Suddenly, and before Richard Crawford had quite decided how to answer her last remark, Josephine Harris said, as if the thought had only that instant come to her:
"Oh, Dick, I am going to ask a favor, in return for my good opinion. The carriage is in, I believe. May I ring for it, for an hour?"
"Certainly," said Crawford. Josephine rung the bell, and the order was given.
"It is dusk, you see," said the young girl, apologetically, "and Imustgo down the Avenue before I go home. Many thanks. Be a good boy and take care of yourself, till I see you again. John will set me down at home when my little errand is over. Good night!" and her kiss fell warm and soft upon his forehead—a sister's kiss, pure and unimpassioned, even if there was no tie of blood between them.
Bell Crawford came down stairs and sat by her brother's side when she heard the carriage roll away with her friend. And whither did that carriage roll? Richard Crawford had no idea that Joe's "little errand" could possibly have any connection with himself; and yet it had—a most intimate and important connection, as will be perceived.
The coachman, at her request, drove out to Fifth Avenue, then down that avenue to Tenth Street, where he opened the door and set her down, receiving orders to wait there for her return. The young girl tripped up from the corner, a few doors on the left hand side, past a church, and entered the front-yard railing of one of two or three unpretending three-story brick-houses standing together. It was now past dusk and the street-lamps were lighted; and looking in at the basement windows of this house, Joe saw that no curtains were drawn, that the gas was burning within, over a table and under a shade; and that at the table sat a man with head bent down and fingers busy at some kind of mechanical contrivance.
"That will do," she muttered to herself. "The Doctorisin, as I believed he might be at this hour, and I shall have no occasion to disturb the people up-stairs."
Passing under the steps she reached the closed door, and instead of ringing, banged half a dozen times against the panels with her hand, very slowly and tragically, as the ghost in "Don Giovanni" might ask to be admitted, provided it had any occasion for using the door. Immediately there was a shuffle inside, and directly the door opened and a tall figure stood in the doorway. There was enough light from the street-lamp to make the young girl's face and figure pretty plainly visible, and the moment he saw her the occupant said:
"I thought so—mischief! I thought I knew that knock! No one else ever takes such liberties with my office-door. What do you want now? But come in, before you forget it!" and seizing both her hands with a playful gesture, he dragged her within the door, closed it, pulled her through the side-door into the front basement which formed the office, drew up a clumsy cushioned operating-chair near the table, sat her down in it, then cast himself into a chair immediately in front of her, threw one leg over the other and his hands behind his head, and said:
"Now I am resigned and prepared. Out with it!"
Had Josephine Harris not been familiar with the place and its occupant, as it was quite evident that shewas, she would have looked twice at the one and several times at the other. That little basement-room was not only the office in which Doctor LaTurque received professional calls, but it was also the sanctum in which were prepared most of the oddly-trenchant articles in theScimetar, a quarterly medical and critical publication with a habit cutting as its name and a reputation dangerous enough to suit the most sensational fancy. Few persons connected with the practice of medicine in or about the great city, who had not first or last suffered some incision from the trenchant blade of theScimetar, wielded by the wiry arm of the Doctor; and few humbugs but he had pricked and exposed, by the same means or in personal conversation, while he was himself the greatest humbug of all. Others habitually humbugged others: he humbugged himself, or tried to do so, insisting to himself that he was a hard man, an iron man, a brute, a skeptic, and everything that was ugly and detestable; while in fact he had the warm heart of an unspoiled child, and a faith in everything good, that was really part of his being—all combined with the vigor of the experienced surgeon and the close study of the untiring student. He used hard words—rough ones, sometimes, and tried to make himself believe that they were the emanations of a hard disposition; while every rough word was really made under protest from his nature, and few men on the whole earth were more ready to do an act of genuine kindness. It is not for us to say that there was not some intentional affectation of singularity underlying his manner; for he evidently loved notice if not notoriety; and other means than the white coat and disarranged trowsers of the Tribune Philosopher have sometimes been adopted to secure the same end.
Certainly Dr. LaTurque was not remarkably choice in the style of his "den," if hehadhandsomely furnished apartments in the house above, and if his windowsdidlook out on Fifth Avenue. The ceilings were low, the walls plain, the furniture was very common, and yet a little odd, as became the place. The floor was oil-clothed; a table covered with dark cloth stood in the middle of the room; an old-fashioned secretary, with books piled on either end, stood against the wall on the right as the visitor entered, with a globe half hidden behind it; on the wall opposite hung the print of a muscular Apollo (muscular, because it was drawn anatomically, with no flesh covering the integuments); on either end of the mantel stood a small statue; in the centre was an impudent placard of bronze on japanned tin, announcing that no complimentary visits could possibly be received in that room, while the occupant, if there, was ready to falsify the announcement at any moment; on a small table between the windows, under a glass globe, lay the cast in plaster of a marvellously handsome male Italian face; two or three small pictures, commonly framed, hung over secretary and mantel; in the corner between the mantel and the window stood a stuffed eagle on a low table covered with the suggestive appliances of a fractured leg; and just behind it, on a bit of rug, nestled a disabled pigeon from his pet flock on the roof, that had come down, with excellent judgment, to be nursed and tended by the surgeon.
In the midst of this odd assemblage Dr. LaTurque was himself not by any means the least remarkable object. He was certainly a singular-looking man, and had a fancy (or pretended to have a fancy) that he was a very homely one. He was not so, however, to any eye of taste—only striking. In figure he was tall and rather thin, but the same epithet we have applied to his arm may be used for the whole man—wiry. He seemed capable of strong nervous effort and of great endurance; and one could see that something more than fifty years had not diminished the locomotive will or power. In the too large and too aquiline nose (literally a beak)—in the iron-gray moustache, imperial, and heavy brown hair—in the thin cheeks and keen gray eye,—there was a marvellous reminder of the portraits of Louis Napoleon, and at the same time another and a stronger suggestion. There is no close observer of physiognomy but has remarked bird, beast and even reptile reproduced in the faces of different men—one being a human lion, another a human bear, a third a human hyena, and still a fourth a human serpent. It scarcely seemed that it could have been by chance that the gray eagle stood stuffed in the corner; for the observer just as naturally detected the eagle in that human face, as he could ever have detected either of the others named, in different physiognomies, and the dead bird seemed thetotemof the living man.
"Well, battle and murder and sudden death!" said the medical Laurence Boythorn, when he had forced the young girl down into a seat. "What is it you want? Who is married or dead, or whom do you intend to kill, or what is it?"
"Are you sober?" asked the young girl, looking into his eyes very gravely.
"Why, you impudent demon in petticoats!" said the Doctor, with a great appearance of indignation. "What do you mean? You know that I am never otherwise than sober."
"From the effects of liquor, of course not," was the reply. "But your hot head, like mine, has the capacity of becoming intoxicated sometimes without any thanks to liquor; and I want to know whether you are cool and clear, or whether you have been puzzling over some bad case, or talking with some man with a stupid skull, until your head is all muddled?"
"Clear as one of the mountain springs that you are some day going with me to see," said the Doctor. "Now out with it."
