CHAPTER XVIII.HOME AGAIN.
Frederic was coming home again—“Marster Frederic,” who, as Dinah said, “had been so near to kingdom come that he could hear thehimesthey sung on Sundays.”
Joyfully the blacks told to each other the glad news, which was an incentive for them all to bestir themselves as they had not done before during the whole period of their master’s absence. Old Dinah, whose mind turned naturally upon eatables, busied herself in conjuring up some new and harmless relish for the invalid, while Uncle Phil spent all the whole day in rubbing down the horses and rubbing up the carriage with which he intended meeting his master at Frankfort. Josh, too, caught the general spirit, and remembering how much his master was wont to chide him for his slovenly appearance, he cast rueful glances at his sorry coat and red cowhides, wishing to goodness he had some “clothes to honor the ’casion with.”
“I m-m-might sh-sh-shine these up a little,” he said, examining his boots, and, purloining a tallow candle from Hetty’s cupboard, he set himself to the task, succeeding so well that he was almost certain of commendation.
A coat of uncle Phil’s was borrowed next, and though it hung like a tent cloth about Josh’s lank proportions, the effect was entirely satisfactory to the boy,who had a consciousness of having done all that could reasonably be expected of him.
In the house Alice was not idle. From the earliest dawn she had been up, for there was something on her mind which kept her wakeful and restless. Frederic’s letters, which were read to her by the wife of the overseer, who lived near by, had told her of the blue-eyed girl who had been with him in his sickness, and in one letter, written ere he had given up the search, he had said, while referring to the girl: “Darling Alice, I am so glad you sent me here, for I hope to bring you a great and joyful surprise.”
Not the least mention did he make of Marian, but Alice understood at once that he meant her. Marian and the blue-eyed girl were the same, and he would bring her back to them again. She was certain of it, and though in his last letter, dated at Riverside, and apprising them of his intended return, he had not alluded to the subject, it made no difference with her. He wished really to surprise her, she thought, and seeking out Dinah, she said to her, rather cautiously, for she would let no one into her secret:
“Supposing Frederic had never been married to Marian, but had gone now after a bride—I don’t mean Isabel,” she said, as she felt the defiant expression of Dinah’s face—“but somebody else—somebody real nice. Supposing, I say, he was going to bring her home, which room do you think he would wish her to have?”
“The best chamber, in course,” answered Dinah—“the one whar the ’hogany bedstead and silk quilt is. You wouldn’t go to puttin’ Marster Frederic’s wife off with poor truck, I hope. But what made you ask that question? What have you hearn?”
“Nothing in particular,” answered Alice, “only it would be nice if he should bring somebody with him, and I want to fix the room just as though I knew he would. May Lid sweep and dust it for me?”
For a moment Dinah looked at her as if she thoughther crazy. Then thinking to herself, “it’ll ’muse her a spell any way, and I may as well humor her whim,” she replied. “Sakes alive, yes, and I’ll ar the bed. Thar haint nobody slep’ in’t sence Marian run away, ’cept Miss Agnes one night and that trollop, Isabel, who consulted me by sayin’ how’t they done clarmbered onto a table afore they could get inter bed, ’twas so high. Ain’t used to feathers whar she was raised, I reckon, and if you’ll b’lieve it, she said how’t she allus slep’ on har afore she come here! Pretty stuff that must be to lie on; but Lord, them Yankees is mostly as poor as poverty, and don’t know no differ.”
Having relieved herself of this speech, which involved both her opinion of Yankees in general and Isabel in particular, the old lady proceeded to business, firstarin’the bed, as she said, and then making it higher, if possible, than it was made on the night when Isabel so injured her feelings by laughing at its height. Lid’s services were next brought into requisition; and when the chamber was swept and dusted, the arrangement of the furniture was left entirely to Alice, who felt that what she did was right, and wished so much that she could see just how Marian’s favorite chair looked standing by the window, from which the gorgeous sunsets Marian so much admired could be plainly seen. Just opposite, and on the other side of the window, Frederic’s easy chair was placed—the one in which he always sat when tired, and where Alice fancied he would now delight to sit with Marian, so near that he could look into her eyes and tell her that he was glad to have her there. He was beginning to love her Alice knew by the tone of his letters; and her heart thrilled with joy as she thought of the happiness in store for them all. She would not be lonely now in her own pleasant chamber, for it was so near to Marian’s. She could leave the doors open between, and that would be so much nicer than having black Ellen sleeping on the floor.
