CHAPTER VI.WHAT CAME OF IT.
Hepsy’s clock, which was thought by its mistress to regulate the sun, was really a great deal too slow, and Mildred had scarcely gone half the way to the Mayfield station, when she was startled by the shrill scream of the engine, and knew that she was left behind.
“Oh, what shall I do?” she cried. “I can’t go back, for maybe Hepsy’s home before now, and she would kill me sure. My arm aches now where she struck me so hard, the old good-for-nothing. I’d rather stay here alone in the woods,” and sinking against a log Mildred began to cry.
Not for a moment, however, did she regret what she had done. The dreary gable-roof seemed tenfold drearier to her than the lonesome woods, while the winter wind, sighing through leafless trees, was music compared with Hepsy’s voice. The day had not been very cold, but the night was chilly, and not a single star shone through the leaden clouds. A storm was coming on, and Mildred felt the snow-flakes dropping on her face.
“I don’t want to be buried in the snow and die,” she thought, “for I ain’t very good; I’m an awful sinner, granny says, and sure to go to perdition, but I ain’t so certain about that. God wouldn’t be very hard on a little girl who has been treated as mean as I have. He’d make some allowance for my dreadful bringing up. I wonder if He is here now; Olly says He is everywhere, and if He is and can see me in my tantrums He can see me in the dark. I mean to pray to Him just as good as I can, and ask Him to take care of me;” and kneeling by the old log, with the darkness all about her, and the snow-flakes falling thickly upon her upturned face, she began a prayer which was a strange mixture of what she had heard at St. Luke’s, where she had once been with Oliver, what she had often heard at the prayer meetings which she had frequently attended with Aunt Hepsy, and of her real self as she thought and felt.
She began: “Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners, for if I know my own heart, I think I have made a new consecration of all that I have and all that I am since we last met, and henceforth I mean to,—mean to,——”
Here the mere form of words left her, and the child Milly spoke out and told her trouble to God.
“Oh, Jesus,” she said, “if you be really here, and if you can hear what I say, as Olly says you can, I wish you’d come up close to me, right here by the log, so I needn’t feel afraid while I tell you how granny has whippedme so many times for ’most nothing, and never let me have a real doll or do anything I wanted to, and I’ve been so unhappy there, and wicked, too, and mad at her, and called her ugly names behind her back, and would to her face, only I dassent, and I’ve made mouths at her and wished I could lick her, and have even in my tantrums been mean to Olly, and twitted him about his twisted feet, and pulled his hair and spit at him as fast as I could spit, and loved him all the time, and now I’ve runned away and the cars have left me when I was going in them to Boston to see Lawrence Thornton and be Miss Geraldine’s waiting-maid, and it’s dark and cold and snowy here in the woods, and I am afraid of something, I don’t know what, and I can’t go back to granny, who would almost skin me alive, and she ain’t my granny either; some Maine woman sent me to Judge Howell, in a thunder-storm and basket, and I’m nobody’s little girl; so, please, Jesus, take care of me and tell me where to go and what to do, and I’m so sorry for all my badness, especially to Olly, for Christ’s sake, Amen.”
This was a very long prayer for Milly, who had never before said more than “Now I lay me,” or the Lord’s prayer; but God saw and heard the little desolate child, and answered her touching appeal.
“There, I feel better and not so lonesome, already,” she said, as she rose from her knees and groped around to find some better place of shelter than the old log afforded.
Suddenly, as she came to an opening in the trees, she saw, in the distance, the light shining out from the library windows of Beechwood; and the idea crossed her brain that she would go there, and if Judge Howell turned her off, as he did before, she’d go to Tiger’s kennel and sleep with him. Mildred’s impulses were usually acted upon, and she was soon traversing the road to Beechwood, feeling with each step that she was drawing nearer to her home.
“Widow Simms says I have a right here,” she thought, as she passed silently through the gate. “And I almost believe so, too. Any way, I mean to tell him I’ve come to stay;” and, without a moment’s hesitation, the courageous child opened the door, and stepped into the hall.
