CHAPTER XVIII.THE GUESTS AT THE HOTEL.
“Where will you be left, miss?” asked the good-humored driver, thrusting his head in at the window of the coach, in one corner of which Mildred sat, closely veiled and shrinking as far as possible from observation.
“At the Stevens Hotel,” she answered, and the driver returned:
“Oh, yes, Stevens Hotel. I have another passenger who stops there. Here he comes,” and he held open the door for a remarkably fine-looking man, who, taking the seat opposite Mildred, drew out a book in which for a time he seemed wholly absorbed, never looking up, except once indeed when a fat old woman entered and sat down beside him, saying, as she sank puffing among the cushions, that “she shouldn’t pester him long,—she was only going a mile or so to visit her daughter-in-law, who had twins.”
Involuntarily Mildred glanced at the gentleman, who,showing a very handsome set of teeth, again resumed his book, while she scanned his features curiously, they seemed to her so familiar, so like something she had seen before.
“Who is he?” she kept asking herself, and she was about concluding that she must have seen him in Boston, when the stage stopped again before one of those low-roofed buildings so common in New England, and the fat old lady alighted, thanking the gentleman for holding the paper of anise-seed and catnip, which all the way had been her special care.
Again the handsome teeth were visible, while the stranger hoped she would find the twins in a prosperous condition. On the green in front of the house a little child was waiting to welcome grandma; and Mildred, who was fond of children, threw back her thick brown veil to look at it, nor did she drop it again, for the road now wound through a mountainous district, and in her delight at the wild, picturesque scenery which met her view at every turn, she forgot that she was not alone, and when at last they reached the summit of a long, steep hill, she involuntarily exclaimed:
“Isn’t it grand?”
“You are not accustomed to mountainous views, perhaps,” said the stranger, and then for the first time Mildred became conscious that a pair of soft, dark eyes were bent upon her with a searching, burning gaze, from which she intuitively shrank.
Ever since her veil had been removed that same look had been fixed upon her, and to himself the stranger more than once had said, “If itwerepossible; but no, it cannot be;” and yet those starry eyes and that nut-brown hair, how they carried him back to the long ago. Could there be two individuals so much alike, and yet nothing to each other? Some such idea passed through his mind as he sat watching her beautiful face, and determined at last to question her, he addressed her as we have seen.
“Yes, I am accustomed to mountain scenery,” she replied, “though not as grand as this.”
“Were you born among the New England hills?” was the next question put to her, and the answer waited for, oh, so eagerly.
For an instant Mildred hesitated, while the hot blood stained her face and neck, and then she replied:
“I was born in New York City,” while over the fine features of the gentleman opposite there fell a shade of disappointment.
Mildred had interested him strangely; and with a restless desire to know more of her history, he continued:
“Pardon me, miss; but you so strongly resemble a friend I have lost that I would like to know your name?”
Again Mildred hesitated, while the name of Howell trembled on her lips, but reflecting that she had no longer a right to it, she answered:
“My name, sir, is Miss Hawley.”
Something in her manner led the stranger to think she did not care to be questioned further, and bowing slightly he resumed his book. Still his mind was constantly dwelling upon the young girl, who met his curious glance so often that she began to feel uneasy, and was glad when they stopped at last at the Stevens Hotel. The stranger helped her out, holding her dimpled hand in his for a single moment, and looking down again into the dark bright eyes, as if he fain would read there that what he had so long believed was false. He knew that he annoyed her, but he could not help it. Every movement which she made mystified him more and more, and he looked after her until she disappeared through the hall and was admitted to the chamber of her friend and former teacher.
Unfortunately Mrs. Miller was sick, but she welcomed Mildred kindly as Miss Hawley, and talked freely with her of the discovery that had been made.
“You will feel better after a time,” she said, as she saw how fast Mildred’s tears came at the mention of Lawrence Thornton. “Your secret is safe with me and my husband, and no one else knows that you ever had claim to another name than Hawley. I am sorry that I am ill just at this time, but I shall be well in a few days, I hope. Meantime you must amuse yourself in any way you choose. I have given orders for you to have the large front chamber looking out upon the village. The room adjoining is occupied by a gentleman who camehere yesterday morning, intending to stop for a few days. He is very agreeable, they say, and quite a favorite in the house.”