"Well," said Joe, "I know that you hate chemistry, but in spite of that youmustgive me a little chemical judgment. I want you to tell me," and she took out the surreptitiously-obtained roll of linen, unrolled it and laid it upon the table, under the full light of the burner—"I want you to tell me what is that dark substance which looks like black paste, whether it is animal, vegetable, or mineral, and what you think its properties."
"And after Idotell you, if I can," said the Doctor, eyeing the suspicious-looking mass, "I suppose that I am to be told why you wish to know?"
"Not one word," said Joe. "At least, not at present. All your reward is to be the honor of conversing withmeon the subject."
"Bravo, Empress; I rather likethat!" said the Doctor, whodidlike it, nevertheless, to judge by the jolly expression of his face. "You are a refreshing young woman, and some day I expect to see you stretch out your arm with imperial dignity and clear off all the pigmies from the face of the earth with a 'Go away, small people! I have had enough of you! You may leave!'"
"Very likely," said Joe. "But meanwhile I have not quite done withyou. Please examine that stuff, for I am in a hurry."
"As usual!" commented the Doctor, going on to smell, inspect, and even taste the dark compound on the cloth.
"Take care!" cried the young girl, in alarm, when she saw him apply his tongue to the substance.
"Pshaw!" said the Doctor. "Don't be alarmed. I am so full of dangerous ingredients myself, that the most virulent of poisons could not produce any effect on me."
"I should not like to see you trust it too far—that is, not if I cared for you!" said the lady, as ifshehad been the chemist and he the neophyte.
"Well," said the Doctor, after a moment's pause and a still closer inspection, "you will give me no particulars, and so I shall giveyounone. I suppose the main fact is what you want to know. The substance is a little dried, and consequently it has lost some of its aroma. But my impression is that it is a very powerful vegetable poison, compounded from certain simples that grow along running streams in the tropics, and especially in some of the West Indies."
"I thought so!" said Joe, almost involuntarily, and an unmistakeable gleam of pleasure lighting up her face. "But would that poison produce any effect if applied outwardly?"
"I should think so," replied the Doctor, "though, as you say, I hate chemistry. I should think that substance, applied to any vital part of the body, and kept there continuously, would produce racking pains and weakness, and be very likely to result in a disease resembling inflammatory rheumatism, or possibly paralysis, and death."
"Thank you—thank you a dozen times," said Joe, springing up and grasping the Doctor very warmly by the hand. "You do not know how much good you may be doing by this examination; but youshallknow, sometime—I will tell you all about it. And now good-night!" rolling up the package and putting it back into her pocket. "My time is up, Mother will be worried about me, and I have a borrowed carriage waiting at the corner."
"Allow me to see you to it," said the Doctor, rising with quick courtesy.
"No farther than the gate, for the world," said the young girl. "For certain reasons, which you shall know some time, I must not be seen in your company to-night, even by the coachman."
She tripped away instantly, the Doctor accompanying her to the gate,—and rolled away homeward at once. What a day that had been to her! And in what a whirl was her brain when she reflected on all she had discovered and tried to arrange in her own mind the details of what she yet felt it necessary to do! It was within forty-eight hours after, and when her mind had not become at all calmed from the thoughts of the crime surrounding her and those she loved, that the visit to the sorceress was made, as before recorded. How much of additional information she may really have expected to gain from the sorceress, it is impossible to say,—or whether this matter of the attempted poisoning was really the matter which sent her to that questionable fountain of intelligence; but it is not at all strange that she should have blended the terrors of the real and the imaginary together, and been powerfully impressed by the events of that day which marked so important an era in her existence.
It may be said here, that two days after the events just narrated, when Bell accompanied her to the sorceress, she did not see Richard Crawford. Thereafter, for many days, she did not visit the house at all, for reasons that will soon make themselves manifest; and consequently the awkwardness of any meeting with the invalid, which might have involved questions she did not care to answer at that moment, was avoided. Joe Harris felt that for once in her life she had a "mission"—something to do, and to do in her own way; and until that work was done, or she had utterly failed in the attempt, she did not mean to let that chattering tongue of hers say one word that could give a clue to her thoughts or intentions. We shall see, presently, how nearly and in what manner her plans were carried out.
A Little Arrangement between Tom Leslie and Joe Harris—Up the Hudson-River Road—A Detention and a Recognition—Going to West Falls, and a Peep at the Halstead Homestead.
There are some things too sacred to be pryed into, and there are some things too difficult to make any progress in that attempt, even when the effort is made with the most determined will. Both these conditions will to some extent apply to the intimacy between Tom Leslie and Josephine Harris, which commenced on a day we well remember, and which may not close until their joint destiny is accomplished. The very next day after that adventure, he called at the house of Mrs. Harris, was introduced to her with great empressement by her daughter, and received by her with great cordiality. The good lady, whom we have no intention whatever of describing, was a splendid specimen of the widowed matron in comfortable circumstances, with just enough threads of silver shining amid her dark hair, to make her matron-hood sacred and all the more loveable. That she, who was not always pleased with a new-comer, chanced to like him from the first, completed the vanquishment of the journalist, if that object had not before been entirely accomplished; and within an hour after setting foot within that comfortable little home the young man felt that it had become dearer to him than any other building of bricks and mortar into which he had ever entered.
So of the confidence which at once began to exist between the two lovers. Yes—let the word be set down—lovers. When Josephine Harris accompanied Tom Leslie to the door, on the night of his first visit to her at home, he held out his arms to her, without a word, and she nestled into them in the same silence, and returned the first kiss he pressed upon her lips. Thenceforth their lips, we may believe, belonged exclusively to neither, but had a divided interest. What matter, thereafter, how many times they were pressed together, or how long that pressure lingered? What matter how many words they spoke, or what formed the burden of those words? They had accidentally touched, when drifting down the stream of life, and who should thenceforth have power to separate them? A month before, Tom Leslie, who had had fifty flirtations or less, would have laughed at the idea of being "in love," with what seemed like a life-passion; and even three days before Josephine Harris would have considered such an event, on her part, not undesirable, but simply impossible. So much for what we know, to-day, of that which is to exist to-morrow, even in the "best-regulated families!"
It was on the third visit paid to the house by Leslie, that Josephine communicated to him her intention to be absent from the city for a week or ten days, visiting some friends in one of the country sections reached by the New York Central Railroad; after which she was again to return to the city and accompany her mother, late in July, on her annual pilgrimage to the Ocean House at Newport. She would leave for the north on one of the first days of July—perhaps the Third or the Fourth. Strangely enough, Leslie had arranged to go to Niagara for a few days, at about the same time, and he suddenly found it a matter of no consequence that he should go by the Erie Road, as he had at first intended. Subsequent inquiries proved that the young girl would go unattended, and leave the railroad at Utica, taking stage for the short remainder of her journey. Leslie felt it almost a matter of inexcusable impudence, after so short an acquaintance, to ask the favor of timing his journey by hers and being her escort so far as Utica; but he dared the risk, as he had dared many a risk before, from things quite as deadly as woman's eyes; and he didnotmeet even one objection or expression of embarrassment. Josephine Harris accepted his escort as freely as offered, and seemed rather pleased than otherwise! How absurd, and in fact how improper! She should have blushed, simpered, and hinted that she would be very much pleased with his escort—but—so short an acquaintance—all her friends would know it—what would people say?—etc., etc. Joe Harris did not understand all these things, exactly; but the next woman would have acted out that role to perfection.