Dear little Alice! She built bright castles in the airthat summer day, and they were as real to her as if Frederic had written, “Marian is found, and coming home with me.”
“She loved a great many flowers around her,” she said, and groping her way down the stairs and out into the yard, she gathered from the tree beneath the library window a profusion of buds and half opened roses, which she arranged into bouquets, and placed in vases for Marian, just as Marian had gathered flowers for her from the garden far away on the river.
It was done at last; and very inviting that pleasant, airy apartment looked with its handsome furniture, its bright carpet and muslin curtains of snowy white, to say nothing of the towering bed. There were flowers on the mantle, flowers on the table, flowers in the window, flowers everywhere, and their sweet perfume filled the air with a delicious fragrance which Dinah declared was “a heap sight better than that scent Miss Isabel used to put on her handkercher and fan. Ugh, that fan!” and Dinah’s nose was elevated at the very thought of Isabel’s sandal-wood fan which had been her special abhorrence.
“Isn’t it most time for Uncle Phil to start?” asked Alice, when Dinah had finished fixing the room.
“Yes, high time,” answered Dinah, “but Phil is so slow. I’ll jest hurry him up,” and followed by Alice she descended the stairs, meeting in the lower hall with Lyd, who held in her hand a brown envelope, which she passed to Alice, saying “One dem letters what come like lightnin’ on the telegraph. A boy done brung it.”
“A telegram,” cried Alice, feeling at first alarmed. “Go for Mrs. Warren to read it.”
But the overseer’s wife was absent, as was also her husband, and neither the blacks nor Alice knew what to do.
“There isn’t more than a line and a half,” said Alice, passing her finger over the paper and feeling the thick sand which had been sifted upon it. “I presumesomething has detained Frederic, and he has sent word that he will not be here to-day.”
“Let me see dat ar,” said Phil, who liked to impress his companions with a sense of his superior wisdom, and, adjusting his iron-bowed specs, he took the letter, which in reality was Greek to him.
After an immense amount of wry faces and loud whispering he said:
“Yes, honey, you’re correct, though Marster Frederic has sich an onery hand-write that it takes me a a heap of time to make it out. It reads, ‘Somethin’ has detained Frederic, and he has sent word that he’ll be here to-morry.’” And, with the utmost gravity, Phil took off his specs, and was walking away with the air of one who has done something his companions could never hope to do, when Hetty called out:
“Wonder if he ’spects us to swaller dat ar, and think he kin read, when he jest done said over what Miss Alice say. Can’t fool dis chile.”
This insinuation Uncle Phil felt constrained to answer, and with an injured air he replied:
“Kin read, too, for don’t you mind how’t Miss Alice say. ‘Won’t be here to-day,’ and it’s writ on the paper, ‘Comin’ to-morry.’” And, fully satisfied that he had convinced his audience, Uncle Phil hastened off, ere Hetty had time for further argument. So certain was Phil that Alice’s surmises were correct and the telegram interpreted aright, and so anxious withal to prove himself sure, that he would not go to Frankfort, as he proposed doing.
“There was no use on’t,” he said. “Marster wouldn’t be thar till to-morry,” and he whiled away the afternoon at leisure.
But alas for Uncle Phil. Mrs. Warren had made a mistake in Frederic’s last letter, the young man writing he should be home on the 15th, whereas she had read it the 17th; afterward, Frederic had decided to leave Riverside one day earlier, and he telegraphed fromCincinnati for Phil to meet him. Finding neither carriage nor servant in waiting, he hired a conveyance, and about four o’clock P. M. from every cabin door there came the joyful cry—
“Marster Frederic has come.”
“Told you so,” said Hetty, with an exultant glance at Uncle Phil, who wisely made no reply, but hastened with the rest to tell his master, “How d’ye?”
“How is it that some one did not meet me?” Frederic asked, after the first noisy outbreak had somewhat subsided. “Didn’t you get the dispatch?”
