Of all that occurred during many ensuing weeks Edna knew little. She
retained, in after years, only a vague, confused remembrance of keen
anguish and utter prostration, and an abiding sense of irreparable
loss. In delirious visions she saw her grandfather now struggling in
the grasp of Phlegyas, and now writhing in the fiery tomb of Uberti,
with jets of flame leaping through his white hair, and his shrunken
hands stretched appealingly toward her, as she had seen those of the
doomed Ghibelline leader, in the hideous Dante picture. All the
appalling images evoked by the sombre and embittered imagination of the
gloomy Tuscan had seized upon her fancy, even in happy hours, and were
now reproduced by her disordered brain in multitudinous and aggravated
forms. Her wails of agony, her passionate prayers to God to release the
beloved spirit from the tortures which her delirium painted, were
painful beyond expression to those who watched her ravings; and it was
with a feeling of relief that they finally saw her sink into
apathy--into a quiet mental stupor--from which nothing seemed to rouse
her. She did not remark Mrs. Hunt's absence, or the presence of the
neighbors at her bedside. And one morning, when she was wrapped up and
placed by the fire, Mrs. Wood told her as gently as possible that her
grandmother had died from a disease which was ravaging the country and
supposed to be cholera. The intelligence produced no emotion; she
merely looked up an instant, glanced mournfully around the dreary room,
and, shivering slightly, drooped her head again on her hand. Week after
week went slowly by, and she was removed to Mrs. Wood's house, but no
improvement was discernible, and the belief became general that the
child's mind had sunk into hopeless imbecility. The kind-hearted miller
and his wife endeavored to coax her out of her chair by the
chimney-corner, but she crouched there, a wan, mute figure of woe,
pitiable to contemplate; asking no questions, causing no trouble,
receiving no consolation. One bright March morning she sat, as usual,
with her face bowed on her thin hand, and her vacant gaze fixed on the
blazing fire, when, through the open window, came the impatient lowing
of a cow. Mrs. Wood saw a change pass swiftly over the girl's face, and
a quiver cross the lips so long frozen. She lifted her head, rose, and
followed the sound, and soon stood at the side of Brindle, who now
furnished milk for the miller's family. As the gentle cow recognized
and looked at her, with an expression almost human in the mild, liquid
eyes, all the events of that last serene evening swept back to Edna's
deadened memory, and, leaning her head on Brindle's horns, she shed the
first tears that had flowed for her great loss, while sobs, thick and
suffocating, shook her feeble, emaciated frame.
"Bless the poor little outcast, she will get well now. That is just
exactly what she needs. I tell you, Peter, one good cry like that is
worth a wagon-load of physic. Don't go near her; let her have her cry
out. Poor thing! It ain't often you see a child love her granddaddy as
she loved Aaron Hunt. Poor lamb!"
Mrs. Wood wiped her own eyes, and went back to her weaving; and Edna
turned away from the mill and walked to her deserted home, while the
tears poured ceaselessly over her white cheeks. As she approached the
old house she saw that it was shut up and neglected; but when she
opened the gate, Grip, the fierce yellow terror of the whole
neighborhood, sprang from the door-step, where he kept guard as
tirelessly as Maida, and, with a dismal whine of welcome, leaped up and
put his paws on her shoulders. This had been the blacksmith's pet, fed
by his hand, chained when he went to the shop, and released at his
return; and grim and repulsively ugly though he was, the only playmate
Edna had ever known; had gamboled around her cradle, slept with her on
the sheepskin, and frolicked with her through the woods, in many a long
search for Brindle. He alone remained of all the happy past; and as
precious memories crowded mournfully up, she sat upon the steps of the
dreary homestead, with her arms around his neck, and wept bitterly.
After an hour she left the house, and, followed by the dog, crossed the
woods in the direction of the neighborhood graveyard. In order to reach
it she was forced to pass by the spring and the green hillock where Mr.