Mildred thought of her companion in the stage, and was about to ask his name, when a servant appeared, offering to show her to her room. It was one of those warm, languid days in early June, and Mildred soon began to feel the effects of her recent excitement and wearisome ride in the racking headache which came on so fast as to prevent her going down to dinner, and at last confined her to the bed, where she lay the entire afternoon, falling away at last into a deep, quiet sleep, from which about sunset she awoke greatly refreshed and almost free from pain. Observing that her door was open, she was wondering who had been there, when her ear caught a sound as of some child breathing heavily, and turning in the direction whence it came, she saw a most beautiful little girl, apparently four or five years old, perched upon a chair near the window, her soft auburn curls falling over her forehead, and her face very red with the exertions she was making to unclasp Mildred’s reticule, which she had found upon the table.
As a carriage rolled down the street, she raised her eyes, and to Mildred it seemed as if she were looking once more upon the face which had so often met her view when she brushed her own hair before the cracked glass hanging on the rude walls of the gable-roof.
“Is it my other self?” she thought, passing her hand before her eyes to clear away the mist, if mist there was. “Isn’t it I as I used to be?”
Just then the snapping apart of the steel clasp, and the child’s satisfied exclamation of “There, I did do it,” convinced her that ’twas not herself as she used to be, but a veritable mass of flesh and blood, embodied in as sweet a face and perfect a form as she ever looked upon.
“I will speak to her,” Mildred thought, and involuntarily from her lips the word “Sister” came, causing the child to start suddenly and drop the reticule, with which she knew she had been meddling.
Shaking back her sunny curls, which now lay in rings about her forehead, and flashing upon Mildred a pair of eyes very much like her own, she said:
“How you didstareme! Be you waked up?”
“Come here, won’t you?” said Mildred, holding out her hand; and won by the pleasant voice, the little girl went to her, and winding her chubby arms around her neck, said:
“Is you most well, pretty lady?”
Mildred answered by kissing her velvety cheek and hugging her closer to her bosom, while over her there swept a most delicious feeling, as if the beautiful creature, nestling so lovingly to her side, were very near to her.
“Where do you live?” she asked; and the child replied:
“Oh, in the ship, and in the railroad, and everything.”
“But where’s your mother?” continued Mildred, and over the little girl’s face there flitted a shadow, as she replied:
“Ma’s in heaven, and pa’s down-stairs smoking a cigar. He ties awful hard sometimes.”
“Have you any sisters?” was the next interrogatory; and the answer was:
“I’ve got one in heaven, and a brother, too,—so pa says. I never seen the sister, but when ma died, and they lifted me up to look at her in the box, there lay on her arm a little teeny baby, not so big as dolly, and they put them both under the grass, over the sea, ever and ever and ever so ways off,” and she pointed toward the setting sun, as if she thus would indicate the vast distance between herself and her buried mother.
“You came from over the sea, then?” returned Mildred. “Will you tell me what your name is?”
“Edith Howell.What is yours?” and Edith looked inquiringly at Mildred, who started suddenly, repeating:
“Edith Howell! Edith Howell! and did your father come in the stage this morning?”
“Yes,” returned the child. “He went off in it before I was up, and brought me Old Mother Hubbard. Don’t you want to see her?” and Edith ran to her own room, while Mildred clasped her hands to her head, whichseemed almost bursting with the conviction which the name of Edith Howell had forced upon her.
She knew now where she had seen a face like that of her stage companion. She had seen it in the pleasant drawing-room at Beechwood, and the eyes which had so puzzled her that morning had many and many a time looked down upon her from the portrait ofRichard Howell.
“’Tis he, ’tis he,” she whispered. “But why is he here instead of going to his father?”
Then, as she remembered having heard how Richard Howell had cared for her, shielding her from the Judge’s wrath, and how once she had dared to hope that she might be his child, she buried her face in the pillow and wept aloud, for the world seemed so dark,—so dreary.
“What you tie for, pretty lady?” asked little Edith, returning to her side, laden with dolls and toys, and Old Mother Hubbard, which last Mildred did not fully appreciate. “What is your name?” Edith said again, as, mounting upon the bed, she prepared to display her treasures.
“Milly Hawley;” and Mildred’s voice trembled so that the child very easily mistook the word forMinnie.
“Minnie,” she repeated. “That’s pretty. I love you, Minnie Hawley,” and putting up her waxen hand, she brushed the tears from Mildred’s eyes, asking again why she cried.
