ELITHE’S PHOTOGRAPH.
The May days were growing longer and warmer. Many of the cottages were
open and there was a feeling of summer everywhere, when suddenly the
weather changed. The sea looked green and angry, the wind blew cold
across it from the east, bringing a drenching rain which, beginning in
the early morning, lasted through the day with a persistency which
precluded anything like intercourse with the outside world unless it
were necessary. Miss Hansford had been alone all day, with no one to
speak to but her cat, Jim. To him and to herself she had talked a good
deal of the past, the present and the future. The present was dreary
enough, with the thick fog on the water and the steady fall of rain,
which increased rather than diminished as the night came on. It was some
little diversion to carry pans and pails to places where the roof
leaked, and to crowd bits of sacking against the doors, under which
pools of water were finding their way. When this was done and darkness
had settled down and her lamp was lighted, she began to wonder what she
should do next to pass the time.
“I ain’t hungry, but it’ll take my mind if I get myself and Jim some
supper. I b’lieve I’ll make griddle cakes. Paul used to be so fond of
’em when he was a boy. I wish he was here to-night,” she said, as she
replenished her fire in her small kitchen and busied herself with her
preparations for her evening meal. “I shall sit here by the stove where
I can lift the cakes from the griddle to my plate and save steps,” she
thought, and, bringing a small round table or stand from the dining
room, she covered it with a towel, placed upon it a plate, a cup and a
saucer and a dish of milk for Jim, who was badly spoiled, and was to
take his supper with her.
The cakes were ready to bake and still she sat in her rocking chair,
with her feet on the stove hearth and her head thrown back, listening to
the rain beating dismally against the windows and wondering why she was
so much more lonesome than common.
“I don’t know what’s come over me,” she said. “I actually feel as
homesick as I did the first night I staid away from mother when I was a
little girl. Maybe it’s Roger’s letter taking me back to when his father
and I were young and lived on the farm at home. That’s fifty years ago,
and John is dead. Everybody is dead but Roger and me, and he might
almost as well be dead as to be buried alive in that heathenish country
among miners and the dear knows what. Poor as Job’s turkey, five
children, six hundred a year, with now and then a missionary box full of
half-worn truck, catechisms, and old Churchmans I’ll warrant, though
Roger didn’t say so. Queer that he would be a minister after all I said
to him about going into business, offering to set him up and all that.
But no; he must be a ’Piscopal minister and go out as a missionary to
the West and marry Lucy Potter. I told him she was shiftless, and she
was. I told him she’d be weakly, and she is. He said he didn’t care how
shiftless or weakly she was, he should marry her. I wonder what he
thinks now; five children, six hundred a year, and she not very strong,
that’s the way he put it. I was glad to hear from him again, and to get
Elithe’s picture.”
Taking from her pocket a letter received the previous day from her
nephew, who was bravely doing his Master’s work among the mountains and
mines of Montana, she read for a second time:
“Samona, May ——, 18——.
“My Dear Aunt—
“It is a long time since I have heard from you, and for the last few
days I have been thinking a great deal about you and the old times
when I was a boy and you were so kind to me. It is more than twenty
years since you saw me and I wonder if you would know me now. Lucy
says I am growing old, but I feel as young as ever, except, perhaps,
when I have had a long ride of twenty or thirty miles on horseback and
am very tired. I like my work and I think I have done some good among
the people here. They are not all miners, and we have in our little
town several good families from the East and from England. We are all
poor, and that is a bond between us. I have six hundred dollars a
year, which is a pretty good salary for this vicinity. Then we
frequently get a missionary box and that helps wonderfully. You should
be here when we open one and hear the expressions of delight as
article after article is taken out,—not all new, of course, nor the
best fit, but the neighbors come in and help cut and make them over,
and we feel quite in touch with the world in our finery. I have five
children, four of them sturdy boys, healthy as little bears and, I am
sometimes fearful, almost as savage, brought up, as they are, just on
the verge of civilization. Our eldest child and only daughter, Elithe,
is nineteen, and as lovely a flower as ever blossomed in the wilds of
the West. Lucy is not strong, and Elithe is our right hand and left
hand, and both hands in one. I send you her photograph, taken by an
inferior artist compared with those you have East, but still a very
good likeness. There is something in her face which reminds me of you
as you looked many years ago when I was a little boy and you came to
my father’s one day, wearing a white dress, and your long curls tied
with a red ribbon. That’s the way I often think of you now, although I
know you must have changed. I should like to see you again and the old
places of my childhood, but I fear I never shall. With my family and
salary there is little surplus for travelling, and then I am trying
hard to save something for my boys’ education when they are older.
