GEM.
A maiden meek, with solemn, steadfast eyes,
Full of eternal constancy and faith,
And smiling lips, through whose soft portal sighs
Truth's holy voice, with every balmy breath.--MRS. KEMBLE.
Three pair of eyes were turned towards Gem. She was well worth looking
at, as she stood there beside the pausing wheel, with the thread of yarn
suspended in her hand between the delicate forefinger and thumb, and
with her large, luminous dark eyes, fixed upon the face of the speaker.
Yes, look at Gem--a slight, elegant creature, whose form was perfect
symmetry, whose every motion was perfect grace, whose small stately head
was covered with shining jet-black ringlets that hung down each side and
half shaded a bright young face of exceeding beauty--an oval face, with
regular features, large, soft, dark-blue eyes, vailed with thick, long
lashes, and arched over by slender, jet-black brows, and with roseate
cheeks and crimson lips. This will do for a pen and ink sketch; but how
can I picture the light, the life, the gleam and glow of that brilliant
and beautiful countenance?
She wore a plain brown linsey dress, that perfectly fitted her
symmetrical form; and this rustic suit was relieved by a little linen
collar that clasped her throat, and a pair of little white linen cuffs
that bound her wrists.
The setting was plain enough, but the gem was a very rich and rare
jewel, whoever might be destined to wear it.
Only for an instant she stood thus, like a bright and beautiful image,
and then she suddenly darted across the room, sunk down beside the old
lady's chair, and looking up into her face, said:
"Grandma! I know more of that awful tragedy than you think I do. Of
course, in all these years, I have chanced to hear much from the talk of
women and children seen in church or in school. And to-night I have
heard too much from you, not now to be told more! What is all this
mystery and horror connected with this anniversary of Hallow Eve?
And--who am I?"
"You are my own darling child, Gem!" answered the old lady, in a
trembling voice.
"I know that I am your foster-child, but that is all I, or any one else
except you, seems to know about me! But you know who I am, grandma! Now
tell me--who am I?" she pleaded, taking the withered old hands within
her own, and gazing imploringly up into the kind old eyes that looked
compassionately down on hers.
"You are my pet, and my darling, and my blessing, Gem! That is enough
for you to know!" answered the old lady, still in a tremulous tone.
"Am I that prison-born child? Am I the daughter of that poor lady who
was crucified and cast out among human creatures? Am I? Am I?" persisted
the young girl beseechingly, while Miss Tabby wept and Miss Libby
moaned.
"Gem," said the aged woman gravely, and sorrowfully pressing the
maiden's hands, "Gem, have I been a good grandma to you?"
"Oh, you have! you have!" answered the young girl, earnestly.
"And can you still trust me to be good to you, and true to your best
interests?"
"Oh, yes, yes, yes! dear grandma!"
"Then, my own little one, trust me, by obeying me, when I tell you to
ask me no questions about yourself; because I cannot answer them yet a
while. Will you do so, my little Gem?"
"Yes, yes, I will! I will! But, dear granny, I know! I know! although
you are too tender to tell me, I know!"
"Know--what, Gem?" questioned Mrs. Winterose, in alarm.
"I know that some mystery and horror hung over my birth--hangs over my
life! I have known this a long time. They call me 'Ingemisca;' that
means, 'Bewail! Bewail!' Some one bewailed my birth, and bade _me_
bewail it! Some one sung the refrain of a requiem at my baptism, as they
do at the burial of others! And oh, grandma! to-night! to-night! in what
has reached my ears, I have found a clue to the solving of my mystery!"
"Gem! Gem! if ever I have been kind to you, mind me now! Never think,
never speak of these things again. Look on yourself as my child, and
nothing more," urged the old lady with so much earnestness, and even
pain, that her pet hastened to caress her, and to say:
"I will mind you as much as I can, best, dearest granny! I will never
speak of this again until you give me leave."
"That is my darling girl! And now put away your wheel and come and sit
down here, and let us have a pleasant talk after all this solemn
nonsense. And when Joe comes in--Where the mischief is that fellow, and
why don't he come with the cones, I wonder? Anyhow, when he does come I
will send him down in the cellar for some nuts and apples, and we will
have a little feast."