Not to linger over these details, Mamma Harris not objecting, they left the city of New York by the five o'clock train on the Hudson River Railroad, on the evening of the Fourth of July, just when the city was sweltering in its most deadly heat and all ablaze with patriotic fireworks. Leslie had certain patrio-political engagements which occupied him until after noon on that day, rendering it impossible to leave by the morning train. Leaving by that at five o'clock, they would connect with the train on the New York Central leaving Albany at midnight, and reach Utica very early in the morning. There Josephine would be set down, while Leslie, after seeing to her stage accommodation, would whirl onward with the train, for Niagara.
The connection between love and railroad-riding may not be obvious to all; and there are some, no doubt, who think the flying speed of the modern conveyance terribly unromantic. But there are others who know of nothing more thoroughly pleasant than lounging back easily in the cushioned seat of a railway-carriage, withthe oneclose beside, with one hand in reach at any moment, the one face ready to reply in smiles to the look of pleasure given, and the one head ready to repose upon the shoulder when night comes on or the continued motion of the train brings on drowsiness. Of the latter class were both Tom Leslie and Joe Harris, both of whom had travelled much, though very differently, and neither of whom had ever before experienced the luxury of the one peculiar companionship. They may ride far and see Nature in her most wonderful phases, in other days; but it is doubtful whether either will ever experience a greater pleasure than that of sitting by the side of the other, on that July afternoon, conscious that they weretogether, and of very little else, but dimly aware, too, that they were sweeping away from the hot and dusty city, with its thousands of sweltering inhabitants, and flying through green woods, among towering hills and beside flashing waters.
It is not more true that "man proposes but God disposes," of any other series of events in life than railroad connections. That Albany express-train on the Hudson-River Road, dashed merrily on for the Highlands, meeting excursion-trains passing backwards and forwards between the various towns on the line, all decked with flags, and evergreens, and the passengers in all waving flags and shouting out their patriotic merriment. Already the Highlands of the Hudson were rising close before them, with the westering sun sinking low and casting broad shadows from their tops over the quiet river,—when suddenly, a little below Peekskill, the train came to a halt, without any station appearing in view.
"What is the matter?" asked some of the passengers, after the halt had been prolonged a few minutes. "Have we met with any accident?" asked others when that halt was longer protracted; and "Are wenevergoing to get on?" asked all parties together, when the delay lengthened to more than half an hour and there appeared to be no signs of starting.
Finally, when more than the half hour had elapsed, a brake-man satisfied the eager inquiries of the passengers by the information that a coal-schooner had attempted to pass through the draw-bridge half a mile above Peekskill, when the tide was too far spent—that she had managed to get aground in the draw-bridge, immediately across the track—and that, consequently, no train could possibly pass until the tide rose again and released the unfortunate boat, well along towards midnight! Here was a pleasant predicament, especially for those who, like our travellers, had connections to make at Albany for the North and West; and yet, to their credit be it said, that particular couple bore the delay with wonderful equanimity! It is just possible that both remembered that they would be together a few hours longer on account of the accident, and that they were prepared to endure even a longer forced companionship!
At last the train moved on, but slowly, through the village of Peekskill, and reached the little creek, under the very edge of the Highlands, where the accident had occurred. The scene was certainly a picturesque one, with the grounded boat, the swung draw-bridge, the men laboring to lighter-off the vessel by unloading the coal, the passengers crowding and swarming from the cars, the setting sun over the noble headlands to the West, and the placid river coming out from the dark shadow of the Highlands and sweeping grandly down to Haverstraw Bay.
It had been arranged that all the passengers by the up-train should disembark and cross the long bridge over the estuary, on the narrow strips of plank temporarily laid down for that purpose, so as to be ready to take the next down-train from Albany, the moment it arrived, and go back with it;—while the passengers by the down-train would cross in the same manner and run back with the up-train towards New York;—thus saving what would otherwise be hours of additional detention. Then streamed across those planks a most picturesque line of pedestrians, sturdy men and timid women, each a little afraid of so narrow a footing over the water, some of the women nervous and screaming a little, and some of the men quite as cowardly but much more ashamed to acknowledge the feeling. The novelty of the picture was materially added to, meanwhile, by the fact that nearly every male passenger was loaded like a pack-horse with baggage, and the ladies with shawls, parasols and bundles,—and that all, when they reached the neck of land at the end of the bridge, squatted down miscellaneously on the dry grass and among the wood and timber, like so many Arabs making a noon encampment.
"Oh, isn't this jolly!" exclaimed Joe Harris, as Tom Leslie was leading her over the line of plank, when they were about half way across, and when, from the instability of a part of the structure, there seemed a fair prospect of taking a duck in the river.
"Bravo, little girl!" said Tom Leslie, in reply. "That is the way to take detention and disappointment in travelling; and after that expression I would bet on you for ascending Mont Blanc or living on a raft." Such little events, to close observers, sometimes furnish keys to the capabilities of whole characters.
"You compliment me," said the young girl, "but there is really nothing to compliment me about. I am not enduring, but enjoying. Look out!—there I go! No I don't!" as she partially lost her balance and then recovered it. "Why we should have lost all this, but for the accident; and probably nothing in our whole ride could have compensated it."
"It is indeed a striking scene," said Leslie, his quick appreciation of the beautiful actively brought into play, as they landed safely on the sward at the end of the bridge. "See the dusky shadows creeping over the Highlands, yonder, and their still duskier shadows in the still water. See the orange and pink of the sunset sky, reaching half way to the zenith, and that quarter moon dividing the sunset colors from the dark blue beyond, like a sentinel. Then see that steamboat creeping close in under the shadow of the land, as if she was trying to steal by unobserved. And then yonder, that smelting furnace perched on one of the hills, throwing out its gleams of molten metal, with their glowing reflection in the little creek. And last, not least, Peekskill lying across the cove yonder, with its Independence flags still flying, those untimely rockets going up, boats with singing parties putting off from the shore, and the music of the band coming over the water just softly enough to make an undertone for the feeling of the place and the hour."
"It is indeed a picture worth remembering," said Josephine, "and the more so after you have so graphically described it." But suddenly, and without any perceptible reason, at that moment the young girl pulled away from his arm, on which she had been leaning, flung down the light veil of her bonnet, stepped away a few paces, and turned her face towards the river. Leslie looked around to see what could have caused the movement, but saw nothing except a few of the last passengers leaving the planks, and among them a military officer in full colonel's uniform, whose face he did not recognize. He saw that the officer passed on, farther up the railroad-track; and the moment after, slightly turning her head, but very warily, the young girl appeared to be beckoning to him. He stepped towards her at once, and turning her head once more towards the river and the western skies, she said:
"Excuse my strange behaviour; I know that you will do so when you understand my reasons—no, you cannot understand them all, at least just now—but part of them. I dare not turn around my head, for fear of being recognized. You saw an officer coming off the bridge just now. Did you know him?"