Elithe has studied with me since leaving the only school we have here,
and I think her a fair scholar. She would like so much to go East.
Please God, she may sometime. I have just been sent for to go to the
mines twelve miles away to see a young man who they think is very ill.
Elithe is going with me, as she often does on my visits to the sick,
and I verily believe the sound of her voice and the sight of her
bright face does more for them than many doctors can do. The horses we
are to ride are at the door, and I must say good-bye, with love from
us all.
“Your affectionate nephew,
“ROGER HANSFORD.”
“P. S.—I need not tell you how glad I shall be to hear from you.
Letters are like angels’ visits.”
This was Roger’s letter, and as Miss Hansford read it for the second
time, the tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped into her lap. The
storm raging without was forgotten; the kitchen in which she sat in her
loneliness vanished, and she was living forty-five years in the past,
when she wore the white gown and her hair was bound with a crimson
ribbon. She remembered the day so well and the little boy who had called
her his pretty Auntie and played with her long curls, making lines of
them while she was the horse to be driven.
“Who would believe I ever wore a white gown and red ribbon?” she said,
looking down at her plain calico dress and gingham apron, and thinking
of her grey hair, combed back from her face as smoothly as she could
comb it, for, in spite of her efforts, it had a trick of twining around
her forehead and only needed a little coaxing to curl again as it once
had done.
She thought curls a device of Satan, and when she put him behind her she
cut them off and burned them. It seemed to her now that she could smell
the scorched hair blackening on the hearth, while she looked on with a
feeling that, in some small degree, she was a martyr and doing God
service.
“Maybe I was morbid and went too far, but I want to do right in that and
in everything else,” she said, and then her mind recurred again to Roger
and his letter and what he had said of Elithe, who reminded him of her.
Reading between the lines, she fancied that she detected a wish that she
would invite Elithe to visit her. “But, my land!” she said, “what would
I do with a girl singing and whistling and, maybe, dancing around the
house, tramping the streets, racing outdoors and in at all hours, never
putting the stone in its place and letting in the flies. No, I couldn’t
stand it in Lucy Potter’s girl, any way. I dare say she is nice, and
she’s handsome, too, if she is like her picture, but as to looking like
me,—oh, my!—” and she laughed at the absurdity, but was conscious of a
little stir of pleasure at the thought that she was ever at all like
Elithe, or any young girl with pretense to beauty.
By this time Jim had become impatient for his supper, and from giving
her sundry soft pats with his paws, had jumped into her chair and from
thence on to her shoulder, where he sat coaxing and purring, in imminent
danger of falling into her lap. She took him down at last, gave him his
milk, and was putting a cake for herself upon the griddle, when on the
steps outside there was a stamping of feet, followed by a knock upon the
door, and Paul Ralston came in with pools of water dripping from his
umbrella.
“Isn’t this a corker for a storm?” he said. “I went to the front door
first and banged away. I knew you must be home, and so came round here.”
He was shutting his umbrella as he talked and removing his wet coat,
while Miss Hansford looked wonderingly at him.
“Where upon earth did you come from?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you as soon as I get to the fire and that cake, which smells
awfully good. Don’t you remember how I used to like them when I was a
boy and happened in at supper time? Flap-jacks you called them, or
something like that.”