Judge Howell sat in his pleasant library, trying to interest himself in a book, but a vague feeling of loneliness oppressed him, and as often as he read one page, he turned backward to see what had gone before.
“It’s of no use,” he said, at last; “I’m not in a reading mood;” and closing his eyes, he leaned back in his armchair, and thought of much which had come to him during the years gone by,—thought first of his gentle wife,—then of his beautiful daughter,—and then of Richard, whom he had cursed in that very room. Where was he now? Were the waters of the Southern seas chanting wild music over his ocean bed? Did the burning sun ofBengal look down upon his grave?—or would he come back again some day, and from his father’s lips hear that the old man was sorry for the harsh words that he had spoken? Then, by some sudden transition of thought, he remembered the night of the storm, and the infant left at his door. He had never been sorry for casting it off, he said, and yet, had he kept her,—were she with him this wintry night, he might not be so dreary sitting alone.
“There they go!” said a childish voice, and as his gold-bowed specs fell to the floor, the Judge started up, and lo, there upon a stool, her bonnet and bundle on a chair, and her hands folded demurely upon her lap, sat the veritable object of his thoughts, even little Mildred.
Through the half-closed door she had glided so noiselessly as not to disturb his reverie, and sitting down upon the stool at his feet, had warmed her hands by the blazing fire, removed her hood, smoothed back her hair, and then watched breathlessly the slow descent of the specs from the nose of the Judge, who, she fancied, was sleeping. Lower, and lower, and lower they came, and when at last they dropped, she involuntarily uttered the exclamation which roused the Judge to a knowledge of her presence.
“What the deuce,—how did you get in, and what are you here for?” asked the Judge, feeling, in spite of himself, a secret satisfaction in having her there, and knowing that he was no longer alone.
Fixing her clear, brown eyes upon him, Mildred answered:
“I walked in, and I’ve come to stay.”
“The plague you have,” returned the Judge, vastly amused at the quiet decision with which she spoke. “Come to stay, hey? But suppose I won’t let you, what then?”
“You will,” said Mildred; “and if you turn me out, I shall come right in again. I’ve lived with Oliver’s grandmother as long as I am going to. I don’t belong there, and to-night I started to run away, but the cars left me, and it was cold and dark in the woods, and I was kind of ’fraid, and asked God to take care of me and tell me where to go, and I comed right here.”
There was a big lump in the Judge’s throat as he listened to the child, but he swallowed it down, and pointing to the bundle containing Mildred’s Sunday clothes, said, “Brought your things, too, I see. You’ll be wanting a closet and a trunk to put them in, I reckon.”
The quick-witted child detected at once the irony in his tone, and with a quivering lip she answered:
“They are the best I’ve got. She never bought me anything since mother died. She’s just as cross as she can be, too, and whips me so hard for nothing,—look,” and rolling up her sleeve she showed him more than one red mark upon her arm.
Sour and crusty as the Judge appeared, there were softspots scattered here and there over his heart, and though the largest was scarcely larger than a pin’s head, Mildred had chanced to touch it, for cruelty to any one was something he abhorred.
“Poor little thing,” he said, taking the fat, chubby arm in one hand, and passing the other caressingly over the marks,—“poor little thing, we’ll have that old she-dragon ’tended to,” and something very like a tear, both in form and feeling, dropped upon the dimpled elbow. “What makes you stare at me so?” he continued, as he saw how the wondering brown eyes were fixed upon him.
“I was thinking,” answered Mildred, “how you ain’t such a cross old feller as folks say you be, and you’ll let me stay here, won’t you? I’d rather live with you than Lawrence Thornton——”
“Lawrence Thornton!” repeated the Judge. “What do you know of him? Oh, yes, I remember now that he spoke of finding you asleep; but were you running away to him?”
In a few words Mildred told him what her intentions had been, and then said to him again:
“But I shall stay here now and be your little girl.”
“I ain’t so sure of that,” answered the Judge, adding, as he saw her countenance fall: “What good could you do me?”