At first Mildred thought to correct her with regard to her name. Then, thinking it was just as well to be Minnie as anything else, she let it pass, for without any tangible reason save that it was a sudden fancy, she had determined that if the handsome stranger were Richard Howell, he should not know from her that she was the foundling left at his father’s door. She had always shrank from hearing the subject discussed, and it seemed more distasteful to her now than ever; so on the whole she was glad Edith had misunderstood her, forMillymight have led to some inquiries on the part of Richard, if it were he, inasmuch as his mother and sister had borne that rather unusual name; so, instead of replying directly to the child, she said, “Let us go over by the window where the cool breeze comes in,” and gathering up her playthings, Edith went with her to the sofa, and climbing into her lap asked, “Where’s your ma, Minnie?”
“She’s dead,” was the reply.
“And is your pa dead, too?”
Ere Mildred could answer this a voice from the hall called out:
“Edith! Edith! where are you?”
“Here, pa, here with Minnie. Come and see her,” and bounding across the floor, the active child seized her father’s hand and pulled him into Mildred’s room.
“Excuse me, Miss Hawley,” he said. “Edith is very sociable; and I am afraid you find her troublesome.”
“Not in the least. I am fond of children,” returned Mildred, taking the little girl again upon her lap, while Mr. Howell sat down by the other window.
He was a very handsome man, and at first appearance seemed to be scarcely thirty. A closer observation, however, showed that he was several years older, for his rich brown hair was slightly tinged with gray, and there were the marks of time or sorrow about his eyes and forehead. In manner he was uncommonly prepossessing, and a few minutes sufficed to put Mildred entirely at her ease, with one who had evidently been accustomed to the society of high-bred, cultivated people.
“Edith tells me you come from England,” she said at last, by way of ascertaining whether he really were Richard Howell or not.
“Yes,” he replied, “I have lived in England for several years, though I am a native American and born in Boston. When six years old, however, my father removed to Mayfield, where he is living now.”
“What for you jump?” asked Edith, as Mildred started involuntarily when her suspicions were thus confirmed.
Mr. Howell’s eyes seemed to ask the same question, and bowing her face over the curly head of the child, so as to conceal her tears, Mildred answered:
“I have been in Mayfield several times, and know an old gentleman whose son went off many years ago, and has never been heard of since.”
“What makes you ty?” persisted Edith, who felt the drops upon her hair.
“I was thinking,” returned Mildred, “how glad that old man will be if your father is the son he has so long considered dead.”
Mr. Howell was gazing fixedly at her.
“Miss Hawley,” he said, when she had finished speaking, “who are you?—that is, who are your parents, and why have you been in Mayfield?”
Mildred knew that her resemblance to his sister puzzled him just as it did every one, and for a moment she was tempted to tell him everything; then, thinking he would learn it fast enough when he went to Beechwood, she replied:
“My mother was Helen Thornton, of Boston, and my father, her music teacher, Charles Hawley, who died in New Orleans soon after I was born.”
Mr. Howell seemed disappointed, but he replied:
“Helen Thornton your mother? I remember her well, and her marriage with Mr. Hawley. You do not resemble her one-half so much as you do my sister Mildred, for I am that old man’s son. I am Richard Howell.”
“Every one who ever saw your sister speaks of the resemblance,” returned Mildred. “Indeed, my old nurse says my mother was very anxious that I should look like her, and even used to pray that I might. This may, perhaps, account for it.”
“It may,—it may,” Richard answered abstractively, pacing up and down the room; then suddenly turning to Mildred he asked: “When were you in Mayfield, and how is my father now? Does he look very old?”
Mildred did not tell him when she was in Mayfield, but merely replied that “his father was well, and that for a man nearly sixty-five he was looking remarkably young.”
“And the negroes?” said Richard; “though, of course, you know nothing of them, nor of those people who used to live in that gable-roofed house down the hill. Thompson was the name.”
Here was a chance for explanation, but Mildred cast it from her by simply answering:
“Old Mrs. Thompson lives there yet with her club-footed grandson, Oliver Hawkins, whose mother was probably living when you went away.”
Spite of her resolution, Mildred hoped he would ask forthe babynext, but he did not. He merely walked faster and faster across the floor, while she sighed mentally: “He has forgotten me, and I will not thrust myself upon his remembrance.”
