CHAPTER I.
“Ferndale, Greenbrier Co., West Va.June 20, 1878.“Dear sister and Aunt Lucy, oh, please do let me come home! Ferndale is horrid, the lonesomest old hole I ever saw in my life, and Aunt Thalia is a real old dragoness! And I’m tired of behaving like a grown-up lady, and just dying for some sort of a lark. And although I don’t like her much, I hate to fool her as I’m doing. It makes me feel mean as if I were a regular little fraud. I try to keep it up for your sake, Lou, but it goes hard. Bother the money! It isn’t worth the deceit, or, as our old French governess used to say, ‘Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle!’ Can’t you let me off now? I’ve been here two weeks, and I don’t think I can stand it any longer! It’s like a catacomb, so deadly lonesome! Not a caller since I came, and I haven’t seen a man for two weeks except the gardener and the old black coach driver! But that’s all the better, since my clothes are shabby anyhow! I think Aunt Thalia must have noticed that my red cashmere is out at elbows, for this morning she actually gave me forty dollars, and told me to go into town and buy myself a summer silk and her maid would make it for me this week. But I’m going to post this letter to you instead with the money registered to you (as you toldme to do). I expect she will be fearfully angry when she finds it out. No doubt she will want to drive me away, so you had better send a telegram right off for me to come home. Say that Aunt Lucy’s sick, or somebody’s dying—anything—so that you get me away at once and forever from Ferndale! I shall die of the blues if I stay any longer! With love to you both,“Molly E. Trueheart.”“To Miss Louise Barry,“Staunton, Va.”
“Ferndale, Greenbrier Co., West Va.June 20, 1878.
“Dear sister and Aunt Lucy, oh, please do let me come home! Ferndale is horrid, the lonesomest old hole I ever saw in my life, and Aunt Thalia is a real old dragoness! And I’m tired of behaving like a grown-up lady, and just dying for some sort of a lark. And although I don’t like her much, I hate to fool her as I’m doing. It makes me feel mean as if I were a regular little fraud. I try to keep it up for your sake, Lou, but it goes hard. Bother the money! It isn’t worth the deceit, or, as our old French governess used to say, ‘Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle!’ Can’t you let me off now? I’ve been here two weeks, and I don’t think I can stand it any longer! It’s like a catacomb, so deadly lonesome! Not a caller since I came, and I haven’t seen a man for two weeks except the gardener and the old black coach driver! But that’s all the better, since my clothes are shabby anyhow! I think Aunt Thalia must have noticed that my red cashmere is out at elbows, for this morning she actually gave me forty dollars, and told me to go into town and buy myself a summer silk and her maid would make it for me this week. But I’m going to post this letter to you instead with the money registered to you (as you toldme to do). I expect she will be fearfully angry when she finds it out. No doubt she will want to drive me away, so you had better send a telegram right off for me to come home. Say that Aunt Lucy’s sick, or somebody’s dying—anything—so that you get me away at once and forever from Ferndale! I shall die of the blues if I stay any longer! With love to you both,
“Molly E. Trueheart.”
“To Miss Louise Barry,“Staunton, Va.”
The Ferndale estate did not deserve the title “horrid old hole,” as applied to it in that gushing, school-girlish letter. On the contrary it was a magnificent place of about a hundred acres—a valley farm, situated a few miles distant from the historic old town of Lewisburg, and less than six miles distant from the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs. The large, old-fashioned red brick mansion was almost hidden by a far-spreading grove of gigantic old forest trees, beneath whose shade, dark and damp and heavy, flourished the splendid ferns that gave the place its distinctive name. But after all, perhaps the dense shade and unavoidable dampness made the old house unwholesome, for old Mrs. Barry, its mistress, was an aged, withered crone, little more than skin and bones, with a temper none of the sweetest, and her servants as a whole were sour-tempered too, as if they did not get enough sunshine on their faces and into their souls. It was this subtle influence perhaps that made Mrs. Barry’s young guest vow to herself that she should go melancholy mad if she stayed much longer at Ferndale.
So with a heart beating high with hope she enteredthe old-fashioned family carriage and was driven into Lewisburg ostensibly to purchase the silk dress, but in reality to secretly register and post the letter of entreaty that was to wring her release from her probation at Ferndale and insure her speedy return to her own home.
She rather enjoyed the ride that sunny June afternoon, up hill and down dale in the jolting carriage over the rough, mountainous road, and her depressed spirits rose until she began to feel mildly jolly and hummed a little tune softly to herself that ended suddenly in an undeniable whistle of surprise as they came around a bend of the road and in sight of a picturesque plateau on which stood a beautiful country residence built of rough gray stone. There were two towers over which the pretty American ivy was picturesquely creeping, and the oriel windows here and there, and jutting verandas, were in a style of architecture quite unusual to the country, and betokening both wealth and taste. Our heroine thought she had never seen anything prettier than the great gray stone house with its creeping ivy, and its windows glistening in the sunlight, which had free play here, for there was a sloping lawn in front of the house with just enough trees grouped here and there to add beauty to the scene without at all obstructing the view.
The girl put her pretty, dark head out of the window and said, eagerly,
“Who lives there, Uncle Abe?”
The old family servant who had spent all his life in West Virginia, and knew every place for many miles around, answered promptly:
“Dat’s de ole Laurens place, honey. Fambly’s allin Yurrup now eddicating de darters and de sons. Mighty rich and proud, all dem Laurenses, missie. Come uv old English stock and ebry now an’ den some o’ dere kin dies ober de sea and leabes dem anoder fortin.”
“Oh,” said Molly, drawing a long breath, her piquant face glowing with eager interest.
She looked in something like awe at the beautiful home of these favorites of fortune.
“I wish I was one of ‘de darters’!” she said, quaintly.
“Hi, honey!” exclaimed old Uncle Abe, quite reproachfully. “Ole Mis’ Barry’s niece just as good as dem proud Laurenses.”
“Yes, Uncle Abe,” answered Molly, demurely, the mischievous golden brown lights dancing in her big, dark eyes, and her red lips dimpling with mirth at the old negro’s family pride.
Then she said, half-questioningly:
“But of course the Laurens family are too proud to notice any of their neighbors?”
Uncle Abe was too busy with his horses to reply for a moment or two, but presently he looked around quite crossly at his interlocutor, and said, severely:
“Miss Looisy Barry, I t’ink you mus’ be c’azy. Don’t you know dere ain’t nobody better den de Barrys? I been livin’ long o’ dem as slave and freedman all my life, me an’ my ole ’oman, and de Barrys is always de top o’ de pot, or, as ole missus say,cweam delly cweam. Dat’s F’ench for top o’ de pot, you mus’ know, chile. As fo’ de Laurenses, dey hab always been hand and glove wif de Barrys! Umph, chile, you don’t seem to know nuffin’ ’tall ’bout de’portance of your own fambly,” concluded old Abe, shaking his gray head disgustedly, and turning his attention wholly to his horses for they had left the gray stone house out of sight, and were descending a steep hill now.
Molly Trueheart sat quite still with a distinctly wistful expression on her lovely girlish face.
“What do I care about the importance of the Barrys? I know that one of them at least can stoop to selfish scheming!” she muttered, impatiently. “Oh, I wish I was well out of this scrape. It is not so funny masquerading as I thought it would be! I nearly exploded into a confession when the poor old soul gave me that money, little fraud that I am!”