Mildred’s first thought was, “I can wash the dishes and scrub the floor;” then as she remembered that servantsdid these things at Beechwood, she stood a moment uncertain how to answer. At last, as a new idea crossed her mind, she said: “When you’re old and lonesome, there’ll be nobody to love you if I go away, and you’ll be sorry if you turn me off.”
Why was it the Judge started so quickly and placed his hand before his eyes, as if to assure himself that it was little Mildred standing there and not his only boy,—not Richard, who long ago had said to him:
“In the years to come, when you are old and lonesome, you’ll be sorry for what you’ve said to-night.” Those were Richard’s words, while Mildred’s were:
“You’ll be sorry if you turn me off.”
It would seem that the son, over whose fate a dark mystery hung, was there in spirit, pleading for the helpless child, while with him was another Mildred, and looking through the eyes of brown so much like her own, she said, “Take her father, you will need her some time!”
And so, not merely because Mildred Hawkins asked him to do it, but because of the unseen influence which urged him on, the Judge drew the little girl closer to his side, and parting back her rich, brown hair, said to her pleasantly, “You may stay to-night, and to-morrow night, and if I don’t find you troublesome, perhaps you may stay for good.”
Mildred had not looked for so easy a conquest, andthis unexpected kindness wrung from her eyes great tears, which rolled silently down her cheeks.
“What are you crying for?” asked the Judge. “You are not obliged to stay. You can go back to Hepsy any minute,—now, if you want. Shall I call Rachel to hold the lantern?”
He made a motion toward the bell-rope, while Mildred, in an agony of terror, seized his arm, telling him “she was only crying for joy; that she’d die before she’d go back!” and adding fiercely, as she saw he had really rung the bell: “If you send me away I’ll set your house on fire!”
The Judge smiled quietly at this threat, and when Rachel appeared in answer to his ring, he said, “Open the register in the chamber above, and see that the bed is all right, then bring us some apples and nuts,—and,—wait till I get done, can’t you,—bring us that box of prunes. Do you love prunes, child?”
“Yes, sir, though I don’t know what they be,” sobbed Mildred, through the hands she had clasped over her face when she thought she must go back.
She knew she was not going now, and her eyes shone like diamonds as they flashed upon the Judge a look of gratitude. It wasn’t lonesome now in that handsome library where Mildred sat, eating prune after prune, and apple after apple, while the Judge sat watching her with an immense amount of satisfaction, and, thinking to himselfhow, on the morrow, if he did not change his mind, he would inquire the price of feminine dry goods, a thing he had not done in years. In his abstraction he even forgot that the clock was striking nine, and, half an hour later, found him still watching Mildred, and marvelling at her enormous appetite for nuts and prunes. But he remembered, at last, that it was his bed time, and, again ringing for Rachel, he bade her take the little girl upstairs.
It was a pleasant, airy chamber where Mildred was put to sleep, and it took her a long time to examine the furniture and the various articles for the toilet, the names of which she did not even know. Then she thought of Oliver, wondering what he would say if he knew where she was; and, going to the window, against which a driving storm was beating, she thought how much nicer it was to be in that handsome apartment than back in her little bed beneath the gable-roof, or even running away to Boston after Lawrence Thornton.
The next morning when she awoke, the snow lay high-piled upon the earth, and the wind was blowing in fearful gusts. But in the warm summer atmosphere pervading the whole house, Mildred thought nothing of the storm without. She only knew that she was very happy, and when the Judge came down to breakfast, he found her singing of her happiness to the gray house-cat, which she had coaxed into her lap.
“Shall she eat with you or wait?” asked Rachel, alittle uncertain whether to arrange the table for two or one.
“With me, of course, you simpleton,” returned the Judge; “and bring on some sirup for the cakes,—or honey; which do you like best, child?”
Mildred didn’t know, butguessedthat she liked both, and both were accordingly placed upon the table,—the Judge forgetting to eat in his delight to see how fast the nicely browned buckwheats disappeared.
“She’ll breed a famine if she stays here long,” Rachel muttered, while Finn looked ruefully at the fast decreasing batter.
