CHAPTER VIII.THE BRAVE LITTLE WOMAN.
Backward now we turn to Edna herself, whowasa brave little woman, though she did not know herself of what she was capable, or how soon her capabilities were to be tested on that October morning when she entered the cars, at Buffalo, a happy bride,—save when something whispered to her that perhaps she had not done the wisest thing in marrying sosecretly. What would her teachers say when they heard the use she had made of their permission for her to accompany her sick friend home? And what would Aunt Jerry say to the runaway match when she was so great a stickler for the proprieties of life?
“She’ll charge it all to my High Church proclivities,” Edna said to herself, trying to laugh as she recalled her aunt’s peculiarities, and the probable effect the news would have on her. “I don’t care! I’m glad to be free from her any way,” she thought, as she remembered, with a shudder, all the dreariness and longing for something different which she had felt in that house by the graveyard where her childhood was passed.
It had never been hers to know the happiness which many children know. No mother had ever put her to bed, and tucked her up, with loving words and the good-night kiss.No hand had smoothed her locks of golden brown, as she said her little prayer. No pleasant voice had waked her in the morning from her dreamless sleep, and found excuse when the slumber was so hard to break, the eyes so unwilling to unclose. No little extra pie or cake was ever baked for her on the broken bit of plate, or cracked saucer. No sled, with her name upon it, stood out by gate, or door-step; and no genuine doll-baby ever lay in any box, or basket, or drawer in that prim, silent house, for Aunt Jerry did not believe in such useless things. “She gave the child enough to eat of good, plain, wholesome food, and that was all any one could ask.” She knew, too, that Edna said her prayers, and she saw that her Sunday-school lesson was always learned, and heard her say the Creed and Commandments every Sunday afternoon; but there were no gentle words and kind caresses, no tucking up on winter nights, no loving solicitude to see if the little hands and feet were warm. Edna knit or sewed till eight o’clock, and then, prompt with the first stroke, put by her work and took the tallow candle from the mantle piece, and without a word stole up the steep back stairs to her little bed in the room which looked out upon the graveyard just across the lane, where the white headstones shining through the darkness seemed to her like so many risen ghosts. She was afraid of the graveyard; and many a night she crept trembling into bed, and hiding her face under the clothes, said her prayers, not from any sense of duty, but because of the question sure to be put to her next morning, “Did you say your prayers, Edna?”
At the time of her father’s death Aunt Jerry had contended with his parishioners about his body, and, coming off victorious, had brought it home with her and buried it just by the fence under the shadow of her own cherry-tree, where regularly every Sunday in summer she took Edna and talked to her of her father, and told her how sorry he would be ifhe knew what a bad girl she was, and how he would rest better in his coffin if she would try to be good and learn the creed and catechism, so as to be confirmed the next time the Bishop came. And, more from fear than anything else, Edna learned the catechism and was confirmed, and hoped her father would be easy in his coffin, as Aunt Jerusha said he would.
As a child, Edna shunned her father’s grave, and thought only with terror of him who slept there; but after a time there came a change, and she no longer stood in fear of that grassy mound, but tended it with the utmost care, and sometimes, when no one saw her, knelt or rather crouched beside it, and whispered softly:
“Dear father, I am trying to be good: but oh, it is so hard, and Aunt Jerry is so cross. I wish you had not died. Help me,—can’t you, father?”
In this prayer there was no direct appeal to God; but He who knew all the trials and sorrow of the poor orphan girl, heard that cry for help, and the world was always brighter to Edna after a visit to that grave, and Aunt Jerusha’s tongue had less power to sting.
Aunt Jerusha meant to do her duty, and thought she did it when she tried to repress her naturally gay, light-hearted niece, and make her into a sober, quiet woman, content to sew the blessed day through and knit the livelong evening.
But Edna was like a rubber ball,—she could be crushed, but she would not stay so, and the moment the oppressor’s foot was removed she bounded back again as full of fun, and frolic, and life as ever! So when at the age of fifteen she became, in one sense, a charity scholar in Canandaigua Seminary, she recovered all her elasticity of spirits, and, freed from her aunt’s scrutiny, seemed constantly bubbling over with happiness and joy.
She was very popular, and, in spite of her plain dress, becamethe goddess by whom every academy boy swore, dreaming of her by night, and devising ways and means of seeing her by day.
Charlie Churchill was in love with her at once,—desperately, irretrievably in love, and, though she snubbed him at first, and made laughable caricatures of him in his foppish clothes, with his eye-glass, which he carried for no reason except to be dandyish, she ended by returning his affection and pledging herself to him on the fly-leaf of her algebra, that being the only bit of paper available at the time.
