CHAPTER XXIV.IN THE SUMMER.
Trixey did not thrive well in her new home, though everything which human ingenuity could devise was done to make her happy and contented. But in spite of everything Trixey could not quite overcome her homesickness. Many times a day she disappeared from sight and was gone a long time, and when she came back there was a mysterious redness about her eyes, which she said, by way of explanation, were “kind of sore, she dessed. Maybe she had got some dust in ’em.”
This went on for weeks, until at last, in a fit of remorse lest she had been guilty of a lie, the conscientious child burst out:
“’Tain’t dust, ’tain’t sore that makes ’em red; it’s wantin’ to see papa, and mamma, and Bunchie, and baby brudder. Was it a lie, and is I a naughty dirl to make breve it was dust?”
Then Bee felt that it would be wrong to keep her any longer, and wrote to Mrs. Morton to that effect.
Mrs. Morton and Bunchie were still in Bronson, but Theo was supplying a vacant pulpit in Boston, and only saw his wife once in two or three weeks. There was room in the parsonage now for homesick Trixey, for the sickly baby had died suddenly with cholera infantum, and the same letter which carried the news to Beatrice asked that Trixey might be sent to Vermont.
“Send her by express,” Mrs. Morton wrote, “or will you bring her yourself? We shall be so glad to see you, though we cannot offer you a bed here, we are so full, but there is a good country hotel near us, and Cousin Julia Hayden, whom you met in New York, wishes me to say that she will be very glad to entertain you at her own house. I hope you will come, for though our acquaintance is so recent, you seem to me like a friend of years, and I feel that the sight of you may do me good, now that my heart is so sore with the loss of my baby.”
“I’ll go,” Bee said, as she finished reading the letter,deciding all the more readily on account of a little incident which had occurred the night before, and which filled her with alarm for both Everard and Rosamond.
They had walked together to Elm Park, and sat with her for an hour or more on the piazza, where the full moon was shining brightly. This time there had been no shawl to adjust, for the early June night was warm and balmy, but there was a slight dampness in the air, and Everard’s solicitude lest Rosamond should take cold or contract a sore throat was noticeable in the extreme. Two or three times he pulled the fleecy cloud of Berlin wool about her neck, and asked if she were quite comfortable, and once he let his hand rest on her shoulder for some minutes, while he sat looking at her with an expression on his face which Josephine might have resented had she seen it. And Bee, with her strong sense of right and wrong, resented it for her, or rather for Rosamond, whom she would not see sacrificed without a protest. So when they arose to go home, she led Everard away from Rossie, and when sure she could not be heard, said to him, earnestly:
“Pardon me, Everard, but you are altogether too solicitous about Rosamond’s health. Let her take care of herself. She is capable of doing it, and, remember, there are bounds you must not pass, or suffer her to approach. It would be very cruel to her.”
“Yes, I know,” he answered, coloring deeply as he spoke. “You need not fear for Rossie. She is my sister, nothing more; and even if I were disposed to make her something else, do you suppose I can ever forget the past?”
He spoke bitterly, and showed plainly how gladly he would free himself, if possible, from the bond which held him, and which was growing daily more and more hateful to him.
As far as she could see them in the moonlight Beatrice watched Everard and Rossie as they walked slowly down the avenue which led to the street, and when they were out of sight she said to herself: “He ought to acknowledge his marriage, and he must, even if he does not take his wife, which might be the better thing to do. There must be good in her,—something to build upon, if under the right influence, with somebody to encourageand stimulate her to do her best. I wish I knew her,—wish I dared face her in her own home, and judge what kind of person she is.”
This was Bee’s thought the night before she read Mrs. Morton’s letter inviting her to Bronson, and when she read it the thought resolved itself into a fixed purpose, the first step of which was to take Trixey to her mother. Poor little Trixey, who turned so white, but did not at first shed a tear, when told of her baby brother’s death. Half an hour later, however, Beatrice found her in the garden, with her face in the grass, sobbing as if her heart would break for the dead brother, of whom she said to Bee, “I wouldn’t feel so bad to have him with Jesus, only I shaked him once hard, when he was so cross and heavy, and I was so tired, and he wouldn’t go to sleep. I’se so sorry. Will God let me go to Heaven some day and see him, and tell him I’se sorry?”
