"Heavily hangs the broad sunflower,
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger lily."
TENNYSON.
It was the gloomy twilight of a gloomy November day; dark and leaden
clouds were fast shutting out every lingering ray of daylight; and the
wind, which moaned dismally around the house, was tossing into mad
antics the leaves which strewed the playground. The lamps were not
lighted yet; of visible fires the _pensionnat_ of St. Catharine's was
innocent; a dull black stove, more or less gigantic, according to the
size of the apartment, gloomed in every one, and affected favorably the
thermometer, if not the imagination. We paced untiringly up and down the
dim corridor--Nelly, Agnes and I--three children, who, by virtue of our
youth, ought to have been let off, one would have thought, for some
years yet, from the deep depression that was fast settling on our
spirits. In truth we were all three very miserable, we thought--Nelly
and Agnes, I am afraid, more so than I, who in common justice ought to
have participated deeply in, as I was the chief occasion of, their
grief.
My trunk was packed and strapped, and stood outside the door of my
dormitory, ready for the porter's attention. In it lay my school-books,
closed forever, as I hoped; and souvenirs innumerable of school
friendships and the undying love of the extremely young persons by whom
I was surrounded.
From them I was to be severed to-morrow, as was expected, and
"It might be for years, and it might be for ever,"
as Nelly had just said, choking up on the last sentence. I _did_ feel
unhappy, and very much like "choking up" too, when I passed the great
windows, that looked into the playground, and remembered all the mad
hours of frolic I had passed there; when I took down my shawl from the
peg where it had hung nightly for five years, and remembered, with a
thrill, it was "the last time;" when the lid of my empty desk fell down
with an echo that sounded drearily through the long school-room; when I
thought "where I might be this time to-morrow," and when Agnes' and
Nelly's arms twined about me, reminded me of the rapidly approaching
hour of separation from those who had represented the world to me for
five years--whom I had loved and hated, and by whom I had been loved and
hated, with all the fervor of sixteen. The hatreds now were softened
down by the nearness of the parting; all my ancient foes, (and they had
not been few), had "made up" and promised forgiveness and forgetfulness
entire; and all ancient feuds were dead. All my friends now loved me
with tenfold the ardor they had ever felt before; all the staff of
teachers, who had, I am afraid, a great deal to forgive, of impatient
self-will, mad spirits and thoughtless inattention, were good enough to
forget all, and remember only what they were pleased to call the truth
and honesty and courage, that in the years we had been together, they
had never known to fail.
They little knew how their unlooked for praise humbled me; and how far
more deeply than any reproach, it made me realize the waste of time and
talents that I had to look back upon.
So, most unexpectedly to myself, I found that I was going off with
flying colors; that all were joining to deplore my departure and laud my
good qualities; and that, from being rather a "limb" in the eyes of the
school, and a hopeless sinner in my own, I was promoted, temporarily, to
the dignity of heroine at St. Catharine's.
It was with a very full heart that I remembered all this; and deeper
feelings than I had known since my childhood were stirred by the
kindness I was certain was as undeserved as it was unexpected. But such
a future dawned before me, that tender regret struggled hard with giddy
hope for the mastery. In almost every girl's life, leaving school is a
marked and important event; and imagination has always a wide, and
generally well-cultivated field for its powers, even when home and
future are as certain as things mundane can be. But in my case there was
so much room for dreaming, so much raw material for fancy to work up,
that a tamer and less imaginative child than I was, would have been
tempted into castle-building. The sad event that five years before had
placed me, a stunned, bewildered, motherless child, in the midst of
strangers, had largely developed the turn for dreaming that such
children always possess. The sympathy and love that God provides for
every child that is born into the world, withdrawn, they turn "not
sullen, nor in scorn," but from an instinct He has himself implanted,
inward, for their sympathy and counsel. So it happened, that though
Nelly and Agnes, and a dozen merry girls beside, were my sworn friends
and very firmest allies, none of them knew anything of the keen wonder
and almost painful longing with which I pictured the future to myself.