The negroes looked at Phil, who stammered out—
“Yes, we done got it, but dem ole iron specs of mine is mighty nigh wore out—can’t see in ’em at all, and I read ‘to-morry’ instead of ‘to-day.’”
The loud shout which followed this excuse enlightened Frederic as to the true state of the case, and he, too, joined in the laugh, telling the crest-fallen Phil that “he should surely have a new pair of silver specs which would read ‘to-day’ instead of ‘to-morry.’”
“But where is Alice?” he continued. “Why don’t she come to greet me?”
“Sure ’nough,” returned Dinah. “Whar can she be, when she was so fierce to have you come? Reckon she’s up in the best charmber she’s been fixin’ up for somethin’, she wouldn’t tell what.”
“I’ll go and see,” said Frederic, starting in quest of the little girl, who, as Dinah had conjectured, was in the front chamber—the one prepared with so much care for Marian.
She had been sitting by the window when she heard the sound of wheels coming up the avenue.—Then the joyful cry of “Marster’s comin’,” came to her quick ear, and, starting up, she bent her head to listen for another voice—a voice she had not heard for many a weary month. But she listened in vain, for Marian was not there. Gradually she became convinced of the fact, and, laying her face on the window sill, she was weeping bitterly when Frederic came in.Pausing for a moment in the door, he glanced around first at the well-remembered chair, then at the books upon the table, then at the flowers, and then he knew why all this had been done.
“I would that it might have been so,” he thought, and going to the weeping Alice he lifted up her head and pushing her hair from her forehead, whispered to her softly, “Darling, was it for Marian you gathered all these flowers?”
“Yes, Frederic, for Marian,” and Alice sobbed aloud.
Taking her in his lap, Frederic replied, “Did you think I would bring her home?”
“Yes, I thought you had found her, and I was so glad. What made you write me that?”
“Alice I did find her,” returned Frederic; “I have seen her, I have talked with her. Marian is alive.”
At these words, so decidedly spoken, the blind eyes flashed up into Frederic’s face eagerly, wistfully, as if they fain would burst their vail of darkness and see if he told her truly.
“Is it true? Oh, Frederic, you are not deceiving me? I can’t bear any more disappointment,” and Alice’s face and lips were as white as ashes, as she proceeded further to question Frederic, who told her of the blue-eyed girl who, just as he was treading the brink of the river of death, had come to him and called him back to life by her kind acts and words of love.
“She had a sweet, childish face,” said he, “fairer, sweeter than Marian’s when she went away—but Marian must have changed; for I knew that this was she.”
Then he told her of her sudden disappearance when Isabel came—of his fruitless efforts to find her, and how while searching for her, he had met another girl, whose hands reminded him of those which he had felt so many times upon his brow.
“Wasn’t that Marian?” said Alice, who had forgotten her grief in listening.
There was a mournful pathos in the tone of his voice, and it emboldened Alice to ask another question.
“Frederic,” she began, and her little hand played with his hair, as it always did when she was uncertain as to how her remarks would be received, “Frederic, ain’t you loving Marian a heap more than you did when she went away?”
Frederic did not hesitate a moment ere replying, “Yes, darling, I am, for that young girl crept away down into my heart where Marian ought to have been, before I asked her to be my wife; and I shall find her too. I only stopped long enough to come home for you. The house is ready at Riverside, and your room is charming.”
“Will Isabel be there?” was Alice’s next inquiry, and Frederic answered by telling her all he knew of the matter.
He did not say he was beginning to understand her and consequently to like her less, but Alice inferred as much, and with this fear removed from her mind, she could endure patiently to become again a pupil of Miss Huntington. For a long time they talked together, wondering who wrote the letter purporting to have come from Sarah Green, and why it had been written. Then Frederic told her of the peddler Ben, and of his sister,Marian Grey, who, at that moment, had his daguerreotype in her keeping. Of Marian Grey Alice did not say to him “She is our Marian,” for she had not such a thought, but she seemed interested both in her and in Ben, and when told that the latter had asked for her picture she consented at once, saying he should have it as soon as they were settled at Riverside.
“I would not tell any one that Marian was with me,” said Frederic, as their conversation drew to a close; “I had rather the subject should not be discussed until I really find her and bring her home; then we will set apart a day of general thanksgiving.”
