WHAT CAME OF IT.
Hepsy’s clock, which was thought by its mistress to regulate the sun,
was really a great deal too slow, and Mildred had scarcely gone half the
way to the Mayfield station, when she was startled by the shrill scream
of the engine, and knew that she was left behind.
“Oh, what shall I do?” she cried. “I can’t go back, for maybe Hepsy’s
home before now, and she would kill me sure. My arm aches now where she
struck me so hard, the old good-for-nothing. I’d rather stay here alone
in the woods,” and sinking against a log Mildred began to cry.
Not for a moment, however, did she regret what she had done. The dreary
gable-roof seemed tenfold drearier to her than the lonesome woods, while
the winter wind, sighing through leafless trees, was music compared with
Hepsy’s voice. The day had not been very cold, but the night was chilly,
and not a single star shone through the leaden clouds. A storm was
coming on, and Mildred felt the snow-flakes dropping on her face.
“I don’t want to be buried in the snow and die,” she thought, “for I
ain’t very good; I’m an awful sinner, granny says, and sure to go to
perdition, but I ain’t so certain about that. God wouldn’t be very hard
on a little girl who has been treated as mean as I have. He’d make some
allowance for my dreadful bringing up. I wonder if He is here now; Olly
says He is everywhere, and if He is and can see me in my tantrums He can
see me in the dark. I mean to pray to Him just as good as I can, and ask
Him to take care of me;” and kneeling by the old log, with the darkness
all about her, and the snow-flakes falling thickly upon her upturned
face, she began a prayer which was a strange mixture of what she had
heard at St. Luke’s, where she had once been with Oliver, what she had
often heard at the prayer meetings which she had frequently attended
with Aunt Hepsy, and of her real self as she thought and felt.
She began: “Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners, for if I know my own
heart, I think I have made a new consecration of all that I have and all
that I am since we last met, and henceforth I mean to,—mean to,——”
Here the mere form of words left her, and the child Milly spoke out and
told her trouble to God.
“Oh, Jesus,” she said, “if you be really here, and if you can hear what
I say, as Olly says you can, I wish you’d come up close to me, right
here by the log, so I needn’t feel afraid while I tell you how granny
has whipped me so many times for ’most nothing, and never let me have a
real doll or do anything I wanted to, and I’ve been so unhappy there,
and wicked, too, and mad at her, and called her ugly names behind her
back, and would to her face, only I dassent, and I’ve made mouths at her
and wished I could lick her, and have even in my tantrums been mean to
Olly, and twitted him about his twisted feet, and pulled his hair and
spit at him as fast as I could spit, and loved him all the time, and now
I’ve runned away and the cars have left me when I was going in them to
Boston to see Lawrence Thornton and be Miss Geraldine’s waiting-maid,
and it’s dark and cold and snowy here in the woods, and I am afraid of
something, I don’t know what, and I can’t go back to granny, who would
almost skin me alive, and she ain’t my granny either; some Maine woman
sent me to Judge Howell, in a thunder-storm and basket, and I’m nobody’s
little girl; so, please, Jesus, take care of me and tell me where to go
and what to do, and I’m so sorry for all my badness, especially to Olly,
for Christ’s sake, Amen.”
This was a very long prayer for Milly, who had never before said more
than “Now I lay me,” or the Lord’s prayer; but God saw and heard the
little desolate child, and answered her touching appeal.
“There, I feel better and not so lonesome, already,” she said, as she
rose from her knees and groped around to find some better place of
shelter than the old log afforded.
Suddenly, as she came to an opening in the trees, she saw, in the
distance, the light shining out from the library windows of Beechwood;
and the idea crossed her brain that she would go there, and if Judge
Howell turned her off, as he did before, she’d go to Tiger’s kennel and
sleep with him. Mildred’s impulses were usually acted upon, and she was
soon traversing the road to Beechwood, feeling with each step that she
was drawing nearer to her home.
“Widow Simms says I have a right here,” she thought, as she passed
silently through the gate. “And I almost believe so, too. Any way, I
mean to tell him I’ve come to stay;” and, without a moment’s hesitation,
the courageous child opened the door, and stepped into the hall.
