MRS. MASON LEAVES THE PINE WOODS.
At last, Mrs. Mason announced that the expected letter had arrived, with
money for her expenses to the South--she never told the exact
locality--and that she and little Rose would set forth at once, taking
the steamboat from New Haven to New York, where her passage southward
was already engaged.
All this was very magnificent and almost startling, but corroborated by
a supply of money which the widow evidently possessed, and by the
disposition of her little household furniture, which she distributed
among her friends with the careless prodigality of a princess.
The preparations for her departure went on spiritedly. With nothing to
prepare; for all her new mourning dresses, she announced, were to be
made in New York; it was only packing a small trunk, and taking leave of
the old neighbors, and she was ready with little Rose to go forth into
her new life. A neighbor had been engaged to take her to town in a
dashing, one horse wagon, which he had just bought, and in this way the
whole arrangement promised to go off with the eclat which the widow
Mason always affected.
Thus time passed until the night before her journey. The furniture had
not yet been removed, and every thing retained the old homelike aspect;
from any appearance of confusion that existed, you would have fancied
that the mistress of the house was only going out for a morning drive.
She seemed rather elated than otherwise, and received her friends with
half royal condescension, not absolutely offensive, but calculated to
check the honest grief with which old neighbors parted on those days
when a household was breaking up. Many kind wishes were, however,
exchanged, little presents were brought in, such as patchwork holders,
work bags, and pincushions, besides a pair of fine, lambs' wool mittens,
knitted by the oldest woman in the town, was presented to her with a
gentle message of farewell, followed by various other trifles,
calculated to appeal eloquently to a kind heart. All these, the widow
received with concealed and smiling indifference, thinking in her soul
how paltry such things were to a person of her expectations.
But little Rose made up for all her mother's lack of feeling. She was
broken-hearted at the thought of leaving her playmates, burst into tears
when the old people patted her on the head, and refused to be comforted
by all the promises of grandeur which were whispered in her ear, either
by her mother or her friends.
That night--after the neighbors had gone away, and Rose was in bed
hugging a home-made doll which one of the little girls had brought
her--a boy who had been kept late with his lessons, climbed softly over
the door yard fence. He was afraid that the gate would creak, and
disturb the family if Rose should be in bed; so with a long string of
robins' eggs held in one hand, he leaped into the grass and stole softly
up to one of the front windows. A corner of the paper blind was turned
up by the back of a chair which it had fallen against, and through this
opening, our little adventurer saw clearly into the room. First, he
looked for Rose, the object of his juvenile idolatry; but her little
chair was empty, and her tiny morocco shoes and red worsted stockings
lay in a heap on the seat, sure proofs that she had gone to bed.
This was a sad disappointment to the lad, but he soon forgot it in the
surprise which followed. Mrs. Mason and some strange man were sitting by
a work table, which stood near the window. A tallow candle shed its
light on the widow's face, but the man sat with his back to the window,
his features all in deep shadow. His hand was extended half over the
table, clutching a quantity of gold or silver coins, the boy could not
tell which, for gold money he had never seen, and the pieces that
escaped between the man's fingers, and fell ringing on the table, might
have been Spanish quarters, or guineas, for aught he knew. At any rate,
that great handful of money seemed a marvellous sum to him, and when
Mrs. Mason received it in her two hands, he wondered that she did not
jump for joy. But instead of this, she took a variegated work bag from
the table drawer, poured the money into it with some smiling remark, and
crossing the room, unlocked her trunk and placed the bag in one corner.
While she was thus occupied, the lad observed a strange looking box
upon the table, which the person still sitting there had opened. A
bright flash came out of the box, as if something had struck fire
within. Mrs. Mason came back to the table. She had taken off her
mourning dress, replacing it with a black silk skirt and dimity short
gown, with loose, open sleeves that left her fine arms partially
exposed, every time she lifted them. She came up to the table and seemed
struck with wonder, for lifting up both arms, she uttered an exclamation
of delight which the boy heard clearly.
The man snatched something from the box, arose, and seized her arm. A
little struggle followed, quick, impassioned words, which the listener
did not understand, but he saw that the man was pleading for something
which she smilingly refused. That boy knew at last what it meant; he had
begged and coaxed exactly in the same way for a good-by kiss, which
little Rose resisted, almost as her mother was doing now. He had
promised the very string of robins' eggs in his hand, as a temptation,
and all to no effect. He remembered his own disappointment, and rather
pitied the poor man, who, baffled and mortified, bent down and kissed
Mrs. Mason's arm, just above a glittering band which circled the wrist,
flashing there like a ribbon of fire.
Mrs. Mason was evidently angry and resentful, even of this liberty. She
tore the bracelet from her arm, and tossed it haughtily into the box.
Still the man's back was toward the window, so it was impossible to mark
the effect this had on him, save by the droop of his shoulders, and a
deprecating action of the hands. But the widow motioned him away,
frowning heavily. The man sat down, closed the box, and bent his
forehead upon it. She leaned over the table and spoke to him. He
started up with a suddenness that frightened the lad, who leaped the
fence like a deer, and fled up the road.
It was a long time before the boy ever mentioned what he had witnessed
that night. The remembrance of his own shy feelings about little Rose
kept him silent. Besides this, he had a consciousness that there was
something to be ashamed of in peeping through the windows of a
neighbor's house, and so wisely kept his peace about what he had
discovered in this surreptitious manner.
