CHAPTER II.MADELINE CLYDE.
Maddy, her grandfather and grandmother called her, and there was a world of unutterable tenderness in the voices of the old couple when they spoke that name, while their dim eyes lighted up with pride and joy whenever they rested upon the young girl who made the sunlight of their home. She was the child of their only daughter, and had lived with them since her mother’s death, for her father was a sea captain, who never returned from his last voyage to China, made two months before she was born.
For forty years the aged couple had lived in the old red farm-house, tilling the barren soil of the rocky homestead, and, save on the sad night when they heard that Richard Clyde was lost at sea, and the far sadder morning when their daughter died, they had been tolerably free from sorrow; and, truly thankful for the blessings so long vouchsafed them, they had retired each night in peace with God andman, and risen each morning to pray. But a change was coming over them. In an evil hour Grandpa Markham had signed a note for a neighbor and friend, who failed to pay, and so it all fell upon Mr. Markham, who, to meet the demand, had been compelled to mortgage his homestead; the recreant neighbor still insisting that long before the mortgage was due he should be able himself to meet it. This, however, he had not done, and, after twice begging off a foreclosure, poor old Grandfather Markham found himself at the mercy of a grasping, remorseless man, into whose hands the mortgage had passed. It was vain to hope for mercy from a man like Silas Slocum. The money must either be forthcoming, or the red farm-house be sold, with its few acres of land; and as among his neighbors there was not one who had the money to spare, even if they had been willing to do so, he must look for it among strangers.
“If I could only help,” Madeline said one evening when they sat talking over their troubles; “but there’s nothing I can do, unless I apply for our school this summer. Mr. Green is the committee-man; he likes us, and I don’t believe but what he’ll let me have it. I mean to go and see;” and, before the oldpeople had recovered from their astonishment, Madeline had caught her bonnet and shawl and was flying down the road.
Madeline was a favorite with all, especially with Mr. Green, and as the school would be small that summer, the plan struck him favorably. Her age, however, was an objection, and he must take time to inquire what others thought of a child like her becoming a school-mistress. The people thought well of it, and before the close of the next day it was generally known through Honedale, as the southern part of Devonshire was called, that pretty little Maddy Clyde had been engaged as teacher, and was to receive three dollars a week, with the understanding that she must board herself. It did not take Madeline long to calculate that twelve times three dollars were thirty-six dollars, more than a tenth of what her grandfather must borrow. It seemed like a little fortune, and blithe as a singing bird she flitted about the house, now stopping a moment to fondle her pet kitten, while she whispered the good news in its very appreciative ear, and then stroking her grandfather’s silvery hair, as she said:
“You can tell them that you are sure of paying thirty-six dollars in the fall, and if I do well, maybethey’ll hire me longer. I mean to try my very best. I wonder if ever anybody before me taught a school when they were only fourteen and a half. Do I look as young as that?” and for an instant the bright, childish face scanned itself eagerly in the old-fashioned mirror, with the figure of an eagle on the top.
Shedidlook very young, and yet there was something womanly too in the expression of the face, something which said that life’s realities were already beginning to be understood by her.
“If my hair were not short I should do better. What a pity I cut it the last time. It would have been so long and splendid now,” she continued, giving a kind of contemptuous pull at the thick, beautiful brown hair, on which there was in certain lights a reddish tinge, which added to its richness and beauty.
“Never mind the hair, Maddy,” the old man said, gazing fondly at her with a half sigh as he remembered another brown head, pillowed now beneath the graveyard-turf. “Maybe you won’t pass muster, and then the hair will make no differ. There’s a new committee-man, that Dr. Holbrook, from Boston, and new ones are apt to be mighty strict, and especiallyyoung ones like him. They say he is mighty larned, and can speak in furrin tongues.”
