schooling and helping the blacks, now they were thrown on themselves
like; for old Dr. Stanchon would have it that they were bound to make
more trouble now in the South than they had before, and that those who
had freed them owed them a living--or something like that. Most hated
him for it around our parts, but doctor says the country has found his
father was right, to-day. Nevertheless, there's other uses for good
family money than that, as we all know.
"You've bewitched the larkspurs, Miss Lisbet," I said, laughing. "Why
not fool them a bit? Pick a tiny short spray like this, and ask a
question you _know_ the answer to, and then you'll see how things are."
"Well," says she, "I'll ask 'If I'm to marry Dick'!"
I didn't half like that, but I happened to peep out of the tail of my
eye and who should I see but Master Dick himself, leaning over the low
cedar hedge, looking for us. He was out of her sight, and so I made
haste and picked a tiny stalk with but three blossoms and handed it to
her.
"Quick, quick, Miss Lisbet, dear!" I said, knowing well what the answer
would be. She asked quick enough, but when she stripped them, _yes,
no_--and stopped there, I saw that the third had somehow fallen off and
lay on her white lap. It gave me a turn, but she only brushed it away
and laughed softly.
"It _is_ foolish," she said, "isn't it, Rhoda? For there he is! Here,
Dick, this way!"
I started to leave them, but she wouldn't have it, and gave him her
cheek to kiss as easy as a child--or started to, but there was a man in
uniform behind him, just rounding the turn, and she drew back.
"Major La Salle," says Master Dick, proud as Punch, you could see,
"Miss Elizabeth Winthrop."
She curtseyed and the Major bowed to the ground, and I couldn't but
notice a tiny bald spot amongst his curly dark hair.
"An old fellow for Master Dick's friend," thought I, and so he was,
being all of thirty-six, and more like Dr. Stanchon's crony than his
son's! Thirty-six was something in those days, you see, and Master
Dick was all ready to settle when the young men of his age to-day are
playing their football games and heedless as school girls.
The Major had lines about his mouth and eyes, and had buried a wife, we
learned, three years before the war--a sad marriage, by Master Dick's
accounts, as she wasn't worthy of him and had made him grave before his
time. Our young Captain couldn't talk enough of him and had written
many's the letters about him before ever we saw him. But we were both
surprised to find him so much older than we had thought, and Miss
Lisbet was afraid to talk much before him at first, for fear he'd find
her missish and ignorant. She didn't realize, the sweet thing, how any
one would think, to see her at the head of that great house, managing
all and doing so much good in the village, that she was the equal of
any woman.
They'd been but three days in the village, and all the time they had
from the doctor's wife's proud tea-drinkings, to show off her boy,
they'd spent with us. She always had me by her, for Mrs. Williams was
getting on, and best off by herself, and Miss Lisbet didn't feel 'twas
quite as it should be for her to be off with them alone. So when they
spoke of Madam's will, I was sewing near by.
Miss Lisbet was telling of her schemes for the poor blacks and the
Major was agreeing with her, and said that Master Dick's father had the
right of it.
"Now, for heaven's sake, Louis, don't encourage Miss Winthrop in any of
her plans for the human race," says Master Dick, laughing. "It's bad
enough to have my father executor. All that money depends on me, you
know, and I don't approve of women's rights as much as you do."
"Depends on you? What do you mean?" says the Major.
"Why, unless she marries me she doesn't get Madam's money at all," says
Master Dick. "The old lady was afraid of unprincipled fortune hunters,
and of me, at least, she knew the worst!"
"But the larkspurs said I wouldn't marry you, Captain Dick Stanchon!"
she cried, half laughing, half displeased, for she couldn't bear him to
question what she said.
The Major got up at that and walked away, and I left them, too, as was
quite correct for a promised pair.
It might have been an hour later that I walked to the cedar grove to
find my thimble and saw Miss Lisbet hurrying there ahead of me. I
slackened a bit, and when I caught her up I saw she was talking with
the Major--he must have been waiting there for her. I thought it odd,
but stooped over and looked through the grass, and all of a sudden they
were level with me, the other side the hedge.
"You sent for me?" said she, breathless like.
"Yes. Can you guess why?" said he, and my knees began to shake.
"N-no, Major La Salle," said she, still breathing strangely.
"I sent for you to tell you that the larkspur told you true,
Elizabeth," he said, very deep. "You will never marry Dick Stanchon,
you will marry me."
"Why--why..." she began, and I couldn't move then, try as I might.