"No, I did not," answered Leslie, and it must be confessed that he wished to add, though he did not do so, "But what the deuce is the mystery inyouryoung life, that you are obliged to shun recognition in this manner?"
Josephine Harris, from the position in which she stood, could not clearly see his face, and she was consequently spared his look of surprise, almost of pain, which was momentary. The instant after, she asked:
"Is he here still? Is he close by us?"
"No," said Leslie, looking around, "he has passed up the track some distance. But tell me—whatcanbe the matter?"
"I know you must think it odd," said the young girl, turning her face around towards Leslie, now that she knew the officer was not near them. "Not only odd, but a little suspicious. But a few words will explain all that it is either necessary or proper for me to say in this place. Keep an eye on that man, please, and if you see him coming this way again, let me know. That officer is Colonel Egbert Crawford, of whom you may have heard."
"I think I have heard the name, through the newspapers. Getting up a bogus regiment, or something of that kind, isn't he?" asked Leslie. "Any relation to Miss Bell, who accompanied us the other day on that—that expedition?"
"Which you regard as among the most foolish things of your life? Eh, Mr. Leslie?" asked Joe, with a little mischief in her tone.
"Which I regard as one of the most fortunate events in my whole existence," said the young journalist, managing to touch her hand at the same time. She appeared to understand the words and the gesture, and went on with the explanation that had been interrupted.
"He is a cousin of Miss Bell Crawford, and very intimate in the family. I have met him very often, and he would recognize me in a moment if he should see my face. If he should do so, probably the great object of my visit to the North would be prevented."
"And that is—" began Leslie.
"Precisely what I cannot tell you, until I know more of the matter myself, because I have no right to take liberties with the characters of others. Would you have thought me so prudent?" concluded the young girl.
"I do not now need to learn for the first time," answered Leslie, "that those whom the world calls 'rattle-brains'—and I am sure they callyouone,—have sometimes plenty of forethought and a good deal of prudence."
"Thank you," said Josephine, and no doubt she did thank him, from her soul. For the rarest flattery is of course the sweetest, and poor wild Joe was in the habit of being oftener complimented for any thing else rather than that terrible quality "forethought."
"But I may tell you," the young girl resumed, "that I have very grave suspicions of that man's honesty, in some of his dealings with the Crawfords, who are my very dear friends; and I am going to unsex myself, I suppose, in your mind, by acknowledging that I am playing the part of a detective,en amateur, for a few days."
"Not a particle unsexed," said Leslie, rubbing a match on his boot-sole and preparing to desecrate the sweet air of evening with cigar-smoke. "Go on, please."
"Well," said Joe, "if I do not mistake, Col. Egbert Crawford and myself are going to the very same place—at least to houses not a quarter of a mile apart; and if he should know of my presence in the neighborhood all my researches might be blocked. Do you see?"
"I see," said Leslie, though how hecouldsee through that cloud of cigar-smoke, was a little unaccountable.
"That is why I turned away and dropped my veil," the young girl went on. "And now I am under the necessity of troubling you a little more than I intended. You must look out, for me, that we do not get into the same car, and afterwards you may have a good deal more of trouble to keep us apart. May I tax you so far?"
"I think so," answered Leslie. "Hark!"
Through the hills above them there swept down a rumble, a roar, and a rattle, growing deeper every moment.
"Clear the track, there," cried Leslie, loud enough to be heard by all the hundreds of passengers. "The down-train is coming!"
In an instant the train from Albany broke into sight from the woods above, and came thundering down, barely giving the passengers who had been lounging on the track, time to drag themselves and their baggage out of the way. It was now growing dusk, but the train stopped upon the bridge without accident; and in a few moments the down passengers were unloaded and transferred, those going up were on board, and the long line moved back again, the locomotive in the rear and pushing all the cars backwards like a gigantic wheelbarrow.
Leslie had taken Miss Harris' hint at once, and kept his eye on the Colonel when the embarkation was being made. He saw him step on board one of the rear cars, and himself and his companion took places farther forward, so that any danger of recognition was past for the time.
There was nothing of incident in the night-ride which followed, demanding description in these pages, except that Leslie found a pleasure he had not anticipated, in Miss Josey's growing drowsy and making a pillow of him eventually. There, have been heavier burdens than that he bore; and what with the soft breath playing so near his cheek in the innocence of slumber—the light form around which he was obliged to clasp his arm (as a matter of duty—to keep her from slipping from the seat, of course!)—the dashes through dusky woods and the glimpses of the moonlit river,—what with all these and the pleasant company of a heart that had never yet known what it was to be desponding, Tom Leslie managed to enjoy the latter portion of the ride to Albany, amazingly. At one o'clock he woke up the pleasant burden on his arm, and half an hour after, Josephine Harris was cradled in soft slumbers at the Delavan, in Albany, while Tom Leslie, a very human description of guardian angel, was watching over her slumbers from his sleepless pillow in another wing of the building.
Corresponding precautions to those of the evening were taken in the morning, when the travellers took the cars of the Central Road, for Utica and their separation; but in that instance they seemed to be superfluous. Whether Colonel Egbert Crawford disdained to pursue his route at that early hour in the morning, or whether he had one more favorable report to make at the Adjutant-General's office, of the condition of the Two Hundredth Regiment, detaining him in Albany for another train,—certain it is that he did not make his appearance, and that the "amateur detective" and her companion were free to choose any of the cars of the train. A rapid ride through the Mohawk Valley, with the quiet river of the same name ever at their side, and the Erie Canal continually in view, with its pleasant reminder of the extent and the wealth of the Empire State,—and before their morning's conversation was half finished (for what check or bound is there to the invaluable nothings of two lovers who have not yet recovered from the novelty of their first impressions?) they dashed up to the station at Utica and alighted for dinner at the American.
It is no matter, here, what arrangements had been made between the two for their subsequent meeting and correspondence; it is enough to know that no fetter has yet been forged by any Tubal Cain of them all, strong enough to hold apart those who choose to single out each other from the world. Tom Leslie and Josephine Harris were to meet again, and at an early day; and with that understanding both were reasonably well content—the male member of the combination because he had no option, and the female member because she really had such a multitude of benevolent plans in her busy brain that she had no time to be otherwise.
Before Josephine Harris had finished her capital dinner at the American, and ceased trifling with those magnificent strawberries, the finest of any season within memory, (that young person was favored with a most unromantic appetite, and often managed to astonish those who had the pleasure of paying her bills at a restaurant dinner or supper)—before all this was accomplished, and before the bell had rung, calling the passengers for the Northward to resume their seats on the train, Leslie had succeeded in discovering the whereabouts of the proper stage for the remainder of Miss Josey's journey, and making the necessary arrangements for her baggage and her personal accommodation. This done, and his mind at rest on that particular point, the bell rung, the two made a hurried farewell, in which a warm pressure of the hand served (for propriety's sake) in the place of a parting kiss understood; and Leslie sprung into his car and was whirled away Northward towards the Mecca of American summer-tourists; while the young girl went up to "do" Utica in a bird's-eye view from the window of her room, and to await the four o'clock that was to bear her away in the lumbering stage to West Falls. Perhaps Tom Leslie felt at that moment that he would have been glad of any excuse or any shadow of invitation to accompany her to that rustic paradise, instead of going away alone to any paradise named in Bible or Koran; and perhaps Joe Harris had the faintest suspicion of a heavy and lonely feeling at her heart, at parting with the "eyes" and the merry brain that lay behind them, so suddenly flung as an element into her own existence.
