CHAPTER XIX.UNCLE PHIL.
Feeling intuitively that it would be better for Aunt Becky to announce her presence, Edna made some excuse for stealing upstairs, where from the window she had her first view of Uncle Phil, as he rode into the yard and round to the barn on Bobtail’s back. He was a short, fat man, arrayed in a home-made suit of gray, with his trouser legs tucked in his boots, and his round, rosy face protected by lappets of sheepskin attached to his cap and tied under his chin. Taken as a whole, there was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance, and nothing especially repellent either, but Edna felt herself shaking from head to foot as she watched him dismounting from Bobtail, the old fat sorrel horse, who rubbed his nose against his master’s arm as if there was perfect sympathy between them. Edna saw this action, and saw Uncle Phil, as he gently stroked his brute friend, to whom he seemed to be talking as he led him into the barn.
“He is kind to his horse, anyway. Maybe he will be kind to me,” Edna thought, and then she waited breathlessly until she heard the heavy boots, first in the back room, then in the kitchen, and then in the south room, where Becky was giving a few last touches to the table.
The chamber door was slightly ajar, and as Uncle Phil’s voice was loud, Edna heard him distinctly, as he said:
“Hallo, Beck, what’s all this highfallutin for. What’s up? Who’s come,—Maude?”
Becky’s reply was inaudible, but Uncle Phil’s rejoinder was distinct and clear:
“Umph! A poor relation, hey? Where is she? Where have you put her?”
Becky was now in the kitchen, and Edna heard her say:
“In the back chamber, in course, till I know yer mind.”
“All right. Now hurry up your victuals and trot her out. I’m hungry as a bear.”
After overhearing this scrap of conversation, it is not strange if Edna shrank from being “trotted out,” but, obedient to Aunt Becky’s call, she went downstairs and into the south room, where with his back to the fire, and his short gray coat-skirts pulled up over his hands, stood Uncle Phil. He did not look altogether delighted, and his little round twinkling eyes were turned upon Edna with a curious rather than a pleased expression as she came slowly in. But when she stood before him and he saw her face distinctly, Edna could not help feeling that a sudden change passed over him: his eyes put on a softer look, and his whole face seemed suddenly to light up as he took her offered hand.
“Becky tells me you are my kin, grand-niece, or grandaunt, or grandmother. I’ll be hanged if she made it out very clear. Maybe you can explain what you are to me?”
He held her hand tightly in his own, and kept looking at her with an earnest, searching gaze, before which Edna dropped her eyes, as she replied:
“I can claim no nearer relationship than your grand-niece. My mother was Lucy Fuller.”
“Who married the parson and died from starvation?” Uncle Phil rejoined.
And with a heightened color, Edna answered quickly:
“She married my father, sir, an Episcopal clergyman, and died when I was a few days old.”
“Yes, yes, all the same,” Uncle Phil answered, good-humoredly. “I dare say she was half-starved most of the time; ministers’ wives mostly are, Episcopal ones especially. I take it you are of the Episcopal persuasion, too?”
“I am.”
And Edna spoke up as promptly as if it were her mother she was acknowledging.
“Yes, yes,” Uncle Phil said again; and here releasing Edna’s hand, which he had been holding all the time, he took a huge pinch of snuff, and then passed the box to Edna, who declined at once. “What, don’t snuff? You miss a great deal of comfort. It’s good for digestion and nervousness, snuff is. I’ve used it this thirty years; and you are an Episcopalian, and proud of it, I see: jest so. I’ve no great reason to like that sect, seeing about the only one I ever knew intimately turned out a regular hornet, a lucifer match, the very old Harry himself; didn’t adorn the profession; was death on Unitarians, and sent the whole caboodle of us to perdition. She’ll be surprised to find me settin’ on the banks of the river Jordan when she comes across, paddlin’ her own canoe, for shewillpaddle it, I warrant you. Nobody can help her. Yes, yes. Such is life, take it as you find it. Maude is an Episcopal, red-hot. I like her; maybe I’ll like you; can’t tell. Yes, yes; sit by now, and have some victuals.”