To this suggestion Alice readily assented, and as thesupper bell just then rang, and the two went together to the delicious repast, which Dinah had prepared with unusual care, insisting the while that “thar was nothin’ fit for nobody to eat.”
Frederic, however, whose appetite was increasing each day, convinced her to the contrary, and while watching him as he did justice to her viands, the old negress thought to herself, “’Clar for’t, how he does eat. I should know he come from Yankee land. You can allus tell ’em, the way they crams, when they get whar thar is somethin’.”
The news of Frederic’s return spread rapidly, and that night he received calls from several of his neighbors, together with an invitation to Agnes Gibson’s wedding, which was to take place in a few days. In the invitation Alice was included, and though Dinah demurred, saying that “trundle-bed truck or to stay at home,” Alice ventured to differ from her, and at the appointed time went with Frederic to the party, which was splendid in all its parts, having been got up with a direct reference to the newspaper articles which were sure to be published concerning it. Agnes, of course, was charming in white satin, point lace, orange flowers, flowing vail, and all otheret ceteraswhich complete the dress of a fashionable bride. And the bridegroom—poor old man—looked very well in his new suit of broadcloth, even if his knees did shake—not from fear, however, but as one of the guests remarked, “Because it was a way they’d had for several years!” The top of his head was bald, it is true, and his hair as white as snow, but for every silver thread Agnes knew there was a golden eagle in his purse, and this consoled her somewhat, though it did not prevent her from watching jealously to see if any one was talking of the palsied man, her husband. Her expected present from Isabel had never come, and the threefish knives, ranged in a row, looked as if two of them, at least, were rather more ornamental than useful, as did also the four card baskets, and three gold thimbles, whichoccupied a conspicuous place. To Frederic, Agnes was especially gracious, asking him numberless questions concerning her “dear friend,” and saying “she hoped to meet her in her travels, as they were going North and were intending to spend the Summer at Saratoga, Newport, and Nahant. I thought once you would be taking your bridal tour about this time,” she said to him, when several were standing near.
“I assure you I had no such idea,” was Frederic’s reply, and Agnes continued, “Indeed I supposed you were engaged, of course.”
“Then you supposed wrong,” he answered, glad of this public opportunity to contradict a story he knew had gained a wide circulation. “I esteem Miss Huntington as a friend and distant relative, but I certainly have no intention whatever of making her my wife.”
Frequently, during the evening, he was asked if he had found any clue to Sarah Green or her letter; and as he could in all sincerity reply in the negative, no one guessed that instead of Sarah Green he had found his wife—only, however to lose her again.
“But he would find her,” he said to himself, and as he looked at the ill-matched bride and groom, he could not forebear wishing that it were himself and Marian. He would stay by her now, he thought, and when it grew dark in the parlor instead of suffering her to go away alone and read the fatal letter, he would draw her to his side, and telling her of its contents, would sue for her forgiveness, and offer to her love in return for the fraud imposed upon her.
It was a pleasant picture Frederic drew that night of what his bridal might have been, and so absorbed was he in it that when, as they were going home, Alice with a yawn said to him, “Wasn’t it so tiresome hearing those young folks say such foolish things to each other, and hearing the old ones talk about their servants?” he replied, “why no, child, I spent a most delightful evening.”
“I—don’t—see—how you could,” was the drowsyanswer, and in a moment more Alice lay upon the carriage cushions fast asleep!
It was nearly three weeks after this party ere Frederic’s arrangements for leaving Kentucky were entirely completed, and it was not until the latter part of July that he finally started for his now home. The lamentations of the negroes were noisy in the extreme, though far more moderate than they would have been if their master had not said that it was very probable he should return in the Autumn, and merely make Riverside a Summer residence. If he found Marian he should come back, of course, he thought, but he did not deem it best to raise hopes which might never be realized, so he said nothing of her to the blacks who supposed of course she was dead.