They knew, of course, the simple facts, that as I had no father or
mother, I was to go and live with my aunt, who had been in Europe until
this summer and whom I had not seen since my mother died; that she had
three daughters, one older, two younger than myself; that she had sent
me some pretty things from Paris, and was, probably, very kind, and I
should have a very nice time.
They knew only these bare beams and framework of the gorgeous fabric I
had reared upon them; they little knew the hours of wakefulness in which
I wondered whether I should be happy or miserable in that new home;
whether my aunt would love me as I already most ardently loved her;
whether the new cousins were at all like Nelly and Agnes; and whether
they were prepared to value the wealth of affection I had in reserve for
them. But time would soon settle all this into certainty; and my aunt's
last letter, containing all the final arrangements for my journey, I at
present knew by heart. The only possible shade of uncertainty about my
starting, lay in the chance of the gentleman who was to be my escort,
being detained by business a day or two longer at C----, and not
arriving to-night, as had been considered probable.
Nelly built greatly upon this possibility, and as the twilight deepened,
and the moaning wind and growing darkness pressed more and more upon us,
we turned to that as our only chance of comfort. Nelly had said, for the
twentieth time, "I am sure he will not come till to-morrow, it is too
late for him now," when a sharp ring at the bell made us all start, and
sent the blood swiftly enough through _my_ veins, and, I suppose, no
less swiftly through my young companions'; for Nelly convulsively
clasped me round the neck and burst into tears, while Agnes said, in a
choking voice, "I'm certain of it!" And for three dreadful minutes of
suspense we stood motionless, holding our breath, and watching for the
first token of the approach of the messenger who should confirm or
confute our forebodings.
At last, steps echoed along the hall, and bearing a dim candle, which
blinked nervously at every step, appeared the Biddy who officiated as
waiter at St. Catharine's. She had a card in her hand, and our end of
the corridor seemed her destination, and our party the party she was in
search of.
"Well?" said Agnes, making a distracted effort to break the silence, as
Biddy groped stupidly and slowly toward us. "A gentleman," she said, "a
gentleman to see you, miss," and she handed me the card. "I knew it,"
said Agnes, with a deep sigh, as, per favor of the blinking candle, the
three heads, clustered over the card, made out the name, "Mr. Arthur
Rutledge."
"Oh, I am so frightened!" I said, sitting down on the lowest step of the
stairs. "Girls, what shall I do?"
Nelly shook her head; she did not wonder I was afraid; for five years I
had encountered no gentlemen more alarming than the professors, and no
strangers more intimidating than occasional new scholars; and knew no
more how to conduct myself on this occasion, than if I had not received
Miss Crowen's valuable instructions on deportment. I had been taught to
swim, theoretically, on shore, and now was to be pushed suddenly out
into deep water, to make the best use I could of my scientific
knowledge. As was to be supposed, I found myself not much the better for
it.
"He's not a young gentleman though," said Agnes, "and I shouldn't mind
it much if I were you."
"Oh, of course he's not young, or Aunt Edith would not have had me go
with him. He's as old as the hills, I know but that makes it so much the
worse; and then, he was abroad with my aunt and cousins, and knows them
all so well; and Aunt Edith calls him 'an accomplished gentleman of high
standing;' and oh! I am sure I shall blush and act like a fool, and
disgrace myself; and aunt is so particular."
Nelly condoled, Agnes counselled, and I stood shivering in an agony of
apprehension and dismay, when the heavy tread of Miss Crowen on the
stairs, gave an impetus to my faltering steps, and sent me parlor-wards
with emphasis.
"If you don't hurry," whispered Agnes. "Miss Crowen will drag you in,
and make one of her horrible speeches about educational advantages and
mental culture, and put you through a course of mathematical problems,
and make you show off on the piano, if not sing."
The wily Agnes had touched the right chord. Threatened with this new
horror, I grew reckless, and without a moment more of hesitation, bolted
into the parlor, and stood confronting the object of my terror, before I
had had time in the least to prepare my line of conduct. I stood for a
moment with burning cheeks and downcast eyes, unable to articulate a
word, and saw nothing, heard nothing, till I found myself seated on the
sofa, and being talked to in a kind manner by the dreaded stranger, who
sat beside me. If my "Yes sir," and "No sir," came in in the right
places, I can claim no sort of credit for it; for neither then nor now,
had or have I the faintest apprehension of anything he said. By and by,
however, under the influence of that steady unmoved voice, my alarm
began to subside, and my scared senses, after fluttering hopelessly
about, like a dislodged brood of swallows, began at last to collect
themselves again, and resume their proper functions. By degrees I began
to comprehend what he was talking about, and in process of time,
commanded my voice sufficiently to answer him audibly, and before the
interview was over, had the courage to raise my eyes, and satisfy myself
as to the personal appearance of this my destined protector in the three
days' journey we had in prospect.
And the result of this investigation was, the instant establishment,
upon a firm basis, of ease and confidence. For few men or women, much
less children or girls, ever looked into Mr. Rutledge's face, without
feeling that they saw their master, but withal so firm and kind a
master, that all thought of resistance to his will, or stubborn
maintenance of their own, together with all foolish vanity and
consciousness, vanished at once and forever, or returned but seldom, and
was soon conquered. If I had cherished any romantic hope that this
"accomplished gentleman" might prove anything out of which I could make
that dearest dream of schoolgirl's heart, a lover, I likewise
relinquished that most speedily, for nothing in the person before me,
gave encouragement to such an idea. Rather below than above the medium
size, and of a firm, well-proportioned figure, Mr. Rutledge gave one,
from his commanding and decided carriage, the impression of a much
larger man. His dark hair was slightly dashed with grey, his eyes were
keen and cold, the lines of care and thought about his brow were deep
and strong. If his face could be said to have an attraction, it lay in
the rare smile that sometimes changed the sternness of his mouth into
winning sweetness and grace. But this was so rare that it could hardly
be called a characteristic of his habitually cold stern face. That it
wore it that evening however, I knew then as now, was because I was a
child, and a miserable, frightened one besides. I never doubted that he
knew how I felt, and read me thoroughly.
The interview was, according to the prim little clock on the
mantelpiece, by no means a long one; and after introducing (with but
indifferent grace) Miss Crowen, who entered the room with elephantine
tread, to my visitor, he took leave, having arranged to come for me the
next morning at six.
That last evening, with its half-strange, excited novelty of
leave-taking, and last messages and last thoughts, is still distinct in
my memory; and the start with which I answered Biddy's call in the
darkness of the November morning, the dressing with cold hurried hands
that were not half equal to the task, the wild way in which everything
came dancing through my mind, as I tried to say my prayers, the utter
inability to taste a mouthful of the breakfast Miss Crowen herself had
superintended, the thrill with which I heard the carriage drive up to
the door, are as vivid as recollections can well be. And I am in no
danger, either of forgetting the moment, when, with half a dozen of my
schoolfellows who had been allowed to see me off, I descended the steps
toward the carriage, the door of which Mr. Rutledge was holding open.
The kind good bye of Miss Crowen, the warm embraces of the girls,
Nelly's tears, Agnes' wistful look, are memories I cannot part with if I
would.
The carriage door shut to with a snap, the horses started forward at a
brisk pace, and we were off, and I had left school and childhood behind
me forever. I did not cry at all, though I felt desperately like it; but
the consciousness that Mr. Rutledge looked sharply at me to see how I
took it, made me struggle harder to keep back my tears, and seem womanly
and composed. In this I succeeded beyond my hopes, and before half an
hour had passed, the bracing air of the fine autumn morning, the rapid
pace at which we rolled along, and the new delight to my cloistered
eyes, of farms, and villages, woods rich in the many colors of the fall,
and meadows and uplands basking in its sunshine, made me feel as if I
had been months away from school, and as if the melancholy of last night
were some strange distant dream. Seventeen never dreamed more fantastic
dreams than I did that morning, however, as I leaned back in the
carriage and idly watched the gay landscape past which we were hurrying.
It was quite a relief to me that my companion, after attending to my
comfort in every necessary way, settled himself in his corner of the
carriage, and taking a book from his valise, devoted himself to its
perusal, and left me to my own thoughts the entire morning. He did not
put it up till we reached the town where we were to dine and wait for
the cars.
Dinner did not prove a very animated meal; my companion, after asking me
about school, and whether I felt sorry to leave it, and a few more
questions of the same nature (such as people always put to school-girls,
and by which they unconsciously give great offence), seemed to consider
his conversational duty performed, and fell into a state of abstraction,
which made his face look harder and colder than ever; and as I
stealthily regarded him from under my eyelashes, some of last night's
alarm threatened to return. But I tried to overcome it, and endeavored
to reassure myself by remembering how kind he was when I was so much
embarrassed, and how well he had helped me through the interview that he
might have made so terrible; and that he did not talk to me--why,
certainly it was not strange that a gentleman of his age should not have
much in common with a girl of mine.
By and by the cars came tearing through the town with a whoop and a
shriek, that seemed to excite everybody wonderfully, considering the
frequency of the occurrence. Passengers, porters, newsboys, in one mad
crowd, rushed toward the depot, each emulating in his own proper person,
the noble rage of the snorting, impatient monster, upon whose energy we
were all depending. The only individual entirely unexcited, was my
escort, who never for a moment lost the appearance of sang froid and
indifference that an earthquake would not have startled him out of, I
was convinced. Though we did not hurry, we were, before many of our
fellow-voyagers, in possession of the best seats, and most commodiously,
because most deliberately, settled for the journey. Mr. Rutledge was
emphatically a good traveller, carrying the clear-sighted precision and
deliberation of his mind into all the details of travel, and thereby
securing himself from the petty annoyances that people often think
unworthy of attention, but which do more than they suspect, toward
marring pleasure and destroying comfort. I aptly followed his manner,
and was a marvel of unconcerned deliberation in the matter of securing
my seat and arranging my shawls, books and bags; which drew from him the
remark, with an approving glance, that he perceived I was used to
travelling. That observation, either from the fact of its being so
absurdly incorrect in its premises, or from the stronger fact of its
being the only one addressed to me until 7 P.M., when we stopped at
F---- for purposes of refreshment, impressed itself very much upon my
mind.
After the wretched meal, called by compliment tea, which we were allowed
twenty minutes to partake of, had been dispatched, and we were again
settled in the cars in which we were to travel all night, commenced the
trials of the journey--to me, at least, for I was an entire novice, not
having been twenty miles away from St. Catharine's since I was first
taken there, and having but a dim recollection of that, my first and
last journey till the present time. Being also subject to the most
unbearably severe headaches upon any unusual excitement, it is not very
wonderful that on this occasion I was attacked with one, and before
night had actually set in, was as completely miserable, as in the
morning I had been completely happy. Excitement and weariness began to
tell most painfully upon me. Not a bone but ached, not a nerve in my
whole body but throbbed and quivered. It was as impossible to think
quietly as to sit quietly. Homesickness, for the home I had been longing
to get away from for five years--all the miserable things I had ever
suffered or dreaded--all the fancied and real trials of my life, then
and there beset my aching head, and made sleep or composure an
impossibility.
If there had been a soul to speak to, a human voice to say a single word
of sympathy, however commonplace, I thought it would have made the night
endurable. But among the sleepy, senseless crowd around, the only one I
had a right to expect attention from, or to whom I was entitled to
address a word, was as regardless of my existence as any of the rest.
Mr. Rutledge occupied the seat before me, and the imperfect light of the
lamp that rattled and flickered above us, showed me more plainly than
any other object, his fixed, unsympathizing face, as he leaned against
the window of the car, his lips compressed and his brow knit. He did not
sleep any more than I did, nor do I think he was a whit more
comfortable; but he had his impatience under better control, and never
moved a muscle or uttered a sound for hours together.
It was the most torturing thing to watch him, so entirely unmoved by the
discomforts that were, I was firmly convinced, driving me mad; and in my
jaundiced eyes, his profile took a thousand wizard shapes. It would have
been a relief if he had moved in ever so slight a degree to one side or
the other; but a painted face upon a painted window could not have been
more rigid than the one before me. I was dying of thirst, was smothering
for want of air, ached in every limb, and there were hours yet to
morning! The monotonous motion of the cars, and their accompanying
noises, harsh and shrill, made to my perfectly unaccustomed ear a
frightful combination of discord; and this all coming upon my excited
and sensitive nerves, worked me up into a state of wretchedness that
naturally resulted in that climax of woes feminine, a fit of crying.
I could no more have helped it than the wind could have helped blowing,
and never having learned to control myself, could not suppress the
indulgence of an emotion which, an hour afterward, I remembered with
acute mortification. I tried to smother my sobs, but they reached at
last the ear of my silent companion, who started, and turning toward me,
asked, with a shade of impatience in his tone, what was the matter? Was
I ill?
That question, so put, in the indescribable tone that shows to a
sensitive ear a want of sympathy the most galling, was the best cure
that could have been devised for my tears. They were done, altogether;
but in their place, the angry blood flew to my face, and I inly vowed,
in accordance with school-girl notions of right, never to forget or
forgive the insult. Angrily averting my head, I declined any assistance
or attention whatever, and pride having thus stepped in to the rescue,
I was able to maintain as rigid a demeanor as Mr. Rutledge himself. For
a moment he looked at me with an expression that I could not quite make
out, then with the slightest possible shrug of the shoulders, turned
away, and seating himself again in the corner, resumed his former
attitude. That was enough; all my spirit was roused; I had always been
good at hating, but the present crisis brought out powers I had never
been aware of before; and there was a great deal in the fact of my
having made a fool of myself in the presence of Mr. Rutledge, to help me
along in detesting him; and not being in a particularly reasonable or
well-governed frame of mind, the aversion I had conceived increased with
alarming rapidity. It was wonderful how powerful my resentment was to
keep my weariness and impatience in check. I did not move an inch nor
utter a single word; I would have borne the rack and torture rather than
exhibit, after that shrug, another shade of emotion.
When at last, morning being broadly awake, we were released from our
prison for an hour to breakfast and rest at a way-station that seemed
most utterly repugnant to those two ideas, Mr. Rutledge asked me if I
would not prefer, on account of my fatigue, waiting there till the next
train, which would arrive at noon?
I answered, "_Decidedly_ not," with so much emphasis, that he only bowed
and turned away; with what opinion of my temper it is not pleasant to
think. Before the day was over, he had, I presume, concluded, that he
had taken under his charge about as willful and disagreeable a young
miss as ever tried the patience of parent or protector.
The day wore on, much after the manner of yesterday. That night at
twelve, we expected to arrive at C---- where we were to rest till
morning; and thence taking the boat, were to reach our journey's end
about noon.
It was toward evening of that weary day; I was sitting listlessly
looking out upon the dreary suburbs of the town which we seemed
approaching, and thinking, by way of diverting myself, of Nelly and
Agnes and school, and what they were doing now, and whether they missed
me; when there came a sudden jar, then a horrid crash, a shriek that
rent the air, a blow upon my head that made a hideous glare of light,
then darkness absolute, and I knew no more.