Gem sat back her wheel, and came and took her seat on a stool at the old
lady's feet.
"Gem," said Mrs. Winterose, passing her hand through the girl's dark
curls, "my two daughters have been horrifying us by telling of some
awful events that happened on certain long past Hallow Eves. But they
have said nothing of the pleasant things that have happened on later
Hallow Eves! They haven't said a word of that Hallow Eve when me and my
Libby was a sitting in our cabin without provisions, and a wondering
where the money to buy them was to come from, and how long the agent
would let us live there, seeing as we had no right, after my old man,
who was the overseer, died, when in walks the agent himself, and offers
of us a home rent free here, with the use of the garden, the orchard,
and the wood, with a small salary besides, if so be we would come here
and live with Tabby, and help keep rats and thieves and rust and mould
out of the old house. You may depend, Gem, as we jumped at the offer,
and came here the very next day."
"That was all the kindness of my child! It didn't need nobody but me to
do all that. But, my sweet angel, she wanted to provide for you and
Libby, and to make us all comfortable and happy together," said Miss
Tabby.
"Yes, I know. Heaven bless her, wherever she is! And that was a happy
Hallow Eve. But the next one was even happier, Gem."
"Yes, dear grandma, I know," smiled the girl.
"Yes, for just one year from that time, when Hallow Eve came around
again, I got up early in the morning, as I used to do _then_ as well as
now, and I came down into this very room, and went through to that back
door and into the back room, and opened the back porch door to let in
the morning air, and there on the porch with the sun shining bright on
the scarlet seed-pods of the rose vines all over the shed, there, like a
cradle, stood a large wicker basket, with a two year old baby
comfortably tucked up into it, and fast asleep."
"That was I," said the maiden.
"Yes, Gem, it was you. But just think of my astonishment when I found
you there! I stared at you, and was as 'fraid to touch you at fust as if
you'd been a bombshell to blow me up! I rubbed my eyes to see if I was
awake. I crept up to you and shrank back from you ever so many times,
before I could venture to touch you. Then I saw a card tied to the
handle of the basket. I took it off, put on my specks, and read this:
"'A GEM FOR MRS. WINTEROSE.'
"Then, my dear, I saw that somebody who wanted to get shet of a baby,
had put it off on to me. And, Lord forgive me, I struck mad as hop, and
said I wouldn't have the brat, and would send it to the alms-house. But,
lor! there is a power in helplessness compared to which the power of a
monarch is all moonshine! And however angry I might a felt at that
minute with the unnatural monsters who I thought had dropped the baby
there, why, I could no more a sent it to the alms-house than I could a
smothered it in its basket," said the soft-hearted old dame, wiping away
the tears that rose to her eyes at the very idea of such a piece of
cruelty.
"So you took the little creature in?" smiled Gem.
"What else could I do? I was shivering with cold myself. Could I leave
it out there? No. I took hold of the handle of the basket--which it was
a large open clothes basket with a handle at each end, and very useful
I have found it ever since to put the siled clothes in--and I began to
drag it through the door and through the back room into this very room.
But the motion waked the baby up, and it opened the darkest blue eyes I
ever had seen in my life, and looked at me as calm and quiet as if it
had known me all my life, and then it opened its little rosy lips, and
said:
"'GAMMA!'
"Yes, my dear Gem, that was what you called me from the first, 'Gamma.'
It went straight to my heart, Gem! And why? Because I was sixty years
old then, and my hair was as white as it is now, and I never had a baby
in the world to call me grandma: all because Tabby and Libby didn't
marry as they ought to have done twenty years before that."
"You're always hitting of us in the teeth about that, mother, as if it
was our fault. As for me I would have married fast enough if William
Simpson hadn't a proved false," snivelled Miss Tabby.
"Bosh! there's as good fish in the sea as ever was got out of it,"
snapped the old lady.
"It was our fate," said the superstitious Miss Libby.
"You made your own fate," answered the inexorable old lady.
"So you adopted the poor little forsaken child," put in Gem, to stop the
altercation between the mother and daughters.