and Mrs. Dent slept side by side, but no nervous terror seized her now
as formerly; the great present horror swallowed up all others, and,
though she trembled from physical debility, she dragged herself on till
the rude, rough paling of the burying-ground stood before her. Oh,
dreary desolation; thy name is country graveyard! Here no polished
sculptured stela pointed to the Eternal Rest beyond; no classic marbles
told, in gilded characters, the virtues of the dead; no flowery-fringed
gravel-walks wound from murmuring waterfalls and rippling fountains to
crystal lakes, where trailing willows threw their flickering shadows
over silver-dusted lilies; no spicy perfume of purple heliotrope and
starry jasmine burdened the silent air; none of the solemn beauties and
soothing charms of Greenwood or Mount Auburn wooed the mourner from her
weight of woe. Decaying head-boards, green with the lichen-fingered
touch of time, leaned over neglected mounds, where last year's weeds
shivered in the sighing breeze, and autumn winds and winter rains had
drifted a brown shroud of shriveled leaves; while here and there
meek-eyed sheep lay sunning themselves upon the trampled graves, and
the slow-measured sound of a bell dinged now and then as cattle browsed
on the scanty herbage in this most neglected of God's Acres. Could
Charles Lamb have turned from the pompous epitaphs and high-flown
panegyrics of that English cemetery, to the rudely-lettered boards
which here briefly told the names and ages of the sleepers in these
narrow beds, he had never asked the question which now stands as a
melancholy epigram on family favoritism and human frailty. Gold gilds
even the lineaments and haunts of Death, making Pere la Chaise a
favored spot for fetes champetres; while poverty hangs neither veil nor
mask over the grinning ghoul, and flees, superstition-spurred, from the
hideous precincts.
In one corner of the inclosure, where Edna's parents slept, she found
the new mounds that covered the remains of those who had nurtured and
guarded her young life; and on an unpainted board was written in large
letters:
"To the memory of Aaron Hunt: an honest blacksmith, and true Christian;
aged sixty-eight years and six months."
Here, with her head on her grandfather's grave, and the faithful dog
crouched at her feet, lay the orphan, wrestling with grief and
loneliness, striving to face a future that loomed before her
spectre-thronged; and here Mr. Wood found her when anxiety at her long
absence induced his wife to search for the missing invalid. The storm
of sobs and tears had spent itself, fortitude took the measure of the
burden imposed, shouldered the galling weight, and henceforth, with
undimmed vision, walked steadily to the appointed goal. The miller was
surprised to find her so calm, and as they went homeward she asked the
particulars of all that had occurred, and thanked him gravely but
cordially for the kind care bestowed upon her, and for the last
friendly offices performed for her grandfather.
Conscious of her complete helplessness and physical prostration, she
ventured no allusion to the future, but waited patiently until renewed
strength permitted the execution of designs now fully mapped out.
Notwithstanding her feebleness, she rendered herself invaluable to Mrs.
Wood, who praised her dexterity and neatness as a seamstress, and
predicted that she would make a model housekeeper.
Late one Sunday evening in May, as the miller and his wife sat upon the
steps of their humble and comfortless looking home, they saw Edna
slowly approaching, and surmised where she had spent the afternoon.
Instead of going into the house she seated herself beside them, and,
removing her bonnet, traces of tears were visible on her sad but
patient face.
"You ought not to go over yonder so often, child. It is not good for
you," said the miller, knocking the ashes from his pipe.
She shaded her countenance with her hand, and after a moment said, in a
low but steady tone:
"I shall never go there again. I have said good-bye to everything, and
have nothing now to keep me here. You and Mrs. Wood have been very kind
to me, and I thank you heartily; but you have a family of children, and
have your hands full to support them without taking care of me. I know
that our house must go to you to pay that old debt, and even the horse
and cow; and there will be nothing left when you are paid. You are very
good, indeed, to offer me a home here, and I never can forget your
kindness; but I should not be willing to live on anybody's charity; and
besides, all the world is alike to me now, and I want to get out of
sight of--of--what shows my sorrow to me every day. I don't love this
place now; it won't let me forget, even for a minute, and--and--"
Here the voice faltered and she paused.
"But where could you go, and how could you make your bread, you poor
little ailing thing?"
"I hear that in the town of Columbus, Georgia, even little children get
wages to work in the factory, and I know I can earn enough to pay my
board among the factory people."
"But you are too young to be straying about in a strange place. If you
will stay here, and help my wife about the house and the weaving, I
will take good care of you, and clothe you till you are grown and
married."
"I would rather go away, because I want to be educated, and I can't be
if I stay here."
"Fiddlestick! you will know as much as the balance of us, and that's
all you will ever have any use for. I notice you have a hankering after
books, but the quicker you get that foolishness out of your head the
better; for books won't put bread in your mouth and clothes on your
back; and folks that want to be better than their neighbors generally
turn out worse. The less book-learning you women have the better."