She did remember and she hastened to fill the griddle and brought an
extra plate and cup.
“Now for it,” he said, as she heaped his plate with the nicely browned
cakes and covered them with maple syrup. “I’ve been to Washington,—sent
for by telegram. The bottom has fallen out.”
“No, really! You haven’t broke with Clarice?” Miss Hansford asked
eagerly, her countenance brightening and then falling at Paul’s answer.
“Not a bit of it. Why should I? It’s that rascally Jack. He’s gone to
the bad entirely.”
“I knew he would. I always felt it in my bones. What’s he been up to
now?” Miss Hansford asked, and Paul replied: “Drinks like a fish. He’s
managed to get rid of most of his own money and has used some of
Clarice’s that she gave him to invest and supposed he had, for he paid
her the interest regularly until lately. He went West while Mrs. Percy
and Clarice were in Europe, and they have heard nothing from him since
February. Clarice’s interest was due the first of April, and as it
didn’t come and she didn’t know where he was, she wrote to the firm in
Denver, and they replied that it had been invested in his name and he
had collected it and skipped. Naturally this cramps her, as they spent a
lot in Europe and Clarice was depending upon a part of the Denver money
to defray the expenses of her wedding in Washington. Meant to make a
splurge, you know, but can’t now, and has decided to be married in Oak
City the last of August. That suits me. I’d rather be married here, but
I offered to pay for the wedding in Washington if Clarice would let me.
She wouldn’t do it. Said she’d some pride left. She’s all broke up about
Jack, for scamp as he is, she has some affection for him. She
telegraphed to me to come and talk it over, and has finally settled upon
almost as big a spread here as she meant to have had in Washington. We
shall send out a great many invitations, and probably rent rooms in some
of the cottages as well as at the hotels. I thought of you, and instead
of going straight through to Boston from New York came here to ask you
not to engage your rooms after the last of July. We shall have a lot of
people at our house, and some of them must sleep elsewhere. I thought
the boat would never reach the wharf, the waves were so high, and when
it did it stormed so that I came here before going to the house, and am
glad I did. These cakes are first rate.”
As he talked he was eating, and Miss Hansford was baking, wondering how
many his stomach would hold, and if the batter would hold out. He was
satisfied at last, and, taking Jim in his lap and stroking his soft fur
with one hand, with the other he drew from his pocket a package, which
he handed to Miss Hansford, saying: “I have brought you a present,
Clarice’s photograph and mine, taken in Washington. Hers was so good I
wanted you to have it. Isn’t she a stunner?”
He had opened the Turkish morocco case and was looking admiringly at the
beautiful face of the girl who was to be his wife. Miss Hansford
admitted that she was a stunner and asked how she was, and thanked Paul
for the picture. Then she said: “I seem to have a run on pictures. This
is the second I have had in two days.”
Going into the next room, she returned with something carefully wrapped
in tissue paper.
“Maybe you didn’t know I had a nephew Roger, a ’Piscopal minister in
Montana?” she said.
“Never knew you had a relation in the world,” Paul replied, and Miss
Hansford continued: “Well, I have—plenty of ’em somewhere; none very
near, though. Roger’s the nearest. His father was my brother John, and I
quarrelled with him,—Roger I mean,—because, in spite of all I could say,
he would marry Lucy Potter, a pretty little helpless thing, with no sort
of get up in her. Her folks lived in Ridgefield same as we did.
Respectable enough, but shiftless,—let things go to rack and ruin. The
front gate hung on one hinge, the fence lopped over, the blinds swung
loose, and for months there was a broken window light in the
garret,—sometimes with paper pasted over it and sometimes an old shawl
sticking out of it. That’s who the Potters were. Went everywhere and
everybody liked ’em, but, my land, how Roger, who wouldn’t drink from a
glass some one else had drank from, could marry one of ’em I don’t know.