During this conversation, Becky, who had put the dinner upon the table, was standing in respectful silence, waiting until her master was ready, and trembling for the fall of her light snowy crusts which she had made for her pot-pie. But her fears were groundless; the dinner was a great success, and Uncle Phil helped Edna bountifully, and insisted upon her taking more gravy, and ordered Becky to bring a bottle of cider from the cellar.
“Cider was ’most as good as snuff for digestion,” he said, as he poured Edna a glass of the beverage, which sparkled and beaded like champagne.
On old Becky’s face there was a look of great satisfaction as she saw her master’s attentions to the young lady, and assoon as her duties were over at the table, she stole up the back stairs to the little forlorn room where Edna’s trunk was standing,
“I know I kin ventur so much,” she said to herself as she lifted the trunk and carried it into the next chamber, which had a pleasanter lookout, and was more pretentious every way, than its small dark neighbor.
This done Becky retired to the kitchen until dinner was over, and her master, who was something of a gormandizer, was so gorged that three or four pinches of snuff were requisite to aid his digestion; and then like a stuffed anaconda he coiled himself up in his huge arm-chair and slept soundly, while Becky cleared the table and put the room to rights.
The short wintry afternoon was drawing to a close by the time Uncle Phil’s nap was over. He had slept heavily and snored loudly, and the last snore awoke him. Starting up, he exclaimed:
“What’s that? Yes, yes; snored, did I? Shouldn’t wonder if I got into a doze. Ho, you, Beck!”
His call was obeyed at once by the colored woman, who came and stood deferentially before him.
“I say, Beck, I’m ’bout used up, what with eatin’ such an all-fired dinner on top of jouncing along on Bobtail,—might as well ride a Virginia fence and done with it. Can’t you do the chores? Bobtail is fed, and the cows too.”
Becky signified her readiness to do anything her master liked, and after bringing a tall tallow candle and adding a stick to the fire, she departed, leaving Edna alone with Uncle Phil, who was wide-awake now, and evidently disposed to talk.
“Now tell me all about it,” he said, suddenly facing toward Edna. “Tell me who you are in black for, and what sent you here, and what you want, and how you happenedto know of me, when I never heard of you; but first, what is your name? I’ll be hanged if I’ve thought to inquire.”
“Edna Louise Browning was my name until I was married.”
“Married! Thunder!” and springing from his chair, Uncle Phil took the candle, and bringing it close to Edna’s face, scrutinized it closely. “You married? Why, you’re nothing but a child. Married? Where was your folks, to let you do such a silly thing? and where is he?”
“My husband is dead, was killed the very day we were married,—killed in the cars,—and I have no folks, no home, no friends, unless you will be one to me,” Edna replied, in a choking voice which finally broke down in a storm of tears and sobs.
Uncle Phil did not like to see a woman cry, especially a young, pretty woman like the one before him, but he did not know at all what to say: so he took three pinches of snuff, one after the other, sneezing as many times, blew his nose vigorously, and then going to the door which led into the kitchen, called out:
“Ho, Beck! come here,—I want you.”
But Beck was watering old Bobtail, and did not hear him, so he returned to his seat by the fire; and as Edna’s tears were dried by that time, he asked her to go on and tell him her story. Edna had determined to keep nothing back, and she commenced with the house by the graveyard, and the aunt, who perhaps meant to be kind, but who did not understand children, and made her life less happy than it might otherwise have been; then she passed on to Canandaigua and Charlie Churchill; and while telling of him and his friends, and where they lived, she thought once Uncle Phil was asleep, he sat so still, with his eyes shut, and one fat leg crossed over the other, and a pinch of snuff held tightly between his thumb and finger. But he was not asleep, andwhen she mentioned Leighton Place, he started up again and went out to Becky, who by this time was moving in the kitchen.
“I say, Beck,” he whispered in her ear, as he gave his snuff-box a tap with his finger, “move that gal’s band-box into the north-west chamber, d’ye hear?”
