From Mrs. Senator Woodhull's elegant house--where Mrs. Judge Markham had been petted, and flattered, and caressed, and Mr. Judge Markham had been adroitly tutored and trained without the least effect--the newly wedded pair went on to Quebec and Montreal, and thence to the White Mountains, where Ethelyn's handsome traveling dress was ruined and Richard's linen coat, so obnoxious to his bride, was torn past repair and laid away in one of Ethelyn's trunks, with the remark that "Mother could mend it for Andy, who always took his brother's cast-off clothes." The hair trunk had been left in Chicopee, and so Ethelyn had not that to vex her.
Noticed everywhere, and admired by all whom she met, the first part of her wedding trip was not as irksome as she had feared it might be. Pleased, as a boy, with his young bride, Richard was all attention, and Ethelyn had only to express a wish to have it gratified, so that casual lookers-on would have pronounced her supremely happy. And Ethelyn's heart did not ache one-half so hard as on that terrible day of her bridal. In the railway car, on the crowded steamboat, or at the large hotels, where all were entire strangers, she forgot to watch and criticise her husband, and if any dereliction from etiquette did occur, he yielded so readily to her suggestion that to him seemed an easy task. The habits of years, however, are not so easily broken, and by the time Saratoga was reached, Richard's patience began to give way beneath Ethelyn's multifarious exactions and the ennui consequent upon his traveling about so long. Still he did pretty well for him, growing very red in the face with his efforts to draw on gloves a size too small, and feeling excessively hot and uncomfortable in his coat, which he wore even in the retirement of his own room, where he desired so much to indulge in the cool luxury of shirt-sleeves--a suggestion which Ethelyn heard with horror, openly exclaiming against the glaring vulgarity, and asking, a little contemptuously, if that were the way he had been accustomed to do at home.
"Why, yes," he answered. "Out West upon the prairies we go in for comfort, and don't mind so small a matter as shirt-sleeves on a sweltering August day."
"Please do not use such expressions as sweltering and go in--they do not sound well," Ethelyn rejoined. "And now I think of it, I wish you would talk more to the ladies in the parlor. You hardly spoke to Mrs. Cameron last evening, and she directed most of her conversation to you, too. I was afraid she would either think that you were rude, or else that you did not know what to say."
"She hit it right, if she came to the latter conclusion," Richard said, good-humoredly, "for the fact is, Ethie, I don't know what to say to such women as she. I am not a ladies' man, and it's no use trying to make me over. You can't teach old dogs new tricks."
Ethie fairly groaned as she clasped her bracelets upon her arms and shook down the folds of her blue silk; then after a moment she continued: "You can talk to me, and why not to others?"
"You are my wife, Ethie, and I love you, which makes a heap of difference," Richard said, and winding his arms around Ethie's waist he drew her face toward his own and kissed it affectionately.
They had been three days at Saratoga when this little scene occurred and their room was one of those miserable little apartments in the Ainsworth block which look out upon nothing but a patch of weeds and the rear of a church. Ethelyn did not like it at all, and liked it the less because she felt that to some extent her husband was to blame. He ought to have written and engaged rooms beforehand--Aunt Van Buren always did, and Mrs. Col. Tophevie, and everybody who understood the ins and outs of fashionable life. But Richard did not understand them. He believed in taking what was offered to him without making a fuss, he said. He had never been to Saratoga before, and he secretly hoped he should never come again, for he did not enjoy those close, hot rooms and worm-eaten furniture any better than Ethelyn did, but he accepted it with a better grace, saying, when he first entered it, that "he could put up with 'most anything, though to be sure it was hotter than an oven."
His mode of expressing himself had never suited Ethelyn. Particular, and even elegant in her choice of language, it grated upon her sensitive ear, and forgetting that she had all her life heard similar expressions in Chicopee, she charged it to the West, and Iowa was blamed for the faults of her son more than she deserved. At Saratoga, where they met many of her acquaintances, all of whom were anxious to see the fastidious Ethelyn's husband, it seemed to her that he was more remiss than ever in those little things which make up the finished gentleman, while his peculiar expressions sometimes made every nerve quiver with pain. The consequence of this was that Ethelyn became a very little cross, as Richard thought, though she had never so openly attacked him as on that day, the third after their arrival, when to her horror he took off his coat, preparatory to a little comfort, while she was dressing for dinner. At Ethelyn's request, however, he put it on again, saying as he did so, that he was "sweating like a butcher," which remark called out his wife's contemptuous inquiries concerning his habits at home. Richard was still too much in love with his young wife to feel very greatly irritated. In word and deed she had done her duty toward him thus far, and he had nothing to complain of. It is true she was very quiet and passive, and undemonstrative, never giving him back any caress as he had seen wives do. But then he was not very demonstrative himself, and so he excused it the more readily in her, and loved her all the same. It amused him that a girl of twenty should presume to criticise him, a man of thirty-two, a Judge, and a member of Congress, to whom the Olney people paid such deference, and he bore with her at first just as a mother would bear with the little child which assumed a superiority over her.
This afternoon, however, when she said so much to him, he was conscious of a very little irritation, for he was naturally high-spirited. But he put the feeling down, and gayly kissed his six-weeks bride, who, touched with his forbearance, kissed him back again, and suffered him to hold her cool face a moment between his hot, moist hands, while he bent over her.
She did respect him in spite of his vulgarism; nor was she unconscious of the position which, as his wife, she held. It was very pleasant to hear people say of her when she passed by:
"That is Mrs. Judge Markham, of Iowa--her husband is a member of Congress."
Very pleasant, too, to meet with his friends, other M. C.'s, who paid her deference on his account. Had they stayed away from Saratoga all might have been well; but alas, they were there, and so was all of Ethelyn's world--the Tophevies, the Hales, the Hungerfords and Van Burens, with Nettie Hudson, opening her great blue eyes at Richard's mistakes and asking Frank in Ethelyn's hearing, "if that Judge Markham's manners were not a little outré."