As well as she could, Beatrice comforted and reassured the weeping child, whose conscientiousness and sweet faith and trust in God were leading her into ways she had only known in theory, but which were beginning to be very pleasant to her feet, as she learned each day some new lesson from the trusting child.
It was near the latter part of June, the season of roses, and pinks, and water lilies in New England, when she at last took Trixey to the old brown house under the shadow of the apple trees, where the mountain air was filled with perfume from the flowers blossoming on the borders by the door, and where Bunchie played in the soft summer sunshine under the snow-ball tree by the well. It was such a plain, but pleasant old house, with the rafters overhead showing in the kitchen, and the great box-like beams in the corners of the room,—for the old house claimed to have seen a hundred years, and to have heard the guns of the Revolution. But it was very cheerful and home-like, and neat as soap and sand and Aunt Nancy’s hands could make it. Aunt Nancy was the first to welcome Miss Belknap, looking a little askance at her style and manners, and wondering how they could ever entertain so fine a lady even for a few hours. Mrs. Morton was sick with a headache, and Mrs. Brown was still down with nervous prostration, having stoutly resistedall Mrs. Julia Hayden’s advice about making an effort, and hints which sometimes amounted to assertions that she could get up if she liked, and would diet on oatmeal and barley. In her last letter to Mrs. Morton, Beatrice had declined Mrs. Hayden’s offer, and said she should feel more independent at the hotel for the short time she should remain in Bronson, but within half an hour after her arrival at the parsonage, Mrs. Hayden was there also, in her handsome carriage, drawn by her shining black horses, and driven by a shining black coachman, in gloves and brass buttons, and she insisted so hard upon Beatrice stopping with her, that the latter finally accepted the invitation, but said she would remain for the day where she was and see if she could not be of some comfort and help to Mrs. Morton, who seemed better from the moment she came and laid her soft hands on her head.
“Nothing can help her or her mother, either, unless they make an effort,” Mrs. Hayden said, with a toss of her head, and a flash of her black eyes. “Spleeny and notional both of them as they can be; call it nervous, if you like; what’s nervousness but fidgets? I was never nervous; but if I’d give up every time the weather changes, or I felt a little weak, I might have prostration, too. There’s Harry, my husband, would have died long ago if I had not kept him up just by my own energy and will. I make him sleep with the windows open, and he takes a cold bath every morning at six o’clock, and eats oatmeal for his breakfast, with a cup of hot water instead of coffee or tea.”
“And does he thrive on that diet? Is he well and strong?” Bee asked, and Mrs. Hayden replied:
“Well and strong? No: he could not be that in the nature of things, he comes from a sickly stock; but he keeps about, which is better than lying in bed and moping all the time.”
How strong and full of life Mrs. Hayden was, and so unsympathetic that Beatrice did not wonder Mrs. Morton shivered and shrank away even from the touch of her large, powerful hands.
“I am sometimes wicked enough to wish she might be sick herself, or at least nervous, so as to know how it feels,” Mrs. Morton said, after her cousin had gone.“She thinks I can do as she does, and the thing is impossible. My health is destroyed, and I sometimes fear I shall never be well again.”
She had failed since Beatrice saw her, and her eyes looked so large and glassy as she lay upon the pillow, and her cough was so constant and irritating, that to talk of effort and oatmeal to her seemed preposterous and cruel. What she needed was rest, and nursing, and care, and change of thought and occupation, and these she could not have in their fullest extent at the parsonage, with poverty and a sick mother, and bustling, irritable Aunt Nancy to act as counter influences. She must be taken entirely away, and amused, and nursed, and petted, and Beatrice began to see the first step of that vague plan formed in Rothsay, and which she meant to carry out.
For a day or two she staid in Bronson, sleeping and eating in Mrs. Hayden’s grand house, and feeling all her sympathies enlisted for shriveled-up Mr. Hayden, who in the morning came shivering to the table from his cold bath, and swallowed his oatmeal and hot water dutifully, but with an expression on his thin, sallow face which showed how his stomach rebelled against it and craved the juicy steak and fragrant coffee with which his blooming wife regaled herself, because she was strong and could bear it. Once Bee ventured to suggest that steak and beef-tea might be a more nutritious diet even for a dyspeptic than oatmeal and barley, varied with dry toast and baked apples; but Mrs. Haydenknew. She had read up onstomachs, andnerves, anddigestion, and knew every symptom of dyspepsia, and its cause, and what it needed, and how a person ought to feel; and her husband submitted quietly, and said, “Julie was right,” and grew thinner, and paler, and weaker every day with cold baths and starvation; but he kept the respect of his wife because hetriedto be well, and that was a great thing to do, for in his estimation she was a wonderful woman, and represented the wisdom of the world.
