CHAPTER XXXV.LETTERS.
In course of time there came a letter to Edna from Roy. It had been sent by him to Aunt Jerry, and by her to Uncle Phil, who forwarded it to his niece, together with a few lines of his own, telling how “all-fired lonesome he was, and how he missed her gab, and the click-clack of her high heels on the stairs, and the whisk of her petticoats through the doors.”
“The synagogue is getting along slowly,” he wrote, “for thecusses—” (he erased that word as hardly consistent for a man who was running a church, and substituted “cattle,” so that it read) “thecattleare on another strike, what hain’t gone over to work on the Unitarian meetin’ house, which is havin’ the greatest kind of overhaulin’ inside and out. The persuasion meets now in the Academy, and go it kind of ritual, with the litany and some of thesams, which they read slower than time in the primmer. Ruth Gardner leads off, and is getting up another carouse to buy aFountto dip the young ones in, and expects to catch the new minister. But let ’em run. Old Phil don’t ask no odds of Unitarian nor Orthodox, nor nobody else. He’ll build his own church and pay his own minister, if necessary, and burninnocencetoo, if he wants to.
“I send a letter from Roy, I guess, and it has done some travellin’, too, having gone first to that remarkable woman, your Aunt Jerushy, who wrote to me as follows:
“‘Philip Overton, forward the enclosed to Edna, and oblige, Jerusha Amanda Pepper.’
“Short and sweet, wasn’t it? but like the old gal, as you described her. If Maude is there, tell her I am real hungry for a sight of her blue eyes and sassy face. Come up here, both of you, as soon as you can. Yours to command,
“Philip Overton.”
“Philip Overton.”
“Philip Overton.”
“Philip Overton.”
This was Uncle Phil’s letter, and Edna cried over it a little, and knew just how lonely the old man was without her, and half wished she had not left him, “though it would have been dreadful never to have known Roy at all,” she said to herself, as she opened next Aunt Jerusha’s letter, in which Roy’s was enclosed, and read what that worthy woman had to say.
There was a good deal about her “neurology,” and a surecure she had found for it, and about the new rector, who was as much toolowas the other had been toohigh, inasmuch as he went to the Methodist prayer-meetings and took a part in them, and said he wasn’t quite sure about the direct line down from the Apostles; it might be straight enough, but he guessed it had been broken a few times, and had some knots in it where it was mended, and he fully indorsed young Tyng, and believed in Henry Ward Beecher and Woman’s Rights, all of which she considered worse than turning your back to the people, and bowing to the floor in the creed, and so latterly she had staid at home and read the Bible and Prayer-Book by herself, and sung a hymn and psalm, and felt she was worshipping God quite as well as if she had gone to church and been mad as fury all the time. She hoped Edna felt better now she was at Leighton, though she was a big fool for going, and a bigger one if she staid there after that woman with a boy’s name came as my lady.
“Roy was not satisfied with sending me a letter foryou, but he must needs write tometoo, and tell me he was going to be married; and that he should insist upon knowing where you were, so he could persuade you to live at Leighton, your proper place.
“So you see what’s before you, and you know my advice, which, of course, you won’t follow. You are more than half in love with Roy yourself; don’t deny it; I know better; and that critter with the boy’s name will find it out, if she has not already, and you’ll hate one another like pisen, and it’s no place for you. Better come back to Aunt Jerusha, and keep the district school this winter. They want a woman teacher, because they can get her cheap, and she’ll do her work better, as if there was any justice in that. I believe in Woman’s Rights so far as equal pay for the same work; but this scurriping through the country speech-making, and the clothes-basket full of dirty duds at home, andyour husband’s night-shirt so ragged that if took sick sudden in the night he’d be ashamed to send for the doctor, I don’t believe in, and never will.
“According to orders, I send this to your Uncle Philip, and s’pose you’ll answer through the same channel and tell if you’ll come home about your business, and teach school for sixteen dollars a month, and I board you for the chores you’ll do night and morning.
Yours with regret,“Jerusha A. Pepper.”
Yours with regret,“Jerusha A. Pepper.”
Yours with regret,“Jerusha A. Pepper.”
Yours with regret,
“Jerusha A. Pepper.”
“Go back to Allen’s Hill, and teach school, and board with Aunt Jerusha, and do chores?” Edna repeated to herself, as she finished the letter; she might have added, “and leave Roy?” but she did not, though her face turned scarlet as she recalled the words, “You are more than half in love with Roy yourself.”
Was that true? She could not quite answer that it was, and she tried to believe it was her attachment to Mrs. Churchill which made Leighton so dear to her, and that Roy had nothing to do with it, except as he helped to make her life very pleasant. She wasnotin love with him, she decided at last; if she were, she should think it her duty to leave at once, but as it was, she should remain until the wedding, which had not yet been appointed. Some time before Christmas, Georgie had told her, while Mrs. Churchill had said:
“Roy will not marry till spring.”