The parting between Dinah and Alice was a bitter one, the former hugging the little girl to her bosom and wondering how Marster Frederic ‘spected a child what had never waited on itself even to fotch a drop of water, could get along way off dar whar thar warn’t nary nigger nor nothin’ but a pack o’ low flung Irish. “Order ’em ’round,” she said to Alice, wiping her eyes with her checked apron, “order ’em round jist like they warn’t white. Make ’em think you be somebody. Say your pra’rs evey night—war your white cambric wrappers in the mornin’, and don’t on no count catch any poor folksy’s marners ’mong them Yankees for I shouldn’t get my nateral sleep o’ nights, till you got shet of ’em, and—” lowering her voice, “if so be that you tell any of the quality ’bout us blacks, s’posin you kinder set me ’bove Hetty and them Higginses, bein’ that I the same as nussed you.”
To nearly all these requirements Alice promised compliance, and then, as the carriage was waiting, she followed Frederic down to the gate, and soon both were lost to the sight of the tearful group which from the piazza of Redstone Hall, gazed wistfully after them.
It was at the close of a sultry Summer day whenthe travelers reached Riverside, where they found Mrs. Huntington waiting to receive them. Frederic had written, apprising her of the time when he should probably arrive, and asking her to be there if possible. Something, too, he had said of Isabel, but that young lady was not in the most amiable mood, and as she was comfortably domesticated with another distant relative, she declined going to Frederic until he came to some understanding, or at least manifested a greater desire to have her with him than his recent letters indicated. Accordingly her mother went alone, and Frederic was not sorry, while Alice was delighted. Everything seemed so bright and airy, she said, just as though a load were taken from them, and like a bird she flitted about the house, for she needed to pass through a room but once ere she was familiar with its location, and could find it easily. With her own cozy chamber she was especially pleased, and in less than half an hour her little hands had examined every article of furniture, even to the vases which held the withered blossoms gathered so long ago.
“Somebody must have put these here for me,” she said, and then her mind went back to the morning when she, too, had gathered flowers for her expected friend, and she wondered much who had done a similar service for her.
“It’s me,” returned Mrs. Russell, who was still staying at Riverside. “How I wonder if you found them dried-up things so soon,” she continued, advancing into room. “I should of hove them out, only that the girl who fixed ’em made me promise to leave ’em till you came. ’Pears like she b’lieved you’d think more on ’em for knowin’ that she picked ’em.”
“Girl! Mrs. Russell. What girl?” and Alice’s eyes lighted up, for she thought at once of Marian, who would know of course about the house, and as she would naturally wish to see it, she had come some day and left these flowers, which would be so dear to her if shefound her suspicions correct. “Who was the girl?” she asked again, and Mrs. Russell replied:
“I don’t remember her name, but she went all over the house, fixing things in Mr. Raymond’s room, which I didn’t think was very marnerly, bein’ that ’twa’n’t none o’ hern. Then she come in here and set ever so long before she picked these posys, which she told me not to throw away.”
“Yes, it was Marian,” came involuntarily from Alice’s lips, while the woman, catching at the name rejoined:
“That sounds like what he called her—that tall spooky chap, her brother—Ben something. She said he had seen you at the South.”
“Oh, Ben Butterworth. It was his adopted sister;” and Alice turned away, feeling greatly disappointed thatMarian Grey, and not Marian Lindsey, had arranged those flowers for her.
This allusion to Ben reminded Alice of his request for her picture, and one morning, when Frederic was going to New York, she asked to go with him and sit for her daguerreotype. There was no reason why she should not, and in an hour or two, she was listening, half stunned, to the noise and uproar of the city.
“Oh, Frederic,” she cried, holding fast to his hand, as they made their way up town—“oh, Frederic, I wonder Marian didn’t get crazy and die. I’m sure I should. I’m almost distracted now. Where are all those people and carts going that I hear running by us so fast, and what makes them keep pushing me so hard. Oh, dear, I wish I hadn’t come!” and as some one just then jostled her more rudely than usual, Alice began to cry.
“Never mind,” said Frederic soothingly, “we are almost there, and we will take a carriage back. Folks can’t push you then;” and in stooping down to comfort the little girl, he failed to see the graceful figure passing so near him that the hem of her dress fluttered against his boot.
They had come upon each other so suddenly that there was not time for the brown vail to be dropped, neither was it needful, for so absorbed was Frederic with his charge that he neither knew nor dreamed how near toMarian Lindseyhe had been.
