, was discouraging. The disease had made fearful inroads upon a constitution that had never been robust, and the nervous excitability of the patient was likely to accelerate her decline. She might linger for several months. It would not surprise him to hear that she had died within twelve hours after his visit. It was but fair and professional he added, that he should, through Mrs. Sutton, advise Mr. Chilton of her state, although, unless he were mistaken, he had already anticipated his verdict.
This Mrs. Sutton found was the case, when she essayed that evening to insure him against the awful shock of his wife's unexpected dissolution.
“She has never been entirely well since the death of our second child, a year ago,” he said. “The little one was buried on a very stormy day, and the mother would not be dissuaded from going to the cemetery. The severe cold, acting upon a system enfeebled by grief, induced an attack of pneumonia. Dr. Ritchie but coincides with every other physician I have consulted.”
“It is a pity you are obliged to leave her so soon,” observed the sympathizing nurse. “Although she may be more comfortable a week hence than she is now.”
“A week! I had no intention of returning in less than a month's time. I made all my arrangements to that effect before leaving home. Rosa's reference to my desire to go back to my clients was sheer badinage”—smiling mournfully. “You have heard her talk often enough to understand how little of earnest there is in the raillery.” More insincerity! For, contradictory as it may appear, Mrs. Sutton felt constrained to believe his unsupported word, in opposition to his wife's written assertion that he designed to return to his practice the ensuing week.
“She thought I would be more apt to come if I imagined that he would soon be gone!” was her grieved reflection. “If she could beguile me hither by this assurance, she trusted to her coaxings and my compassion to retain me. O Rosa! Rosa! cannot even the honest hour teach you to be truthful?”
The shadow of death drew on apace to the sight of all, save the consumptive, and her semi-imbecile mother. These seemed alike blind to the fatal symptoms that were more strongly defined with every passing day. The paralytic sat in her wheeled chair, in the March sunshine, at the window of her chamber, and talked droningly of other times and paltry pleasures to that one of her daughters or grand-children whose turn it was to minister to her comfort and amusement, and insisted upon having all the neighborhood news repeated in her dull ear with wearisome—to the narrator—amplifications and reiterations, shaking with childish laughter at the humorous passages, and whimpering at the pathetic. Rosa cheated time of heaviness by unceasing demands upon her attendants for service and diversion. Unable to sleep, except at long intervals, in snatches of fitful dozing, she had a horror of being alone for an instant, from dusk until dawn; was ingenious in contrivances to surprise an unwary watcher nodding upon her post; plenteous and plaintive in lamentations, if the device succeeded. Fifty times a night her pillows must be shaken, her drink, food, or medicine given, and after each of these offices had been performed, occurred the petition:
“Now—sit where I can see you whenever I open my eyes! It drives me crazy to imagine for a moment that I am by myself. I want to be sure all the while that some living human being is near at hand. I have such frightful dreams! I awake always with the impression that I am drowning or suffocating, or floating away into a sea of darkness alone!”
With the light of day, her spirits revived, and her hopes of speedy recovery.
“You need not grudge waiting upon me now, for I shall be up and about shortly—well and spry as the best of you!” she would say. “And while I am playing invalid, I mean to have my quantum of attention. I have been avaricious of devotion all my life, and this is a golden chance that may never happen again.”
Her husband she would not willingly suffer to leave her for an instant. But for Mrs. Sutton's management and kindly authority, he would have been condemned to take his meals at her bedside and from the same tray with herself. She would be removed from the bed to the lounge by no other arms than his, and at any hour of the twenty-four he was liable to be called upon to read, sing, or talk her into composure. Variable as ever in mood and fancy, and more capricious in the exhibition of these, she was fond, sullen, teasing, and mirthful with him as the humor of the moment dictated; sometimes assailing him with reproaches for his indifference and want of regard for her wishes and tastes, now that she was no longer young, pretty, and sprightly; at others, clinging to him with protestations of repentance and love, bewailing her waywardness and imploring his forbearance; then, taking him to task for the slightest inadvertence—the spilling of a drop of her medicine or jarring of her sofa or bed; anon lauding him to the skies as the most skilful nurse she had, and enjoining upon all about her to render verbal testimonial to his irreproachableness as husband and man—oh! it was a wearisome, oftentimes a revolting duty to listen to and bear with it all—keep in mind though one did that the intolerable restlessness preluded centuries of dreamless repose.