But Mildred’s appetite was satisfied at last, and she was about leaving the table, when Hepsy’s sharp, shrill voice was heard in the hall, proclaiming to Rachel the astonishing news that Mildred Hawkins had run away and been frozen to death in a snow bank,—that Clubs, like a fool, had lost his senses and gone raving distracted, calling loudly for Milly and refusing to be comforted unless she came back.
Through the open door Mildred heard this last, and darting into the hall she asked the startled Hepsy to tell her if what she had said were true. Petrified with astonishment, Hepsy was silent for an instant, and then in no mild terms began to upbraid the child, because she was not frozen to death as she had declared her to be.
“Never mind,” said Mildred, “but tell me of Oliver. Is he sick, and does he ask for me?”
The appearance of the Judge brought Hepsy to herself, and she began to tell the story. It seemed that she had staid with Widow Simms until after ten, and when she reached home she found Clubs distracted on account of Mildred’s absence. He had looked all through the house, and was about going up to Beechwood, when his grandmother returned and stopped him, saying that Mildred had probably gone to stay with Lottie Brown, as she had the previous day asked permission so to do and been refused. So Oliver had rested till morning, when he insisted on his grandmother’s wading through the drifts to see if Milly really were at Mr. Brown’s.
“When I found she wasn’t,” said Hepsy, “I began to feel a little riled myself, for I knowed that she had the ugliest temper that ever was born, and, says I, she’s run away and been froze to death, and then such a rumpus as Oliver made. I thought he’d go——”
Her sentence was cut short by a cry of joy from Mildred, who, from the window, caught sight of the crippled boy moving slowly through the drifts, which greatly impeded his progress. Hastening to the door she drew him in out of the storm, brushed the snow from his thin hair, and folding her arms about him, sobbed out, “Oliver, I ain’t dead, but I’ve run away. I can’t live withherany more,though if you feel so bad about it, maybe I’ll go back. Shall I?”
Before Oliver could reply, Hepsy chimed in, “Go back, to be sure you will, my fine madame. I’ll teach you what is what;” and seizing Mildred’s hood, which lay upon the hat-stand, she began to tie it upon the screaming child, who struggled violently to get away, and succeeding at last ran for protection behind the Judge.
“Keep her, Judge Howell, please keep her,” whispered Oliver, while Mildred’s eyes flashed out their gratitude to him for thus interfering in her behalf.
“Woman!” and the Judge’s voice was like a clap of thunder, while his heavy boot came down with a vengeance as he grasped the bony arm of Hepsy, who was making a dive past him after Mildred. “Woman, get out of my house! Quick too, and if I catch you here again after anybody’s child, I’ll pull every hair out of your head. Do you hear, you she-dragon? Begone, I say; start. Move faster than that!” and he accelerated her movements with a shove, which sent her quite to the door, where she stood for an instant, threatening to take the law of him, and shaking her fist at Mildred, who, holding fast to the coat-skirts of the Judge, knew she had nothing to fear.
After a moment Hepsy began to cry, and assuming a deeply injured tone, she bade Oliver “Come.”
Not till then had Mildred fully realized that if she stayedat Beechwood she must be separated from her beloved playmate, and clutching him as he arose to follow his grandmother, she whispered, “If you want me, Oliver, I’ll go.”
Hedidwant her, oh, so much, for he knew how lonely the gable-roof would be without her, but it was far better that she should not return, and so, with a tremendous effort the unselfish boy stilled the throbbings of his heart, and whispered back: “I’d rather you’d stay here, Milly, and maybehe’lllet me come some time to see you.”
“Every day, every day,” answered the Judge, who could not help admiring the young boy for preferring Mildred’s happiness to his own. “There, I’m glad that’s over,” he said, when, as the door closed upon Hepsy and Oliver, he led Mildred back to the breakfast room, asking her if she didn’t want some more buckwheats.
But Milly’s heart was too full to eat, even had she been hungry. Turn which way she would, she saw only the form of a cripple boy moving slowly through the drifts, back to the dark old kitchen, which she knew would that dismal day be all the darker for her absence. It was all in vain that the Judge sought to amuse her by showing her all his choice treasures and telling her she was now his little girl and should call him father if she liked. The sad, despondent look did not leave her face for the entire day, and just as it was growing dark, she laid her brown head upon the Judge’s knee, as he sat inhis armchair, and said mournfully, “I guess I shall go back.”