Alice’s tears being dried, they kept on their way, and when the picture was taken, Frederic did it up and directing it to Ben Butterworth, sent it to the office, then calling a carriage, he took Alice, as he had promised, all over the great city. And Alice enjoyed it very much, laying back on the soft cushions, and knowing that no one could touch her of all the noisy throng she heard so distinctly, but could not see. It was a day long talked of by the blind girl, and she asked Mrs. Huntington to write a description of it to the negroes, who she knew fancied that Louisville was the largest city in the world.
Not long after this, something which Mrs. Huntington said about her daughter determined Frederic to visit her and make the explanation which he felt it his duty to make, for he knew he had given her some reason to think he intended asking her to be his wife. He accordingly feigned some excuse for going to New Haven, and one morning found himself at the door where Isabel was stopping.
“Give her this,” he said, handing his card to the servant who carried it at once to the delighted young lady.
“Frederic Raymond,” read Isabel. “Oh, yes. Tell him I’ll be down in a moment,” and she proceeded to arrange her hair a little more becomingly, and made several changes in her dress, so that the one minute was nearly fifteen ere she started for the parlor, where Frederic was rather dreading her coming, for he scarcely knew what he wished to say.
Half timidly she greeted him as a bashful maiden is supposed to meet her lover, and seating herself at a respectful distance from him, she asked numberless questions concerning his health, her numberless friendsin Kentucky, her mother, and dear little Alice, who, she presumed, did not miss her much.
“Your mother’s presence reminds us of you very often, of course,” returned Frederic, “but you know we can get accustomed to almost anything, and Alice seems very happy.”
“Yes,” sighed Isabel. “You will all forget me, I suppose, even to mother—but for me I have not been quite contented since I left Kentucky. I thought it tiresome to teach, and perhaps was sometimes impatient and unreasonable, but I have often wished myself back again. I don’t seem to be living for anything now,” and Isabel’s black eyes studied the pattern of the carpet quite industriously.
This long speech called for a reply, and Frederic said, “You would not care to come back again, would you?”
“Why, yes,” returned Isabel; “I would rather do that than nothing.”
For a time there was silence, while Frederic fidgeted in his chair and Isabel fidgeted in hers, until at last the former said:
“I owe you an explanation, Isabel, and I have come to make it. Do you remember our conversation in the parlor, and to what it was apparently tending, when we were interrupted by Alice?”
“Yes,” replied Isabel, “and I have thought of it so often, wondering if you were in earnest, or if you were merely trifling with my feelings.”
“I certainly had no intention of trifling with you,” returned Frederic: “neither do I know as I was really in earnest. At all events it is fortunate for us both that Alice came in as she did;” and having said so much, Frederic could now look calmly upon a face which changed from a serene Summer sky to a dark, lightning-laden thunder-cloud as he told her the story he had came to tell.
In her terrible disappointment, Isabel so far forgot herself as to lose her temper entirely, and Frederic,while listening to her as she railed at him for what she called his perfidy, wondered how he ever could have thought her womanly or good.
“It was false that Marian was living, and had taken care of him when sick,” she said. “He could not impose that story upon her, and he only wished to do it because he fancied that he was in some way pledged to her and wished for an excuse, but he might have saved himself the trouble, for even had Alice not appeared she should have told him No. She liked him once, she would admit, but there was nothing like living beneath the same roof to make one person tire of another, and even if she were not disgusted with him before, she should have become so while taking care of him in New York, and so she wrote to Agnes Gibson, who, she heard, had spread the news that she was engaged, though she had no authority for doing so, but it was just like the tattling mischief-maker!”
“Are you through?” Frederic coolly asked, when she had finished speaking. “If you are I will consider our interview at an end.”
Isabel did not reply and he arose to go, saying to her as he reached the door, “I did not come here to quarrel with you, Bell, I wish still to be your friend, and if you are ever in trouble come to me as to a brother. Marian will, I trust, be with me then; but she will be kind to you, for ’tis her nature.”