Henceforward, for the present, the business of this narration only requires that the course of Miss Josephine Harris shall be traced, leaving the "other half" of her incomplete "pair of scissors" to be picked up hereafter.
No one who has ever travelled among the mountains or through any of the Northern hill-sections, needs any description of the heavy lumbering "Concord coach" in which the young girl and her stage-companions were slowly dragged up Genesee Street, Utica, by four horses of lymphatic temperament, on that sultry July afternoon with occasional sprinkles of shower thrown in to make it endurable. They are all alike—those heavy coaches—except as to paint and upholstery, wherever we meet them,—whether they drag us up the Cattskills, bear us over from Moreau to Lake George, dash down with us through the gorges of the White Mountains, or jog us heavily along the rough roads that thread the Alleghanies. The same half cord of wood in each of the curved bodies—the same complication of sole-leather in the swinging jacks which serve in the place of springs—the same cumbrous weight of wheel, suggesting that a mill may have gone out on its travels, locomoted on its running-gear. And yet there is no conveyance so safe or so easy for the mountain; and some of us have enjoyed pleasant hours lounging back upon those polished leather cushions within, or shouting out enthusiastic admiration of scenery from the pokerish seats on the top.
It is a pleasant ride, at any season of the year—that from Utica over the range of hills which lies westward, to the Oneida Valley which nestles down a few miles beyond. And it was especially pleasant and enjoyable, that afternoon, with the cloud-shadows playing over the yet uncut wheat-fields, and the glints of sunlight falling on the roofs and gables of cozy-looking farmsteads bordering the road on either hand or peeping out from behind clumps of woods in the distance. The opened back-curtains of the coach gave a delicious view, when they had surmounted the height, of Utica lying on the slope below, stretching downwards towards the Mohawk and the Canal, with its clustering domes and spires and the melancholy Lunatic Asylum overlooking all from the North-west. And a view not less pleasant opened before, of the long stretch of valley lying in the distance, bounded on either side by a continuous range of hills rising up with an almost even slope, crowned with woods and diversified with the divisions of cultivated fields, and here and there a glint of water, showing where the silver Sauquoit, most laboriously taxed of all minor streams except those of the Naugatuck and Housatonic Valleys, wound its busy way down to the Mohawk.
And when the eye tired of resting upon these, it could find variety in studying the Welsh contour and primitive aspect of many of the Oneida countrymen passing upon the road—the clumsy contrivances of a hundred years ago, on which the gathered loads of hay were going homeward from some of the out-lands—and the long, low wagons on which great pyramids of boxes of cheese, the staple of the section, were being slowly dragged towards Utica and a market.
But fair Oneida showed that war was in the land, removed though it might be from the great centres of recruiting operations. Joe Harris had noticed that a recruiting tent for McQuade's gallant Fourteenth stood in the middle of Genesee Street, only a little way above the hotels, with drums beating and flags and placards exhibited; and even in the fields she saw traces of the effort to answer the President's last demand for troops. Where on the visits of previous years she had seen only men toiling in the sunshine, many women were laboring now, and the change was significant. The homes of Oneida had already given of their best and bravest to the cause of the nation, and still the Moloch of war demanded more!—more, ever and continually more!
There was a reminder of the war, too, within the coach, and a reminder of the mode in which the recruiting service was being conducted. On one of the front seats sat a fine-looking young man, bright-eyed and keen-faced, in the shoddy uniform of a private. His conversation was at once that of a patriot and a gentleman; and it did not require many moments of unavoidable listening for the young girl to discover that he was well educated. Further conversation between himself and other passengers who seemed to know and respect him, showed that he had abandoned his studies in a leading institution, to answer the call of the country—that mathematics and military science had formed a considerable part of his studies—that he had had some hopes, when he enlisted, of obtaining the grade of a subaltern officer, when he should succeed in procuring sufficient enlistments—that by his personal efforts and fervid eloquence he had already succeeded in enlisting more than fifty men for the regiment with which he was connected, and was then on his way to another section of the county to make further efforts in the same direction—and that he was still a "full private," with a certainty of rising no higher, because he had neither money nor political influence to put him forward. So that this young patriot and soldier, who showed the power and energy of his nature in every glance of his eye and every word he spoke, was to be kept in the lowest position known to the service, and commanded by men who had never heard of a book on military science or tactics, a week before, but who could buy commissions or command a certain number of votes at a town-meeting! Josephine Harris had studied the current history of the time, enough to know and recognize the picture set before her, and to say, silently and between her set teeth:
"Oh, I wish I was only a man, to start out with a horsewhip and lash these incapables until they howled!"
Six o'clock, and the stage went rumbling and swaying into the little village of West Falls, which it is hoped that no matter-of-fact reader will attempt to find on the map of Oneida, albeit it has a veritable existence there under another name. It was a cozy little spot, nestled down into the valley of a small stream, half creek and half river, that formed a cataract in the neighborhood and gave it the name. Factories clustered along the stream, making the idle water labor for the benefit of man, and within them whirred the spindle of the cotton or wool spinner and clanked the hammer of the worker in iron and steel. The village itself lay partly in the valley, along the east margin of the stream, and partly climbing the slight range of hills that bounded it still farther eastward. A wilderness of shade-trees bordered the main street and seemed to cluster around every house on the narrow lanes that branched from it, presenting a cool and refreshing picture in the hot summer afternoon, and suggesting rosy-cheeked lasses, breezy halls and bed-rooms, real milk instead of the manufactured article, and all the other pleasant things traditionally supposed to belong to summer in the country.
Up the long shady street, then down a wide bye-street that branched to the left under the very edge of the hills, and the accommodating stage set the city girl down at the gate of a neat-looking story-and-a-half house, buried in trees and bowered in summer flowers, unvisited by her for the previous three years, but before that time the scene of many an hour of quiet rustic enjoyment. For reasons best known to herself, Josephine Harris had chosen not to advise her hostess of her intended visit, but she had no fears that it could possibly find her "not at home," and indeed before the clanking steps of the coach were well let down, the new-comer had been recognized from the house, and a young girl came flying down the pathway to the gate. This was Susan Halstead, her cousin, three years younger than herself, petite in figure, brown-haired and round-faced, with the curls flying loose over her shoulders and her childish mouth all puckered with pleasure at once more seeing and embracing "Cousin Joe."