"As sure as that little star belongs in the moon's arms, Elizabeth, you
belong in mine!" said he. "Don't you know it?"
"But, Dick," she said, still breathing as I had never heard her.
"Dick is a boy," he said. "You are fit for a man. I loved you when I
first took off my cap before you. But I would never court an heiress.
Could you come to a western army post and live on a Major's pay?"
"It's not me--I could live on nothing, almost--it's how to tell Dick!"
she began, crying and breathing that strange way, both together--and
then I knew it was all over, of course.
"My star!" I heard him say, and I crept away, somehow.
Well, that was all. One week, she was a great heiress and engaged to a
bright young fellow with life opening out before him; the next she was
married to a poor widower, fifteen years her elder, and off to some
place in the western prairies, with only a chest of linen and silver
and some old mahogany and her clothes! It was like a dream. But only
to see her look at him, you'd know she'd met her master. Before, she
hadn't sensed things rightly, she told me.
I was wild to go with her, but no such thing as a maid for his wife,
the Major said, and anyway, mother was near doubled with the rheumatism
and I couldn't be spared. So I kissed her on the station platform and
cried myself blind that night. And Master Dick went off to Germany, to
study, and never a word was mentioned: he held his head high, the
Captain did!
We got news regular from little Essie White, that Miss Lisbet's outworn
dresses used to go to. She used to read an hour a day, did Miss
Lisbet, to Essie's mother, who went blind, and she stocked Essie with
flannels and such, as she grew. I trained her in as kitchen maid when
I was at The Cedars, and when help turned out so poor and scarce in the
West--all ignorant Paddies, as we called them then--she sent to me and
I sped Essie out to her, and a good job, too, for she was in no state
to be worrying out her precious health over dust and dirt and victuals!
Essie wrote us long letters, how Miss Lisbet was the belle of the post
and had a night school for the private soldiers started, with officers'
ladies to teach, and took all the charge of the little hospital. Mrs.
Jarvis sent her rules and saving ways and many clever contrivances from
all her experience in the South, and long after the La Salles left that
post the night school was kept up--and may be now, for aught I know,
for it seemed that all she planted, grew. Balls they gave and private
theatricals and riding parties, and Essie said she was happy as the day
was long, but for that she felt she might have done so much for the
world with Madam's money. She wanted schools in all the army posts and
the negroes taught farming and goodness knows what not, you see.
But when little Louis came there was no time for all that, I promise
you! It broke my heart not to be with her, but mother was failing,
slow but sure, and 'twould have been sin to leave her.
But I heard all his sweet ways and when he was creeping, and how he
called my poor old picture "Dody" (bless him!) and hardly was he ready
for his kilts but his brother was stepping into his shoes! Named for
her father he was, and the image of the first, that was the image of
the Major. She took the care of them mostly, herself, for she didn't
like the rough girls out there, and had only Essie and a woman for
washing, and I didn't need Essie's letters to tell me she was tired and
worn-like. It seemed a poor kind of life for one that had had a half
dozen of servants and gardens and grape houses and her
saddle-horse--but she wouldn't have changed for Windsor Castle, I well
knew.
And next I heard, they were to move, very sudden, and the garden just
planted and all, and worst of all, Essie had lost her heart to a
corporal and was to stay behind. At the time I blamed her sorely and
wrote her a bitter letter, but, dearie me, life is life for all of us,
and Miss Lisbet wasn't her treasure as she was mine. We made it up
later, Essie and me.
My dear wrote me herself, the saddest letter that ever I had from her,
I believe. The old mahogany pieces had been stored, very careful, and
burned in the storage, and the linen was out and the china broken, and
the new baby would find but a poor house, she feared, when they should
be settled. Could I find her one for Essie's place? And oh, if only
she could see my face, for she dreaded her coming trial, with every one
strange!
I was sitting in my new black, when I read the letter, with poor mother
free of her rheumatics at last, and all soft as I was from it, I cried
and cried!
I wrote her that I'd find some one, and then I went to the old doctor
and we talked and twisted it this way and that, and he went up to The
Cedars and called on Madam's heir-at-law, a crabbed old cousin that
lived much to himself and saw only the doctor, and the end of it was
that I was to pick out what I thought Miss Lisbet would like in the
matter of furniture, for he used but a third of the rooms, and what
linen and stuff his housekeeper thought could be spared.
And wasn't I glad to hear that, for well I knew the housekeeper, a good
woman who'd nursed turn about with mother for years, and had seen my
young lady grow up!