"Yes, Gem, of course. But oh! the day you were given to us was a day of
jubilee! While I was lifting you out of that basket, lame leg Joe came
in to make the fire. When he saw me with a babe in my arms he let his
wood fall, and lifted up his arms and opened his eyes in dumb amazement.
And when I told him where I found it, he recovered his speech, and
advised me to send it to the alms-house.
"'Joe,' I said, '_if ever_ you mention alms-houses and babies in the
same breath to me again, you and I will have to part."
"Yet poor old Joe spoke in your interests, grandma," said Gem.
"I know he did, dear, or he thought he did; but my real interest was to
keep my Gem, for she has been the brightness of my life, and not only of
mine, but of Tabby's and Libby's, poor childish old maids, and of
Mopsy's and lame leg Joe's."
"It is because we all love each other so much, and it is such a
happiness to love," said Gem.
"We all loved you, my darling, from the very first. We could not help
it. Ah! you should have seen what a sunbeam you were in our dull house
that day and all days after that. When I took you out of the basket and
set you upon your feet, you tottered all about the room, eagerly
examining all that was new to you; the chip-bottom chairs, the
turkey-wing fans, the peacock's feathers, even poor Joe's crooked leg.
And me and Joe watched you in your little crimson dress, as one watches
some bright-plumed bird, hopping from twig to twig."
"How I wish I could remember that day, grandma."
"You were too young; not more than two years old. But oh! you should
have seen the surprise and delight of Tabby and Libby, when, after they
had made the beds up stairs, they came down to help me to get breakfast.
They were as silly over you as ever you saw children over a new pet
kitten. I thought you would have been pulled to pieces between them,
which was another sign that they ought to have been married twenty years
before."
"Oh, mother!" began Miss Tabby.
"Well, there! I won't say anything more about that. But the way they
talked to you, Gem!"
"'What's your name, little one?' they asked.
"'Gem,' you answered.
"'Who's your mother, baby?'
"'Gamma,' you replied. You had only them two words, my darling--'Gem'
and 'Gamma.'"
"Did you ever afterwards find out who I was, grandma?" inquired the
girl.
"Maybe I did, and maybe I didn't, Gem. Anyway there was no clue to your
history there in that basket, Gem. There was heaps of baby clothes,
nicely got up and marked 'In-gem-is-ca,' and there was a small bag of
gold coins, amounting to just one hundred dollars. That was all. And
now, didn't you give me your word never to ask me any questions about
yourself?"
"I know I did, grandma, and I will keep my word; but oh, grandma, I
can't help thinking about it and suspecting who I am."
"Hush! hush, Gem! Put away such troublesome thoughts. I had rather see a
little natural silliness than so much gravity in one so young as you
are. Be a girl while girlhood lasts. The season is short enough. This is
Hallow Eve. When I was young, it used to be a gay festival, and not the
funeral feast my mournful daughters would make it. When I was young, the
lads and lasses, on a Hallow Eve night, used to try spells to find out
their sweethearts and lovers. And if ghosts walked then, they were merry
sprites who only came to tell the youths and maidens whom they were to
love and marry. Come, now, I'll teach you a sure spell. Here are some
chestnuts," she said, rising and taking a little basket from the chimney
shelf, and emptying it into Gem's lap.
"What am I to do with these, grandma?" smiled the girl.
"You are to take half a dozen large ones, scratch on each the first
letter in the name of some young man you know. Then on another, 'Str.'
for stranger; on another 'Wid.' for widower; on the last one, a cross
for old maidenhood."
Smilingly Gem complied with the directions, and marked the chestnuts,
while the old lady, with spectacles on nose, watched her carefully.
When they were all ready, Gem looked up, saying:
"Well, they are marked! Nine of them altogether."
"Now lay them in a row on the hot hearth, close to the coals, to roast."
"It is done," said Gem, after she had arranged them according to rule.
"Now, then, my dear, you must sit and watch them in perfect silence,
until they are roasted, when they will begin to pop; and the first one
that pops will be your fate, whether it be one of the young men, or the
widower, or the stranger, or whether it be the cross that stands for old
maidenhood."