They certainly were outré, there was no denying it, and Ethelyn's blood tingled to her finger tips as she wondered if it would always be so. It is a pitiable thing for a wife to blush for her husband, to watch constantly lest he depart from those little points of etiquette which women catch intuitively, but which some of our most learned men fail to learn in a lifetime. And here they greatly err, for no man, however well versed he may be in science and literature, is well educated, or well balanced, or excusable, if he neglects the little things which good breeding and common politeness require of him, and Richard was somewhat to be blamed. It did not follow because his faults had never been pointed out to him that they did not exist, or that others did not observe them besides his wife. Ethelyn, to be sure, was more deeply interested than anyone else, and felt his mistakes more keenly, while at the same time she was over-fastidious, and had not the happiest faculty for correcting him. She did not love him well enough to be very careful of wounding him, but the patience and good humor with which he received her reprimand that hot August afternoon, when the thermometer was one hundred in the shade, and any man would have been excusable for retorting upon his wife who lectured him, awoke a throb of something nearer akin to love than anything she had felt since the night when she stood upon the sandy beach and heard the story of Daisy.
Richard was going to do better. He would wear his coat all the time, both day and night, if Ethelyn said so, He would not lean his elbow on the table while waiting for dessert, as he had more than once been guilty of doing; he would not help himself to a dish before passing it to the ladies near him; he would talk to Mrs. Cameron in the evening, and would try not to be so absorbed in his own thoughts as to pay no attention when Mrs. Tophevie was addressing herself directly to him; he would laugh in the right place, and, when spoken to, would answer in something besides monosyllables; he would try to keep his hands out of his pockets and his handkerchief out of his hand, or at least he would not "snap it," as Ethie said he had done on the first evening of his arrival at Saratoga. In short, he promised a complete reformation, even saying that if Ethelyn would select some person who was an fait in those matters in which he was so remiss, he would watch and copy that man to the letter. Would she name someone? And Ethelyn named her cousin Frank, while Richard felt a flush of something like resentment that he should be required to imitate a person whom in his secret heart he despised as dandyish, and weak, and silly, and "namby-pamby," as he would probably have expressed it if he had not forsworn slang phrases of every kind. But Richard had pledged his word, and meant to keep it; and so it was to all appearances a very happy and loving couple which, when the dinner gong sounded, walked into the dining room with Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's set, Ethelyn's handsome blue silk sweeping far behind her, and her white bare arm just touching the coat-sleeve of her husband, who was not insensible to the impression made by the beautiful woman at his side.
There were no lectures that night, for Richard had done his best, talking at least twenty times with both Mrs. Cameron and Mrs. Colonel Tophevie, whom he found more agreeable than he had supposed. Then he had held Ethelyn's white cloak upon his arm, and stood patiently against the wall, while up at the United States she danced set after set--first, the Lancers, with young Lieutenant Gray, then a polka with John Tophevie, and lastly, a waltz with Frank Van Buren, who whirled his fair partner about the room with a velocity which made Richard dizzy and awoke sundry thoughts not wholly complimentary to that doubtful dance, the waltz. Richard did not dance himself, at least not latterly. In his younger days, when he and Abigail Jones attended the quilting-frolics together and the "paring bees," he had with other young men, tried his feet at Scotch reels, French fours, "The Cheat," and the "Twin Sisters," with occasionally a cotillion, but he was not accomplished in the art. Even the Olney girls called him awkward, preferring almost anyone else for a partner, and so he abandoned the floor and cultivated his head rather than his heels. He liked to see dancing, and at first it was rather pleasant watching Ethelyn's lithe figure gliding gracefully through the intricate movements of the Lancers; but when it came to the waltz, he was not so sure about it, and he wondered if it were necessary for Frank Van Buren to clasp her as tightly about the waist as he did, or for her to lean so languidly upon his shoulder.
Richard was not naturally jealous--certainly not of Frank Van Buren; but he would rather his wife should not waltz with him or any other man, and so he said to her, asking this concession on her part in return for all he had promised to attempt; and to Ethelyn's credit we record that she yielded to her husband's wishes, and, greatly to Frank's surprise, declined the waltz which he had proposed the following evening. But she made amends in other dances, keeping poor Richard waiting for her night after night, until he actually fell asleep and dreamed of the log cabin on the prairie, where he had once danced a quadrille with Abigail Jones to the tune of Money-musk, as played by the Plympton brothers--the one on a cracked violin, and the other on an accordion.
A tap of Mrs. Tophevie's fan brought him back to consciousness, and he was almost guilty of a sigh as the log cabin faded from his vision, with the Plymptons and Abigail Jones, leaving instead that heated ballroom, with its trained orchestra, its bevy of fair young girls, its score of white-kidded dandies with wasp-like waists and perfumed locks, and Ethie smiling in their midst.
Saratoga did not agree with Richard. He grew sick first of the water; then of the fare; then of the daily routine of fashionable follies; then of the people; and then, oh! so sick of the petty lectures which Ethelyn gradually resumed as he failed in his attempts to imitate Frank Van Buren and appear perfectly at ease in everybody's presence. Saratoga was a "confounded bore," he said, and though he called himself a brute, and a savage, and a heathen, he was only very glad when toward the last of August Ethelyn became so seriously indisposed as to make a longer stay in Saratoga impossible. Newport, of course, was given up, and Ethelyn's desire was to go back to Chicopee and lie down again in the dear old room which had been hers from childhood. Aunt Barbara's toast, Aunt Barbara's tea, and Aunt Barbara's nursing, would soon bring her all right again, she said; but in this she was mistaken, for although the toast, and the tea, and the nursing each came in its turn, the September flowers had faded, and the trees on the Chicopee hills were beginning to flaunt their bright October robes ere she recovered from the low, nervous fever, induced by the mental and bodily excitement through which she had passed during the last three or four months.