Mrs. Sutton could endure everything else better—and she believed that it was the same with Frederic—than the needless and puerile trickery to which Rosa resorted to achieve the most trivial purposes. If she wished that one of her sisters should pass the day with her, or to sit up for a part of the night, she worked upon her by means of others' intercessions, or broached the subject by covert passages, the end of which, she flattered herself, was successfully masked, until her train was ready for explosion. Did she set her fancy upon any particular article of diet, the same tortuous course was pursued to present the delicacy in question to the mind of him or her who, she designed, should be the provider. Under her sauciest rattle of fun or perversity lurked some subtle meaning. She had either some end to subserve, or wanted to possess herself of some bit of information she could have gained sooner and more easily by direct inquiry. Cajolery and intrigue had become a second nature, stronger than the original; and it never occurred to her that her wiles, in her mental and bodily decadence, were transparent as they had once been artful.
A discovery, made on the fourth day of her visit, excited Mrs. Sutton's sympathies in behalf of the much enduring husband to a pitch it required long and serious pondering upon the wife's weakness and critical condition to restrain from indignant demonstration.
Rosa was sleeping more soundly than usual under the influence of an anodyne, and Frederic, with a whispered apology to his coadjutor, went into the next room, leaving the door ajar. From her seat, Mrs. Sutton had a distinct view of him in an opposite mirror—a circumstance of which she was not aware for several minutes. Happening, then, to look up from her knitting she saw that he was writing, and half an hour afterward that he was leaning back in his chair, looking at something in the hollow of his hand, a mingling of such love and sadness in his countenance that she felt it would be unlawful prying into his most sacred feelings for her to watch him longer. He turned his head at the slight rustle she made in removing to another part of the room, and beckoned to her. At her approach, he arose and held out a morocco case, containing the miniature of a child—a bright-eyed, delicate-featured girl of seven or eight summers—exquisitely painted.
“You have never seen my little Florence, I think?”
“I have not. She is pretty—and resembles you strongly.”
He did not color or laugh at the unconscious compliment, or seem pleased at her praise of his darling. Instead, there crept over his face a shade of more painful sadness, darkening his eyes and compressing his lip, as he answered—
“So every one says. She is the dearest child in the world—a sunbeam of gladness in any house—amiable, affectionate, and intelligent. I wish you would read her last letter to me. She is a better correspondent than many grown people.” Then, smiling, apologetically, “If my commendation seem overstrained, you will excuse a father's partiality.”
The letter—although the unformed chirography betrayed the writer's inexperience in pen-practice—was correctly spelled and easy in style, crowded with loving messages to “dear papa and mamma;” relating anecdotes of school and home life, and while expressive of her longings for her parents' return, professing willingness to stay where she was “until mamma should be well enough to come back.”
“I pray every night that God will cure her, and make us all happy again,” she wrote. “I dreamed one night last week that I saw her dressed for a party, all rosy and funny and laughing, as she used to be, and that she kissed me, and put her arm around me, and called me 'baby Florence' and 'little one,' in her sweet voice. Wasn't it strange? I awoke myself crying, I was so happy! I do try to be brave, and not fret about what cannot be helped, papa, because I promised you I would; but sometimes it is right hard work. It is always easier for a whole day after I get one of your nice, long letters. It is not QUITE as good as having real talk with you, but it is the best treat I can have when you are away.”
Mrs. Sutton wiped her eyes.
“The dear child!” she said, in the subdued tone habitual to the frequenters of the sick-room. “No wonder you want to see her! Why didn't you give her a holiday, and bring her to Virginia with you?”
“I dreaded the effect of a child's high animal spirits and thoughtless bustle upon her mother's health”—the shadow thickening into trouble. “The next best thing to having her with me is to know that she is kindly and lovingly looked after by my married sister, of whom she is very fond. Florence is merrier, if not always happier, with her young cousins than if she were condemned to the repression and joyless routine of a house where the care of the sick is the most engrossing business to all.”
The more Mrs. Sutton meditated upon this conversation, the more enigmatical it appeared that the mother never spoke of missing her only living child—never pined for the sound of her vivacious talk and the sight of her winning ways. Curiosity—her strong love for all children, and a lively interest in Florence and Florence's father, the two who assuredly did feel the separation—got the ascendency over discretion that night, when Rosa, too nervous to sleep, begged her to talk, “to scare away the horrors that were sitting, a blue-black brood, upon her pillow.”
“Your little daughter would be an endless source of entertainment to you if she were here,” said downright Aunt Rachel, with no show of circumlocution. “I am surprised you do not send for her.”
“Children of that age are a nuisance!” returned Rosa, peevishly. “And of all tiresome ones that I ever saw, Florence is the most trying. She doesn't talk after I bid her hold her tongue, but her big, solemn eyes see and her ears hear all that passes. If there is one thing that pushes me nearer to the verge of distraction than another it is to have my own words quoted to me when I have forgotten that I ever uttered them. And she—literal little bore!—is always pretending to take all that I say in earnest. If I were to tell her to go to Guinea, it is my belief she would put on her bonnet, cloak, and gloves, pocket a biscuit for luncheon and a story-book to read by the way, and set out forthwith, asking the first decent-looking man she met in the street at what wharf she would find a vessel bound for Africa.”