At last the rapid walking ceased, and coming up before her, Mr. Howell said:
“It seems strange to you, no doubt, that I have purposely absented myself from home so long, and in looking back upon the past, it seems strange to me. I was very unhappy when I went away, and at the last I quarrelledwith my father, who, for a farewell, gave to me his curse, bidding me never come into his presence again. If you know him at all, you know he has a fiery temper. To a certain extent I inherit the same, and with my passions roused I said it would be many years before he saw my face again. Still, I should have returned had not circumstances occurred which rendered it unnecessary. I wrote to my father twice, but he never answered me, and I said ‘I will write no more.’ For three years I remained among the South Sea Islands, and then found my way to India, where, in the excitement of amassing wealth, I gradually ceased to care for anything in America. At last I made the acquaintance of a fair young English girl, and making her my wife, removed with her to England, where, little more than a year since, she died, leaving me nothing to love but Edith. Then my thoughts turned homeward, for I promised Lucy, when dying, that I would seek a reconciliation with my father. So I crossed the ocean again, coming first to Dresden, for this wild, out-of-the-way place is connected with some of the sweetest and saddest memories of my life. In a few days, however, I go to Beechwood, but I shall not apprise my father of my return, for I wish to test the instincts of the parental heart, and see if he will know me.
“I have told you so much, Miss Hawley, because I know you must think strangely of my long absence, and then there is something about you which prompts me towish for your good opinion. I might tell you much more of my life,—tell you of an error committed in boyhood, as it were, and in manhood bitterly regretted,—not the deed itself, but the concealment of it, but the subject would not interest you.”
Mildred could not help fancying that the subject would interest her, but she did not say so, and as Mr. Howell just then observed that Edith had fallen asleep in her arms, he ceased speaking and hastened to relieve her. The movement awakened Edith, who insisted upon sleeping withMinnie, as she called her.
“Yes, let her stay with me,” said Mildred; “she is such an affectionate little thing that she seems almost as near to me as a sister.”
“You are enough alike to be sisters. Did you know that?” Mr. Howell asked, and Mildred blushed painfully as she met the admiring gaze fixed upon her so intently.
He was thinking what a beautiful picture they made,—therosejust bursting into perfect loveliness, and thebudso like the rose that they might both have come from the same parent stem.
“Yes, Edith has your eyes,” he continued, “your mouth and your expression, but otherwise she is like her English mother.”
He bent down to kiss the child, who had fallen asleep again, and had Mildred been a little younger he might perhaps have kissed her, too, for he was an enthusiasticadmirer of girlish beauty, but as it was, he merely bade her good-night and left the room.
The next morning Mildred was roused by a pair of the softest, fattest, chubbiest hands patting her round cheeks, and opening her eyes, she saw Edith sitting up in bed, her auburn curls falling from beneath her cap and herself playful as a kitten. Oh, how near and dear she seemed to Mildred, who hugged her to her bosom, calling her “little sister,” and wishing in her heart that somewhere in the world she had a sister as gentle, and pretty, and sweet, as Edith Howell.
That afternoon, as Mildred sat reading in her room, she saw a carriage drive up to the door, and heard Edith’s voice in the hall, saying to her father:
“Yes, Minnie must go,—Minnie must go.”
A moment after Mr. Howell appeared, saying to her:
“We are going to ride, Miss Howell, and on Edith’s account, as well as my own, shall be glad of your company. I shall visit the cemetery for one place, and that may not be agreeable, but the remainder of the trip I think you will enjoy.”
Mildred knew she should, and hurrying on her bonnet and shawl, she was soon seated with Mr. Howell and Edith in the only decent carriage the village afforded.
“To the graveyard,” said Mr. Howell, in answer to the driver’s question. “Where shall I drive you first?” and after a rapid ride of a mile or more they stoppedbefore the gate of the enclosure where slept the Dresden dead.
Holding Edith’s hand in hers. Mildred followed whither Richard led, and soon stood by a sunken grave, unmarked by a single token of love, save the handsome stone, on which was inscribed
“Hetty K. Howell,Aged 19.”
“Hetty K. Howell,Aged 19.”
“Hetty K. Howell,
Aged 19.”
“Hetty Howell!” repeated Mildred. “Who was she?” and she turned inquiringly towards Richard.
He was standing with folded arms and a most touchingly sad expression upon his face, but at her question he started, and unhesitatingly answered, “Hetty Kirby was my wife.”
Mildred had incidentally heard of Hetty Kirby at Beechwood, but never that she was Richard’s wife, and she exclaimed, in some astonishment:
“Your wife, Mr. Howell? Were you then married when you went away?”
“Yes,” he answered; “and the concealment of it is one of my boyhood’s errors which I regret. I married Hetty without my father’s knowledge and against his wishes. He knew I loved her, and for that he turned her from his door and bade me forget her. But I did not. With the help of a college friend I went with her over the Bay State line into New York, where we weresoon made one. After a week or so she came to Dresden, where her grandmother lived, while I returned to college. I saw her as often as possible after that, until at last——” here he paused, and seemed to be thinking of something far back in the past; then he suddenly added, “she sickened and died, and I buried her here.”