Although he knew it was necessary that he should be at home if he would transact any business before the opening of his next session in Washington, Richard put aside all thoughts of self, and nursed his wife with a devotedness which awakened her liveliest gratitude.
Richard was not awkward in the sick-room. It seemed to be his special providence, and as he had once nursed and cared for Daisy and the baby brother who died, so he now cared for Ethelyn, until she began to miss him when he left her side, and to listen for his returning step when he went out for an hour or so to smoke and talk politics with his uncle, Captain Markham. With Mrs. Dr. Van Buren and Frank and the fashionable world all away, Richard's faults were not so perceptible, and Ethelyn even began to look forward with considerable interest to the time when she should be able to start for her Western home, about which she had built many delusive castles. Her piano had already been sent on in advance, she saying to Susie Granger, who came in while it was being boxed, that as they were not to keep house till spring she should not take furniture now. Possibly they could find what they needed in Chicago; if not, they could order from Boston.
Richard, who overheard this remark, wondered what it meant, for he had not the most remote idea of separating himself from his mother. She was very essential to his happiness; and he was hardly willing to confess to himself how much during the last summer he had missed her. She had a way of petting him and deferring to his judgment and making him feel that Richard Markham was a very nice kind of man, far different from Ethelyn's criticisms, which had sometimes led him seriously to inquire whether he were a fool or not. No, he could not live apart from his mother--he was firm upon that point; but there was time enough to say so when the subject should be broached to him. So he went on nailing down the cover to the pine box, and thinking as he nailed what a nice kitchen cupboard the box would make when once it was safely landed at his home in the prairie, and wondering, too, how his mother--who was not very fond of music--would bear the sound of the piano and if Ethie would be willing for Melinda Jones to practice upon it. He knew Melinda had taken lessons at Camden, where she had been to school, and he had heard her express a wish that someone nearer than the village had an instrument, as she should soon forget all she had learned. Somehow Melinda was a good deal in Richard's mind, and when a button was missing from his shirts, or his toes came through his socks--as was often the case at Saratoga--he found himself thinking of the way Melinda had of helping "fix his things" when he was going from home, and of hearing his mother say what a handy girl she was, and what a thrifty, careful wife she would make. He meant nothing derogatory to Ethelyn in these reminiscences; he would not have exchanged her for a thousand Melindas, even if he had to pin his shirt bosoms together and go barefoot all his life. But Melinda kept recurring to his mind much as if she had been his sister, and he thought it would be but a simple act of gratitude for all she had done for him to give her the use of the piano for at least one hour each day.
In blissful ignorance of all that was meditated against her, Ethelyn saw her piano taken away from the sitting room, where it would never stand again, and saw the tears which rolled down Aunt Barbara's faded cheeks as she, too, watched its going, and tried to fill up the vacancy it left by moving a chair and a table and a footstool into the gap. Those were hard days for Aunt Barbara, harder than for Ethelyn, who liked the excitement of traveling, and was almost glad when the crisp October morning came on which she was to say good-by to the home which was hers no longer. Her two huge trunks stood in the hall, together with the square hair trunk which held Richard's wardrobe, and the three tin cans of peaches Mrs. Captain Markham was sending to her sister-in-law, with the injunction to be sure and get that particular patent for cans if she wished her fruit to keep. In addition to these, an immense box had been forwarded by express, containing, besides Ethelyn's wearing apparel, many little ornaments and pictures and brackets, which, during the winter, might perhaps adorn the walls of the parlor where Daisy's picture hung, and where, Richard had said, was also an oil-painting of Niagara, omitting to add that it was the handiwork of Melinda Jones, that young lady having dabbled in paints as well as music during her two terms schooling at Camden. Tucked away in various parts of the box were also sundry presents, which, at Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's suggestion, Ethelyn had bought for her husband's family. For James, who, she had heard Richard say, was an inveterate smoker, there was a handsome velvet smoking-cap which, having been bought at Saratoga, had cost an enormous sum; for John, an expensive pair of elaborately wrought slippers had been selected; but when it came to Anderson, as Ethelyn persisted in calling the brother whom Richard always spoke of as Andy, she felt a little perplexed as to what would be appropriate. Richard had talked very little of him--so little, in fact, that she knew nothing whatever of his tastes, except from the scrap of conversation she once accidentally overheard when the old captain was talking to Richard of his brothers.
"Does Andy like busts as well as ever?" the captain had asked, but Richard's reply was lost as Ethelyn walked on.
Still, she had heard enough to give her some inkling with regard to the mysterious Andy. Probably he was more refined than either James or John--at all events, he was evidently fond of statuary, and his tastes should be gratified. Accordingly, Boston was ransacked by Mrs. Dr. Van Buren for an exquisite head of Schiller, done in marble, and costing thirty dollars. Richard did not see it. The presents were a secret from him, all except the handsome point-lace coiffure which Aunt Barbara sent to Mrs. Markham, together with a letter which she had sat up till midnight to write, and in which she had touchingly commended her darling to the new mother's care and consideration.
"You will find my Ethie in some respects a spoiled child--[she wrote] but it is more my fault than hers. I have loved her so much, and petted her so much, that I have doubt if she knows what a harsh word or cross look means. She has been carefully and delicately brought up, but has repaid me well for all my pains by her tender love. Please, dear Mrs. Markham, be very, very kind to her, and you will greatly oblige, your most obedient servant,
"BARBARA BIGELOW.
"P.S. I dare say your ways out West are not exactly like our ways at the East, and Ethie may not fall in with them at once, perhaps never with some of them, but I am sure she will do what is right, as she is a sensible girl. Again, yours with regret, B.B."