Judge Howell sat in his pleasant library, trying to interest himself in
a book, but a vague feeling of loneliness oppressed him, and as often as
he read one page, he turned backward to see what had gone before.
“It’s of no use,” he said, at last; “I’m not in a reading mood;” and
closing his eyes, he leaned back in his armchair, and thought of much
which had come to him during the years gone by,—thought first of his
gentle wife,—then of his beautiful daughter,—and then of Richard, whom
he had cursed in that very room. Where was he now? Were the waters of
the Southern seas chanting wild music over his ocean bed? Did the
burning sun of Bengal look down upon his grave?—or would he come back
again some day, and from his father’s lips hear that the old man was
sorry for the harsh words that he had spoken? Then, by some sudden
transition of thought, he remembered the night of the storm, and the
infant left at his door. He had never been sorry for casting it off, he
said, and yet, had he kept her,—were she with him this wintry night, he
might not be so dreary sitting alone.
“_There they go!_” said a childish voice, and as his gold-bowed specs
fell to the floor, the Judge started up, and lo, there upon a stool, her
bonnet and bundle on a chair, and her hands folded demurely upon her
lap, sat the veritable object of his thoughts, even little Mildred.
Through the half-closed door she had glided so noiselessly as not to
disturb his reverie, and sitting down upon the stool at his feet, had
warmed her hands by the blazing fire, removed her hood, smoothed back
her hair, and then watched breathlessly the slow descent of the specs
from the nose of the Judge, who, she fancied, was sleeping. Lower, and
lower, and lower they came, and when at last they dropped, she
involuntarily uttered the exclamation which roused the Judge to a
knowledge of her presence.
“What the deuce,—how did you get in, and what are you here for?” asked
the Judge, feeling, in spite of himself, a secret satisfaction in having
her there, and knowing that he was no longer alone.
Fixing her clear, brown eyes upon him, Mildred answered:
“I walked in, and I’ve come to stay.”
“The plague you have,” returned the Judge, vastly amused at the quiet
decision with which she spoke. “Come to stay, hey? But suppose I won’t
let you, what then?”
“You will,” said Mildred; “and if you turn me out, I shall come right in
again. I’ve lived with Oliver’s grandmother as long as I am going to. I
don’t belong there, and to-night I started to run away, but the cars
left me, and it was cold and dark in the woods, and I was kind of
’fraid, and asked God to take care of me and tell me where to go, and I
comed right here.”
There was a big lump in the Judge’s throat as he listened to the child,
but he swallowed it down, and pointing to the bundle containing
Mildred’s Sunday clothes, said, “Brought your things, too, I see. You’ll
be wanting a closet and a trunk to put them in, I reckon.”
The quick-witted child detected at once the irony in his tone, and with
a quivering lip she answered:
“They are the best I’ve got. She never bought me anything since mother
died. She’s just as cross as she can be, too, and whips me so hard for
nothing,—look,” and rolling up her sleeve she showed him more than one
red mark upon her arm.
Sour and crusty as the Judge appeared, there were soft spots scattered
here and there over his heart, and though the largest was scarcely
larger than a pin’s head, Mildred had chanced to touch it, for cruelty
to any one was something he abhorred.
“Poor little thing,” he said, taking the fat, chubby arm in one hand,
and passing the other caressingly over the marks,—“poor little thing,
we’ll have that old she-dragon ’tended to,” and something very like a
tear, both in form and feeling, dropped upon the dimpled elbow. “What
makes you stare at me so?” he continued, as he saw how the wondering
brown eyes were fixed upon him.
“I was thinking,” answered Mildred, “how you ain’t such a cross old
feller as folks say you be, and you’ll let me stay here, won’t you? I’d
rather live with you than Lawrence Thornton——”
“Lawrence Thornton!” repeated the Judge. “What do you know of him? Oh,
yes, I remember now that he spoke of finding you asleep; but were you
running away to him?”
In a few words Mildred told him what her intentions had been, and then
said to him again:
“But I shall stay here now and be your little girl.”
“I ain’t so sure of that,” answered the Judge, adding, as he saw her
countenance fall: “What good could you do me?”
