CHAPTER XIX.THE GOVERNESS.
It was a bright September afternoon, and the dense foliage of the trees looked as fresh and green as when watered by the Summer showers, save here and there a faded leaf came rustling to the ground, whispering to those at whose feet it fell of the Winter which was hastening on, and whose breath even now was on the northern seas. Softly the Autumnal sunlight fell upon the earth, and the birds sang as gayly in the trees as if there were no hearts bereaved—no small, low rooms where all was darkness and gloom—no humble procession winding slowly through the crowded streets and out into the country, where, in a new-made grave, a mother’s love was buried, while the mourners, two in number, a young man and a girl, held each other’s hand in token that they were bound together by a common sorrow. Not a word was said by either; and when the solemn burial rite was over, they returned as silently to the carriage, then were driven back to their desolate home—the tenement where Frederic Raymond had watched the curtained window and the geranium growing there.
For many days that window had been darkened, just as it was when Marian Grey lay there with the fever in her veins; but it was open now, and the west wind came stealing in, purifying the room from the faint sickening smell of coffins and of death, for the Destroyer had been there. And when the mournerscame back from the grave in the country, one threw himself upon the lounge, and burying his face in the cushions, sobbed aloud:
“Oh, Marian, it’s terrible to be an orphan and have no mother.”
“Yes, Ben, ’tis terrible,” and Marian’s tears dropped on the hair of the honest-hearted Ben.
Up to this hour he had restrained his grief, but now that he was alone with Marian, he wept on until the sun went down and the night shadows were creeping into the room. Then lifting up his head, he said, “It is so dark—so dismal now—and the hardest of all is the givin’ up our dear old home where mother lived so long, and the thinkin’ maybe you’ll forget me when you live with that grand lady.”
“Forget you! Oh, Ben, I never can forget how much you have done for me, denying yourself everything for my sake,” said Marian, while Ben continued, “Nor won’t you be ashamed of me neither, if I should come sometimes to see you? I should die if I could not once in a while look into your eyes; and you’ll let me come, won’t you, Marian?”
“Of course I will,” she replied, continuing after a moment, “It is not certain yet that I go to Mrs. Sheldon’s. I have not answered her last letter because—You know what we talked about before your mother died!”
“Yes, yes, I know,” returned Ben, “but I had forgot it—my heart was so full other things. I’ll go out there to-morrow. I’d rather you should teach at Riverside, even if you’d never heard of Frederic, than go to that grand lady, who might think, because you was a governess, that you wan’t fit to live in the same house.”
“I have no fears of that,” said Marian. “Mrs. Harcourt says she is an estimable woman; but still, I too, would rather go to Riverside, if I were sure Frederic would not know me. Do you think there is any danger?”
“No,” was Ben’s decided answer, and in this opinion Marian herself concurred, for she knew that she had changed so much that none who saw her when first she came to Mrs. Burt’s would recognize her now.
About three months before the night of which we are writing, she had been graduated at Mrs. Harcourt’s school with every possible honor, both as a musician and a scholar. There had never been her equal there before, Mrs. Harcourt said, and when her friend, Mrs. Sheldon, who lived in Springfield, Mass., applied to her for a family pupil, she warmly recommended her favorite pupil, Marian Grey, frankly stating, however, that she was of humble origin—that her adopted mother or aunt was a poor sewing woman, and her adopted brother a peddler. This, however, made no difference with Mrs. Sheldon, and several letters had passed between herself and Marian, who would have accepted the liberal offer at once, but for a lingering hope that Ben would carry out his favorite plan, and procure her a situation as teacher at Riverside. She had forgotten what she once said about learning to hate Frederic, and the possibility of living again beneath the same roof with him made her heart beat faster than its wont. She had occasionally met him in the street, and once she was sure his eye had rested upon her in passing, but she knew by its expression that she was not recognized, and when Ben suggested offering her services as Alice’s governess she readily consented.
During these years Ben had not lost sight of Frederic’s movements, though it so chanced that they had met but twice, once just after the receipt of Alice’s picture, which had been greeted by Marian with a shower of kisses and tears, and once the previous Autumn, when Frederic was about returning to Kentucky, for, with his changed feelings toward Marian, Mr. Raymond felt less delicacy in using her money—less aversion to Redstone Hall, where his presence was really needed, for a portion of the year at least, and which he intended making his Winter residence.
But he was at Riverside now, and Ben was about going there to see what arrangements could be made, when his mother’s sudden death caused both himself and Marian to forget the subject until the night after the burial, when, without a moment forgetting the dead or the dreary blank her absence made, they talked together of the future, and decided that on the morrow Ben should go to Riverside and see if there were room in Frederic’s house for Marian Grey. The morning came, and at an early hour Ben started, bidding Marian keep up her spirits as he was sure of bringing her good tidings.
Frederic was sitting in his arm-chair, which stood near the window, just where Marian had placed it three years and a half ago. Not that it had never been moved since that April morning, for, freed from old Dinah’s surveillance, Mrs. Huntington, who was still at Riverside, proved herself a pattern housekeeper, and the chair had probably been moved a thousand times to make room for the broom and brush, but it was in its old place now, and Frederic was sitting in it, thinking of Marian and his hitherto fruitless efforts at finding her. He was beginning to get discouraged, and still each time he went to the city he thought “perhaps I may meet her to-day,” and each night, as the hour for his return drew near, Alice waited upon the piazza when the weather was fine, and by the window when it was cold, listening intently for another step than Frederic’s—a step which never came, and then Alice grew less hopeful, while Marian seemed farther and farther away as month after month went by bringing no tidings of her. Frederic knew that she must necessarily have changed somewhat from the Marian of old, for she was a woman now, but he should readily recognise her, he said. He should know her by her peculiarhair, if by no other token. So when his eye once rested on a face of surpassing sweetness, shaded by curls of soft chesnut hair, which in the sunlight wore a rich red tinge, he felt a glow like that whichone experiences in gazing for a single instant on some picture of rare loveliness; then the picture faded, the graceful figure glided by, and there was nothing left to tell how, by stretching forth his hand, he might have grasped his long lost Marian. Moments there were when she seemed near to him, almost within his reach, and such a moment was the one when Mrs. Huntington announcedBen Butterworth, whom he had not seen for a long time.