The writing of this letter was not perhaps the wisest thing Aunt Barbara could have done, but she was incited to it by what her sister Sophia told her of the rumors concerning Mrs. Markham, and her own fears lest Ethelyn should not be as comfortable with the new mother-in-law as was wholly desirable. To Richard himself she had said that she presumed that his mother's ways were not like Ethie's--old people were different from young ones--the world had improved since their day, and instead of trying to bring young folks altogether to their modes of thinking, it was well for both to yield something. That was the third time Richard had heard his mother's ways alluded to; first by Mrs. Jones, who called them queer; second, by Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, who, for Ethie's sake had also dropped a word of caution, hinting that his mother's ways might possibly be a little peculiar; and lastly by good Aunt Barbara, who signalized them as different from Ethelyn's.
What did it mean, and why had he never discovered anything amiss in his mother? He trusted that Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Van Buren, and Aunt Barbara were mistaken. On the whole, he knew they were; and even if they were not his mother could not do wrong to Ethie, while Ethie would, of course, be willing to conform to any request made by a person so much older than herself as his mother was. So Richard dismissed that subject from his mind, and Ethelyn--having never heard it agitated, except that time when, with Mrs. Jones on his mind, Richard had thought proper to suggest the propriety of her humoring his mother--felt no fears of Mrs. Markham, senior, whom she still associated in her mind with heavy black silk, gold-bowed spectacles, handsome lace and fleecy crochet-work.
The October morning was clear and crisp and frosty, and the sun had not yet shown itself above the eastern hills, when Captain Markham's carryall drove to Aunt Barbara's gate, followed by the long democratic-wagon which was to take the baggage. Ethelyn's spoiled traveling dress had been replaced by a handsome poplin, which was made in the extreme of fashion, and fitted her admirably, as did every portion of her dress, from her jaunty hat and dotted lace veil to the Alexandre kids and fancy little gaiters which encased her feet and hands. She was prettier even than on her bridal day, Richard thought, as he kissed away the tears which dropped so fast even after the last good-by had been said to poor Aunt Barbara, who watched the flutter of Ethie's veil and ribbons as far as they could be seen, and then in the secrecy of her own room knelt and prayed that God would bless and keep her darling, and make her happy in the new home to which she was going.
It was very quiet and lonely in the Bigelow house that day, Aunt Barbara walking softly and speaking slowly, as if the form of someone dead had been borne from her side, while on the bed, which the housemaid Betty had made so plump and round there was a cavity made by Aunt Barbara's head, which hid itself there many times as the good woman went repeatedly to God with the pain gnawing so at her heart. But in the evening, when a cheerful wood fire was kindled on the hearth of her pleasant sitting room, while Mrs. Captain Markham came in with her knitting work, to sit until the Captain called for her on his return from the meeting where he was to oppose with all his might the building of a new schoolhouse, to pay for which he would be heavily taxed, she felt better, and could talk composedly of the travelers, who by that time were nearing Rochester, where they would spend the night.
Although very anxious to reach home, Richard had promised that Ethelyn should only travel through the day, as she was not as strong as before her illness. And to this promise he adhered, so that it was near the middle of the afternoon of the fifth day that the last change was made, and they took the train that would in two hours' time deposit them at Olney. At Camden, the county seat, they waited for a few moments. There was always a crowd of people here going out to different parts of the country, and as one after another came into the car Richard seemed to know them all, while the cordial and rather noisy greeting which they gave "the Judge" struck Ethelyn a little oddly--it was so different from the quiet, undemonstrative manner to which she had been accustomed. With at least a dozen men in shaggy overcoats and slouched hats she shook hands with a tolerably good grace, but when there appeared a tall, lank, bearded young giant of a fellow, with a dare-devil expression in his black eyes and a stain of tobacco about his mouth, she drew back, and to his hearty "How are ye, Miss Markham? Considerable tuckered out, I reckon?" she merely responded with a cool bow and a haughty stare, intended to put down the young man, whom Richard introduced as "Tim Jones," and who, taking a seat directly in front of her, poured forth a volley of conversation, calling Richard sometimes "Dick," sometimes "Markham," but oftener "Squire," as he had learned to do when Richard was justice of the peace in Olney. Melinda, too, or "Melind," was mentioned as having been over to the "Squire's house helping the old lady to fix up a little," and then Ethelyn knew that the "savage" was no other than brother to Abigail Jones, deceased. The discovery was not a pleasant one, and did not tend to smooth her ruffled spirits or lessen the feeling of contempt for Western people in general, and Richard's friends in particular, which had been growing in her heart ever since the Eastern world was left behind and she had been fairly launched upon the great prairies of the Mississippi Valley. Richard was a prince compared with the specimens she had seen, though she did wonder that he should be so familiar with them, calling them by their first names, and even bandying jokes with the terrible Tim Jones spitting his tobacco juice all over the car floor and laughing so loudly at all the "Squire" said. It was almost too dreadful to endure, and Ethelyn's head was beginning to ache frightfully when the long train came to a pause, and the conductor, who also knew Judge Markham, and called him "Dick," screamed through the open door "O-l-ney!"
Ethelyn was at home at last.
They were very peculiar, and no one knew this better than Mrs. Jones and her daughter Melinda, sister and mother to the deceased Abigail and the redoubtable Tim. Naturally bright and quick-witted, Melinda caught readily at any new improvement, and the consequence was that the Jones house bore unmistakable signs of having in it a grown-up daughter whose new ideas of things kept the old ideas from rusting. After Melinda came home from boarding-school the Joneses did not set the table in the kitchen close to the hissing cook stove, but in the pleasant dining room, where there gradually came to be crocheted tidies on the backs of the rocking-chairs, and crayon sketches on the wall, and a pot of geraniums in the window, with a canary bird singing in his cage near by. At first, Mrs. Markham, who felt a greater interest in the Joneses than in any other family--Mrs. Jones being the only woman in the circle of her acquaintance to whom she would lend her copper boiler--looked a little askance at these "new-fangled notions," wondering how "Miss Jones expected to keep the flies out of her house if she had all the doors a-flyin' three times a day," and fearing lest Melinda was getting "stuck-up notions in her head, which would make her fit for nothing."