Mrs. Sutton was obliged to laugh.
“She must be a truthful, sincere little thing!”
“Didn't I tell you she is TOO outrageously literal and unimaginative? Just let me give you an example of how she tires and vexes me. One day, about a fortnight before I left home, she set her heart upon spending the whole of Saturday afternoon with me. Her father objected, for he understands, if he does not sympathize with me, what a trial she is to flesh and spirit. But I was moderately comfortable, and my nerves were less unruly than usual, so I said we would try and get on together.
“No sooner had he gone than the catechism commenced:
“'Now, mamma, what can I do to amuse you?'
“She talks like a woman of fifty.
“'What should you propose if I were to leave it to you?' I asked.
“'I suppose,' said my Lady Cutshort, 'that it would excite you too much to talk, so I had better read aloud. What book do you prefer?'
“I named one—a novel I had not finished—and resigned myself to martyrdom. She reads fluently—her father says prettily; but the piping voice rasped my auriculars to the quick, and I soon stopped the exhibition. Then we essayed conversation, but our range of themes was limited, and a dismal silence succeeded to a short dialogue. By and by I told her that I was sleepy, hoping she would take the hint and leave my room.
“'Then, mamma, I will just get my work-basket, and sit here, as still as a mouse, and prevent all disturbance.'
“With that, she gets out her miniature thimble and scissors, and falls to work upon a pair of slippers she was embroidering for her father's birthday present, sitting up, starched and prim as an old maid, her lips pursed, and her forehead gravely consequential. I could not close my eyes without seeing her still, like an undersized nightmare, her hair smooth to the least hair, her dress neat to the smallest fold, stitching, stitching, the affected, conceited marmoset!
“At last I said:
“'Put down your sewing, Florence, and look out of the window at the people going by. You must be very tired.'
“'Not in the least, mamma, dear,' answered Miss Pert. 'I like to work, and there is nothing interesting going on outside.'
“I tossed and sighed, and she was by me in a second.
“'Darling mamma! my poor, sweet little mother!' in her reed-like chirp; 'can I do nothing to make you feel better?' putting her hands upon my head and stroking my face until my flesh crawled.
“'Yes,' said I, out of all patience. 'Take yourself off, and don't let me see you again until to-morrow morning! You kill me with your teasing.'
“And would you believe it? she just put up her sewing in the basket and went directly out, without a tear or a murmur, and when her father came home he could not prevail upon her, by commands or persuasions, to accompany him further than the door of my chamber. So he, who won't admit that she can do anything wrong, instead of whipping her for her obstinacy, as he ought to have done, guessed she 'had some reason' for her disobedience which she did not like to tell, and interrogated poor, persecuted me. When he had heard my version of the manner in which we had spent the afternoon, he only said, 'I should have foreseen this. But the child—she is only a child, Rosa!—did her best!' and he looked so mournful that I, knowing he blamed me for his bantling's freak of temper, told him plainly that he cared a thousand times more for this diminutive bundle of hypocrisy than he ever did for me, and that his absurd favoritism was fast begetting in me a positive dislike for her. I couldn't endure the sight of the sulky little mischief-maker for a week after her complaint of barbarity had brought the look into his face I knew so well.”
“O Rosa, she is your own flesh and blood! and, as her father said, a mere baby yet! You said, too, that she refused to assign any cause to him for her singular conduct.”
“She might better have made open outcry than have left upon his mind the impression that I had banished her cruelly and unnecessarily. But I despair of giving you an idea of how provoking she can be. She is a Chilton, through and through, in feature, manner, and disposition—one of those 'goody' children, you know! a class of animals that are simply intolerable to me. She is too precocious and unbaby-like to be in the least interesting. You should have seen my little Violet to understand what a constant disappointment Florence is. She was myself in miniature, and moreover the most witching, prankish, peppery elf that was ever made. The best trait in Florence's character was her love for her baby-sister. She gave up everything to her while she was alive, and they told me that she would not eat, and scarcely slept, for days after her death. Her father will have it that she is singularly sensitive, and has marvellous depths of feeling; but if this be so, it is queer I never found it out. Nobody could help adoring Violet—my sweet, lost, beautiful angel!”
The hysterical sobs were pumping up the tears now in hot torrents, and these Mrs. Sutton was fain to assuage by loving arts she would not—but for the danger of allowing them to flow—have been in the temper to employ, so full was her heart of yearning pity for the hardly-used babe, and displeasure at the mother's weak selfishness. It was easier to forgive and forget Rosa's sins; to lessen, in the retrospect, her worst faults into foibles, than it would have been to overlook the more venal failings of one less mercurial, and whose personal fascinations did not equal hers.