“I guess you won’t,” returned the Judge, running his fingers through her soft hair, and thinking how much it was like his own Mildred’s.
“But I ought to,” answered the child. “Oliver can’t do without me. You don’t know how much he likes me, nor how much I like him. He’s missing me so now, I know he is, and I’m afraid he’s crying, too. Mayn’t I go?”
Mildred’s voice was choked with tears, and Judge Howell felt them dropping upon his hand, as he passed it caressingly over her face. Six months before he had professed to hate the little girl sitting there at his feet, and crying to go back to Oliver, but she had grown strangely into his love within the last twenty-four hours, and to himself he said:
“I will not give her up.”
So after sitting a time in silence, he replied:
“I can do you more good than this Oliver with his crooked feet.”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Mildred, “but it’s because his feet are crooked that I can’t leave him all alone, and then he loved me first, when you hated me and swore such awful words if I just looked at a flower.”
There was no denying this,—but the Judge was not convinced, and he continued by telling her how manynew dresses he would buy her,—how in the spring he’d get her a pony and a silver-mounted side-saddle——
“And let me go to the circus?” she said, that having hitherto been the highest object of her ambition.
“Yes, let you go to the circus,” he replied; “and to Boston and everywhere.”
The bait was a tempting one, and Mildred wavered for a moment,—then just as the Judge thought she was satisfied, she said:
“But that won’t do Oliver any good.”
“Hang Oliver!” exclaimed the Judge; “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll have a lady governess to come into the house and teach you both. So you will see him every day. I’ll get him some new clothes——”
“And send him to college when he’s big enough?” put in Mildred. “He told me once he wished he could go.”
“Great Peter, what next will you want? But I’ll think about the college; and if he learns right smart, and you behave yourself, I reckon maybe I’ll send him.”
The Judge had no idea that Oliver would learn “right smart,” for he did not know him, and he merely made the promise by way of quieting Mildred, who, with this prospect in view, became quite contented in her new quarters, though she did so wish Oliver could know it that night, and looking up in the Judge’s face, she said:
“It’s such a little bit of a ways down there,—couldn’tyou go and tell him, or let me. It seems forever till to-morrow.”
Had the Judge been told the previous day that Mildred Hawkins could have persuaded him to brave that fierce northeaster, he would have scoffed at the idea as a most preposterous one, but now, looking into those shining eyes of brown, lifted so pleadingly to his, he felt all his sternness giving way, and before he knew what he was doing, or why he was doing it, he found himself plowing through the snow-drifts which lay between Beechwood and the gable-roof, where he found Oliver sitting before the fire with a sad, dejected look upon his face as if all the happiness of his life had suddenly been taken from him. But he brightened at once when he saw the Judge and heard his errand. It would be so nice to be with Milly every day and know that she was beyond the reach of his grandmother’s cruelty, and bursting into tears he stammered out his thanks to the Judge, who without a sign of recognition for old Hepsy, who was dipping candles with a most sour expression on her puckered lips, started back through the deep snow-drifts, feeling more than repaid, when he saw the little, eager face pressed against the pane, and then heard a sweet, young voice calling him “the best man in the world.”
And Mildred did think him the embodiment of every virtue, while her presence in his house worked a marvellous change in him. He had something now to live for,and his step was always more elastic as he drew near his home, where a merry-hearted, frolicsome child was sure to welcome his coming.
“The little mistress of Beechwood,” the people began to call her, and so indeed she was, ruling there with a high hand, and making both master and servant bend to her will, particularly if in that will Oliver were concerned. He was her first thought, and she tormented the Judge until he kept his promise of having a governess, to whom Oliver recited each day as well as herself.