Becky did not tell him that she had already done that, but simply answered, “Yes, sar,” while he returned to Edna, who, wholly unconscious of her promotion or the cause of it, continued her story, which, when she came to the marriage and the accident, was interrupted again with her tears, which fell in showers as she went over with the dreadful scene, the gloomy night, the terrible storm, the capsized car, and Charlie dead under the ruins. Uncle Phil too was excited, and walked the room hurriedly, and took no end of snuff, and blew his nose like a trumpet, but made no comment until she mentioned Mrs. Dana, when he stopped walking, and said:
“Poor Sue, if she’d had a different name, I believe I’d kept her for my own, though she wan’t over clever. Dead, you say, and left five young ones, of course; the poorer they be the more they have. Poor little brats. I’ll remember that. And John wanted to marry you? You did better to come here; but where was that aunt, what d’ye call her? I don’t remember as you told me her name.”
“Aunt Jerusha Pepper,” Edna said; whereupon something dropped from Uncle Phil’s lip which sounded very much like “the devil!”
“What, sir?” Edna asked; and he replied:
“I was swearin’ a little. Such a name as that! Jerusha Pepper! No wonder she was hard on you. Did you go back to her at all? and what did she say?”
He took four pinches of snuff in rapid succession, and scattered it about so profusely, that Edna received some inher face and moved a little further from him, as she told him the particulars of her going back to Aunt Jerusha, and what the result had been. She intended to speak just as kindly and cautiously of Aunt Jerry as was possible; but it seemed as if some influence she could not resist was urging her on, and Uncle Phil was so much interested and drew her out so adroitly, that, though she softened everything and omitted many things, the old man got a pretty general impression of Aunt Jerusha Pepper, and guessed just how desolate must be the life of any one who tried to live with her.
“Yes, yes, I see,” he said, as Edna, frightened to think how much she had told, tried to apologize for Aunt Jerry, and take back some things she had said. “Yes, yes, never mind taking back. I can guess what kind of a firebrand she is. Knew a woman once, as near like her as two peas; might have been twins; pious, ain’t this peppercorn?”
Edna did not quite like Uncle Phil’s manner of speaking of her aunt, and she began to defend her, saying she was in the main a very good woman, who possessed many excellent qualities.
“Don’t doubt it in the least. Dare say she’s a saint; great on the creed and the catechism. And she is your aunt? Ho, Beck, come here; or stop, I’ll speak to you in the kitchen,” he said, as Becky came to the door.
The woman retreated to the kitchen fireplace, where Uncle Phil joined her, speaking again in a whisper, and saying,—
“Look here, Beck. Take that girl’s work-bag, or whatever she brought her things in, and carry it into the north chamber.”
“Maude’s room, sar!” Becky asked, with glistening eyes.
“Yes, Maude’s room,” Uncle Phil replied, and then went back to Edna, who had but little more to tell, except of her resolve to come to him as the only person in the world whowas likely to take her in, or on whom she had any claim of relationship.
“I don’t wish to be an incumbrance,” she said. “I want to earn my own living, and at the same time be getting something with which to pay my debts. Mr. Belknap, who brought me from the depot, thought I might get up a select school, and if I do, maybe you will let me board here. I should feel more at home with you than with strangers. Would you let me stay if I could get a school?”
There certainly was something the matter with Uncle Phil’s eyes just then.
“The pesky wind made them water,” he said, as he wiped them on his coat-sleeves and then looked down at the girl, who had taken a stool at his feet, and was looking anxiously into his face, as she asked if she might stay.
“Let me be, can’t you. I’ve got a bad cold. I’ve got to go out,” he said; and rising precipitately he rushed into the kitchen, and again summoning old Becky, began with, “I say, Beck, make a fire in the north chamber, a good rousing one too. It’s cold as fury; and fetch down a rose blanket from the garret, and warm the bed with the warming-pan; the sheets must be damp; and make some cream-toast in the morning; all cream,—girls mostly take to that, and stew somecrambriesto-morrow, and kill a hen.”