Charlie had the reputation of being very rich,—heir, or joint heir with his brother of Leighton Place, on the Hudson. And Edna fully believed him when he talked so largely of “my house, my horses, my hounds, my park.” Allmine, and nothing Roy’s, “Old Roy,” as he usually designated his brother, whom Edna thought of as a sober, middle-aged man, who was at Leighton rather on sufferance than as its rightful owner.
After her adventure in the cars, and she learned that the man she had caricatured was the veritable Roy, she thought him rather younger and better-looking than she had supposed, but still esteemed him a kind of supernumerary, who would be dreadfully in her way when she was mistress at Leighton, and of whom she would dispose as soon as possible.
She would do nothing unkind, she thought,—nothing for which any one could blame her; but it was so much better for young folks and old folks to live apart, that she would fit up some one of the numerous cottages which Charlie had told her were on his place.
There was one near the river, a Gothic cottage, he said, somewhat out of repair. This she would improve and beautify, and furnish tastefully, and move Roy and his mother thither, where they could not be disturbed by the gayetiesat Leighton. For she meant to be very gay, and have the house full all the time, and had made out a list of those who were to be her guests.
Aunt Jerry was to come duringLent, and the carriage was to take her every day to morning service in the little church; while, every Friday, they would have omelets for breakfast, and baked salmon trout for dinner. Edna had the programme of her future life all marked out, even to the dresses she would wear on different occasions. And she knew just how beautiful her future home was; for Charlie had described it so minutely that she had made a little sketch of it, and, with Charlie to suggest, had corrected and improved and enlarged it, until it was a very accurate picture of the grounds and house at Leighton; with Edna herself on the steps, fastening a rose in Charlie’s button-hole.
The likeness to Charlie was perfect, and Edna prized it most for this, and put it away in her portfolio of drawings; and went on dreaming her bright dreams of the glorious future opening so joyfully before her.
She was not mercenary, and would have loved and married Charlie all the same if he had not been rich, as she believed him to be. But she was very glad that he had money, for her tastes were naturally luxurious. She liked beautiful things about her; and then she could do so much good, and make so many happy, she said to Charlie, when he asked her once how she would feel to know he was poor as a church mouse.
Charlie had almost made up his mind to tell her the truth, for his conscience troubled him greatly; but when, among other things, she said: “I do not care for your money, Charlie; and should love you just the same if you had not a penny. The only thing that could change me toward you, would be losing confidence in you,” he could not tell herthat he was deceiving her; and so he let her dream on, and tried to remember if he ever had told her positively that he was the heir of Leighton, and concluded that he had not. She had taken it for granted, and he was not responsible for the mistake.
Then, he trusted much to Roy’s generosity. Roy would let them live at Leighton, of course; and it would be Edna’s home just the same as if he owned it, only he did not know aboutmovinghis mother and Roy into that cottage by the river.
But he would not worry; it would all be right; and, in any event, Edna would behis, and could not “go back on him,” when she did find out; and he could easily persuade her it was all done from love and his fear of losing her.
So he silenced his conscience, and let her go on blindly toward her fate, and surprised her one day with a proposition to elope.
At first, Edna refused; but when the mail brought her a letter from Aunt Jerusha, she began to waver. She had asked her aunt for a dollar of pocket money, and her aunt had written a stinging reply, telling her shehada dollar when she left home three weeks ago, and asking what had become of that.
“I know,” she wrote, “that if you follow my instructions, you have put five cents every Sunday on the plate; that makes fifteen cents; then, you may have wanted some boot-lacings,—you always do,—and possibly some elastics, but that isallyou have any business to want; and you ought to have on handfifty centsat least, and still allow for some extravagance I can’t think of. No; I shan’t send you any dollar for three weeks to come; then, if the roads are not too muddy, I shall be in town with some butter, and eggs, and poultry, and, if I hear a good account of you, shall give you, maybe, seventy-five cents.
“P.S. I’ve been half sorry that I let you go back to school this winter, for I ain’t feeling very well, and I shouldn’t wonder if I took you home with me for a spell. I’ve got stuff enough together to make a nice carpet, and you could cut and sew the rags.”
Now Edna had not spent her dollar of pocket money in ways of which her aunt would at all approve. Fifteen cents had gone on the plate, and five cents more to Sunday-school. Fifteen more had gone for chocolates, and twenty-five more for the blue ribbon on her hair which Charlie liked so much; twenty-five more to a poor woman, carrying one child in her arms and leading another by the hand, while the remaining fifteen had been paid for a saucer of ice-cream which she shared with two of her companions; nothing for shoe-lacings, nothing for elastics, and only twenty cents for anything which would commend itself to her stern aunt, who would call the beggar woman an impostor, the blue ribbon trash and vanity, which Edna had promised to renounce, while the chocolates and cream would be classed under the head ofgormandizing, if, indeed, the literal Miss Jerusha did not accuse her of “gluttony and stuffing.”