Once during the spring Lawrence Thornton came again to Beechwood, renewing his acquaintance with Mildred, who, comparing him with other boys of her acquaintance, regarded him as something more than mortal, and after he was gone, she was never weary of his praises. Once in speaking of him to her teacher, Miss Harcourt, she said, “He’s the handsomest boy I ever saw, and he knows so much, too. I’d give the world if Oliver was like him,” and Mildred’s sigh as she thought of poor lame Oliver was echoed by the white-faced boy without the door, who had come up just in time to hear her remarks. He, too, had greatly admired Lawrence Thornton, and it had, perhaps, been some satisfaction to believe that Mildred had not observed the difference between them, but he knew, now, that she had, and with a bitter pang, as he thought of his deformity, he took his accustomed seat in the school-room.
“I can never be like Lawrence Thornton,” he said to himself. “I shall always be lame, and small, and sickly, and by and by, maybe, Milly will cease to love me.”
Dark, indeed, would be his life, when the sun of Mildred’s love for him was set, and his tears fell fast, erasing the figures he was making on his slate.
“What is it, Olly?” and Mildred nestled close by his side, taking his thin hand in her own chubby ones and looking into his face.
Without the least reserve he told her what it was, and Mildred’s tears mingled with his as he said that his twisted feet were a continual canker worm,—a blight on all his hopes of the future when he should have attained the years of a man. The cloud was very heavy from which Mildred could not extract some comfort, and after a moment she looked up cheerily, and said:
“I tell you, Oliver, you can’t be as handsome as Lawrence, nor as tall, nor have such nice straight feet, but you can be as good a scholar, and when folks speak of that Mr. Hawkins, who knows so much, I shall be so proud, for I shall know it is Oliver they mean.”
All unconsciously Mildred was sowing in Oliver’s mind the first seeds of ambition, though not of a worldly kind. He did not care for the world. He cared only for the opinion of the little brown-eyed maiden at his side. It is true he would have endured any amount of torture if, in the end, he might look like Lawrence Thornton; butas this could not be, he determined to resemble him in something,—to read the same books,—to learn the same things,—to be able to talk about the same places, and if, in the end,shesaid he was equal to Lawrence Thornton, he would be satisfied. So he toiled both early and late, far outstripping Mildred and winning golden laurels, in the opinion of Miss Harcourt and the Judge, the latter of whom became, in spite of himself, deeply interested in the pale student, who before three years were gone, was fully equal to his teacher.
Then it was that Mildred came again to his aid, saying to the Judge one day, “Oliver has learned all Miss Harcourt can teach him, and hadn’t you better be looking out for some good school, where he can be fitted for college?”
“Cool!” returned the Judge, tossing his cigar into the grass and smiling down upon her. “Cool, I declare. So you think I’d better fit him for college, hey?”
“Of course, I do,” answered Mildred; “you said you would that stormy day long ago, when I cried to go back and you wouldn’t let me.”
“So I did, so I did,” returned the Judge, adding that “he’d think about it.”
The result of this thinking Mildred readily foresaw, and she was not at all surprised when, a few days afterwards, the Judge said to her, “I have made arrangements for Clubs to go to Andover this fall, and if he behaves himself I shall send him to college, I guess; and,—come backhere, you spitfire,” he cried, as he saw her bounding away with the good news to Oliver. But Mildred could not stay for more then. She must see Oliver, who could scarcely find words with which to express his gratitude to the man who, for Mildred’s sake, was doing so much for him.
Rapidly the autumn days stole on, until at last one September morning Mildred’s heart was sore with grief, and her eyes were red with weeping, for Oliver was gone and she was all alone.
“If you mourn so for Clubs, what do you think I shall do when you, too, go off to school?” said the Judge.
“Oh, I sha’n’t know enough to go this ever so long,” was Mildred’s answer, while the Judge, thinking how lonely the house would be without her, hoped it would be so; but in spite of his hopes, there came a day, just fourteen years after Mildred was left on the steps at Beechwood, when the Judge said to Oliver, who had come home, and was asking for his playmate:
“She’s gone to Charlestown Seminary, along with that Lilian Veille, Lawrence Thornton makes such a fuss about, and the Lord only knows how I’m going to live without her for the next miserable three years.”