And she believed the latter, because she wanted to, and saying to herself, “I shall stay till Georgie comes, for Mrs. Churchill’s sake,” she opened Roy’s letter, and read the kind, brotherly message he had written to his “dear sister Edna, whom he wished so much to find.” There were hot blushes on Edna’s cheeks, and she felt a heart throb of pain as she began to read, in Roy’s own words, of his engagement toGeorgie Burton. She had known it all before, it is true, and had seen his betrothed almost every day, and received, each time she saw her, some little malicious stab through the medium of Edna Browning. She had also been witness, at divers times, to various little love-passages between the engaged pair, or rather of love-passages on Georgie’s part, for that young lady was not at all backward in asserting her right to fondle and caress her promised husband, who was not demonstrative, and who never of his own accord so much as took Georgie’s hand in his own, or laid a finger on her in the presence of others. He merely submitted to her fondlings in silence and did not shake her off, though Edna sometimes fancied he wanted to do so, when she hung so helplessly upon him, or put her arm around his neck, and smoothed and caressed his hair, and called him “Roy dear.” How he demeaned himself toward her when they were alone Edna did not know, but seeing him always so quiet and reserved, she had never realized that he was engaged as fully as she did when she saw it in his own handwriting, and two burning tears rolled down her cheeks and were impatiently dashed away as she read:
“And now, my little sister, I have something to communicate which may surprise you, but which I hope will please you, inasmuch as I trust it may have a direct bearing upon your future. I am engaged to be married to the Miss Georgie Burton who was so kind to you and poor Charlie in Iona. She is very nice, of course, and the most beautiful woman I have ever met, unless it be a Miss Overton who is here as companion for mother.”
Edna’s face and neck were scarlet now, and there was a throb of ecstasy in her heart, as she read on:
“This Miss Overton is not at all like Georgie, but quite as beautiful, I think, and both mother and myself like her immensely. She is nineteen, I believe, but aweelittle creature,with the roundest, sauciest eyes, the softest golden brown hair rippling all over her head, and the sweetest, most innocent face, while her smile is something wonderful. Maude Somerton, whom I wish you knew, calls herDotty, but to myself I call her ‘Brownie,’ her eyes and hair are such a pretty brown, just tinged with golden, and her complexion, though smooth and soft, and very bright, is still a little brownish.”
“A pretty way to talk aboutme, and he engaged to Georgie,” Edna said, but not impatiently.
Indeed, she would have been well satisfied to have read Roy’s praises of herself for the entire day, and felt a little annoyed when he turned from Miss Overton’s beauty, to his plan of having his sister at Leighton as soon as Georgie came, and begged her to tell him where she was, that he might come for her himself.
“Mother wants you,” he wrote, “and surely for Charlie’s sake you will heed her wishes.”
Edna wished she could believe that Mrs. Churchill would love her when she knew who she was, but after Georgie’s insinuations she could not hope to be esteemed by either Roy or his mother.
“They would hate and despise me,” she said, “so I shall not let them know thatEdnawas ever here, and my easier way will be not to answer Roy’s letter, now or ever; I cannot tell him I am rejoiced at his engagement, for I am not. I don’t like her; I never shall like her; I almost think I hate her, or should if it were not so very wicked,” and Edna’s boot-heels dug into the carpet as she gave vent to this amiable outburst.
There was nothing more of Georgie or Miss Overton in the letter, but Edna had read enough to make her very happy. Roy thought she was beautiful, and called her “Brownie” to himself. Surely this was sufficient cause forhappiness, even though his marriage with another was fixed for the ensuing spring. It was a long time till then, and she would enjoy the present without thinking of the future, when Leighton could no longer be her home.
This was Edna’s conclusion, and folding up Roy’s letter, she went to Mrs. Churchill with so bright a look in her face, that it must have shown itself in her manner, for Mrs. Churchill said:
“You seem very happy this morning. You must have had good news in the letter Russell brought you.”
“Yes; very good news. At least, a part of it was,” Edna replied, her pulse throbbing a little regretfully, as she remembered having seen, in Roy’s own handwriting, that he was pledged to another,—he who called her “Brownie,” and who, as the days went by, was so very kind to her, and who, once, when she was standing beside him, laid his hand upon her hair, and said:
“What a little creature you are! One could toss you in his arms as easily as he could a child.”
“Suppose you try,” said a smooth, even-toned voice, just behind him, and the next moment Georgie appeared in view, her black eyes flashing, but her manner very composed and quiet.