She was just a China doll, and her beauty took him. I guess he’s paid
for it. I’ve no doubt her house looks like bedlam, and he so neat and
particular! There was some French blood in old Miss Potter ’way back,
and her sister, Lucy’s aunt, was on the stage,—an actress!”
Miss Hansford whispered the last word as if afraid the furniture in the
room would hear and rise in judgment against her. Paul did not seem at
all disturbed, and she continued: “Roger and Lucy went to hear her when
she was in Boston, and tried to have me go. Think of it! I in such a
place! I went with your folks, I know, to see ‘Uncle Tom,’ but that was
different. This play the Potter woman was in was about Lady somebody,
who put her husband up to kill somebody.”
“Lady Macbeth?” Paul suggested, and Miss Hansford replied: “Yes, that’s
the one. A blood and thunder play. Why, I’d as soon go to Purgatory as
to see it. I’ve never told a living soul before that we had an actress
in the family. I’m so ashamed I hope you’ll keep it to yourself. I
shouldn’t like to have Elder Atwater’s wife know it. She has never quite
got over my going to see ‘Uncle Tom.’”
Paul did not share Miss Hansford’s prejudice against theatres and
actresses, but he promised that neither Elder Atwater’s wife nor any
other elder’s wife should ever hear from him of the disgrace attaching
to Miss Hansford because her nephew’s wife’s aunt, dead years ago, had
been an actress. Miss Hansford had handed him the picture, saying as she
did so: “It’s Roger’s girl. He sent it in a letter. He thinks she looks
like me.”
“By George, she’s a beauty, if she does; but what’s her name?” Paul
said, bending close to the lamp and looking at the word “Elithe” written
with very pale ink.
“I don’t wonder you ask,” Miss Hansford replied. “Such an outlandish
name. I told you her great-grandmother was French, and they called the
girl for her and that aunt on the stage. That’s the worst of it. Named
for an actress! It’s pronounced _A-l-double e-t-h_.”
“Yes, I know—_Aleeth_. It’s a pretty name, and she is pretty, too,” Paul
said, admiring the picture, whose large brown eyes looked at him as
steadily and intelligently as if they were living eyes and could read
his thoughts.
Some of the great-grandmother’s French blood had been transmitted to her
descendant, who showed it in her features and in the pose of her head,
covered with short curls, which made her look younger than she was. The
nose was slightly retroussé and the mouth rather wide, but taken as a
whole the face was charming. The dress was countrified and
old-fashioned, and you knew at a glance that the artist was countrified,
too, and not at all like the one to whom Clarice had sat. Every curve
and line of her graceful figure showed to advantage, while Elithe’s
position was cramped and awkward. Her hands were placed just where they
looked large and stiff. Her boots, which showed under her short dress,
were square-toed instead of pointed like those of Clarice, who was
standing with her hands behind her in an attitude “for all the world
like a play-actor,” Miss Hansford thought, mentally giving the
preference to Elithe. Unconsciously Paul did the same. He did not think
of Elithe’s boots or dress or hands. He saw only the lovely face, which
held and mastered him with a power he could not define.
“Elithe,” he said, as if speaking to her in the flesh. “I know you are a
nice girl with no nonsense in you.” Then to Miss Hansford: “Why don’t
you have her come here to visit you?”
“It’s too expensive, for I should have to pay carfare both ways,” Miss
Hansford replied; “and then she can’t be spared. There’s four more
children, all boys,—little savages, I dare say. Lucy is weakly and the
brunt of everything falls on Elithe, who works like a dog.”
“More reason why she should have an outing. Poor little Elithe! Let’s
see how she’d look beside Clarice,” Paul said, and slipping his own
picture from the case, he put Elithe’s in its place side by side with
the proud beauty who seemed to look with disdain upon her humble
neighbor.
Elithe, however, did not lose by the comparison. She only represented a
different type of girlhood, and most people would have looked at her
first and longest.