Ere the close of another day, Mrs. Sutton had excused her unnatural insensibility to her child's virtues and affection, by representing to herself how fearfully disease had warped judgment and perception; had cast over the enormities she could not palliate the pall of solemn remembrance of the truth that death's dark door was already as surely shut between mother and daughter, as if the grave held the former. A week of chill March rains and wind was disastrous to the patient, who had seemed to draw her main supplies of strength from the sunshine admitted freely to her room, with the spring air, redolent with the delicious odors of the freshly-turned earth, the budding trees, and early blossoms from the garden beneath her windows. She shrank and shivered under the ungenial sky, while the drizzling mist soaked life and animation out of the fragile body. Occasional fits of delirium, increased difficulty of breathing, and a steady decline of the slender remains of vital force, warned her attendants that their care would not be required much longer. She was still obstinate in her disbelief of the grave nature of her malady. The most distant reference to her decease would arouse her to angry refutation of the hinted doubt of her recovery, and excited her to offer proof of her declaration that she was less ill than others supposed; she would summon up a poor counterfeit of energy and mirth, more ghastly than her previous lassitude; deny that she suffered from any cause, save the unfailing nervous depression consequent upon the unfavorable weather.
Then came a day on which the sun looked forth with augmented splendor from his sombrely curtained pavilion; when the naked branches of the deciduous trees, the serried lances of the evergreens, and the broad leaves of the tent-like magnolias—the pride of the Tazewell place—shone as from a bath of molten silver. The battered flowers ventured into later and healthier bloom, and a robin, swinging upon the lilac spray nearest Rosa's window, sang blithe greeting to the reinstated spring.
Rosa heard him—opened her eyes, and smiled.
“One—maybe the very same—used to sing there every morning when I was a girl—used to awake me from my second nap. I could sleep all night then, and never dream once!”
A messenger had been sent, at daybreak, for her sisters and brother, who resided several miles away, but as yet Mrs. Sutton and Frederic were her only nurses. She had dozed almost constantly during the night, and been delirious when awakened to take nourishment or tonics, muttering senseless and disconnected words, and moaning in pain, the location and nature of which she could not describe to the solicitous watchers.
“I remember that Mabel and I,” she continued, dreamily, after a long pause—then correcting herself, “I ask your pardon, Frederic! I said I wouldn't speak of her ever again to you, but we were so much together in those days. Moreover, it has troubled me at times, that you did not know who your real friends were, and she did like you—and—and—what am I saying! You shouldn't let me run on so!”
She raised her hand with difficulty, and tried to wipe away the film gathering over her dilated eyes.
“Never mind, my darling! Do not attempt to talk! You are too weak and tired!” said her husband, tenderly.
“Tired!” catching at the word, “That is it! There is nothing else the matter, whatever Dr. Ritchie and the rest of them may say. Tired! for how many years I have been THAT! It seems like a thousand. This world is a tiresome place to most people, I think I shall never forget how jaded Mabel looked that week,” breaking off, as before, with a frightened start, such as a dreamer gives when he fancies he is falling from an immeasurable height. “Indeed, Fred, dear!” feeling for his hand upon the coverlet, “I did not mean to wound or offend you. It was a terrible ordeal for you, my love! But you came out of it as silver seven times refined. That is what the text says—isn't it? And you and Aunt Rachel are friends once more! That is one good deed I have done. I hope it will be recorded up THERE! Heaven knows there are not so many that I can afford to have one overlooked!”
Another season of dozing, and she awoke, rubbing her hands feebly together, as to cleanse them.
“My hands ought to be whiter—purer! I know what ails them. I should have picked up the letter she—Mrs. Sutton—wrote you. But I loved you so—even then!” beseechingly. “You will not hate me when I am gone? I mean when you get back to Philadelphia, and I am well enough to be left here. I was sure, if you got it, you would come to Ridgeley, and I let it go down the stream—down—down! Frederic!”
“I am here, dearest!” slipping his arm under, and raising her, as her shrill cry rang out, and she grasped the empty air. “Rosa, my WIFE!”
“I thought I was strangling—in the water! I am your wife—am I not? She couldn't take you from me if she were here. I wish she were! I always liked Mabel. She was a good, true woman—but she did not love you as I did!”
Panting for breath, she leaned upon her husband's breast, and her eyelids fell together again. Only for a moment! Then a smile—fond, sweet, and penitent—played among the ashy shadows encircling her mouth. “Poor little Florence! I am sorry I was cross to her. Tell her so, papa!” Her husband stooped to kiss her, laid her back upon the pillows, closed the sightless eyes, and left Mrs. Sutton alone with the dead.