CHAPTER XV.AUNT JERRY.
Edna had planned it so as to reach home on Thanksgiving day, thinking within herself:
“Her heart will be softer on that day, sure, and she will not be so hard on me.”
Fortunately for her she saw no one in Canandaigua whom she knew, for the morning train, which was a little behind time, arrived just before the departure of the stage which would take her to the Hill. She was the only passenger, and as she rode along over the rough, uneven road, she had ample time for reviewing the past, and living over in fancy all she had experienced since last she traversed that route, drawn by Deacon Williams’s old white horse, with Aunt Jerry beside her, prim and straight, and grimly silent, save when she gave her niece some wholesome advice, or reproved her for what she had not done quite as much as for what she had. Then she was Edna Browning, the happy school-girl, who knew no care sharper than Aunt Jerry’s tongue, and from that she was escaping for a time, for she was going back to school, to all the fun and frolic which she always managed to extract from her surroundings; and Charlie was there to meet her,—aye, did meet her right by the gate, as the old white horse drew up, and would have helped her out, but for the signal she gave that he must not notice her. Aunt Jerry was death on academy boys, and her face assumed a still more vinegary expression as she asked:
“What young squirt was that who looked as if he was going to speak?”
Edna had not replied, as she was busily occupied in climbing over the wheel, and so Aunt Jerry had never heard of Charlie Churchill until the telegram was brought to her announcing his death. That scene was very fresh in Edna’s mind, and her tears flowed like rain as she thought of herself as she was then, and as she was now, scarcely three months later. A wife, a widow, friendless and alone, going back to Aunt Jerry as the only person in the world on whom she had a claim.
“She won’t turn me off,” she said to herself. “She can’t,when I’ve nowhere to go; and I mean to be so humble, and tell her the whole story, and I’ll try to please her harder than I ever did before.”
Thus Edna reasoned with herself, until from the summit of a hill she caught sight of the tall poplars, and saw in the distance the spire of St. Paul’s. Behind it was Aunt Jerry’s house; she was almost there, and her heart beat painfully as she tried to think what to say, how to word her greeting so as not to displease. It did not occur to her that probably Aunt Jerry was at church, until the stage left her at the gate, and she tried the door, which was locked. Fortunately, she knew just where to look for the key, and as she stooped to get it, Tabby, who had been sitting demurely on the windowsill, with one eye on the warm room from which she was shut out, and one on the church whence she expected her mistress to come, jumped down, and with ameowof welcome came purring and rubbing against Edna’s dress, and showing,—as much as a dumb creature can show,—her joy at seeing her young playmate again. Edna took the animal in her arms, and hugging it to her bosom, let fall a shower of kisses and tears upon the long, soft fur, saying aloud:
“You, at least, are glad, old Tabby, and I’ll take your welcome as a good omen of another.”
She let herself into the house, and with Tabby still nestled in her arms, stood looking around the familiar room. It seemed to her years since she was there, and she found herself wondering to find it so unchanged. The same rag carpet which she had helped to make, with what weariness and tears she could not recall without a shudder. The same calico-covered lounge, with Aunt Jerry’s work-basket and foot-stove tucked away under it, the same fall leaf table with its plaid spread of red and green, Aunt Jerry’s straight-back chair by the oven door, the clock upon the mantel, and could she believe her senses, a picture of herself upon the wallabove the fireplace; a photograph taken three years before by a travelling artist, whose movable car had ornamented the common in front of the church, a terror to all the horses, and a thing of wonder and fascination to all the school boys and girls, most of whom first and last saw the inside of the mysterious box, and came out reproduced. Edna had picked blackberries to pay for her picture, and sat unknown to Aunt Jerusha, whose comment on the likeness was, “Better have saved the money for something else. You ain’t so handsome that you need want to be repeated. It looks enough sight better than you do.”
Edna knew that the picture did not look half as well as she did. The mouth was awry, the chin elevated, the hands immense, and the whole body indicative of awkwardness, and lack of taste on the artist’s part. But it was herself, and Edna prized it and kept it hidden away from Aunt Jerry, who threatened to burn it when she found her niece looking at it instead of knitting on her stocking. Latterly, Edna had ceased to care for it, and did not know where it was, but Aunt Jerry had found it and put it in a little frame made of hemlock twigs, and hung it over the mantel; and Edna took heart from that, for it showed that Aunt Jerry had a warm place for her memory at least, or she would not preserve that horrid caricature of her.
“She is not so hard after all,” Edna said, as she laid aside her wraps, and then, as she remembered something she had read about there being a parlor and a kitchen in every person’s heart, and the treatment one received depending very much upon which room they get into, she thought, “I guess I’ve always been in the kitchen, but hereafter I’ll stay in the parlor.”
The stove, which Aunt Jerry used in winter, was closed tightly, but Edna caught the odor of something cooking in the oven, and opening the door, saw the nicely dressed turkeysimmering slowly in preparation for Miss Pepper’s dinner, and then the impulse seized her to hasten the fire, and have the dinner ready by the time her aunt came in from church. The vegetables were prepared and standing in pans of water, and Edna put them on the stove, and basted the turkey, and set the table with the best cloth and dishes, just as she used to do on Thanksgiving day, and felt her old identity coming back as she moved about among the familiar things, and wondered what Aunt Jerry would say, and how long before she would come.