Mildred’s first thought was, “I can wash the dishes and scrub the
floor;” then as she remembered that servants did these things at
Beechwood, she stood a moment uncertain how to answer. At last, as a new
idea crossed her mind, she said: “When you’re old and lonesome, there’ll
be nobody to love you if I go away, and you’ll be sorry if you turn me
off.”
Why was it the Judge started so quickly and placed his hand before his
eyes, as if to assure himself that it was little Mildred standing there
and not his only boy,—not Richard, who long ago had said to him:
“In the years to come, when you are old and lonesome, you’ll be sorry
for what you’ve said to-night.” Those were Richard’s words, while
Mildred’s were:
“You’ll be sorry if you turn me off.”
It would seem that the son, over whose fate a dark mystery hung, was
there in spirit, pleading for the helpless child, while with him was
another Mildred, and looking through the eyes of brown so much like her
own, she said, “Take her father, you will need her some time!”
And so, not merely because Mildred Hawkins asked him to do it, but
because of the unseen influence which urged him on, the Judge drew the
little girl closer to his side, and parting back her rich, brown hair,
said to her pleasantly, “You may stay to-night, and to-morrow night, and
if I don’t find you troublesome, perhaps you may stay for good.”
Mildred had not looked for so easy a conquest, and this unexpected
kindness wrung from her eyes great tears, which rolled silently down her
cheeks.
“What are you crying for?” asked the Judge. “You are not obliged to
stay. You can go back to Hepsy any minute,—now, if you want. Shall I
call Rachel to hold the lantern?”
He made a motion toward the bell-rope, while Mildred, in an agony of
terror, seized his arm, telling him “she was only crying for joy; that
she’d die before she’d go back!” and adding fiercely, as she saw he had
really rung the bell: “If you send me away I’ll set your house on fire!”
The Judge smiled quietly at this threat, and when Rachel appeared in
answer to his ring, he said, “Open the register in the chamber above,
and see that the bed is all right, then bring us some apples and
nuts,—and,—wait till I get done, can’t you,—bring us that box of prunes.
Do you love prunes, child?”
“Yes, sir, though I don’t know what they be,” sobbed Mildred, through
the hands she had clasped over her face when she thought she must go
back.
She knew she was not going now, and her eyes shone like diamonds as they
flashed upon the Judge a look of gratitude. It wasn’t lonesome now in
that handsome library where Mildred sat, eating prune after prune, and
apple after apple, while the Judge sat watching her with an immense
amount of satisfaction, and, thinking to himself how, on the morrow, if
he did not change his mind, he would inquire the price of feminine dry
goods, a thing he had not done in years. In his abstraction he even
forgot that the clock was striking nine, and, half an hour later, found
him still watching Mildred, and marvelling at her enormous appetite for
nuts and prunes. But he remembered, at last, that it was his bed time,
and, again ringing for Rachel, he bade her take the little girl
upstairs.
It was a pleasant, airy chamber where Mildred was put to sleep, and it
took her a long time to examine the furniture and the various articles
for the toilet, the names of which she did not even know. Then she
thought of Oliver, wondering what he would say if he knew where she was;
and, going to the window, against which a driving storm was beating, she
thought how much nicer it was to be in that handsome apartment than back
in her little bed beneath the gable-roof, or even running away to Boston
after Lawrence Thornton.
The next morning when she awoke, the snow lay high-piled upon the earth,
and the wind was blowing in fearful gusts. But in the warm summer
atmosphere pervading the whole house, Mildred thought nothing of the
storm without. She only knew that she was very happy, and when the Judge
came down to breakfast, he found her singing of her happiness to the
gray house-cat, which she had coaxed into her lap.
“Shall she eat with you or wait?” asked Rachel, a little uncertain
whether to arrange the table for two or one.
“With me, of course, you simpleton,” returned the Judge; “and bring on
some sirup for the cakes,—or honey; which do you like best, child?”
Mildred didn’t know, but _guessed_ that she liked both, and both were
accordingly placed upon the table,—the Judge forgetting to eat in his
delight to see how fast the nicely browned buckwheats disappeared.
“She’ll breed a famine if she stays here long,” Rachel muttered, while
Finn looked ruefully at the fast decreasing batter.