Having completed his list of orders Uncle Phil returned to Edna, while Becky, who, in anticipation of some suchdénouementhad already made a fire in the north and best chamber in the house, went up and added fresh fuel to the flames, which roared, and crackled, and diffused a genial warmth through the room. Meanwhile Uncle Phil, without directly answering Edna’s question as to whether she could stay there, said to her:
“And it’s seven hundred dollars you owe, with interest: three to Mr. Leighton, and four to that Peppery woman, andyou expect by teaching to earn enough to pay it, child; you never can do that, never. Schoolma’ams don’t get great wages round here.”
“Then I’ll hire out as a servant, or go to work in the factory. I’m not ashamed to do anything honorable, so that it gives me money with which to pay the debt,” Edna said, and her brown eyes were almost black with excitement, as she walked hastily across the floor to the window, where she stood for a moment, struggling to keep back the hot tears, and thinking she had made a great mistake in coming to a man like Uncle Phil, who, having regaled himself with two pinches of snuff, said:
“Look here, girl. Come back to the fire and let’s have it out.”
Something in his voice gave Edna hope that after all he was not going to desert her, and she came back, and stood with her hand on the iron fireplace, and her eyes fixed on him, as he said:
“You spoke of Mr. Belknap. Did he inquire your name?”
“No, sir,” was the reply.
“Did anybody inquire your name down to the depot?”
“No, sir.”
“Has Beck asked it?”
“No, sir, but I think I told her.”
“Thunder you did. Why will women tell all they know, and more too; ten chances though she didn’t understand, she’s so blunderin’. I’ll go and see.”
And again Uncle Phil went into the kitchen, and while pretending to drink from the gourd, casually said to the servant:
“Ho, Beck, what’s this girl’s name in t’other room; hanged if I want to ask her.”
Becky thought a moment and then replied: “don’t jestlyremember, though I b’lieve she told me; but I was so flustified when she came. Spects, though, it’s Overton, seein’ she’s yer kin.”
“Yes, yes, certainly;” and Uncle Phil went back to the south room with a very satisfied look upon his face. “See here, miss,” he began. “Your name isOverton,—Louise Overton. Do you understand?”
Edna looked at him too much surprised to speak, and he continued:
“You are my niece,Miss Overton,Louise Overton, not Browning, nor Churchill, nor Pepper-pod, nor Edna, but Louise Overton. And so I shall introduce you to the folks in Rocky Point.”
Edna saw that he meant her to take another name than her own, and she rebelled against it at once.
“My name is not Overton,” she said, but he interrupted her with—
“It’sLouisethough, according to your own statement, Edna Louise.”
“I admit that, but it is not Overton, and it would be wrong for me to take that name, and lose my identity.”
“The very thing I want you to do,” said Uncle Phil, “and here are my reasons, or a part of them. I like you, for various things. One, you seem to have some vim, grit, spunk, and want to pay your debts; then, I like you because you have had such a hard time with that Pepper woman. I don’t blame you for running away; upon my soul I don’t. Some marry to get rid of a body, and some don’t marry and so get rid of ’em that way. You did the first, and got your husband’s neck broke, and got into debt yourself, and seas of trouble. And you are my great niece. And Lucy Fuller was your mother, and Louise Overton was your grandmother, and my twin sister. Do you hear that, my twin sister, that I loved as I did my life, and you must have been named forher, and there’s a look like her in your face, all the time, and that hair which you’ve got up under a net, but which I know by the kinks is curly as a nigger’s, is hers all over again, color and all, and just now when you walked to the window in a kind of huff, I could have sworn it was my sister come back again from the grave where we buried her more than thirty years ago. Yes, you are a second Louise. I’m an old man of sixty, and never was married, and never shall be, and when Susan was here years ago, I thought of adopting her, but I’ll be hanged if there was snap enough to her, and then she took the first chap that offered, and married Dana, and that ended her. There wasn’t a great many of us, and for what I know you are all the kin I have, and I fancy you more than any young girl I’ve seen, unless its Maude, and she’s no kin, which makes a difference. I’ve a mind to adopt you, to give you my name, Overton, and if you do well I’ll remember you in my will. Mind, I don’t propose to pay your debts. I want to see you scratch round and do it yourself, but I’ll give you a home and help you get scholars, or if you can’t do anything at that, help you get a place in the factory at Millville, or in somebody’s kitchen as you mentioned.”