Involuntarily he started up, half expecting his visitor had come to tell him something of her. But when he saw the crape upon Ben’s hat, and the sorrow on his face, he forgot Marian in his anxiety to know what had happened.
“My mother’s dead,” said Ben, and the strong man, six feet high, sobbed like a little child, bringing back to Frederic’s mind the noiseless room, the oddly shaped box, the still, white face, and tolling bell, which were all he could distinctly remember of the day when he, too, said to a boy like himself, “My mother’s dead.”
These three words. Alas, how full of anguish is their utterance, and how their repetition will call up an answering throb in the heart of every one who has ever said in bitterness of grief, “My mother’s dead.”
Frederic felt it instantly, and it prompted him to take again the rough hand, which he pressed warmly in token of his sympathy.
“Heisa good man,” thought Ben, wiping his tears away; and after a few choking coughs and brief explanations as to how and when, he came at once to the object of his visit.
“He should peddle now just as he used to do, of course, but wimmen wan’t so lucky, and all Marian could do was to teach. He had given her a tip-top larnin’, though she had earnt some on’t herself by sewin’. She had got a paper thing, too, with a blue ribin, from Miss Harcourt, who praised her up to the skies. In short, if Mr. Raymond had not any teacher for Alice, wouldn’t he take Marian Grey?” and Bentwirled his hat nervously, while he waited for the answer.
“I wish you had applied to me sooner,” said Frederic, “for in that case I would have taken her, but a Mrs. Jones, from Boston, came on only a week ago, so you see I am supplied. I am very sorry, for I feel an interest in Miss Grey, and will use my influence to procure her a situation.”
“Thank you; there’s a place she can have, but I wanted her to come here,” returned Ben, who was greatly disappointed and began to cry again.
Frederic was somewhat amused, besides being considerably disturbed, and after looking at the child-man for a moment, he continued:
“Mrs. Jones is engaged for one year only, and if at the end of that time Miss Grey still wishes to come, I pledge you my word that she shall do so.”
This brought comfort at once. One year was not very long to wait, and by that time Marian would certainly be past recognition, and as all Ben’s wishes and plans centered upon one thing, to wit: Mr. Raymond’s falling in love with his unknown wife, he was readily consoled, and wiping his eyes, he said apologetically, as it were, “I’m dreadful tender-hearted, and since I’ve been an orphan it’s ten times wus. So you must excuse my actin’ like a baby. Where’s Alice?”
Frederic called the little girl, who, childlike, waited to put on her bracelet, “so as to show the man that she still wore it and liked it very much.” She seemed greatly pleased at meeting Ben again, asking him why he had not been there before, and if he had received her picture.
“Yes, wee one,” said he, taking her round white arm in his hand and touching the bracelet. “I should have writ, only that ain’t in my line much, and I don’t always spell jest right, but we got the picter, and Marian was so pleased she cried.”
“What made her?” said Alice, wonderingly. “She don’t know me.”
“But she knows you’re blind, for I told her,” was Ben’s quick reply, which was quite satisfactory to Alice, who by this time had detected a note of sadness in his voice, and she asked what was the matter.
To her also Ben replied, “My mother’s dead,” and the mature little girl understood at once the dreary loneliness that a mother’s death must bring even to the heart of a big man like Ben. Immediately, too, she thought of Marian Grey, and asked “What she would do?”
“I come out to see if your pa—no, beg your pardon—to see if the Square didn’t want her to hear you say your lessons,” was Ben’s answer, and Alice exclaimed, “Oh, Frederic. Let her come. I know I shall like her better than Mrs. Jones, for she’s young and pretty, I am sure. May she come?”
“Alice,” said Frederic, “Mrs. Jones has an aged mother and two little children dependent upon her earnings, and, should I send her away, the disappointment would be very great. Next year, if we all live, Miss Grey shall come, and with this you must be satisfied.”
Alice saw at once that he was right, and she gave up the point, merely remarking that “a year was a heap of a while.”
“No, ’taint,” said Ben, who each moment was becoming more and more reconciled to the arrangement.
One year’s daily intercourse with fashionable people, he thought, would be of invaluable service to Marian, and as he wished her to be perfect both in looks and manners when he presented her to Frederic Raymond, he was well satisfied to wait, and he returned to New York with a light, hopeful heart. Marian, on the contrary, was slightly disappointed, for like Alice, a year seemed to her a long, long time. Still there was no alternative, and she wrote to Mrs. Sheldon that she would come as early as the first day of October. It was hard to break up their old home, but it was necessary, they knew, and with sad hearts they disposedof the furniture, gave up the rooms, and then, when the appointed time came, Marian started for her new home, accompanied by Ben, who went rather unwillingly.
“We ain’t no more alike than ile and water,” he said, when she first suggested his going, “and they won’t think as much of you for seein’ me.”
But Marian insisted, and Ben went with her, mentally resolving to say but little, as by this means he fancied “he would be less likely to show how big a dolt he was!”