But Mildred’s appetite was satisfied at last, and she was about leaving
the table, when Hepsy’s sharp, shrill voice was heard in the hall,
proclaiming to Rachel the astonishing news that Mildred Hawkins had run
away and been frozen to death in a snow bank,—that Clubs, like a fool,
had lost his senses and gone raving distracted, calling loudly for Milly
and refusing to be comforted unless she came back.
Through the open door Mildred heard this last, and darting into the hall
she asked the startled Hepsy to tell her if what she had said were true.
Petrified with astonishment, Hepsy was silent for an instant, and then
in no mild terms began to upbraid the child, because she was not frozen
to death as she had declared her to be.
“Never mind,” said Mildred, “but tell me of Oliver. Is he sick, and does
he ask for me?”
The appearance of the Judge brought Hepsy to herself, and she began to
tell the story. It seemed that she had staid with Widow Simms until
after ten, and when she reached home she found Clubs distracted on
account of Mildred’s absence. He had looked all through the house, and
was about going up to Beechwood, when his grandmother returned and
stopped him, saying that Mildred had probably gone to stay with Lottie
Brown, as she had the previous day asked permission so to do and been
refused. So Oliver had rested till morning, when he insisted on his
grandmother’s wading through the drifts to see if Milly really were at
Mr. Brown’s.
“When I found she wasn’t,” said Hepsy, “I began to feel a little riled
myself, for I knowed that she had the ugliest temper that ever was born,
and, says I, she’s run away and been froze to death, and then such a
rumpus as Oliver made. I thought he’d go——”
Her sentence was cut short by a cry of joy from Mildred, who, from the
window, caught sight of the crippled boy moving slowly through the
drifts, which greatly impeded his progress. Hastening to the door she
drew him in out of the storm, brushed the snow from his thin hair, and
folding her arms about him, sobbed out, “Oliver, I ain’t dead, but I’ve
run away. I can’t live with _her_ any more, though if you feel so bad
about it, maybe I’ll go back. Shall I?”
Before Oliver could reply, Hepsy chimed in, “Go back, to be sure you
will, my fine madame. I’ll teach you what is what;” and seizing
Mildred’s hood, which lay upon the hat-stand, she began to tie it upon
the screaming child, who struggled violently to get away, and succeeding
at last ran for protection behind the Judge.
“Keep her, Judge Howell, please keep her,” whispered Oliver, while
Mildred’s eyes flashed out their gratitude to him for thus interfering
in her behalf.
“Woman!” and the Judge’s voice was like a clap of thunder, while his
heavy boot came down with a vengeance as he grasped the bony arm of
Hepsy, who was making a dive past him after Mildred. “Woman, get out of
my house! Quick too, and if I catch you here again after anybody’s
child, I’ll pull every hair out of your head. Do you hear, you
she-dragon? Begone, I say; start. Move faster than that!” and he
accelerated her movements with a shove, which sent her quite to the
door, where she stood for an instant, threatening to take the law of
him, and shaking her fist at Mildred, who, holding fast to the
coat-skirts of the Judge, knew she had nothing to fear.
After a moment Hepsy began to cry, and assuming a deeply injured tone,
she bade Oliver “Come.”
Not till then had Mildred fully realized that if she stayed at Beechwood
she must be separated from her beloved playmate, and clutching him as he
arose to follow his grandmother, she whispered, “If you want me, Oliver,
I’ll go.”
He _did_ want her, oh, so much, for he knew how lonely the gable-roof
would be without her, but it was far better that she should not return,
and so, with a tremendous effort the unselfish boy stilled the
throbbings of his heart, and whispered back: “I’d rather you’d stay
here, Milly, and maybe _he’ll_ let me come some time to see you.”
“Every day, every day,” answered the Judge, who could not help admiring
the young boy for preferring Mildred’s happiness to his own. “There, I’m
glad that’s over,” he said, when, as the door closed upon Hepsy and
Oliver, he led Mildred back to the breakfast room, asking her if she
didn’t want some more buckwheats.
But Milly’s heart was too full to eat, even had she been hungry. Turn
which way she would, she saw only the form of a cripple boy moving
slowly through the drifts, back to the dark old kitchen, which she knew
would that dismal day be all the darker for her absence. It was all in
vain that the Judge sought to amuse her by showing her all his choice
treasures and telling her she was now his little girl and should call
him father if she liked. The sad, despondent look did not leave her face
for the entire day, and just as it was growing dark, she laid her brown
head upon the Judge’s knee, as he sat in his armchair, and said
mournfully, “I guess I shall go back.”