Uncle Phil’s eyes twinkled a little as he said this last, and looked to see what effect it had on Edna. But she never winced or showed the slightest emotion, and he continued:
“Nobody knows that you are a Browning, or a Churchill, or a widow, and it’s better they shouldn’t. I saw the account of that smash-up in the newspaper, but never guessed the girl was Louise’s grandchild. Folks round here read it too; the papers were full of it. Charlie Churchill hunted up in my woods one season; he’s pretty well known hereabouts.”
“Charlie, my Charlie, my husband; was he ever here, and did you know him?” Edna asked, vehemently, and Uncle Phil replied:
“Yes, I knew him when he was a boy, though he couldn’t be much more than that when you run off with him. His brother owns the hotel in town. We are on different roads, but ain’t neither of us such a very great ways from Albany, you know.”
Instantly Edna’s countenance fell.
“Roy Leighton own the hotel! then he will be coming here, and I don’t want to see him till he is paid,” she said, in some dismay, and Uncle Phil replied:
“He don’t often bother himself to come to Rocky Point. Never was here more than two or three times. His agent does the business for him, and that agent isme. He was here once, and I believe his mother was up the mountain at a kind of hotel where city folks sometimes stay and make b’lieve they like it. But this Charlie stayed in town at the tavern, and folks——”
Here Uncle Phil stopped abruptly, and Edna, after waiting a moment for him to proceed, said:
“Folks did not fancy Charlie. He was not popular. Is that what you want to say? If it is, don’t be afraid to say it. I have borne much harder things than that,” and there came a sad, sorry look upon her face. She was thinking of her lost faith in Charlie’s integrity, and Uncle Phil of the scandalous stories there had been about the fast young man of eighteen who had made love to the girls indiscriminately, from little Marcia Belknap, the farmer’s daughter, to Miss Ruth Gardner, whose father was the great man of Rocky Point, and whose influence would do more to help or harm Edna than that of any other person in town. But Uncle Phil could not tell Edna all this, so he merely replied, after a little:
“No, he wan’t very popular, that’s a fact. Young men from the cities are different, you know, and Charles was sowing his wild oats about those days. He passed for rich, yousee; called itmy hotel, my tenants, and all that, when it was his brother’s.”
A sound from Edna like a sob made Uncle Phil pause abruptly and mentally curse himself for having said so much. The truth was he had never quite forgiven Charlie for inveigling him into loaning fifty dollars with promises of payment as soon as he could get a draft from home. The draft never came, but Roy did, and settled his brother’s bills and took him away while Uncle Phil was absent, and as Charlie made no mention of his indebtedness in that direction, the debt remained uncancelled. Several times Uncle Phil had been on the point of writing to Roy about it, but had neglected to do so, thinking to wait until he came to Rocky Point again, when he would speak to him about it. But after the news of Charlie’s tragical death was received, he abandoned the idea altogether:
“Fifty dollars would not break him,” he thought, and it was not worth while to trouble Roy Leighton any more by letting him know just what a scamp his brother was. So he tore up Charlie’s note and threw it into the fire, and took a great deal of snuff that day, and stayed till it was pitch dark at the hotel where they were discussing the accident, and commenting upon poor Charlie, whose virtues now were named before his faults. Mention was made of him in the minister’s sermon the next Sunday, and it was observed that Miss Ruth Gardner cried softly under her veil, and that pretty Marcia Belknap looked a little pale, and after that the excitement gradually died away, and people ceased to talk of Charlie Churchill and his unfortunate end. But they would do so again, and the whole town would be alive with wonder if it once were known that the young girl in black at Uncle Phil Overton’s was Charlie Churchill’s widow. Ruth Gardner’s pale-gray eyes would scan her coldly and harshly, while even Marcia Belknap would, perhaps, draw back from onewho all unknowingly had been her rival. This Uncle Phil foresaw, and hence his proposition that Edna should bear his name and drop that of Churchill, which was pretty sure to betray her. And after a time he persuaded her to do it.