Instantly Maddy’s face flushed with nervous dread, as she thought, “What if I should fail?” fancying that to do so would be an eternal disgrace. But she should not fail. She was called by everybody the very best scholar in the Honedale school, the one whom the teachers always put forward when desirous of showing off, the one whom Mr. Tiverton, and Squire Lamb, and Lawyer Whittemore always noticed and praised so much. Of course she should not fail, though shediddread Dr. Holbrook, wondering much what he would ask her first, and hoping it would be something in arithmetic, provided he did not stumble upon decimals, where she was apt to get bewildered. She had no fears of grammar. She could pick out the most obscure sentence and dissect a double relative with perfect ease; then, as to geography, she could repeat whole pages of that; while in the spelling-book, the foundation of a thorough education, as she had been taught, she had no superiors, and but few equals. Still, she would be very glad when it was over, and she appointed Monday, both because it was close at hand, and because that was the day her grandfather had set in which to ride to Aikenside, in an adjoiningtown, and ask its young master for the loan of three hundred dollars.
He could hardly tell why he had thought of applying to Guy Remington for help, unless it were that he once had saved the life of Guy’s father, who, as long as he lived, had evinced a great regard for his benefactor, frequently asserting that he meant to do something for him. But the something was never done, the father was dead, and in his strait the old man turned to the son, whom he knew to be very rich, and who, he had been told, was exceedingly generous.
“How I wish I could go with you clear up to Aikenside! They say it’s so beautiful,” Madeline had said, as on Saturday evening they sat discussing the expected events of the following Monday. “Mrs. Noah, the housekeeper, had Sarah Jones there once, to sew, and she told me all about it. There are graveled walks, and nice green lawns, and big, tall trees, and flowers—oh! so many!—and marble fountains, with gold fishes in the basin; and statues, big as folks, all over the yard, with two brass lions on the gate-posts. But the house is finest of all. There’s a drawing-room bigger than a ball-room, with carpets that let your feet sink in so far; pictures and mirrors clear to thefloor—think of that, grandpa! a looking-glass so tall that one can see the very bottom of her dress and know just how it hangs. Oh, I do so wish I could have a peep at it! There are two in one room, and the windows are like doors, with lace curtains; but what is queerest of all, the chairs and sofas are covered with real silk, just like that funny gored gown of grandma’s up in the oak chest. Dear me! I wonder if I’ll ever live in such a place as Aikenside?”
“No, no, Maddy, no. Be satisfied with the lot where God has put you, and don’t be longing after something higher. Our Father in Heaven knows just what is best for us; as He didn’t see fit to put you up at Aikenside, ’tain’t no ways likely you’ll ever live in the like of it.”
“Not unless I should happen to marry a rich man. Poor girls like me have sometimes done that, haven’t they?” was Maddy’s demure reply.
Grandpa Markham shook his head.
“They have, but it’s mostly their ruination; so don’t build castles in the air about this Guy Remington.”
“Me!oh, grandpa, I never dreamed of Mr. Guy!” and Madeline blushed half indignantly. “He’s too rich, too aristocratic, though Sarah said he didn’t actone bit proud, and is so pleasant that the servants all worship him, and Mrs. Noah thinks him good enough for the Queen of England. I shall think so, too, if he lets you have the money. How I wish it was Monday night, so we could know for sure!”
“Perhaps we both shall be terribly disappointed,” suggested grandpa, but Maddy was more hopeful.
She, at least, should not fail; while what she had heard of Guy Remington, the master of Aikenside, made her believe that he would accede at once to her grandfather’s request.
All that night in her dreams she was working to pay the debt, giving the money herself into the hands of Guy Remington, whom she had never seen, but who came up before her the tall, handsome-looking man she had so often heard described by Sarah Jones after her return from Aikenside, where she had once done some plain sewing for the housekeeper. Even the next day, when, by her grandparent’s side, Maddy knelt reverently in the small church at Honedale, her thoughts were more intent upon the to-morrow and Aikenside than the sacred words her lips were uttering. She knew it was wrong, and with a nervous start tried to bring her mind back from decimal fractions to what the minister was saying; but Maddy was mortal,and right in the midst of the Collect, Aikenside and its owner would rise before her, together with the wonder how she and her grandfather would feel one week from that day. Would the desired certificate be hers? or would she be disgraced forever and ever by a rejection? Would the mortgage be paid and her grandfather at ease, or would his heart be breaking with the knowing he must leave what had been his home for so many years?