"I don't see that it is any of your business, Peter Wood, how much
learning we women choose to get, provided your bread is baked and your
socks darned when you want 'em. A woman has as good a right as a man to
get book-learning, if she wants it; and as for sense, I'll thank you,
mine is as good as yours any day; and folks have said it was a blessed
thing for the neighborhood when the rheumatiz laid Peter Wood up, and
his wife, Dorothy Elmira Wood, run the mill. Now, it's of no earthly
use to cut at us women over that child's shoulders; if she wants an
education she has as much right to it as anybody, if she can pay for
it. My doctrine is, everybody has a right to whatever they can pay for,
whether it is schooling or a satin frock!"
Mrs. Wood seized her snuff-bottle and plunged a stick vigorously into
the contents, and, as the miller showed no disposition to skirmish, she
continued:
"I take an interest in you, Edna Earl, because I loved your mother, who
was the only sweet-tempered beauty that ever I knew. I think I never
set my eyes on a prettier face, with big brown eyes as meek as a
partridge's; and then her hands and feet were as small as a queen's.
Now as long as you are satisfied to stay here I shall be glad to have
you, and I will do as well for you as for my own Tabitha; but, if you
are bent on factory work and schooling, I have got no more to say; for
I have no right to say where you shall go or where you shall stay. But
one thing I do want to tell you, it is a serious thing for a poor,
motherless girl to be all alone among strangers."
There was a brief silence, and Edna answered slowly:
"Yes, Mrs. Wood, I know it is; but God can protect me there as well as
here, and I have none now but Him. I have made up my mind to go,
because I think it is the best for me, and I hope Mr. Wood will carry
me to the Chattanooga depot to-morrow morning, as the train leaves
early. I have a little money--seven dollars--that--that grandpa gave me
at different times, and both Brindle's calves belong to me--he gave
them to me--and I thought may be you would pay me a few dollars for
them."
"But you are not ready to start to-morrow."
"Yes, sir, I washed and ironed my clothes yesterday, and what few I
have are all packed in my box. Everything is ready now, and, as I have
to go, I might as well start to-morrow."
"Don't you think you will get dreadfully homesick in about a month, and
write to me to come and fetch you back?"
"I have no home and nobody to love me, how then can I ever be homesick?
Grandpa's grave is all the home I have, and--and--God would not take me
there when I was so sick, and--and--" The quiver of her face showed
that she was losing her self-control, and turning away, she took the
cedar piggin, and went out to milk Brindle for the last time.
Feeling that they had no right to dictate her future course, neither
the miller nor his wife offered any further opposition, and very early
the next morning, after Mrs. Wood had given the girl what she called
"some good motherly advice," and provided her with a basket containing
food for the journey, she kissed her heartily several times, and saw
her stowed away in the miller's covered cart, which was to convey her
to the railway station. The road ran by the old blacksmith's shop, and
Mr. Wood's eyes filled as he noticed the wistful, lingering, loving
gaze which the girl fixed upon it, until a grove of trees shut out the
view; then the head bowed itself, and a stifled moan reached his ears.
The engine whistled as they approached the station, and Edna was
hurried aboard the train, while her companion busied himself in
transferring her box of clothing to the baggage car. She had insisted
on taking her grandfather's dog with her, and, notwithstanding the
horrified looks of the passengers and the scowl of the conductor, he
followed her into the car and threw himself under the seat, glaring at
all who passed, and looking as hideously savage as the Norse Managarmar.
"You can't have a whole seat to yourself, and nobody wants to sit near
that ugly brute," said the surly conductor.
Edna glanced down the aisle, and saw two young gentlemen stretched at
full length on separate seats, eyeing her curiously.
Observing that the small seat next to the door was partially filled
with the luggage of the parties who sat in front of it, she rose and
called to the dog, saying to the conductor as she did so:
"I will take that half of a seat yonder, where I shall be in nobody's
way."
Here Mr. Wood came forward, thrust her ticket into her fingers, and
shook her hand warmly, saying hurriedly:
"Hold on to your ticket, and don't put your head out of the window. I
told the conductor he must look after you and your box when you left
the cars; said he would. Good-by, Edna; take care of yourself, and may
God bless you, child."
The locomotive whistled, the train moved slowly on, and the miller
hastened back to his cart.