After that, Roy did not touch Edna’s hair, or talk of tossing her in his arms. Whatever it was which Georgie said to him with regard to Miss Overton,—and she did say something,—it availed to put a restraint upon his manner, and caused him to keep to himself any wishes he might have with regard to Edna. But he watched her when she went out, and when she came in, and listened to her voice when reading or singing to his mother, until there would, at times, come over him such a feeling of restlessness,—a yearning for something he could not define,—that he would rush out into the open air, or, mounting his swift-footed steed, ride for miles downthe river road, until the fever in his veins was abated, when he would return to Leighton, and, if Georgie was there, sit dutifully by her, and try to behave as an engaged man ought to do, and get up a little enthusiasm for his bride-elect. But whether he held Georgie’s white jewelled hand in his, as he sometimes did, or felt her breath upon his cheek, as she leaned her beautiful head upon his breast in one of her gushing moods, he never experienced a glow of feeling like that which throbbed through every vein did “Brownie’s” soft, dimpled hands by any chance come in contact with so much as his coat-sleeve, or “Brownie’s” dress sweep against his feet when he was walking with her.
He did not ask himself whither all this was tending. He did not reason at all. He was engaged to Georgie; he fully intended to keep his engagement; he loved her, as he believed, but that did not prevent his being very happy in Miss Overton’s society; and as the days went by he drifted farther and farther from his betrothed, who, with all her shrewdness, was far from suspecting the real nature of his feelings.
During all this time, no answer had come from Edna to Roy, who wrote again and again, until he grew desperate, and resolved upon a second visit to Aunt Jerry Pepper, hoping by bribe or threat to obtain some clue to Edna’s whereabouts. This intention he communicated by letter to the worthy spinster, who replied:
“Don’t for goodness’ sake come here again on that business, and do let Edna alone. She nor no other woman is worth the powder you are wasting on her. If she don’t answer your letter, and tell you she’s in the seventh heaven because of your engagement, it’s pretty likely she ain’t thrown off her balance with joy by it. She didn’t fancy that woman with a boy’s name none too well when she saw her in Iona, and if I may speak the truth, as I shall, if I speak atall, it was what she overheard that person say to her brother about you and your mother’s opinion of poor girls like her, that kept her from going to Leighton with the body, and it’s no ways likely she’ll ever go now, so long as the thing with the boy’s name is there as mistress. So just let her alone and it will work itself out. Anyway, don’t bother me with so many letters, when I’ve as much as I can do with my house-cleaning, and making over comforters, and running sausages.
“Yours to command,“Jerusha Amanda Pepper.”
“Yours to command,“Jerusha Amanda Pepper.”
“Yours to command,“Jerusha Amanda Pepper.”
“Yours to command,
“Jerusha Amanda Pepper.”
It was Roy’s duty to feel indignant toward one who called his wife elect, “that thing with a boy’s name,” and he made himself believe he was, and styled her a very rude, impertinent woman, and then he thought of what she had said about Edna’s disapproval of the match, and of Georgie’s treatment of her in Iona, and that hurt him far worse than Miss Pepper’s calling his betrothed “that thing with the boy’s name.”
What could Georgie have said or done to Edna? She had always seemed so kindly disposed toward the girl, and since their engagement had warmly seconded his plan of finding her, and bringing her home. Once he thought to speak to Georgie herself on the subject, but generously refrained from doing so, lest she should be pained by knowing there was any one who was not pleased with the prospect of her being his wife. But Georgie, who was not overscrupulous with regard to other people’s property, found the letter on the library table, where he left it, and unhesitatingly read it through, and then that same afternoon took occasion, in Edna’s presence, to ask Roy if he had heard from his sister yet, and to express herself assosorry that they could not find where she was.
“Poor little creature, so young and so childlike as she seemed when I saw her at Iona,” she said, flashing her great eyes first upon Roy and then upon Miss Overton. “And so shy too of strangers. Why, I almost fancied that she was afraid ofme, she was so timid and reserved, and possibly she was, for in my excitement I might have been a little brusque in my manner.”
“I do not remember asking if you urged her to come here at that time,” Roy said, thinking of Miss Pepper’s letter, while Georgie, thinking of it too, replied without the least hesitation:
“Certainly, I did. I said all I could consistently say; but she was too sick to undertake the journey, and then she had a nervous dread of meeting Charlie’s friends. I’ve since thought it possible that she was too much stunned and bewildered to know exactly what was said to her, or what we meant by saying it.”
Georgie had made her explanation, and effectually removed from Roy’s mind any unpleasant impression which Aunt Jerry’s letter might have left upon it. And she was satisfied; for it did not matterwhatEdna thought of her; and still Georgie could not then meet the wondering gaze of the brown eyes fixed so curiously upon her; and she affected to be very much interested and occupied with a cap she was finishing for Mrs. Churchill, and did not look at Edna, who managed to escape from the room as soon as possible, and who, out in the yard, had recourse to her old trick of digging her heels into the gravel by way of relieving her feelings.
Roy made one effort more to win over Miss Pepper, but with so poor success that he gave the matter up for a time, and devoted himself to trying to get up a passion for his betrothed equal to that she felt for him, and to studying and enjoying Miss Overton, who became each day more bewilderingand enjoyable for him, while to Mrs. Churchill she became more and more necessary, until both wondered how they had ever existed without her.