But when she found there were no more flies buzzing in Farmer Jones' kitchen than in her own, and that Melinda worked as much as ever, and was just as willing to lend a helping hand when there was need of haste at the Markham house, her anxiety subsided, and the Joneses were welcome to eat wherever they chose, or even to have to wait upon the table, when there was company, the little black boy Pete, whom Tim had bought at a slave auction in New Orleans, whither he had gone on a flatboat expedition two or three years before. But she never thought of introducing any of Melinda's notions into her own household. She "could not fuss" to keep so many rooms clean. If in winter time she kept a fire in the front room, where in one corner her own bed was curtained off, and if in summer she always sat there when her work was done, it was all that could be required of her, and was just as they used to do at her father's, in Vermont, thirty years ago. Her kitchen was larger than Mrs. Jones', which was rather uncomfortable on a hot day when there was washing to be done; the odor of the soap-suds was a little sickening then, she admitted, but in her kitchen it was different; she had had an eye to comfort when they were building, and had seen that the kitchen was the largest, airiest, lightest room in the house, with four windows, two outside doors, and a fireplace, where, although they had a stove, she dearly loved to cook just as her mother had done in Vermont, and where hung an old-fashioned crane, with iron hooks suspended from it. Here she washed, and ironed, and ate, and performed her ablutions in the bright tin basin which stood in the sink near to the pail, with the gourd swinging in the top, and wiped her face on the rolling towel and combed her hair before the clock, which served the double purpose of looking-glass and timepiece. When company came--and Mrs. Markham was not inhospitable--the east room, where the bed stood, was opened; and if the company, as was sometimes the case, chanced to be Richard's friends, she used the west room across the hall, where the chocolate-colored paper and Daisy's picture hung, and where, upon the high mantel, there was a plaster image of little Samuel, and two plaster vases filled with colored fruit. The carpet was a very pretty Brussels, but it did not quite cover the floor on either side. It was a small pattern, and on this account had been offered a shilling cheaper a yard, and so the economical Mrs. Markham had bought it, intending to eke out the deficiency with drugget of a corresponding shade; but the merchant did not bring the drugget, and the carpet was put down, and time went on, and the strips of painted board were still uncovered, save by the straight row of haircloth chairs, which stood upon one side, and the old-fashioned sofa, which had cost fifty dollars, and ought to last at least as many years. There was a Boston rocker, and a center table, with the family Bible on it, and a volume of Scott's Commentaries, and frosted candlesticks on the mantel and two sperm candles in them, with colored paper, pink and green, all fancifully notched and put around them, and a bureau in the corner, which held the boys' Sunday shirts and Mrs. Markham's black silk dress, with Daisy's clothes in the bottom drawer, and the silver plate taken from her coffin. There was a gilt-framed looking-glass on the wall, and blue paper curtains at the windows, which were further ornamented with muslin drapery. This was the great room--the parlor--where Daisy had died, and which, on that account, was a kind of sacred place to those who held the memory of that sweet, little prairie blossom as the dearest memory of their lives. Had she lived, with her naturally refined tastes, and her nicety of perceptions, there was no guessing what that farmhouse might have been, for a young girl makes a deal of difference in any family. But she died, and so the house, which when she died, was not quite finished, remained much as it was--a large, square building, minus blinds, with a wide hall in the center opening in front upon a broad piazza, and opening back upon a stoop, the side entrance to the kitchen. There was a picket fence in front; but the yard was bare of ornament, if we except the lilac bushes under the parlor windows, the red peony in the corner, and the clumps of violets and daisies, which grew in what was intended for borders to the walk, from the front gate to the door. Sometimes the summer showed here a growth of marigolds, with sweet peas and china asters, for Andy was fond of flowers, and when he had leisure he did a little floral gardening; but this year, owing to Richard's absence, there had been more to do on the farm, consequently the ornamental had been neglected, and the late autumn flowers which, in honor of Ethelyn's arrival, were standing in vases on the center table and the mantel, were contributed by Melinda Jones, who had been very busy in other portions of the house working for the bride.
She could do this now without a single pang of jealousy, for she was a sensible girl, and after a night and a day of heaviness, and a vague sense of disappointment, she had sung as merrily as ever, and no one was more interested in the arrival of Richard's bride than she, from the time when Richard started eastward for her. Between herself and her mother there had been a long, confidential conversation, touching Mrs. Markham's ways and the best means of circumventing them, so that the new wife might not be utterly crushed with homesickness and surprise when she first arrived. No one could manage Mrs. Markham as well as Melinda, and it was owing to her influence wholly that the large, pleasant chamber, which had been Richard's ever since he became a growing man, was renovated and improved until it presented a very inviting appearance. The rag carpet which for years had done duty, and bore many traces of Richard's muddy boots, had been exchanged for a new ingrain--not very pretty in design, or very stylish either, but possessing the merit of being fresh and clean. To get the carpet Melinda had labored assiduously, and had enlisted all three of the brothers, James, and John, and Andy in the cause before the economical mother consented to the purchase. The rag carpet, if cleaned and mended, was as good as ever, she insisted; and even if it were not, she could put on one that had not seen so much actual service. It was Andy who finally decided her to indulge in the extravagance urged by Melinda Jones. There were reasons why Andy was very near to his mother's heart, and when he offered to sell his brown pony, which he loved as he did his eyes, his mother yielded the point, and taking with her both Mrs. Jones and Melinda, went to Camden, and sat two mortal hours upon rolls of carpeting while she decided which to take.