The next morning, a little group of neighbors gathered to see Mrs. Mason
off. A light, yellow wagon, stood before the gate, a restive, gray
horse, stamped and chafed beneath his harness till it rattled again. The
widow was shaking hands in the entry, while the proud owner of that
equipage carried out her little hair trunk, and put it behind the seat.
Rose was crying bitterly over a gray kitten that came and rubbed itself
against her ankles, and purred as if it rather enjoyed the unusual
commotion. This pretty child really seemed to feel the parting from her
home much more keenly than her mother.
It was the father of the bright boy that had so naughtily looked into
the window--who owned the wagon. With his heart full of grief, the poor
fellow had begged a ride, and stood dolefully by the gate, peeping at
little Rose through an opening of the boards.
At last Mrs. Mason came forth into the morning sunshine, prepared for
her journey. The earth was wet, and she gathered up the skirt of her
dark dress, as a queen manages her train, revealing a finely shaped
foot, with which she trod daintily through the grass. Really it was
difficult to say which struck the beholder most forcibly in that woman;
the regal style with which she carried herself, or the marvellous
physical beauty which gave grace to her very haughtiness. No one could
deny that she was a superb creature, even in that cheap bombazine dress
and gloomy black bonnet.
Mrs. Mason took her seat in the wagon. The owner placed himself by her
side, and began to unwind the long lash from his whip handle, with the
air of a man who meant to do the thing up handsomely. Little Rose had
been lifted over the wheel, and placed into the centre of the seat, like
an exclamation point in the middle of a short sentence. Thus they were
all crowded together a little uncomfortably.
"Wait, wait," cried the lad, dashing into the house, and bringing forth
Rose's tiny arm-chair with its pretty crimson cushion. "There," he said,
choking back a great sob, "if pa brings it back in the wagon, maybe
you'll let me keep it; nobody shall ever sit in it, Rose, 'till you come
home again."
Then Rose covered her face with two dimpled little hands that were wet
all over in a moment. "Oh, don't--la, don't!"
The lad sprang up on the hub of the front wheel, and laid the string of
robins' eggs into her lap, his face all in a blaze, and his eyes full of
tears.
"Don't forget me, Rose, don't--no boy will ever love you half so much as
I do."
Rose dropped her hands, looked down at the blue eggs in her lap, and
throwing her arms around his neck, kissed him three or four times.
The farmer and Mrs. Mason looked at each other, and laughed softly. The
boy heard them, sprang down from the wheel, and dashed into the house,
where no one could see what a great baby he was ready to make of
himself. Then he watched the wagon drive off through a flood of blinding
tears, while little Rose flung kisses back at random, sobbing as if her
heart would break, and wondering if any of them would reach him.
When the farmer returned from his ten miles' drive into New Haven, he
brought news that a steamboat lay at the foot of "Long Wharf," ready to
sail in half an hour after Mrs. Mason reached it, and that he saw her go
on board in great spirits, with Rose, who had cried all the way, but
seemed a little pacified by the sight of the broad waters, and the great
puffing boat in which she was about to cross them.
Nelson Thrasher happened to be standing near when the farmer said this,
and one of the rare smiles I have spoken of crossed his face, but he
made no observations, and soon took a cross-cut through the fields which
led him by Mrs. Allen's, on his way home. Katharine was watching for him
at the back window. She had heard of Mrs. Mason's journey, and exulted a
little when Nelson passed the house on his way to Falls Hill, an hour
after she had started. All that night she had been troubled lest he
should wish to bid the widow farewell; for, spite of herself, a
lingering distrust still kept its hold on her heart, when she remembered
the conversation of that evening.
Thrasher saw her at the window, and made a signal, which soon brought
her outside of the stone wall, and under a huge apple tree, which flung
its branches across it and into the garden.
Never since his return had Thrasher seemed so cheerful. He even
inquired after the old lady with something of interest, and spoke of the
time when she would regard him with less prejudice. All this gave
Katharine a lighter heart; her beauty, which had been dimmed by
adversity of late, bloomed out again. If not so stately as Mrs. Mason,
she was far more lovely, and her fair, sweet face was mobile with
sentiments which the widow could not have understood. Compared to that
woman, she was like the apple blossoms of May contrasted with autumn
fruit--one a child of the pure, bright spring, appealing to the
imagination; the other a growth of storm, sunshine, and dew, mellowing
down from its first delicate beauty to a perfection of ripeness which
sense alone can appreciate. There existed elements in that young
creature's character from which the best poetry of life is wrought.
Heroism, self-abnegation, endurance, and truthfulness--all these
rendered her moral character beautiful as her person.
But, alas! our future pages will prove all this. Why should we attempt
to foreshadow in words a destiny and a nature like hers? It is enough
that she looked lovely as an April morning that bright day, as she stood
under the apple tree, leaning against the mossy old wall, talking to her
husband, sometimes with her lips, sometimes with her wonderful eyes,
which said a thousand loving things that her voice refused to utter. He
fell into the current of her cheerfulness, and chatted pleasantly, till
the slanting shadows warned her that the tea hour had arrived, and that
her mother would be impatient. With his kisses warm upon her mouth, she
went singing into the house, happy and rich in sudden joyousness.