As the engine got fully under way, and dashed around a curve, the
small, straggling village disappeared, trees and hills seemed to the
orphan to fly past the window; and when she leaned out and looked back,
only the mist-mantled rocks of Lookout, and the dim, purplish outline
of the Sequatchie heights were familiar.
In the shadow of that solitary sentinel peak her life had been passed;
she had gathered chestnuts and chincapins among its wooded clefts, and
clambered over its gray boulders as fearlessly as the young llamas of
the Parime; and now, as it rapidly receded and finally vanished, she
felt as if the last link that bound her to the past had suddenly
snapped; the last friendly face which had daily looked down on her for
twelve years was shut out forever, and she and Grip were indeed alone,
in a great, struggling world of selfishness and sin. The sun shone
dazzlingly over wide fields of grain, whose green billows swelled and
surged under the freshening breeze; golden butterflies fluttered over
the pink and blue morning-glories that festooned the rail-fences; a
brakeman whistled merrily on the platform, and children inside the car
prattled and played, while at one end a slender little girlish figure,
in homespun dress and pink calico bonnet, crouched in a corner of the
seat, staring back in the direction of hooded Lookout, feeling that
each instant bore her farther from the dear graves of her dead; and
oppressed with an intolerable sense of desolation and utter isolation
in the midst of hundreds of her own race, who were too entirely
absorbed in their individual speculations, fears and aims, to spare
even a glance at that solitary young mariner, who saw the last headland
fade from view, and found herself, with no pilot but ambition, drifting
rapidly out on the great, unknown, treacherous Sea of Life, strewn with
mournful human wrecks, whom the charts and buoys of six thousand years
of navigation could not guide to a haven of usefulness and peace.
Interminable seemed the dreary day, which finally drew to a close, and
Edna, who was weary of her cramped position, laid her aching head on
the window-sill, and watched the red light of day die in the west,
where a young moon hung her silvery crescent among the dusky tree-tops,
and the stars flashed out thick and fast. Far away among strangers,
uncared for and unnoticed, come what might, she felt that God's
changeless stars smiled down as lovingly upon her face as on her
grandfather's grave; and that the cosmopolitan language of nature knew
neither the modifications of time and space, the distinctions of social
caste, nor the limitations of national dialects.
As the night wore on, she opened the cherished copy of Dante and tried
to read, but the print was too fine for the dim lamp which hung at some
distance from her corner. Her head ached violently, and, as sleep was
impossible, she put the book back in her pocket, and watched the
flitting trees and fences, rocky banks, and occasional houses, which
seemed weird in the darkness. As silence deepened in the car, her sense
of loneliness became more and more painful, and finally she turned and
pressed her cheek against the fair, chubby hand of a baby, who slept
with its curly head on its mother's shoulder, and its little dimpled
arm and hand hanging over the back of the seat. There was comfort and a
soothing sensation of human companionship in the touch of that baby's
hand; it seemed a link in the electric chain of sympathy, and, after a
time, the orphan's eyes closed--fatigue conquered memory and sorrow,
and she fell asleep with her lips pressed to those mesmeric baby
fingers, and Grip's head resting against her knee.
Diamond-powdered "lilies of the field" folded their perfumed petals
under the Syrian dew, wherewith God nightly baptized them in token of
his ceaseless guardianship, and the sinless world of birds, the "fowls
of the air," those secure and blithe, yet improvident, little gleaners
in God's granary, nestled serenely under the shadow of the Almighty
wing; but was the all-seeing, all-directing Eye likewise upon that
desolate and destitute young mourner who sank to rest with "Our Father
which art in heaven" upon her trembling lips? Was it a decree in the
will and wisdom of our God, or a fiat from the blind fumbling of
Atheistic Chance, or was it in accordance with the rigid edict of
Pantheistic Necessity, that at that instant the cherubim of death
swooped down, on the sleeping passengers, and silver cords and golden
bowls were rudely snapped and crushed, amid the crash of timbers, the
screams of women and children, and the groans of tortured men, that
made night hideous? Over the holy hills of Judea, out of crumbling
Jerusalem, the message of Messiah has floated on the wings of eighteen
centuries: "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know
hereafter."
Edna was awakened by a succession of shrill sounds, which indicated
that the engineer was either frightened or frantic; the conductor
rushed bare-headed through the car; people sprang to their feet; there
was a scramble on the platform; then a shock and crash as if the day of
doom had dawned--and all was chaos.