Mrs. Markham was not stingy with regard to her table; that was always loaded with the choicest of everything, while many a poor family blessed her as an angel. But the articles she ate were mostly the products of their large, well-cultivated farm; they did not cost money directly out of her hand, and it was the money she disliked parting with, so she talked and dickered, and beat the Camden merchant down five cents on a yard, and made him cut it a little short, to save a waste, and made him throw in the thread and binding and swear when she was gone, wondering who "the stingy old woman was." And yet the very day after her return from Camden "the stingy old woman" had sent to her minister a loaf of bread and a pail of butter, and to a poor sick woman, who lived in a leaky cabin off in the prairie, a nice, warm blanket for her bed, with a basket of delicacies to tempt her capricious appetite.
In due time the carpet had been made, Melinda Jones sewing up three of the seams, while Andy, who knew how to use the needle almost as well as a girl, claimed the privilege of sewing at least half a seam on the new sister's carpet. Adjoining Richard's chamber was a little room where Mrs. Markham's flour and meal and corn were kept, but which, with a little fitting up, would answer nicely for a bedroom, and after an amount of engineering, which would have done credit to the general of an army, Melinda succeeded in coaxing Mrs. Markham to move her barrels and bags, and give up the room for Ethelyn's bed, which looked very nice and inviting, notwithstanding that the pillows were small, and the bedstead a high poster, which had been in use for twenty years. Mrs. Markham knew all about the boxes, as she called them. There was one in Mrs. Jones' front chamber, but she had never bought one, for what then would she do with her old ones--"with them laced cords," so greatly preferable to the hard slats, which nearly broke her back the night she slept on some at a friend's house in Olney.
Richard was fond of books, and had collected from time to time a well-selected library, which was the only ornament in his room when Melinda first took it in hand; but when she had finished her work--when the carpet was down, and the neat, white shades were up at the windows; when the books which used to be on the floor and table, and chairs, and mantel, and window sills, and anywhere, were neatly arranged in the very respectable shelves which Andy made and James had painted; when the little sewing chair designed for Ethelyn was put before one window, and Richard's arm-chair before the other, and the drab lounge was drawn a little into the room, and the bureau stood corner-ways, with a bottle of cologne upon it, which John had bought, and a pot of pomade Andy had made, and two little pink and white mats Melinda had crocheted, the room was very presentable. Great, womanish Andy was sure Ethelyn would be pleased, and rubbed his hands jubilantly over the result of his labors, while Melinda was certainly pardonable for feeling that in return for what she had done for Richard's wife she might venture to suggest that the huge box, marked piano, which for ten days had been standing on the front piazza, be opened and the piano set up, so that she could try its tone. This box had cost Andy a world of trouble, keeping him awake nights, and taking him from his bed more than once, as he fancied he heard a mysterious sound, and feared someone might be stealing the ponderous thing, which it took four men to lift. With the utmost alacrity he helped in the unpacking, nearly bursting a blood-vessel as he tugged at the heaviest end, and then running to the village with all his speed, to borrow Mrs. Crandall's piano key, which, fortunately, fitted Ethelyn's, so that Melinda Jones was soon seated in state, and running her fingers over the superb five-hundred dollar instrument, Ethelyn's gift from Aunt Barbara on her nineteenth birthday.
Melinda's fingers were strained and cut with carpet thread, and pricked with carpet tacks, and red with washing dishes, but they moved nimbly over the keys, striking out with a will the few tunes she had learned during her two quarters' instruction. She had acquired a great deal of knowledge in a short time, for she was passionately fond of music, and every spare moment had been devoted to it, so that she had mastered the scales with innumerable exercises, besides learning several pieces, of which Money-musk was one. This she now played with a sprightliness and energy which brought Andy to his feet, while the cowhides moved to the stirring music in a fashion which would have utterly confounded poor Ethelyn could she have seen them. But Ethelyn was miles and miles away. She was not coming for a week or more, and in that time Andy tried his hand at Yankee Doodle, playing with one finger, and succeeding far beyond his most sanguine expectations. Andy was delighted with the piano, and so was Eunice, the hired girl, who left her ironing and her dishes, standing with wiping towel or flatiron in hand, humming an accompaniment to Andy's playing, and sometimes helping to find the proper key to touch next.
Eunice was not an Irish girl, nor a German, nor a Scotch, but a full-blooded American, and "just as good as her employers," with whom she always ate and sat. It was not Mrs. Markham's custom to keep a girl the year round, but when she did it was Eunice Plympton, the daughter of the drunken fiddler who earned his livelihood by playing for the dances the young people of Olney sometimes got up. He was anticipating quite a windfall from the infair it was confidently expected would be given by Mrs. Markham in honor of her son's marriage; and Eunice herself had washed and starched and ironed the white waist she intended to wear on the same occasion. Of course she knew she would have to wait and tend and do the running, she said to Melinda, to whom she confided her thoughts, but after the supper was over she surely might have one little dance, if with nobody but Andy.
This was Eunice, and she had been with Mrs. Markham during the past summer; but her time was drawing to a close. All the heavy work was over, the harvests were gathered in, the soap was made, the cleaning done, the house made ready for Richard's wife, and it was the understanding that when that lady came and was somewhat domesticated, Miss Eunice was to leave. There was not much to do in the winter, Mrs. Markham said, and with Richard's wife's help she should get along. Alas! how little Ethelyn was prepared for the home which awaited her, and for the really good woman, who, on the afternoon of her son's arrival, saw into the oven the young turkey which Andy had been feeding for so very long with a view to this very day, and then helped Eunice set the table for the expected guests.
It did occur to Mrs. Markham that there might be a great propriety in Eunice's waiting for once, inasmuch as there were plates to change, and custard pie and minced, and pudding, to be brought upon the table, for they were having a great dinner, but the good woman did not dare hint at such a thing, so the seven plates were put upon the table, and the china cups brought from the little cupboard at the side of the chimney, and the silver teapot, which was a family heirloom, and had been given Mrs. Markham by her mother, was brought also and rubbed up with what Eunice called a "shammy," and the pickles, and preserves, and honey, and cheese and jellies, and the white raised biscuits and fresh brown bread, and shredded cabbage and cranberry sauce, with golden butter, and pitchers of cream, were all arranged according to Eunice's ideas. The turkey was browning nicely, the vegetables were cooking upon the stove, the odor of silver-skinned onions pervading the entire house. Eunice was grinding the coffee, and the clock said it wanted but half an hour of car-time, when Mrs. Markham finally left the kitchen and proceeded to make her toilet.