“You are already Louise,” he said, as Edna questioned the right in the matter. “And inasmuch as I adopt you for my daughter, it is right and proper that you take my name, is it not?”
“Perhaps so,” Edna replied faintly; “but I shall have to tell Aunt Jerry, and Mr. Heyford too. I promised him I would write as soon as I was located in business.”
To this, Uncle Phil did not object, provided Jack Heyford kept his own counsel, as Edna was sure he would. With regard to Miss Pepper, he made no remonstrance. He did not seem to fearher, but surprised Edna with the question,
“What sort of a looking craft is this Pepper woman?”
Edna, who felt that she might have told too much that was prejudicial to her aunt, gladly seized the opportunity to make amends by praising her personal appearance.
“Aunt Jerry dresses so queerly that one can hardly tell how she does look,” she said, “but if she only wore clothes like other people, I think she’d be real handsome for her age. She was pretty once, I’m sure, for she has a nice, fair complexion now, and her neck and arms are plumper and whiter than a Mrs. Fosbook’s, whom I saw barenecked and short-sleeved at a sociable in Canandaigua. Her hair is soft and wavy, and she has so much of it, too, but will twist it into such a hard knot always, when she might make such a lovely waterfall.”
“Do you mean those things that hang down your back like a work-bag?” Uncle Phil asked, laughing louder and longer than Edna thought the occasion warranted, especially as he did not know Miss Pepper, and how out of place a waterfall would be upon her.
“What of her eyes?” he asked, and Edna replied—“bright and black as jet beads.”
“And snap like a snap-dragon, I’ll bet,” Uncle Phil rejoined, adding, after a moment, “I’d really like to see this kinswoman of yours. Tell her so when you write, and say she’s welcome to bed and board whenever she chooses to come, and there’s an Episcopal meeting-house over to Millville, and she can have old Bobtail every saint’s day in the calendar.”
There was a perfect shower of snuff after this, and then Uncle Phil questioned Edna as to what she thought she could teach, and how much she expected to get for each scholar; then he summoned Becky and ordered cider, and apples, and fried cakes, and butternuts, and made Edna try them all, and told her about her grandmother Louise when she was a girl, and then, precisely as the clock pointed to nine, called Becky again, and bade her showMiss Overtonto her room.
“I breakfast sharp at half-past seven,” he said to Edna; “but if you feel inclined, lie as long as you please, though I can’t say but I’d like to see a fresh young face across the table. Maude generally was up.”
“I shall be up too,” Edna said, as she stood a moment in the door looking at her uncle; then, as she remembered all the kindness he had shown to her, there came over her with a rush the hunger she had always felt for something missed in childhood, and without stopping to think, she walked boldly up to the little man, and said, “Uncle Phil, nobody ever kissed me good-night since I can remember; none of my relatives I mean; will you do so?”
Uncle Phil was confounded. It was more than thirty years since he had kissed anybody, and he began to gather up his short coat skirts and hop,—first on one foot, then on the other, and look behind him toward the door in akind of helpless way, as if meditating flight But Edna stood her ground, and put up her full, red lips so temptingly, that with a hurried “bless me, girl, bless me, I don’t know ’bout this. Yes, yes, I feel very queer and curis,” Uncle Phil submitted, and suffered Edna’s kiss, and as her lips touched his, he clasped both arms about her neck, and kissed her back heartily, while with a trembling voice, he said, “Heaven bless you, my child, my daughter, Louise Overton. I’m a rough old fellow, but I’ll do my duty to you.”
There was a tear on Edna’s cheek, left there by Uncle Phil, and Edna accepted it as the baptism for her new name, and felt more resigned to “Louise Overton,” as she followed Becky upstairs to the north room, where the bright fire was making shadows on the wall, and diffusing a delightful feeling of warmth throughout the apartment