The stage rolled away, the luggage found its way inside the white gate, and Josephine was soon in the arms of her matronly-looking Aunt Betsey, her mother's sister and the country type of the family as Mrs. Harris herself supplied that representing the city. Much taller in figure than her daughter, a little deaf and with many threads of silver shining in her dark hair, but with the kindest face and the merriest laugh in the world, Mrs. Betsey Halstead furnished a pleasant specimen of those moderately-circumstanced Lady Bountifuls of the country and the country village, who always have a spare bed for the wayfarer, always a cup of milk and a slice of fresh bread for the weak and the needy, and always an unalloyed enjoyment in the coming of "company,"i.e.,visitors.
It need scarcely be said that the coming of merry Joe was a pleasure, as well as a surprise, that she was overwhelmed with welcomes as well as questions, that aunt and cousin and the tidy "help" all vied in the effort to "put away her things," and that in five minutes the city girl was more pleasantly flustered than she would have been on entering a fashionable ball at Irving Hall or attending the first hop of the season at Newport. Pleasantly flustered—that is, she did not quite know whether her head was on or off her shoulders, and yet she knew that she was for the time in a quiet little haven of country rest from the noise and whirl of the great city, very pleasant to contemplate.
"And you did not write us a word about your coming?" said Aunt Betsey, interrogatively, when the bonnet had been laid off, the dust brushed away, and the second kiss of meeting exchanged.
"Not a word, Aunt," was the young girl's reply. "You know that I never do things like other people. I knew that you would be at home—knew that you would be glad to see me—did not know that I was coming, myself, until a day or two ago—and do not think that I should have written, if I had, when it was so much easier to bring the information myself."
"Still the same rattle-brain!" said Aunt Betsey, shaking her head with that peculiar gesture which really implies admiration of a prodigy. "So mother is still in the city, is she? Why did not she come along?"
"Yes?" echoed Susan. "Why didn't she come along? Did you come all the way alone?"
"No," answered Josey, with the least little bit of hesitation in her answer, and the tiniest flush creeping up on her face, that neither of the others had the tact to see. "There were some friends of mine going on to Niagara, and so I had company all the way to Utica, and they set me down there." Sly Joe!—why did she use the plural number,—"friends," and "they"? Why will people, even those belonging to the most irreproachable classes of society, indulge in these little fibs upon occasion?
"Oh, Cousin Joe," said Susy, "you do not know what a nice little room we have for you, up-stairs. The vines have climbed up and half covered the window, and a robin has built its nest in one of the branches of the big apple-tree, that hangs so close to it. Little robie will wake you early in the morning, I'll be bound—none of the late lying in bed that they say you all practice in the great city!"
"No, you rose-bud!" exclaimed Joe. "I will get up as early as any of you, especially as I have not come out here to be idle, but towork. But where is Uncle?—I have not seenhimyet?"
"Your Uncle Halstead," said Aunt Betsey, with a shade of sorrow momentarily crossing her kindly face. "Oh, I suppose you did not know it! Your Uncle has gone to the war, with the rest of them. There have a great many gone from Oneida—scarcely a family that does not miss one member at least. Some of them will not come back, I suppose; and some may. God shelter and keep your Uncle! It was a little hard to part with him, after being together nearly all the time for so many years; but he felt that he must go, and he knew his duty best."
"And you so cheerful about it that I did not even know till now that he was gone!" said Joe, with surprise.
"Why yes," said her Aunt. "Iftheyhave a duty to fight for the country,wehave a duty to be patient while they are gone and do the best we can with what they leave behind them!"
Bravely and truly said, wife of the Oneida soldier! If the battles of the Union are lost, half the fault will lie with the women who have preferred their own ease and the contentment of their own affections, to the peril of their native land; and if those battles are won, no small share of the credit will be due to those true-hearted descendants of Molly Starke, who have emulated the self-sacrificing spirit of the women of old Rome and sent off the husbands they loved and the sons upon whom they leaned, to win their love and confidence over again on the battle-field, or to die for the worshipped flag and the perilled nation!
"God shelter and keep him, indeed!" responded the young girl. "And he will, without a doubt." No one could exactly understand why it should be so, in conjunction with the dash and freedom of her character; but hidden away somewhere among the dark glossy hair was a bump of Veneration that recognized the Supreme Being with the most filial love and trust, and in the heart there was a corresponding throb of gratitude, confidence and childlike dependence.
"But what have you got, out-of-doors?" she asked, changing her manner again to that of one who had no thought beyond the present. "I have not quite forgotten how the old yard looks, with the smoke-house, close to the back door, and the barn at the other end. Got any pigs and chickens? And how's your cat?"
"The cat is well," said Susan, gravely—"that is, as well as could be expected. She has quite a family. We have lots of chickens—you must have seen some of them in the front yard as you came in. And pigs—a pen full of them, but a little too big to suityou. They are too heavy and dirty to take in your arms, and all the curl is gone out of their tails."
"So sorry!" said Miss Josey, with the most melancholy of pouts on her lip, and with a funny reminder of Laura Keene when she uses the same expression to the discardedPomanderin "Peg Woffington."
"But we have something else that youwilllike," Susy continued, determined to atone for any disappointment in the pigs and their terminations. "We have got a calf—a nice red-and-white spotted calf, only about a week old."
"Oh, that is the thing!" cried the merry girl. "We will go at once and have a look at the calf. Does it hook?"
"Hook?—you stupid thing!" laughed Susy. "Why it is only a week old, I tell you; and of course it hasn't any horns. But come along!" and down from a convenient peg she pulled a couple of sun-bonnets, her mother's and her own, sticking one on the gypsy head of Josey and the other on her own refractory curls. "But stop—we have something else that you have not thought of"—and she pulled down the head of her cousin and whispered in her ear.
"Cherries! oh good gracious!" absolutely yelled the young lady. "Quick—get me some boy's-trousers and a step-ladder! No, you needn't mind the trousers, as long as it is only you, Susy, who is going to help me pick; but the step-ladder—don't forget the step-ladder!" and away she went, flying out of the house, her hand in that of Susan, and the whole movement more suggestive than anything else, of two young colts turned out in a clover-field for a summer-day frolic.
Five minutes afterwards, a subterranean observer, could such a person have been possible, would have seen Miss Josey most unromantically astride of a limb, half way up the big Tartarean cherry tree overhanging the smoke-house, appropriating those pulpy little purple globes at a most luxurious rate, and staining her cherry lips and her white fingers very nearly of the same color. Susy stood below, laughing and clapping her hands at mad Joseph's position, and eating, by way of sympathy, the few clusters thrown down to her by the busy fingers.
But we cannot linger upon this picture, pleasant as it is—nor yet upon the adventures of Josey among the pigs, chickens, cats, with the calf (which managed to "butt" her over, even if it could not "hook"), and among all and singular the belongings and appliances connected with that cozy little retreat in the country village. Then what a supper followed, with the flaky white tea-biscuit made by Aunt Betsey's own hands, with the fresh cream equally divided between the cherries and the strawberries, and the scent of the roses stolen by the slight evening breeze and thrown in at the windows. Then an hour of moonlight, but only an hour, for the young girl was wearied out by the changes of scene that had kept her excited during the day, and the broken rest of the night before. Long hours earlier than Tom Leslie heard the whistle of his train, braking-up at Suspension Bridge, Josephine was nestling among the white sheets and cool pillows of her pleasant chamber, nodded at by the vines at the window and just lovingly kissed by one glint of the moon that stole in upon her privacy—sleeping such a sleep as wealth and power turn wearily upon their pillows and pray for without hope.