“Plague on that Marian,” was Isabel’s unlady-like thought as the door closed after Frederic. “I wonder how many times she’s coming to life! How I wanted to charge him with his meanness in marrying her fortune, but as that is a secret between the two, he would have suspected me of treachery. The villain! I believe I hate him—and only to think how those folks in Kentucky will laugh. But it’s all Agnes’ doings. She inveigled more out of me than there was to tell, and then repeated it to suit herself. The jade! I hope she’s happy with that old man”—and at this point Isabel broke down in a flood of tears, in themidst of which the door bell rang again, and hurrying up the stairs she listened to the names, which this time were “Mr. and Mrs. Rivers,” (Agnes and her husband) and they asked for her.
Drying her tears, and bathing her eyes until the redness was gone, Isabel went down to meet the “tattling mischief-maker,” embracing her very affectionately, and telling her how delighted she was to see her again, and how well she was looking.
“Then why do you not embark on the sea of matrimony yourself, if you think it such a beautifier,” said Agnes.
“Me?” returned Isabel, with a toss of her head; “I thought I wrote you that I had given up that foolish fancy.”
“Indeed, so you did,” said Agnes, “but I had forgotten it, and when I saw Mr. Raymond at the Tontine, where we are stopping, I supposed of course he had come to see you, and I said to Mr. Rivers it really was too bad, for from what he said at our wedding I fancied there was nothing in it, and had made up my mind to take you with us to Florida, as I once talked of doing. Husband’s sister wants a teacher for her children, don’t she, dear?”
Mr. Rivers was about to answer in the affirmative, but ere he could speak Isabel chimed in, “Oh, you kind, thoughtful soul. Let me go with you now; do. Nothing could please me more. I have missed your society so much, and am so unhappy here!” and in the black eyes there was certainly a tear, which instantly touched the heart of the sympathetic old man who anticipated his wife’s reply, by saying, “Certainly you shall go, if you like. You’ll be company for Mrs. Rivers, and if I am in my dotage, as some say, I’ve sense enough to know that she can’t be contented all the time with her grandfather. Eh, Aggie?” and chucked his bride under the chin.
“Disgusting!” thought Isabel.
“Old fool!” thought Agnes, who was really ratherpleased with the idea of having Isabel go with her to her new home, for though she did not love her dear friend, she rather enjoyed her company, and she felt that anybody was acceptable who would stand as a third person between herself and the grandfather she had chosen.
The more she thought of the plan the better she was pleased with it, and before parting the whole was amicably adjusted. Early in October, Isabel was to join her friend in Kentucky, and go with her from thence to Florida, where she was either to remain with Mrs. Rivers, or to teach in the family of Mrs. McGregor, Mr. Rivers’ sister. The former was what Isabel intended to do, for she thoroughly disliked teaching, and if she could live without it, she would. Still she did not so express herself to her visitors, and she appeared so gracious and so grateful withal, that, the heart of the bridegroom was wholly won, and after his return to their hotel, he extolled her so highly that Agnes began to pout, a circumstance which pleased her fatherly spouse, inasmuch as it augured more affection for himself than he had supposed her to possess.
The story of Isabel’s intended trip to Florida was not long in reaching Rudolph McVicar, who had been wondering why something didn’t occur, and if he were really to be disappointed after all.
“I wasted that paper and ink for nothing,” was his mental comment when he heard from her own lips that Isabel was going; for, presuming upon his former acquaintance, he finally ventured to call upon her, demeaning himself so well that, like her mother, Isabel began to think he had reformed.
Still there was an expression in his eye which she did not like, and when at last he left her, she experienced a feeling of relief, as if a spell had been removed. After her recent interview with Frederic she would not go to his house, so her mother went to New Haven, staying with her daughter a week andthen returning to Riverside, while Isabel started for Kentucky, where, as she had expected, she met with Mr. and Mrs. Rivers, and was soon on her way to Florida.
When sure that Isabel was gone, and that Sarah Green’s letter had indeed been written in vain, Rudolph, who cared nothing now whether Marian were ever discovered to her husband or not, went to New York and embarked on a whaling voyage, as he had long thought of doing, fancying that the roving life of a seaman would suit his restless nature.
And now, with Rudolph on the sea, with Isabel in Florida, with Marian at school, and Frederic at Riverside, we draw a vail over the different characters of our story, nor lift it again until three years have passed away, bringing changes to all, but to none a greater change than to the so-called Marian Grey.