“And did you not tell your father?” asked Mildred.
“No, not then,” he answered; “but I told him on the night I went away, and it was for this he cursed me.”
There were tears in his eyes, and they came also to Mildred’s, as she thought of poor Hetty, and how much she must have loved her handsome boy-husband. Insensibly, too, there crept over her a strange affection for that grassy mound, as if it covered something which she had known and loved.
“There are no flowers here,” she said, wishing to break the painful silence; and when Richard answered, sadly, “There has been no one to plant them,” she continued, “I shall remain in Dresden some time, perhaps, and I will put some rose trees here and cover the sods with moss.”
“Heaven bless you, Miss Hawley,” and in that silent graveyard, standing by Hetty Kirby’s grave, Richard Howell took the hand of Mildred and pressed it to his lips,—modestly, gently, as if he had been her father.
“Tome, pa. Less doe,” Edith had said a dozen times, and yielding to her importunities, Mr. Howell nowwalked slowly away, but Mildred lingered still, chained to the spot by a nameless fascination.
“Tome, Minnie,—tome,” called Edith, and roused thus from her reverie of the unknown Hetty Kirby, Mildred followed on to the carriage, where Mr. Howell was waiting for her.
Down the hill, up another, round a curve, over a stream of water and down the second long, steep hill they went, and then they stopped again, but this time at a deserted old brown building, whose slanting roof had partially tumbled in, and whose doors were open to the weather, being destitute of latch or bolt. Through a gate half off the hinges they went, and going up a grass-grown path, they passed into a narrow entry, and then into a side room, where the western sun came pouring in. Here Mr. Howell stopped, and with his hand upon his forehead, stood leaning against the window, while the great tears dropped through his fingers and fell upon the old oak floor. Mildred saw all this, and needed nothing more to tell her that they stood in the room where Hetty Kirby died.
Oh, Mildred, Mildred,—if she could have known, but she did not. She only felt stealing over her a second time the same sensation which had come to her at Hetty’s grave,—a feeling as if every spot once hallowed by Hetty Kirby’s presence were sacred to her, and when at last they left the ruinous old house, she looked about forsome memento of the place, but everything had run to waste, save one thrifty cedar growing in a corner of the yard. From this she broke a twig and was thinking how she would preserve it, when Richard touched her arm, and said:
“I planted that tree myself and Hetty held it up while I put the earth about it.”
The cedar bough was dearer far to Mildred now, and she stood long by the evergreen thinking how little Hetty dreamed that such as she would ever be there with Richard at her side, and a fairy creature frolicking over the grass, the child of another than herself.
“If she had left a daughter how Richard would have loved it,” she thought, and through her mind there flitted the wild fancy that it would be happiness indeed to call him father and say sister to young Edith, who was now pulling at her dress, telling her to come away from that old place. “It isn’t as pretty,” she said, “as ma’s home over the sea, for there were fountains and trees and flowers there.”
Mildred could not forbear smiling as the little girl rattled on, while in listening to her prattle even Mr. Howell forgot his sadness, and by the time they reached the hotel he was apparently as cheerful as ever.
The next morning he was slightly indisposed, and Mildred kept Edith with her the entire day. The morning following he was still worse, and for two weeks he kepthis room, while Mildred took charge of Edith, going occasionally to his bedside, and reading to him from books which he selected. Never for a moment, however, did she forget her gnawing pain, which, as the days advanced, seemed harder and harder to bear, and when at last the morning came on which she was to have been a bride, she buried her face in her pillows, refusing to be comforted, even by little Edith, who, alarmed at her distress, begged of her father to come and cure Minnie, “who did ty so hard.”
A severe headache was the result of this passionate weeping, and all the morning she lay upon the bed or sofa, almost blinded with pain, while Edith’s little soft hands smoothed her aching head or brushed her beautiful hair. Once Richard, who was better now, came to the door, offering to do something for her, and suggesting many remedies for headache. Very gratefully Mildred smiled upon him, but she could not tell him how the heart was aching tenfold harder than the head, or how her thoughts were turning continually toward Beechwood, from which she had received no news, she having bidden them not to write until Lawrence, Geraldine, Lilian and all were gone; then Oliver was to tell her the whole.
As he had not written, they, of course, had not gone, and fearful that something terrible had happened, her anxiety and excitement seemed greater than she could bear.