Josephine Harris in Search of Information—A Big Fib for a Good End—Mary Crawford with Her Eyes Shut, and with the Same Eyes Opened—A Bomb-Shell for Colonel Egbert Crawford.
Pleasant though those hours in the little homestead at West Falls may have been, they must be passed rapidly over, except as each bore some event connected with the progress of this story.
When Josephine Harris woke next morning with the birds singing Sunday matins under her window, all the fogs and mists of merriment and country enjoyment seemed for the time to have rolled away from her brain, and the prime object of her visit to West Falls came prominently into her mind. In order to effect it, it was necessary that her aunt and cousin should both be taken somewhat into her confidence; and she had no fear of any evil result from this, as their location at a distance from the city would prevent any ill effects even from an unguarded word. Whatever these confidences were to be, however, there was no occasion to make them with any great suddenness; and in her character of an "amateur detective" she naturally preferred to make what discoveries might be possible, before explaining her motives for making the inquiries.
Accordingly, when breakfast and the Sunday "morning work" had been dispatched, she pulled little Susy away from the house, under the pretence of taking a "swing" in the popular abomination of that name, suspended between two of the trees in the back-yard. Seated side by side on the board seat between the ropes, and with their arms clasping each other's waists, the two girls fell into a conversation which was very soon led by Josephine into the direction she wished. Not, however, until she had propitiated the demon of mischief within her, by making an onslaught upon a daguerreotype which she had found in one of the drawers of the bureau in her room during an imprudent "rummage" before breakfast. A few sly hits at the appearance of the face there depicted, brought a sudden flush to the face of little Susy; and not long elapsed before they elicited the information, given through deeper and warmer blushes, that she was under an engagement of marriage to the young man whose portrait was thus made a hidden treasure—that he was an engineer on a distant railroad, who could only make his visits to West Falls at intervals of a month or two—and that they were to be married sometime during the ensuing year, if life and health would permit. Simple Susy!—what a pity that she could not have been informed of some of the events in the life of her cousin which had occurred during the previous few days—especially of the "friends" who had accompanied her to Utica! In that case it is just possible that the blushes might have been duplicated, though no corresponding confidence could have been elicited, for the best of all reasons. As it was, Susan had nothing to do but to pour out the one life-secret of her innocent heart, receiving nothing in return but a peal or two of merry laughter and a final assurance that "he would do," and that "he was not soveryhomely and awkward, after all!"
When she had reduced her cousin to that state of defencelessness and subserviency, Pussy Harris (as we have before had occasion to call her) suspended amusement, went into business, and commenced her round of enquiries.
A quarter of a mile away, in full sight of the grounds in the neighborhood of the barn, from its elevated position near the top of a gently-swelling knoll, a little separated from the main chain of hills that stretched away eastward—stood a large two-story farm-house, a little old and Dutch in its appearance, but thrifty-looking and suggesting that the man who made it a residence was the owner of many broad acres. This appearance was very much added to by the size and extent of the barns and out-houses; and the impression of age and stability was enhanced by the fine old trees which surrounded the yards and added so much to the pleasantness of the situation. From her old memory of the place, and of conversations during previous visits when she had no interest whatever in the inmates, Josephine Harris had an impression that this house was the abode of the Crawfords; and it was upon that supposition that she began her enquiries.
"Let me see—I almost forget," she said, pausing in their swing, and with the air of one trying very hard to remember—"Who was it that used to live in the big house yonder on the hill? Thompson? Johnson? What was the name?"
"The big house? oh, Crawford—the Crawfords live there," answered Susan, very innocently.
"Oh, yes, the namewasCrawford," said Joe. "Let me see—there was an old man—"
"Yes, old John Crawford," so Susan supplied the missing name.
"And he had one daughter—only one daughter, and only onechild, I think," said Josephine, working her features into a terrible semblance of trying to recollect something in the past, that had almost escaped her.
"Why yes, he had only one child, Mary," said Susan, evincing a little surprise. "But I did not know that you ever met her, so as to take any interest in her."
"Humph! well, I never did meet her, except at church," said the city girl, evasively. "But you were pretty young, then, and you would scarcely have remembered it if I had. I remember thinking that the old house must be a nice place for living in the country, and I thought of it again this morning. Is the old man living still?"
Less unsophisticated persons than little Susan Halstead might have been led into pursuing a subject of village gossip, by so specious a trap as that set by Josephine; and it is not strange that she fell at once into the line of conversation that the other desired.
"Yes, old Mr. Crawford is still living," said Susy, "and that is about all that can be said. He is old and very feeble, and they have been expecting him to die any day for the past three or four months. And that is not all—as you seem to have known something about Mary, I do not care if I tell you. There is serious trouble in that house, Cousin Josey!"
"Trouble?" echoed the young girl. "Indeed! why what is the matter?"
"It is a long story," said Susan, "but perhaps I can tell it without using many words. You know that the Crawfords are richer than most of us here—they say that the old man isveryrich—and so they belong to the aristocracy and do not associate with everybody. Mary is older than myself, a year or two, but we were at school together. We have not had much intimacy since, but a little, in spite of the difference in our circumstances. Mary is a dear, good soul, and not a bit proud, though the family are proud as Lucifer. Well, she used to come here once in awhile, and she made me come over there, though I always felt out of place in the big house. She was as gay and merry, then, as could be, and seemed always happy and light-hearted. She used to think a great deal of Mother, apparently; and once, two years ago, when Mother was very sick, she came down two or three times a day and brought her everything nice that she could think of. Lately she has not come here at all, and as she is richer than I, I am too proud to put myself in her way."
"Did nothing occur between you, to make any change in her behavior towards you?" asked the female lawyer.
"Nothing at all," answered little Susy. "I suppose that some of her fine acquaintances told her that she must not visit people poorer than herself, and that may have made the difference."
"But this is not the 'trouble' you spoke of, is it?" asked the young girl, who did not by any means intend to allow the cross-examination to fall through at this point.
"Oh, not at all," said the unsuspicious Susan. "I was coming to that directly. There was a cousin of Mary's, Richard, from New York, who used to come up here very often. I sometimes saw them together, and then it was that she looked so gay and happy. I am sure that they loved each other, and every one thought that some day they would be married. Of course I have never heard any of these things fromher, and perhaps I ought not to talk about them; but you know such things will creep out. Well, Richard Crawford does not come up here any more. They say that he has been leading a dreadful life, drinking and going into bad places, until he is all broken down and a miserable cripple. There is another cousin, a Colonel, who comes up here now, and he and Mary go out together sometimes. The Crawfords are notorious for trying to keep all their property in the family; and so, as the other has proved so bad, probablythiscousin and Mary may be married. But she looks like a ghost when I meet her, at church or when she is riding out; and I know that she is unhappy. Perhaps she loves the poor young man still, bad as he is. Don't you think that is possible, cousin Joe? And may that not be what ails her?"