All this Edna knew was in store for her whenever the state of the roads would admit of her aunt’s journey to town with her butter, eggs, and poultry; but, aside from these, there was the dreadful possibility of being taken from school and compelled to pass the dreary winter in that lonely house by the graveyard, with no companions but the cat and her own gloomy thoughts, unless it were the balls of carpet-rags she hated so terribly. When Edna thought of all this, and then remembered that Charlie had said, “I shall see you again to-night, when I hope to find you have changed your mind and will go with me yet,” she began to hesitate, and balance the two situations offered for her acceptance. One, the lonely house, the dreary winter, the rasping aunt, andthe carpet-rags; the other, Leighton Place, with its freedom from all restraint, its life of perfect ease, and Charlie! Can we wonder that she chose the latter, and told Charlie yes instead of no, and planned the visit to Mrs. Dana, her mother’s cousin, and looked upon the proposition to accompany her sick friend home as something providential. There was no looking back after that, and Edna hardly stopped to think what she was doing, or to consider the consequences, until she found herself a bride, and stepped with Charlie on board the train at Buffalo. She was very happy, and her happiness showed itself in the sparkle of her eye, and the bright flush on her cheeks, and the restlessness of her little head, which tossed and turned itself airily, and kept the golden brown curls in constant motion.
Charlie, too, was happy, or would have been, could he have felt quite sure that Roy would send some money, without which he would be reduced to most unpleasant straits, unless he pawned his watch. He could do that, and he decided that he would; but as it could not be done until he reached Chicago, and as his purse, after paying the clergyman, and paying for his tickets, and paying for the book which Edna wanted, was none the heaviest, he feigned not to be hungry when they stopped to dine, and so had only Edna’s dinner to pay for, and contented himself with crackers and pop-corn for his supper; and when Edna proposed sharing them with him, he only made a faint remonstrance, and himself suggested that they should travel all night, instead of stopping at somehorrid hotelwhere the fare was execrable.
And Edna consented to everything, and, as the evening advanced, and she began to grow weary, nestled her curly head down on Charlie’s shoulder, and slept as soundly as if she had been at home in her own room looking out upon the graves behind the churchyard. Once, about midnight,as they stopped at some station, Charlie went out for a minute, and when he returned and took his seat beside her, he said, hurriedly, as if it were something for which he was not very glad:
“I have just recognized two old acquaintances in the rear car, Jack Heyford and Georgie Burton. I hope they won’t see us. I like Jack well enough; but to have that Georgie’s great big eyes spearing at you I could not bear.”
“Who is Georgie Burton, and who is Jack Heyford?” Edna asked; and Charlie replied, “Georgie lives at Oakwood, near Leighton, and is the proudest, stuck-up thing, and has tried her best to catch old Roy. I think she’ll do it, too, in time, and then, my ——, won’t she snub you, because—”
He hesitated a moment, while Edna said:
“Because what? Tell me, please, why Georgie Burton will snub me.”
“Well, because you are poor, and she is rich,” Charlie jerked out; and Edna said, innocently:
“But I shall be rich, too, as rich as she, won’t I, Charlie?”
Her clear, honest eyes were fixed upon his without a shadow of suspicion; and Charlie could not undeceive her, and tell her that ten dollars was all the money he had in the world; that to defray the expenses of that journey he had sold a diamond stud in Buffalo, and, if Roy did not come to the rescue, his watch must get them back to Leighton.
“Even if you were not rich you would be worth a hundred Georgie Burtons,” he said, as he drew her closely to his side; and then he spoke of Jack Heyford, Georgie’s half-brother, and the best fellow in the world, and Edna listened awhile, until things began to get a little mixed in her brain, and her head lay again on Charlie’s shoulder, and her eyes were closed in sleep.
The day had been very warm and sultry, and although somewhat out of season, a heavy thunder-storm had come up, and the darkness without grew darker as the rain beat against the windows, and flashes of lightning showed occasionally against the inky sky. Faster and faster the train sped on; and Charlie’s head drooped till his locks mingled with Edna’s curls of golden brown, and in his sleep his arm tightened around her waist, and he was dreaming perhaps of Roy and his mother, and what they would say to his wife, when suddenly, without a moment’s warning, came the fearful crash, and the next flash of lightning which lit up the gloom showed a dreadful sight of broken beams, and shattered boards, and shivered glass, and a boyish form wedged tightly in, its white face upturned to the pitiless sky, while beside it crouched the girlish bride, trying in vain to extricate her lover, as her quivering lips kept whispering, “Charlie, oh, Charlie!”