CHAPTER XXXIIIAS IT IS NOW
Allthis happened years ago, some ten or twelve, more or less, and there have been many changes in that time.
In front of the iron railing where Lady Jane clung on that cold Christmas eve, peering into the warmth and light of the Orphans’ Home, there is now a beautiful little park, with magnolias, oaks, fragrant white jasmine, and pink flowering crape-myrtle. The grass is green, and the trees make shadows on the pretty little pond, the tiled bridge and shelled walks, the cactus and palmetto. Flowers bloom there luxuriantly, the birds sing merrily, and it is a spot beloved of children. Always their joyous laugh can be heard mingled with the songs of birds and the distant hum of many little voices in the Orphans’ Home a few paces away.
In the center of that square on a green mound, bordered with flowers, stands a marble pedestal, and on that pedestal is a statue. It is the figure of awoman, seated and holding a little orphan to her heart. The woman has a plain, homely face, the thin hair is combed back austerely from the broad forehead, the eyes are deep-set, the features coarse, the mouth wide. She is no high-born dame of delicate mold, but a woman of the people—untaught, honest, simple, industrious. Her plain gown falls around her in scanty lines; over her shoulders is modestly folded a little shawl; her hands, that caress the orphan at her side, are large and rough with honest toil; but her face, and her whole plain figure, is beautiful with purity and goodness. It is Margaret, the orphans’ friend, who, though a destitute orphan herself, by her own virtue and industry earned the wealth to found homes and asylums, to feed and clothe the indigent, to save the wretched and forsaken, and to merit the title of Mother to the Motherless.
And there sits her marble image, through summer’s heat and winter’s cold, serene and gentle, under the shadow of the home she founded, and in sound of the little voices that she loved so well; and there she will sit when those voices are silent and those active little forms are dust, as a monument of honest, simple virtue and charity, as well as an enduringtestimony to the nobility of the women who erected this statue in respectful recognition of true greatness under the homely guise of honest toil.
If one of my young readers should happen near this spot just at the right moment on some fine evening in early spring, he or she might chance to notice an elegant carriage drawn by two fine horses, and driven by a sleek darky in plain livery, make the circuit of the place and then draw up near the statue of Margaret, while its occupants, an elderly woman of gentle and distinguished appearance, and a beautiful young girl, study the homely, serene face of the orphans’ friend.
Presently the girl says reverently, “Dear Mother Margaret! She was a saint, if earth ever knew one.”
“Yes; she was a noble woman, and she came from the poor and lowly. My dear, she is an example of a great truth, which may be worthy of consideration. It is, that virtue and purity do not disdain to dwell in the meanest shrine, and that all the titles and wealth of earth could not ennoble her as her own saintly character has done.”
The occupants of the carriage are Lady Jane and Mam’selle Diane d’Hautreve.
The beautiful child is now a beautiful girl of seventeen. Her education is finished, and she has not disappointed the expectations of her friends. At home and abroad she is not only known as the Chetwynd heiress, but also for her many accomplishments, as well as for her beauty and charitableness. And her wonderful voice, which time has enriched and strengthened, is a constant delight to those who hear it, although it is never heard in public, save in the service of God, or for some work of charity. The poor and the lowly, the sick and the dying have often been carried to the very gates of heaven on its melodious strains, and the good sisters and grateful little orphans in Margaret’s Home count it a day long to be remembered when Lady Jane sits down among them and sings some of the hymns that she loved so well in those old days when she herself was a homeless little orphan.
Mr. Chetwynd still likes to spend part of the year in Paris; but he has purchased a beautiful winter home in one of the lovely streets in the garden district, not far from Mrs. Lanier, and Lady Jane and Mam’selle Diane spend several months every spring in its delightful seclusion.
And here Madelon comes to bring her deliciouscakes, which she now sells to private customers instead of having a stand on the Rue Bourbon; and Tante Modeste often rattles up in her milk cart, a little older, a little stouter, but with the same bright face; and on the same seat where Lady Jane used to sit is one of Marie’s little ones, instead of one of her own. “Only think, my dear,” she says proudly, “Tiburce has graduated, and now he is studying law with Marie’s husband, who is rising fast in his profession.”
But among all her happy hours there are none pleasanter than those she spends with Pepsie in the pretty cottage at Carrollton, when the bright-faced little cripple, who seems hardly a day older, spreads out her beautiful needlework and expatiates eloquently on the fine results she obtains from the Paris patterns and exquisite material with which she is constantly supplied. She is a natural little artist with the needle, her dainty work sells readily and profitably, and she is in a fair way to become rich. “Just think,” she says with one of her broad smiles, “I could buy a piano now myself, if I wanted to, and perhaps I shall, so that you can play to me when you come.”
During sunny mornings, on a certain lawn in thegarden district, there is nearly always a merry party playing tennis, while a gentle-faced woman sits near holding a book, which she seldom reads, so interested is she in watching a golden-haired girl and a handsome young man, who frequently interrupt the game to point out the grave antics of a stately blue heron, that stalks majestically about the lawn or poses picturesquely on one leg under a glossy palm.
But we must not approach the border-land of romance. Lady Jane is no longer a child, and Arthur Maynard is years older than the boy who gave her the blue heron.
THE END