“I guess you won’t,” returned the Judge, running his fingers through her
soft hair, and thinking how much it was like his own Mildred’s.
“But I ought to,” answered the child. “Oliver can’t do without me. You
don’t know how much he likes me, nor how much I like him. He’s missing
me so now, I know he is, and I’m afraid he’s crying, too. Mayn’t I go?”
Mildred’s voice was choked with tears, and Judge Howell felt them
dropping upon his hand, as he passed it caressingly over her face. Six
months before he had professed to hate the little girl sitting there at
his feet, and crying to go back to Oliver, but she had grown strangely
into his love within the last twenty-four hours, and to himself he said:
“I will not give her up.”
So after sitting a time in silence, he replied:
“I can do you more good than this Oliver with his crooked feet.”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Mildred, “but it’s because his feet are crooked
that I can’t leave him all alone, and then he loved me first, when you
hated me and swore such awful words if I just looked at a flower.”
There was no denying this,—but the Judge was not convinced, and he
continued by telling her how many new dresses he would buy her,—how in
the spring he’d get her a pony and a silver-mounted side-saddle——
“And let me go to the circus?” she said, that having hitherto been the
highest object of her ambition.
“Yes, let you go to the circus,” he replied; “and to Boston and
everywhere.”
The bait was a tempting one, and Mildred wavered for a moment,—then just
as the Judge thought she was satisfied, she said:
“But that won’t do Oliver any good.”
“Hang Oliver!” exclaimed the Judge; “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll
have a lady governess to come into the house and teach you both. So you
will see him every day. I’ll get him some new clothes——”
“And send him to college when he’s big enough?” put in Mildred. “He told
me once he wished he could go.”
“Great Peter, what next will you want? But I’ll think about the college;
and if he learns right smart, and you behave yourself, I reckon maybe
I’ll send him.”
The Judge had no idea that Oliver would learn “right smart,” for he did
not know him, and he merely made the promise by way of quieting Mildred,
who, with this prospect in view, became quite contented in her new
quarters, though she did so wish Oliver could know it that night, and
looking up in the Judge’s face, she said:
“It’s such a little bit of a ways down there,—couldn’t you go and tell
him, or let me. It seems forever till to-morrow.”
Had the Judge been told the previous day that Mildred Hawkins could have
persuaded him to brave that fierce northeaster, he would have scoffed at
the idea as a most preposterous one, but now, looking into those shining
eyes of brown, lifted so pleadingly to his, he felt all his sternness
giving way, and before he knew what he was doing, or why he was doing
it, he found himself plowing through the snow-drifts which lay between
Beechwood and the gable-roof, where he found Oliver sitting before the
fire with a sad, dejected look upon his face as if all the happiness of
his life had suddenly been taken from him. But he brightened at once
when he saw the Judge and heard his errand. It would be so nice to be
with Milly every day and know that she was beyond the reach of his
grandmother’s cruelty, and bursting into tears he stammered out his
thanks to the Judge, who without a sign of recognition for old Hepsy,
who was dipping candles with a most sour expression on her puckered
lips, started back through the deep snow-drifts, feeling more than
repaid, when he saw the little, eager face pressed against the pane, and
then heard a sweet, young voice calling him “the best man in the world.”
And Mildred did think him the embodiment of every virtue, while her
presence in his house worked a marvellous change in him. He had
something now to live for, and his step was always more elastic as he
drew near his home, where a merry-hearted, frolicsome child was sure to
welcome his coming.
“The little mistress of Beechwood,” the people began to call her, and so
indeed she was, ruling there with a high hand, and making both master
and servant bend to her will, particularly if in that will Oliver were
concerned. He was her first thought, and she tormented the Judge until
he kept his promise of having a governess, to whom Oliver recited each
day as well as herself.
