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 did _not_ meet 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, with _the one_ close 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 were _together_, 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 we _never_ going
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 in _your_ young 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--what _can_ be 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 call
_you_ one,--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 he _could_ see 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 to _work_.
But where is Uncle?--I have not seen _him_ yet?"
"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. "If _they_ have a duty to fight for the
country, _we_ have 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 suit _you_. 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 discarded _Pomander_ in "Peg Woffington."
"But we have something else that you _will_ like," 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.