Eunice's had been made some time ago, and the large-sized hoop she wore had already upset a pail and dragged a griddle from the stove hearth, greatly to the discomfiture of Mrs. Markham, who did not fancy hoops, though she wore a small one this afternoon under her clean and stiffly-starched dress of purple calico. St. Paul would have made her an exception in his restrictions with regard to women's apparel, for neither gold nor silver ornaments, nor braided hair, found any tolerance in her. She followed St. Paul strictly, except at such times as the good people in the Methodist church at the east end of the village held a protracted meeting, when she deviated so far from his injunction as to speak her mind and tell her experience.
She was a good and conscientious woman, practicing what she preached, and believing more in the inner than the outer adorning; but she looked very neat this afternoon in her purple calico, with a motherly white apron tied around her waist, and her soft, silvery hair combed smoothly back from her forehead and twisted in a knot behind, about the size of a half dollar. This knot however, was hidden by the headdress which Melinda had made from bits of black lace and purple ribbon, and which, though not at all like Aunt Barbara's Boston caps, was still very respectable, and even tasteful-looking. Almost too tasteful, Mrs. Markham thought, as she glanced at the tiny artificial flower tucked in among the bows of ribbon. But Mrs. Markham did not remove the flower, for it was a daisy, and it made her think of the Daisy who died fourteen years ago, and who, had she lived till now, would have been twenty-eight.
"A married woman, most likely, and I might have been grandmother," Mrs. Markham sighed, and then, as she heard in fancy the patter of little feet at her side, and saw before her little faces with a look like Daisy in them, her thoughts went softly out to Richard's bride, through whom this coveted blessing might come to her quiet household, and her heart throbbed with a quick sudden yearning for the young daughter-in-law, now just alighting at the Olney station, for the Eastern train had come, and James was there with the democrat-wagon to meet it.
Olney was a thriving, busy little town, numbering five hundred inhabitants or thereabouts. It had its groceries, its dry goods stores, and its two houses for public worship--the Methodist and Presbyterian--while every other Sunday a little band of Episcopalians met for their own service in what was called the Village Hall, where, during week days, a small, select school was frequently taught by some Yankee schoolmistress. It had its post office, too; and there was also talk of a bank after the railroad came that way, and roused the people to a state of still greater activity. On the whole, it was a pretty town, though different from Chicopee, where the houses slept so aristocratically under the shadow of the old elms, which had been growing there since the day when our national independence was declared.
At home Ethelyn's pride had all been centered in Boston, and she had sometimes thought a little contemptuously of Chicopee and its surroundings; but the farther she traveled west the higher Chicopee rose in her estimation, until she found herself comparing every prairie village with that rural town among the hills, which seemed to give it dignity, and made it so greatly superior to the dead levels of which she was getting so weary. She had admired the rolling prairies at first, but, tired and jaded with her long journey, nothing looked well to her now--nothing was like Chicopee--certainly not Olney, where the dwellings looked so new and the streets were minus sidewalks.
Ethelyn had a good view of it as the train approached it and even caught a passing glimpse of the white house in the distance which Richard pointed out as home, his face lighting up with all the pleasure of a schoolboy as he saw the old familiar waymarks and felt that he was home at last.
Dropping her veil over her face Ethelyn arose to follow her husband, who in his eagerness to grasp the hand of the tall, burly young man he had seen from the window, forgot to carry her shawl and her satchel, which last being upon the car-rack, she tugged at it with all her strength, and was about crying with vexation at Richard's thoughtlessness, when Tim Jones, who while rolling his quid of tobacco in his great mouth, had watched her furtively, wondering how she and Melind would get along, gallantly came to her aid, and taking the satchel down kept it upon his arm.
"Take care of that air step. Better let me help you out. Dick is so tickled to see Jim that he even forgets his wife, I swan!" Tim said, offering to assist her from the train; but with a feeling of disgust too deep to be expressed, Ethelyn declined the offer and turned away from him to meet the curious gaze of the young man whom Richard presented as brother James.
He was younger than his brother by half a dozen years, but he looked quite as old, if not older. His face and hands were sunburnt and brown, his clothes were coarse, his pants were tucked into his tall, muddy boots, and he held in his hands the whip with which he had driven the shining bays, pricking up their ears behind the depot and eyeing askance the train just beginning to move away. The Markhams were all good-looking, and James was not an exception. The Olney girls called him very handsome, when on Sunday he came to church in his best clothes and led the Methodist choir; but Ethelyn only thought him rough, and coarse, and vulgar, and when he bent down to kiss her she drew back haughtily.
"Ethelyn!" Richard said, in the low, peculiar tone, which she had almost unconsciously learned to fear, just as she did the dark expression which his hazel eyes assumed as he said the single word "Ethelyn!"
She was afraid of Richard when he looked and spoke that way, and putting up her lip, she permitted the kiss which the warm-hearted James gave to her. He was naturally more demonstrative than his brother, and more susceptible, too; a pretty face would always set his heart to beating and call out all the gallantry of his nature. Wholly unsophisticated, he never dreamed of the gulf there was between him and the new sister, whom he thought so beautiful--loving her at once, because she was so pretty, and because she was the wife of Dick, their household idol. He was more of a ladies' man than Richard, and when on their way to the democratic-wagon they came to a patch of mud, through which Ethelyn's skirts were trailing, he playfully lifted her in his strong arms, and set her down upon the wagon-box, saying, as he adjusted her skirts: "We can't have that pretty dress spoiled, the very first day, with Iowa mud."