Smilingly Gem folded her hands, and composed herself to perfect silence
and stillness.
While she watched her roasting chestnuts, the old lady watched her.
Each of these women, the ancient dame and the youthful maiden, was
making herself silly to please the other. Mrs. Winterose, wishing to
divert Gem from her troublesome thoughts, and Gem willing to gratify her
"grandma."
But the law of silence was not laid upon any one else but the trier of
the spell. And Miss Tabby and Miss Libby chattered together like a pair
of sister magpies for some minutes, when suddenly Miss Tabby exclaimed:
"Look out, Gem! Your chestnuts are beginning to crack; they will shoot
you presently, if you don't mind."
The warning came too late. A blazing chestnut was suddenly shot from the
hearth like a small bombshell, and struck Gem upon the right hand,
inflicting a slight burn.
With a faint cry she sprang up and shook it off; and she sat down
startled and trembling, for she was very delicate and very sensitive to
pain.
"Never mind, never mind a little smarting! When I was young I would have
been willing to have been scorched worse than that, to have had such a
powerful sign that some one loved me so fiercely as all that! Goodness!
how he loves you, to be sure! and how quickly he is coming to see you!
Come, pick up your chestnut, child, and see what mark it bears. Come,
now! Is it Cromartie?" inquired the old lady with an arch smile.
But the girl made no reply. She had picked up and blown out the blazing
emblem that she had playfully made a messenger of fate, and she was
gazing upon it. She remained pale and mute.
"Come, come; did you name it for that auburn-haired youth?" persisted
the old lady.
"I named it for--_the exile_--the lady who was borne from the flooded
prison that stormy night; I named it for--_my mother_," answered the
maiden in a low tone.
Silence like a panic fell upon the little party.
Mrs. Winterose was the first to break it.
"Gem! how dare you do such dreadful things?" she demanded, speaking more
harshly than she had ever before spoken to her spoiled child.
"It's enough to break anybody's heart to hear her say that," whimpered
Miss Tabby, wiping her eyes.
"And, oh! what a sign and an omen! If there's any truth in the spell,
her mother--if so be _she_ is her mother and is a living--her mother
loves her better than any one in the world, and is a hurrying to see her
now! For I never knew that to fail," said Miss Libby, clasping her hands
and rolling up her eyes.
Gem turned and gazed at the last speaker, while a superstitious faith in
the omen crept into her heart.
"There is nothing at all in it! I was only trying to amuse the poor
child by the old love spell. I had no thought it would turn out this
way," said Mrs. Winterose, glancing uneasily at Gem.
But Miss Tabby sighed, and Miss Libby shook her head, and Gem continued
to look very grave.
"Well, I declare! I am out of all patience with Joe!" exclaimed the old
lady, by way of changing the whole conversation. "It has been full forty
minutes or more since I sent him after them cones! And now I am going to
call him."
And so saying she went and opened the back door.
But she had no sooner done so, than she started with a cry of horror and
fled back into the room.
And well she might!
Behind her came three men, bearing in their arms the mutilated and
bleeding body of a third man!
Following them limped lame-legged Joe.
The affrighted women shrank back to the chimney corner, where they clung
together in that dumb terror which is the deeper for its very silence.
"Now don't you be scared, ladies," said Joe, soothingly. "Nobody an't a
going to do you no harm. It is only some man as has been murdered out
there."
"_Murdered!_" echoed Mrs. Winterose, in an awe-deepened tone.
"Another Hallow Eve murder!" groaned Miss Tabby, wringing her hands.
"It is doom!" muttered Miss Libby solemnly.
Gem vailed her eyes and said nothing.
"Lay him down here on the floor, men, and let us take a look of him to
see if we know him," said Joe, as he took a candle from the table.
The bearers laid their burden gently down.
Joe held the candle to the face of the murdered man.
Old Mrs. Winterose cautiously approached to view it.
"Good angels in Heaven!" she exclaimed.
"Who is it, mother?" inquired her daughters, in terrified tones.
"MR. HORACE BLONDELLE!" she whispered.