Once during the spring Lawrence Thornton came again to Beechwood,
renewing his acquaintance with Mildred, who, comparing him with other
boys of her acquaintance, regarded him as something more than mortal,
and after he was gone, she was never weary of his praises. Once in
speaking of him to her teacher, Miss Harcourt, she said, “He’s the
handsomest boy I ever saw, and he knows so much, too. I’d give the world
if Oliver was like him,” and Mildred’s sigh as she thought of poor lame
Oliver was echoed by the white-faced boy without the door, who had come
up just in time to hear her remarks. He, too, had greatly admired
Lawrence Thornton, and it had, perhaps, been some satisfaction to
believe that Mildred had not observed the difference between them, but
he knew, now, that she had, and with a bitter pang, as he thought of his
deformity, he took his accustomed seat in the school-room.
“I can never be like Lawrence Thornton,” he said to himself. “I shall
always be lame, and small, and sickly, and by and by, maybe, Milly will
cease to love me.”
Dark, indeed, would be his life, when the sun of Mildred’s love for him
was set, and his tears fell fast, erasing the figures he was making on
his slate.
“What is it, Olly?” and Mildred nestled close by his side, taking his
thin hand in her own chubby ones and looking into his face.
Without the least reserve he told her what it was, and Mildred’s tears
mingled with his as he said that his twisted feet were a continual
canker worm,—a blight on all his hopes of the future when he should have
attained the years of a man. The cloud was very heavy from which Mildred
could not extract some comfort, and after a moment she looked up
cheerily, and said:
“I tell you, Oliver, you can’t be as handsome as Lawrence, nor as tall,
nor have such nice straight feet, but you can be as good a scholar, and
when folks speak of that Mr. Hawkins, who knows so much, I shall be so
proud, for I shall know it is Oliver they mean.”
All unconsciously Mildred was sowing in Oliver’s mind the first seeds of
ambition, though not of a worldly kind. He did not care for the world.
He cared only for the opinion of the little brown-eyed maiden at his
side. It is true he would have endured any amount of torture if, in the
end, he might look like Lawrence Thornton; but as this could not be, he
determined to resemble him in something,—to read the same books,—to
learn the same things,—to be able to talk about the same places, and if,
in the end, _she_ said he was equal to Lawrence Thornton, he would be
satisfied. So he toiled both early and late, far outstripping Mildred
and winning golden laurels, in the opinion of Miss Harcourt and the
Judge, the latter of whom became, in spite of himself, deeply interested
in the pale student, who before three years were gone, was fully equal
to his teacher.
Then it was that Mildred came again to his aid, saying to the Judge one
day, “Oliver has learned all Miss Harcourt can teach him, and hadn’t you
better be looking out for some good school, where he can be fitted for
college?”
“Cool!” returned the Judge, tossing his cigar into the grass and smiling
down upon her. “Cool, I declare. So you think I’d better fit him for
college, hey?”
“Of course, I do,” answered Mildred; “you said you would that stormy day
long ago, when I cried to go back and you wouldn’t let me.”
“So I did, so I did,” returned the Judge, adding that “he’d think about
it.”
The result of this thinking Mildred readily foresaw, and she was not at
all surprised when, a few days afterwards, the Judge said to her, “I
have made arrangements for Clubs to go to Andover this fall, and if he
behaves himself I shall send him to college, I guess; and,—come back
here, you spitfire,” he cried, as he saw her bounding away with the good
news to Oliver. But Mildred could not stay for more then. She must see
Oliver, who could scarcely find words with which to express his
gratitude to the man who, for Mildred’s sake, was doing so much for him.
Rapidly the autumn days stole on, until at last one September morning
Mildred’s heart was sore with grief, and her eyes were red with weeping,
for Oliver was gone and she was all alone.
“If you mourn so for Clubs, what do you think I shall do when you, too,
go off to school?” said the Judge.
“Oh, I sha’n’t know enough to go this ever so long,” was Mildred’s
answer, while the Judge, thinking how lonely the house would be without
her, hoped it would be so; but in spite of his hopes, there came a day,
just fourteen years after Mildred was left on the steps at Beechwood,
when the Judge said to Oliver, who had come home, and was asking for his
playmate:
“She’s gone to Charlestown Seminary, along with that Lilian Veille,
Lawrence Thornton makes such a fuss about, and the Lord only knows how
I’m going to live without her for the next miserable three years.”