All this time Tim Jones had been dutifully holding the satchel, which he now deposited at Ethelyn's feet, and then, at James' invitation, he sprang into the hinder part of the wagon-box, and sitting down, let his long limbs dangle over the backboard, while James sat partly in Richard's lap and partly in Ethelyn's. It had been decided that the democrat must come down again for the baggage; and so, three on a seat, with Tim Jones holding on behind, Ethelyn was driven through the town, while face after face looked at her from the windows of the different dwellings, and comment after comment was made upon her pretty little round hat, with its jaunty feather, which style had not then penetrated so far west as Olney. Rumors there were of the Eastern ladies wearing hats which made them look at least ten years younger than their actual age; but Ethelyn was the first to carry the fashion to Olney, and she was pronounced very stylish, and very girlish, too, by those who watched her curiously from behind their curtains and blinds.
It was the close of a chill October day, and a bank of angry clouds hung darkly in the western sky, while the autumn wind blew across the prairie; but colder, blacker, chillier far than prairie winds, or threatening clouds, or autumnal day was the shadow resting on Ethelyn's heart, and making her almost cry out with loneliness and homesickness, as they drew near the house where the blue paper curtains were hanging before the windows and Eunice Plympton's face was pressed against the pane. The daisies and violets and summer grass were withered and dead, and the naked branches of the lilac bush brushed against the house with a mournful, rasping sound, which reminded her of the tall sign-post in Chicopee, which used to creak so in the winter wind, and keep her Aunt Barbara awake. To the right of the house, and a little in the rear, were several large, square corn-cribs, and behind these an inclosure in which numerous cattle, and horses, and pigs were industriously feeding, while the cobs, stripped, and soiled, and muddy, were scattered everywhere. Ethelyn took it all in at a glance, exclaiming, in a smothered voice, as the wagon turned into the lane which led to the side door, "Not here, Richard; surely, not here!"
But Richard, if he heard her, did not heed her. He could not comprehend her utter desolation and crushing disappointment. Her imaginings of his home had never been anything like this reality, and for a moment she felt as if in a kind of horrible nightmare, from which she struggled to awake.
"Oh! if it were only a dream," she thought; but it was no dream, though as Richard himself lifted her carefully from the wagon, and deposited her upon the side stoop, there came a mist before her eyes, and for an instant sense and feeling forsook her; but only for an instant, for the hall door was thrown open, and Richard's mother came out to greet her son and welcome her new daughter.
But alas for Ethelyn's visions of heavy silk and costly lace! How they vanished before this woman in purple calico, with ruffles of the same standing up about the throat, and the cotton lace coiffure upon her head! She was very glad to see her boy and wound both her arms around his neck, but she was afraid of Ethelyn. She, too, had had her ideal, but it was not like this proud-looking beauty, dressed so stylishly, and, as it seemed to her so extravagantly, with her long, full skirt of handsome poplin trailing so far behind her, and her basque fitting her graceful figure so admirably. Neither did the hat, rolled so jauntily on the sides, and giving her a coquettish appearance, escape her notice, nor the fact that the dotted veil was not removed from the white face, even after Richard had put the little, plump hand in hers, and said:
"This, mother, is Ethie, my wife. I hope you will love each other for my sake."
In her joy at seeing her pet boy again, Mrs. Markham would have done a great deal for his sake, but she could not "kiss a veil," as she afterwards said to Melinda Jones, when she reached the point where she talked straight out about her daughter-in-law. No, she could not kiss a veil, and so she only held and pressed Ethelyn's hand, and leading her into the house, told her she was very welcome, and bade her come to the fire and take off her things, and asked if she was not tired, and cold and hungry.
And Ethelyn tried to answer, but the great lumps were swelling in her throat, and so keen a pain was tugging at her heart that when at last, astonished at her silence, Richard said, "What is the matter, Ethie--why don't you answer mother?" she burst out in a pitiful cry:
"Oh, Richard, I can't, I can't; please take me back to Aunt Barbara."
This was the crisis, the concentration of all she had been suffering for the last hour, and it touched Mrs. Markham's heart, for she remembered just how wretched she had been when she first landed at the rude log cabin which was so long her Western home, and turning to Richard, she said, in an aside:
"She is homesick, poor child, as it's natural she should be at first. She'll be better by and by, so don't think strange of it. She seems very young."
In referring to her youth, Mrs. Markham meant nothing derogatory to her daughter-in-law, though Ethelyn did strike her as very young, in her pretty hat with her heavy hair low in her neck. She was finding an excuse for her crying, and did not mean that Ethelyn should hear. But she did hear, and the hot tears were dashed aside at once. She was too proud to be petted or patronized by Mrs. Markham, or apologized for by her, so she dried her eyes, and lifting her head, said proudly:
"I am tired to-night, and my head is aching so hard that I lost my self-control. I beg you will excuse me. Richard knows me too well to need an excuse."
A born duchess could not have assumed a loftier air, and in some perplexity Mrs. Markham glanced from her to Richard, as if asking what to do next. Fortunately for all parties, Andy just then came in with his brother John, who approached his new sister with some little hesitation. He had heard Tim Jones' verdict, "Stuck up as the old Nick," while even cautious James had admitted his fears that Dick had made a mistake, and taken a wife who would never fit their ways. And this was why John had been so late with his welcome. He had crept up the back stairs, and donned his best necktie, and changed his heavy boots for a pair of shoes, which left exposed to view a portion of his blue yarn socks. He had before changed his coat and vest, and tied on a handkerchief, but it was not his best; not the satin cravat, with the pretty bow Melinda Jones had made, and in which was stuck a rather fanciful pin he wore on great occasions. He was all right now, and he shook hands with his new sister, and asked if she were pretty well, and told her she was welcome, and then stepped back for Andy, who had been making his toilet when the bride arrived, and so was late with his congratulations.