Church was out at last, she knew by the pealing of the organ, and by seeing Mr. Swift go behind the church and unhitch his gray horses. There was a brisk step outside the gate; Aunt Jerry was coming, and with her hands clasped together, and her head slightly bent forward in the attitude of intense expectancy, Edna stood waiting for her.
There was a heightened color on her cheek, and her eyes shone with such brilliancy as to make them seem almost black, while her long curls fell forward and partly covered her face like some bright satin veil.
To say that Miss Pepper was surprised, would but faintly express the perfect amazement with which she regarded the apparition which met her view as she hastily opened the door, her movements accelerated by the mysterious smells of savory cooking which had greeted her olfactories when outside the gate. And yet Edna had really been much in the spinster’s mind that Thanksgiving morning, when she bustled about here and there and made her preparations for her solitary dinner,—solitary unless Miss Martha Ann Barnes, the only intimate friend Miss Pepper had, could be induced to spend the remainder of the day with her.
“It will seem more Christian-like and pleasant to have somebody sit opposite you at table on such a day as this, won’t it, Tabby?” Miss Pepper said to her cat, to whom shewas sometimes given to talking, and who showed her appreciation of the remark by a friendly mew and by rubbing against her mistress’ dress.
And then Miss Pepper’s thoughts went straying back into the past, forty years ago, and she saw a group of noisy, happy children, of which she had been the merriest, the ringleader, they had called her at first, and afterward the flirt, who cared but little how many hearts she broke when, at the gay Thanksgiving time, she joined them at her grandfather’s house among the Vermont hills, and with her glowing beauty, set off by some bright bit of ribbon or string of beads, made sad havoc with the affections of her young male relatives. There was a slight jerking of her shoulders, and a bridling of her head, as Miss Pepper remembered those far-off days, and then her thoughts came a little nearer to the present time, to thirty-five years ago that Thanksgiving day, and the dress of white brocade, with its bertha of dainty lace, and the orange flowers sent by a city cousin who “could not be present on the happy occasion.” The flowers were never worn, neither was the lace, nor the brocade; and yellow and soiled with time, they lay together, far down in the old red chest, where the linen sheets and the sprigs of lavender were, and where no one had ever seen them but Miss Pepper herself.
As regularly as Thanksgiving day came round, she opened the red chest, and undoing the precious parcel, shook out the heavy folds of the brocade, and held the orange flowers a moment in her hands, and wondered wherehewas to-day, and if he thought of thirty-five years ago, and what had almost been.
As she had always done so, Miss Pepper did now on the day of which we write; and did it, too, earlier than had been her wont. Usually her visit to the chest was reserved for the afternoon, but this morning there was a strange yearningat her heart, a longing for something her life had missed, and before her breakfast dishes were washed she had made her yearly visit to the chest, and sitting down beside it, as by an open grave, with the faded brocade across her lap, and the orange flowers in her hand, said softly to herself, “If this had come to pass I mightn’t have been alone to-day.” And then, as she remembered the girl of thirty-five years ago, and thought of herself as she was now, she arose, and going to the glass, inspected, with a grim kind of resignation, the face which met her view; the thin, sharp features, the straight nose, with its slightly glaring nostrils, the firmly compressed lips, the broad, low forehead, and the round black eyes which age had not dimmed one whit, though it had given them a sharper, harder expression than in their youth they had worn.
“And they called me handsome,” she said, as she stood contemplating herself. “I was Jerry then, pretty Jerry Pepper, but now I’m nobody but Aunt Jerusha, or worse yet, old Mother Pepper, as the school boys call me.”
And with a sigh, the lonely woman locked up her treasures till another year, and went back to her household cares and her lonely life. But there was a softer look upon her face, and when, as she was dusting, she came to Edna’s picture, which from some unaccountable impulse she had only a few days before framed and hung upon the wall, she held her feather duster suspended a moment, and looked earnestly at the face of the young girl who for twelve years had been with her on Thanksgiving day. And as she looked there arose a half wish that Edna was there now, disgraced though she thought her to be by her unlucky marriage.
“She bothered me a sight, but then it’s kind of lonesome without her. I wonder what she’s doing to-day,” she said, as she resumed her dusting and thought again of MarthaAnn Barnes, who might be induced to occupy Edna’s old seat at the table.
But Martha Ann was not at church. Miss Pepper must eat her dinner alone; and with the thought that “it did not pay to buy that head of celery and make a parade just for herself,” she turned to the Prayer-Book and minister, and felt her ire rise so high at his bowing so low in the creed, that, as she wrote to Mrs. Churchill, she withheld a dollar and gave as her offering only fifty cents; taking care as she came out of church to tell what she had done to one who she knew would communicate it to her pastor. Excellent Miss Pepper! the Thanksgiving sermon must have done her a world of good, and she went home prepared to enjoy as best she could her solitary dinner, but not prepared to find her niece waiting there for her.