“They are both beauties and no mistake,” Paul said, following Miss
Hansford into the sitting room, where she heard a blind banging. “Keep
them here, where you can see them every day,” he continued, placing them
on the mantel with Miss Hansford’s Bible and hymn book and spectacle
case, a card of sea mosses, a conch shell and a plaster bust of John
Wesley.
Returning to the kitchen, he sat down again by the stove and plied Miss
Hansford with questions concerning Elithe, who interested him greatly.
Miss Hansford could only tell him what Roger had written of her, but she
had a good deal to say of Roger and Lucy Potter and the Potters
generally, whose blood was not as good as that of the Hansfords. At this
Paul laughed. He had suspected that one of Miss Hansford’s objections to
Clarice was the thinness of the Percy blood compared with the Ralston’s.
For himself he didn’t care a picayune for the color of any one’s blood,
and it amused him greatly to hear this peculiar old lady vaunting the
superiority of her family and his over the Percys and Potters. For a
time he listened patiently, and then, as it was growing late, he
returned to the real object of his visit, the refusal of her rooms for
August and possibly a part of July,—he would let her know in time. The
rooms were promised and then he arose to go, after one more look at the
photographs.
“I don’t believe Elithe has much Potter blood in her,” he said, “and I’d
send for her if I were you. I’d like to see her myself.”
The next morning Miss Hansford took down the morocco case and looked
long and critically at Elithe. Paul’s admiration of her was having its
influence. The French name, the actress aunt and the Potter blood did
not seem quite so obnoxious to her, and she began to feel a longing to
see the girl whose eyes held her as they had held Paul Ralston.
“I s’pose an outing would do her good, and I can afford it, too,” she
said. “What am I saving my money for? To give to the Methodists, I
suppose, and they don’t need it half as much as Roger.”
The idea of sending for Elithe was beginning to take definite shape, and
the more she thought about it the more surprised she grew to find how
lonesome she was and how much she wanted the girl whose eyes followed
her so persistently and seemed to say, “Send for me; send for me.” From
an economical standpoint it might be well to do so, for if Miss
Hansford’s rooms were full of lodgers she would need help, and colored
servants were out of the question. Martha Ann, the best she had ever
employed, had decamped with three napkins, two silver spoons and a fruit
knife. Her would-be successor had come to the front door in a silk dress
and big hat, and, introducing herself as Mrs. Helena Jackson, had asked
if Miss Hansford wished to hire either a wash-lady or a lady to do
general housework. She was told that Miss Hansford wanted neither a
wash-lady nor a nigger, and the door slammed in her face.
“No more darkies for me,” she said, and as she must have some one she
began to wonder if Elithe would not do. “I don’t s’pose she’d be much
more than a teacup wiper, though if what Roger says is true, she is
capable of doing more than that; and then I feel it in my bones that I
ought to send for her.”
For a week or more Miss Hansford kept up this style of conversation with
herself, while her bones clamored more and more for Elithe. At last she
made up her mind and wrote to Roger inviting Elithe to spend the summer
with her, and as much longer time as she chose, if she proved the right
kind of a girl, and didn’t make more trouble than her company was worth.
“One thing I may as well mention now,” she wrote, “I can’t have her
gadding nights to concerts and rides on the water and clambakes and the
Casino and the like. She must be in by nine, or half-past at the latest,
as I keep early hours. I can’t have her slat her things round
everywhere. I can’t have her sing and whistle in the house. I ain’t used
to it. I like to be still and meditate. I don’t want you to think she
isn’t to have any privileges, for she is. I shall use her well, and I
inclose money for her fare and a little more, as she may want to buy a
dress or two. Let me know when to expect her.—Phebe Hansford.”
“P. S.—Give my regards to Lucy and a dollar to each of the boys. I’ve
allowed for that.”
“There, I’ve done my duty,” Miss Hansford thought, as she posted the
letter, and then rather anxiously awaited the result.