But no such thoughts troubled the aged disciple beside her—the good old man, whose white locks swept the large-lettered book over which his wrinkled face was bent, as he joined in the responses, or said the prayers whose words had so soothing an influence upon him, carrying his thoughts upward to the house not made with hands, which he felt assured would one day be his. Once or twice, it is true, the possibility of losing the dear old red cottage flitted across his mind with a keen, sudden pang, but he put it quickly aside, remembering at the same instant how the Father he loved doeth all things well to such as are his children. Grandpa Markham was old in the Christian course, while Maddy could hardly be said to have commenced it as yet, and so to her that April Sunday was long and wearisome. How she didwish she might just look over the geography, by way of refreshing her memory, and see exactly how the rule for extracting the cubic root did read, but Maddy forbore, and read only the Pilgrim’s Progress, the Bible, and the book brought from the Sunday-school, vainly imagining that by so doing she was earning the good she so much desired.
With the earliest dawn of day she was up, and her grandmother heard her repeating to herself much of what she fancied Dr. Holbrook might question her upon. Even when bending over the wash-tub, for there were no servants at the red cottage, a book was arranged before her so that she could study with her eyes, while her fat hands and dimpled arms were busy in the suds. Before ten o’clock everything was done, the clothes, white as snow-drops in the garden beds, were swinging upon the line, the kitchen floor was scrubbed, the windows washed, the best room swept, the vegetables cleaned for dinner, and then Maddy’s work was finished. Grandma could do all the rest, and Madeline was free to pore over her books until called to dinner; she could not eat so great was her excitement.
Swiftly the hours flew until it was time to be getting ready, when again the short hair was deplored, asbefore her looking-glass Madeline brushed and arranged her shining, beautiful locks. Would Dr. Holbrook think of her age? Suppose he should ask it. But no, he wouldn’t. Only census-takers did that. If Mr. Green thought her old enough, surely it was not a matter with which the doctor need trouble himself; and, somewhat at ease on that point, Madeline donned her longest frock, and, standing on a chair, tried to discover how much of her pantalet was visible.
“I could see splendidly in Mr. Remington’s mirrors. Sarah Jones says they come to the floor,” she said to herself, with a half sigh of regret that her lot had not been cast in some such place as Aikenside, instead of there beneath the hill in that wee bit of a cottage, whose roof slanted back until it almost touched the ground. “After all, I guess I’m happier here,” she thought. “Everybody likes me, while if I were Mr. Guy’s sister and lived at Aikenside, I might be proud and wicked, and——”
She did not finish the sentence, but somehow the story of Dives and Lazarus, read by her grandfather that morning, recurred to her mind, and feeling how much rather she would rest in Abraham’s bosom than share the fate of him who once was clothed in purpleand fine linen, she pinned on her little neat plaid shawl, and, tying the blue ribbons of her coarse straw hat under her chin, glanced once more at the rule for the formidable cube root, and then hurried down to where her grandfather and old Sorrel were waiting for her.
“I shall be so happy when I come back, because it will then be over, just like having a tooth out, you know,” she said to her grandmother, who bent down for the good-bye kiss, without which Maddy never left her. “Now, grandpa, drive on; I was to be there at three,” and chirruping herself to Sorrel, the impatient Maddy went riding from the cottage door, chatting cheerily until the village of Devonshire was reached; then, with a farewell to her grandfather, who never dreamed that the man he was seeking was so near, she tripped up the walk, and soon stood in the presence of not only Dr. Holbrook, but also of Guy Remington.