"Why yes, you dear little soul, I should think very likely!" said the city girl, leaning down her head on her hand and trying to still the throbbing of her temples. What a revelation was here, from lips so innocent and evidently so truthful! And how the whole story tallied with what she had heard in her ambush and conjectured from other circumstances! She was on the right scent, beyond a question—but here came her difficulty,—how to cut this knot of villainy, even now that it lay plainly before her! This was the question that labored through the young girl's brain and bent down her head on her hand. And yet it must be done, whatever the difficulty. Courage, Joseph Harris!—there never was a difficult thing, either in wickedness or benevolence, that a woman could not master when she once fairly set about it!
"It is indeed a sad story that you have been telling," she said, "and it interests me more and more in the family and especially in Mary. I wish I could see her and talk to her for half an hour." She had gathered all the information that she had any right to expect, and now came the necessary confidence. "What would you say now, Susy, if I could put back some of the light into Miss Mary Crawford's eyes?"
"You?" and the country girl looked at her as if a pair of horns had suddenly sprouted from under the dark hair.
"Yes,I!" echoed the "amateur detective."
"I don't see how you can do it, especially as you do not know these people or anything much about them," said Susan. "But indeed I should be very much pleased if you could, and I should—yes, I should just think you a witch!"
"Well," said Josephine, "suppose then that I had known something about these people for a long time, and that I had come up to West Falls not only to see my dear aunt and cousin, but to serve them in a way that they knew nothing about—would you and your mother keep the secret and help me?"
The wondering eyes looked at her more wonderingly still, but they seemed to see that the speaker was not jesting, and some of those country people have a faith in the abilities of people from the "big city," not always justified.
"Certainly I would," said Susy, "and I am sure that mother would do anything to serve Mary. But what is it all, Cousin Joe?"
"That is what I am just going to tell you, or at least a part of it," said Josephine. "In one word, all these stories about Richard Crawford arelies. He is a good, true-hearted young man, as can be found in the world. I know him very well, and visit him and his sister every day or two—sometimes, when I am very idle, every day. I love him as I would my own brother, if I had one."
"Notbetterthan a brother, eh, cousin Josey?" asked the country girl, with a funny glance out of the corners of her eyes.
"Oh, no," said Joe, laughing. "Notbetterthan a brother, or I should scarcely be trying to make matters right between him and Mary Crawford."
"No, I suppose you would not—I didn't think of that," said Susy. "And so you know them, and you knowhim, and he is a good man, is he? Why, cousin Josey, where did all these stories come from, then?"
"Humph!" said the city girl, "we may find all that out by-and-bye. It is enough to say that they are not true, and that Iknowthem not to be true. If I find that I am right in my suspicions of their origin, I will tell you: if not, you will be the better for not knowing."
"And what are you going to do?" asked the proprietor of the unmanageable curls and the wondering eyes.
"I scarcely know yet, myself," said the schemer. "It seems certain that no time is to be lost. You say that old Mr. Crawford may die any day. Now, Susy, it is my belief that if he should die to-day, as matters are arranged Mary and all the property would go—well, I cannot tell you where, but where you would not like to see them."
"Indeed you frighten me, cousin!" said Susy.
"I suppose so," answered Josephine. "But now—see here! I think I ought to see Mary Crawford this very day, and without any one at the big house knowing that I am at West Falls or that she has any communication with this house. How can that be managed?"
"Indeed I do not see how it can be managed at all!" said the country girl, with a very hopeless look at her pleasant face.
"Indeed itmust!" said Miss Josey, who was only confirmed in the determination by the supposed difficulty.
"I do not see how it can," repeated Susy. "You cannot gothere, of course, without being seen, and I do not know of any way to get herhere."
"But that is the thing," persisted Josephine. "She must be gothere, in some way or another. Pshaw! I don't see how it is to be done, but itmustbe done. We might set fire to the house, and that would probably bring her over, but then it would bring all the other people from the house, and then your mother might have some objections."
"I should think very likely shewould!" said Susy, with another wondering look around at the female torpedo who was thus exploding in West Falls.
"Stop! I have it!" cried the wild girl, a flash of triumph passing over her face. "Run into the house, Susy, and ask your mother to come out here. Your 'help' must not hear what is said."
Susy ran into the house on her errand, stopping once, as she turned the corner, to look around and satisfy herself whether Cousin Joe had not escaped from some lunatic asylum. While she was gone, Joe sat in the swing alone and did some energetic thinking; but twice, before the old lady came, she endorsed her plan with: "Yes, that will do. Thatmustdo!"
Directly Aunt Betsey came out to the swing, her arms floured to the elbows, having been interrupted in the midst of the divine mysteries of moulding cherry-dumplings, for the Sunday dinner. But she did not look the less amiable and good-natured for the interruption, as many good housewives might have done.
"Aunt," said Josephine, grasping her by the hand, in spite of the flour. "Aunt, I want you to do a good and benevolent action, at once."
"Well, I will try, my child!" said the good woman. "That is, if itisa good action that you want me to do. But you know, Josey, that you are a bit of a rattle-brain."
"Yes, well, I think that I may have heard that observation before," said Miss Josey. "However, I can live through it. Aunt, I will tell youwhy, by-and-bye when there is more time,—but I have a reason, that may be one of life and death, for what I ask. I want you to believe in the weight of my reasons at once, and to help me get Mary Crawford from the big house yonder, overhere, immediately."
"Why, she does not come here now-a-days; and what can you want of her?" asked Aunt Betsey.
"There you go, Aunt!" said Joe. "You are not doing what I asked you to do. I tell you there are reasons why I must see Mary Crawford to-day, and with no one, outside of this house, knowing that I do so."
"She is right, mother," said Susan. "She has told me what she means, and she ought to see her at once. Do help her—pray do!" These dear little innocent people who are happy in their own love-affairs, have a marvellous faculty of falling into the needs of others, and God bless them for it!
"But how?" asked Aunt Betsey.
"Oh,Idon't know," said Susan. "Cousin Josey knows."
"I only know one plan to get her here without suspicion," said Josephine. "To do that we must tell a falsehood, but only for an hour."
"Oh, I cannot tell a falsehood," said the conscientious matron.
"Yes you can, or you can letustell it," said the incorrigible. "Susy tells me that when you were sick, two years ago, Mary Crawford came to see you very often."
"She did, and she was a very kind nurse—Heaven bless her, even if shedoes notcome to see us any more!" said the old lady.
"If she thought you sick, she would come again, I think," said Josephine. "Once here, my word for it that she would not be angry, but thank you, when she heard all that I have to tell her."
"I do not like it, my child!" said the straight-forward woman.
But what can a kind-hearted old lady do, with two young ones and one a model of her sex, tugging at her apron-strings? In five minutes more, without at all understanding what was to be done or why it should be done, Aunt Betsey had given her consent to take part in what was probably one of the first falsehoods of her life. In ten minutes more, one of the boys who had already dressed himself for church, was on his way to the Crawford mansion, with a sealed note in the school-girl hand-writing of Susan, written under the dictation of Josephine, and reading as follows: