without eagerness. He never had suspected such a thing; the only
explanation which had suggested itself to his mind was that Miss
Prince had been investing some of her money without his advice or
knowledge, and he had gone so far as to tell himself that it was just
like a woman, and quite good enough for her if she had lost it. "I
never thought of its being from her," he said, a little bewildered,
for the captain was not a man of quick wit; his powers of reflection
served him better. "Well, aren't you going to tell me what she has to
say for herself?"
"She proposes to make me a visit," answered Miss Prince, trying to
smile as she handed him the little sheet of paper which she had
unconsciously crumpled together; but she did not give even one glance
at his face as he read it, though she thought it a distressingly long
time before he spoke.
"I must say that this is a very good letter, very respectful and
lady-like," said the captain honestly, though he felt as if he had
been expected to condemn it, and proceeded to read it through again,
this time aloud:--
MY DEAR AUNT,--I cannot think it is right that we do not know
each other. I should like to go to Dunport for a day some time
next month; but if you do not wish to see me you have only to
tell me so, and I will not trouble you.
Yours sincerely,
ANNA PRINCE.
"A very good handwriting, too," the captain remarked, and then
gathered courage to say that he supposed Miss Prince would give her
niece the permission for which she asked. "I have been told that she
is a very fine girl," he ventured, as if he were poor Nan's
ambassador; and at this Miss Prince's patience gave way.
"Yes, I shall ask her to come, but I do not wish anything said about
it; it need not be made the talk of the town." She answered her cousin
angrily, and then felt as if she had been unjust. "Do not mind me,
Walter," she said; "it has been a terrible grief and trouble to me all
these years. Perhaps if I had gone to see those people, and told them
all I felt, they would have pitied me, and not blamed me, and so
everything would have been better, but it is too late now. I don't
know what sort of a person my own niece is, and I wish that I need
never find out, but I shall try to do my duty."
The captain was tender-hearted, and seemed quite unmanned, but he gave
his eyes a sudden stroke with his hand and turned to go away. "You
will command me, Nancy, if I can be of service to you?" he inquired,
and his cousin bowed her head in assent. It was, indeed, a dismal hour
of the family history.
For some time Miss Prince did not move, except as she watched Captain
Parish cross the street and take his leisurely way along the uneven
pavement. She was almost tempted to call him back, and felt as if he
were the last friend she had in the world, and was leaving her
forever. But after she had allowed the worst of the miserable shock to
spend itself, she summoned the stern energy for which she was famous,
and going with slower steps than usual to the next room, she unlocked
the desk of the ponderous secretary and seated herself to write.
Before many minutes had passed the letter was folded, and sealed, and
addressed, and the next evening Nan was reading it at Oldfields. She
was grateful for being asked to come on the 5th of June to Dunport,
and to stay a few days if it were convenient, and yet her heart fell
because there was not a sign of welcome or affection in the stately
fashioning of the note. It had been hardly wise to expect it under the
circumstances, the girl assured herself later, and at any rate it was
kind in her aunt to answer her own short letter so soon.
XV
HOSTESS AND GUEST
Nan had, indeed, resolved to take a most important step. She had
always dismissed the idea of having any communication with her aunt
most contemptuously when she had first understood their unhappy
position toward each other; but during the last year or two she had
been forced to look at the relationship from a wider point of view.
Dr. Leslie protested that he had always treated Miss Prince in a
perfectly fair and friendly manner, and that if she had chosen to show
no interest in her only niece, nobody was to blame but herself. But
Nan pleaded that her aunt was no longer young; that she might be
wishing that a reconciliation could be brought about; the very fact of
her having constantly sent the yearly allowance in spite of Mrs.
Thacher's and Dr. Leslie's unwillingness to receive it appealed to the
young girl, who was glad to believe that her aunt had, after all, more
interest in her than others cared to observe. She had no near
relatives except Miss Prince. There were some cousins of old Mrs.
Thacher's and their descendants settled in the vicinity of Oldfields;
but Nan clung more eagerly to this one closer tie of kindred than she
cared to confess even to her guardian. It was too late now for any
interference in Dr. Leslie's plans, or usurping of his affectionate
relationship; so, after he found that Nan's loyal heart was bent upon
making so kind a venture, he said one day, with a smile, that she had
better write a letter to her aunt, the immediate result of which we
already know. Nan had been studying too hard, and suffering not a
little from her long-continued city life, and though the doctor had
been making a most charming plan that later in the season they should
take a journey together to Canada, he said nothing about that, and
told himself with a sigh that this would be a more thorough change,
and even urged Nan to stay as long as she pleased in Dunport, if she
found her aunt's house pleasant and everything went well. For whether
Nan liked Miss Prince remained to be proved, though nobody in their
senses could doubt that Miss Prince would be proud of her niece.
It was not until after Nan had fairly started that she began to feel
at all dismayed. Perhaps she had done a foolish thing after all;
Marilla had not approved the adventure, while at the last minute Nan
had become suspicious that the doctor had made another plan, though
she contented herself with the remembrance of perfect freedom to go
home whenever she chose. She told herself grimly that if her aunt died
she should be thankful that she had done this duty; yet when, after a
journey of several hours, she knew that Dunport was the next station,
her heart began to beat in a ridiculous manner. It was unlike any
experience that had ever come to her, and she felt strangely unequal
to the occasion. Long ago she had laughed at her early romances of her
grand Dunport belongings, but the memory of them lingered still, in
spite of this commonplace approach to their realities, and she looked
eagerly at the groups of people at the railway station with a great
hope and almost certainty that she should find her aunt waiting to
meet her. There was no such good fortune, which was a chill at the
outset to the somewhat tired young traveler, but she beckoned a driver
whom she had just ignored, and presently was shut into a somewhat
antiquated public carriage and on her way to Miss Prince's house.
So this was Dunport, and in these very streets her father had played,
and here her mother had become deeper and deeper involved in the
suffering and tragedy which had clouded the end of her short life. It
seemed to the young stranger as if she must shrink away from the
curious glances that stray passers-by sent into the old carriage; and
that she was going to be made very conspicuous by the newly-awakened
interest in a sad story which surely could not have been forgotten.
Poor Nan! she sent a swift thought homeward to the doctor's house and
Mrs. Graham's; even to the deserted little place which had sheltered
her good old grandmother and herself in the first years she could
remember. And with strange irony came also a picture of the home of
one of her schoolmates,--where the father and mother and their
children lived together and loved each other. The tears started to her
eyes until some good angel whispered the kind "Come back soon, Nan
dear," with which Dr. Leslie had let her go away.
The streets were narrow and roughly paved in the old provincial
seaport town; the houses looked a good deal alike as they stood close
to the street, though here and there the tops of some fruit trees
showed themselves over a high garden fence. And presently before a
broad-faced and gambrel-roofed house, the driver stopped his horses,
and now only the front door with its bull's-eyed top-lights and
shining knocker stood between Nan and her aunt. The coachman had given
a resounding summons at this somewhat formidable entrance before he
turned to open the carriage door, but Nan had already alighted, and
stepped quickly into the hall. Priscilla directed her with some
ceremony to the south parlor, and a prim figure turned away from one
of the windows that overlooked the garden, and came forward a few
steps. "I suppose this is Anna," the not very cordial voice began, and
faltered; and then Miss Prince led her niece toward the window she had
left, and without a thought of the reserve she had decided upon,
pushed one of the blinds wide open, and looked again at Nan's
appealing face, half eager herself, and half afraid. Then she fumbled
for a handkerchief, and betook herself to the end of the sofa and
began to cry: "You are so like my mother and Jack," she said. "I did
not think I should be so glad to see you."
The driver had deposited Nan's box, and now appeared at the door of
the parlor with Priscilla (who had quite lost her wits with
excitement) looking over his shoulder. Nan sprang forward, glad of
something to do in the midst of her vague discomfort, and at this
sight the hostess recovered herself, and, commanding Priscilla to show
Miss Prince to her room, assumed the direction of business affairs.
The best bedroom was very pleasant, though somewhat stiff and unused,
and Nan was glad to close its door and find herself in such a
comfortable haven of rest and refuge from the teasing details of that
strange day. The wind had gone to the eastward, and the salt odor was
most delightful to her. A vast inheritance of memories and
associations was dimly brought to mind by that breath of the sea and
freshness of the June day by the harbor side. Her heart leaped at the
thought of the neighborhood of the wharves and shipping, and as she
looked out at the ancient street, she told herself with a sense of
great fun that if she had been a boy she would inevitably have been a
surgeon in the navy. So this was the aunt whom Nan had thought about
and dreamed about by day and by night, whose acquaintance had always
been a waiting pleasure, and the mere fact of whose existence had
always given her niece something to look forward to. She had not known
until this moment what a reserved pleasure this meeting had been, and
now it was over with. Miss Prince was so much like other people,
though why she should not have been it would be difficult to suggest,
and Nan's taste had been so educated and instructed by her Oldfields'
advantages, not to speak of her later social experiences, that she
felt at once that her aunt's world was smaller than her own. There was
something very lovable about Miss Prince, in spite of the constraint
of her greeting, and for the first time Nan understood that her aunt
also had dreaded the meeting. Presently she came to the door, and this
time kissed Nan affectionately. "I don't know what to say to you, I am
sure," she told the girl, "only I am thankful to have you here. You
must understand that it is a great event to me;" at which Nan laughed
and spoke some cheerful words. Miss Prince seated herself by the other
front window, and looked at her young guest with ever-growing
satisfaction. This was no copy of that insolent, ill-bred young woman
who had so beguiled and ruined poor Jack; she was a little lady, who
did honor to the good name of the Princes and Lesters,--a niece whom
anybody might be proud to claim, and whom Miss Prince could cordially
entreat to make herself quite at home, for she had only been too long
in coming to her own. And presently, when tea was served, the careful
ordering of it, which had been meant partly to mock and astonish the
girl who could not have been used to such ways of living, seemed only
a fitting entertainment for so distinguished a guest. "Blood will
tell," murmured Miss Prince to herself as she clinked the teacups and
looked at the welcome face the other side of the table. But when they
talked together in the evening, it was made certain that Nan was
neither ashamed of her mother's people nor afraid to say gravely to
Miss Prince that she did not know how much injustice was done to
grandmother Thacher, if she believed she were right in making a
certain statement. Aunt Nancy smiled, and accepted her rebuff without
any show of disapproval, and was glad that the next day was Sunday,
so that she could take Nan to church for the admiration of all
observers. She was even sorry that she had not told young Gerry to
come and pay an evening visit to her niece, and spoke of him once or
twice. Her niece observed a slight self-consciousness at such times,
and wondered a little who Mr. George Gerry might be.
Nan thought of many things before she fell asleep that night. Her
ideas of her father had always been vague, and she had somehow
associated him with Dr. Leslie, who had shown her all the fatherliness
she had ever known. As for the young man who had died so long ago, if
she had said that he seemed to her like a younger brother of Dr.
Leslie, it would have been nearest the truth, in spite of the details
of the short and disappointed life which had come to her ears. Dr.
Ferris had told her almost all she knew of him, but now that she was
in her own father's old home, among the very same sights he had known
best, he suddenly appeared to her in a vision, as one might say, and
invested himself in a cloud of attractive romance. His daughter felt a
sudden blaze of delight at this first real consciousness of her
kinship. Miss Prince had shown her brother's portrait early in the
evening, and had even taken the trouble to light a candle and hold it
high, so that Nan could see the handsome, boyish face, in which she
recognized quickly the likeness to her own. "He was only thirteen
then," said Miss Prince, "but he looks several years older. We all
thought that the artist had made a great mistake when it was painted,
but poor Jack grew to look like it. Yes, you are wonderfully like
him," and she held the light near Nan's face and studied it again as
she had just studied the picture. Nan's eyes filled with tears as she
looked up at her father's face. The other portraits in the room were
all of older people, her grandfather and grandmother and two or three
ancestors, and Miss Prince repeated proudly some anecdotes of the most
distinguished. "I suppose you never heard of them," she added sadly at
the close, but Nan made no answer; it was certainly no fault of her
own that she was ignorant of many things, and she would not confess
that during the last few years she had found out everything that was
possible about her father's people. She was so thankful to have grown
up in Oldfields that she could not find it in her heart to rail at the
fate that had kept her away from Dunport; but the years of silence
had been very unlovely in her aunt.
She wondered, before she went to sleep that night, where her father's
room had been, and thought she would ask Miss Prince in the morning.
The windows were open, and the June air blew softly in, and sometimes
swayed the curtains of the bed. There was a scent of the sea and of
roses, and presently up the quiet street came the sound of footsteps
and young voices. Nan said to herself that some party had been late in
breaking up, and felt her heart thrill with sympathy. She had been
dwelling altogether in the past that evening, and she liked to hear
the revelers go by. But as they came under the windows she heard one
say, "I should be afraid of ghosts in that best room of Miss
Prince's," and then they suddenly became quiet, as if they had seen
that the windows were open, and Nan first felt like a stranger, but
next as if this were all part of the evening's strange experiences,
and as if these might be her father's young companions, and she must
call to them as they went by.
The next morning both the hostess and her guest waked early, and were
eager for the time when they should see each other again. The beauty
and quiet of the Sunday morning were very pleasant, and Nan stood for
some minutes at the dining-room windows, looking out on the small
paved courtyard, and the flowers and green leaves beyond the garden
gate. Miss Prince's was one of the fine old houses which kept its
garden behind it, well-defended from the street, for the family's own
pleasure.
"Those are the same old bushes and trees which we used to play among;
I have hardly changed it at all," said Miss Prince, as she came in. It
must be confessed that she had lost the feeling of patroness with
which she had approached her acquaintance with Nan. She was proud and
grateful now, and as she saw the girl in her pretty white dress, and
found her as simple and affectionate and eager to please as she had
thought her the night before, she owned to herself that she had not
looked for such happiness to fall into her life. And there was
something about the younger Anna Prince which others had quickly
recognized; a power of direction and of command. There are some
natures like the Prussian blue on a painter's palette, which rules all
the other colors it is mixed with; natures which quickly make
themselves felt in small or great companies.
Nan discovered her father's silver mug beside her plate, and was fired
with a fiercer resentment than she had expected to feel again, at the
sight of it. The thought of her childhood in good grandmother
Thacher's farm-house came quickly to her mind, with the plain living,
to her share of which she had been made a thousand times welcome;
while by this richer house, of which she was also heir, such rightful
trinkets and treasures had been withheld. But at the next minute she
could meet Miss Prince's observant eyes without displeasure, and
wisely remembered that she herself had not been responsible for the
state of affairs, and that possibly her aunt had been as wronged and
insulted and beaten back as she complained. So she pushed the
newly-brightened cup aside with an almost careless hand, as a sort of
compromise with revenge, and Miss Prince at once caught sight of it.
"Dear me," she said, not without confusion, "Priscilla must have
thought you would be pleased," and then faltered, "I wish with all my
heart you had always had it for your own, my dear." And this was a
great deal for Miss Prince to say, as any of her acquaintances could
have told her nearest relative, who sat, almost a stranger, at the
breakfast-table.
The elder woman felt a little light-headed and unfamiliar to herself
as she went up the stairway to get ready for church. It seemed as if
she had entered upon a new stage of existence, since for so many years
she had resented the existence of her brother's child, and had kept up
an imaginary war, in which she ardently fought for her own rights. She
had brought forward reason after reason why she must maintain her
position as representative of a respected family who had been shamed
and disgraced and insulted by her brother's wife. Now all aggressors
of her peace, real and imaginary, were routed by the appearance of
this young girl upon the field of battle, which she traversed with
most innocent and fearless footsteps, looking smilingly into her
aunt's face, and behaving almost as if neither of them had been
concerned in the family unhappiness. Beside, Nan had already added a
new interest to Miss Prince's life, and as this defeated warrior took
a best dress from the closet without any of the usual reflection upon
so important a step, she felt a great consciousness of having been
added to and enriched, as the person might who had suddenly fallen
heir to an unexpected property. From this first day she separated
herself as much as possible from any thought of guilt or complicity in
the long estrangement. She seemed to become used to her niece's
presence, and with the new relationship's growth there faded away the
thought of the past times. If any one dared to hint that it was a pity
this visit had been so long delayed, Miss Prince grandly ignored all
personality.
Priscilla had come to the guest's room on some undeclared errand, for
it had already been put in order, and she viewed with pleasure the
simple arrangements for dressing which were in one place and another
about the room. Priscilla had scorned the idea of putting this visitor
into the best bedroom, and had had secret expectations that Miss
Prince's niece would feel more at home with her than with her
mistress. But Miss Anna was as much of a lady as Miss Prince, which
was both pleasing and disappointing, as Priscilla hoped to solace some
disrespectful feelings of her own heart by taking down Miss Nancy's
pride. However, her loyalty to the house was greater than her own very
small grudges, and as she pretended to have some difficulty with the
fastening of the blind, she said in a whisper, "Y'r aunt'll like to
have you make yourself look pretty," which was such a reminder of
Marilla's affectionate worldliness that Nan had to laugh aloud. "I'm
afraid I haven't anything grand enough," she told the departing
housekeeper, whose pleasure it was not hard to discern.