On the third day Beatrice left Bronson, to look, she said, for some quiet, pleasant nook, where she could spend a few weeks during the hot weather. She found such a place in Holburton, whither she came one warm July afternoon, when the town was at its best. Itwas not an unheard-of thing for city people to pass a few weeks in Holburton during the hot weather, and no one was surprised when Miss Belknap registered her name on the hotel books, and said she was looking for some quiet and reasonable boarding-house for an invalid with two children. Several were recommended to her, and with the list in her hand she started out to reconnoiter.
Mrs. Roxie Fleming was the fourth name on her paper, but she went there first, and was pleased with the place at once, because it looked so cool and inviting under the wealth of hop vines which covered one side of it.
The day was warm, and Mrs. Fleming, in her clean purple calico gown, sat sewing on the door-steps, while a woman with a deep pasteboard bonnet on her head, concealing her face from view, was sweeping the grass in the back yard. But she turned as she heard the gate open, and seeing Beatrice, came forward until she saw her mother; then she withdrew, leaving Mrs. Fleming to confer with the stranger.
She had rooms to let, she said; did the lady wish them for herself? and she looked curiously at Beatrice, who was so different from the boarders who usually came to her, for her rooms were low and scantily furnished, and not at all like the apartments city people desired.
Miss Belknap wanted board for herself and a friend with two children; two sleeping-rooms and a parlor would do nicely for them all, and she was willing to pay whatever it was worth.
Mrs. Fleming readily guessed that money was no consideration with the lady, and as it was of much importance to her, she decided to ask the highest possible price at first, and then fall if necessary. After a moment, during which she seemed to be thinking, she said:
“I don’t know but I can accommodate you with three rooms, though I do not often rent an extra parlor, and if I do so now my daughter Josephine must give up the room she occupies when she is here.”
“Then she is not at home?” Beatrice said, feeling that she must know that fact before she engaged board, where the only attraction was Josephine who, she found, had only gone for a week or so to Oak Bluffs, with a party of friends, and was expected daily.
The price named for the three rooms, though high for Holburton, did not seem unreasonable to Beatrice, and the bargain was closed with the understanding that Beatrice was to take immediate possession.
“It will be a change for Mrs. Morton; a relief to Aunt Nancy; a possible benefit to Everard, and an amusement to me,” Beatrice thought, as she hurried back to Bronson, where she found the Rev. Theodore himself, handsomer, more elegant in appearance, because better dressed, than when she saw him last, and very glad to see her, as an old friend who was kind to his wife and children.
To the Holburton plan he listened approvingly. It would do Mollie good, he said, for two sick people in one house were quite too many for the comfort of either. But Mollie demurred; she could not sleep in new places unless everything were right, and she presumed there were swarms of crickets and tree-toads, and possibly bull-frogs, there among the mountains, to make the night hideous.
It would be impossible to portray the scorn and disgust which blazed in the black eyes of Mrs. Julia Hayden, who was present, when Mollie uttered her protest against Holburton.
“Crickets, and tree-toads, and bull-frogs, indeed! She’d like to see the bull-frog which could keep her awake, even if it sat on her pillow and croaked in her ear; it was all nonsense, such fidgets. Just use your will and a little common sense, and you will sleep through everything.”
This was Mrs. Hayden’s theory, which made Mollie cry and Beatrice angry, and Theodore laugh. He had to stand between them all, and keep them from quarreling, and he did it admirably, and smoothed everything so nicely, and made the trip to Holburton seem so desirable, that Mollie began to want to go, especially as he assured her he could well afford it, as the church in Boston paid him liberally, and had just given him a hundred dollars to do with as he liked. Beatrice had intended to meet the expenses herself, but could not press the matter without hurting more than she did good. It was just possible that Mrs. Hayden might follow them with her husband, if good rooms andboard could be found for her, for she had taken a great liking to Miss Belknap, who stood even higher in her estimation than Mrs. Sniffe, and whose acquaintance she readily saw would do her more real good in a social point of view. So it was finally arranged that Mollie and the children should go to Holburton for the summer, and word to that effect was forwarded to Mrs. Fleming, with instructions to have the rooms in readiness by the middle of July.