Well, if I do say it of myself, I stripped The Cedars thorough! And
yet a stranger would hardly know. It was full, do you see, from many
generations, and overflowing, and I furnished three bedrooms, complete,
from the garrets! Blankets I got, and a trunk of towels, and seven
woven bedspreads, and a dining-table that Miss Lisbet's mother's mother
had eaten a wedding dinner at, and the stuffed macaw on his ebony
perch! Eight dozen dinner napkins that had never seen the laundry, and
carpets that the moths were sure to take if I didn't! And brass
fire-irons and a great chest of books and some heads of statues she'd
always liked, and big engravings of foreign places, broken old ruins
and such. And her nursery fittings, that had never been touched, I
took entire--fire guard and small chairs, Moses in the Bulrushes,
little kneeling Samuel and all! And nearly everything from her lovely
bedroom--chintz valances, and the little South American
dressing-cabinet, and the china-set in a strawed barrel. _I_ knew what
she loved--who better? And the old doctor got the whole car-load
across the country free as air for me, through a gentleman that had
heard how much Miss Lisbet had done in the War, and that as good as
owned the railroad. He had us met with mules, too, at the end of the
horrid, dusty trip; and when me and little Maria Riggs (niece of a tidy
widow-woman Miss Lisbet had had chair-caning taught to, so that she had
no need to come on the town) got to the new home, we found only a
neighbor to give us the keys. The Major was off on army matters for a
week, and she had taken the two boys and gone on a visit to a new
friend she'd made, and left things all hugger-mugger, from despair and
tiredness, poor girl!
I was quite as well pleased, and Maria and I swept and cleaned and
nailed carpets and hung pictures and clear-starched muslin curtains and
filled shelves and drawers, as happy as queens. And round the house I
planted out the five old vines I'd brought all moist and good in an
open basket, from The Cedars, and in the garden that a fine,
fresh-faced soldierman, English as could be, dug and spaded for me,
what did I put in but _larkspur seeds_, amongst the sweet williams and
pansies and mignonette!
Well, she came back, expecting nothing, do you see, and there at the
door was I, in black, with white cuffs and apron, and little Maria
curtseying behind me. And the old claw-leg card-table in the hall and
the glass with the gilt eagle above it.
"Rhoda! _Rhoda!_" she screams, and gives one look at the statues and
pictures and new carpet in the drawing-room and faints on the floor!
And I nearly crazy for being such a fool at such a time!
None the less, the third boy was born in his mother's old four-posted
bed, as beautiful as a king, and her living picture. Stanchon La Salle
he was, for the old doctor, who never bore her a moment's grudge, mind
you, on Master Dick's account.
"He's a fine man, Rhoda, and I doubt if Dick could have managed her
right," was all he ever said to me. "She has a great spirit."
And then the time went by like the water under a bridge. She'd no more
worries about drudging, for Maria and I did all, with the English
soldierman for rough jobs; but she had her hands full with the boys,
for the Major didn't want them sent back to the East to school, and she
had all the teaching and training of them, to say nothing of the care
of them, growing. Nine years we lived there, and then Master Louis was
off to West Point, and in two years more his brother, and one day--it
seemed the next day but two or three!--we were packing Master
Stanchon's trunk to go to Yale College, where his father went! We
rubbed our eyes and sat alone, and there was the macaw she got for her
tenth birthday looking at us! And I do assure you, I felt much the
same as ever. Which I had heard people say, as a girl, and felt to be
unbecoming.
The Colonel was pretty nigh to white hair, but firm and strong, and she
was grey, but not a wrinkle, and very beautiful. He was to leave the
service and had been offered a post in government, somehow, at
Washington, when just as we were beginning to worry if his eyes could
stand the book-work, the lawyer's letter came.
It seemed too good to be true. Old, crabbed Mr. Hawkes was long ago
dead, and The Cedars closed, and his heir, a very curious woman, had
felt that Miss Lisbet was defrauded, and left everything to her in her
will! So we were to go back, and it cleared so many worries that we
cried together.
"And now, Rhoda, now for a chance to do something!" she says, suddenly.
I only stared at her.
"Why, Miss Lisbet, you've been doing since you were born!" I cried.
"Oh, Rhoda, you know!" she says, coaxing, "only for those near me, and
in such a small way! Now the boys are started, and no more worry for
the Colonel, and you and I can do something that will last!"
And laughing like a girl, if she didn't fly out to the garden and find
our frost-bitten, yellow larkspur, the last!
"See!" says she, and began to wave it.
"Oh, don't, don't!" says I, anxious-like, "and you to be a grandmother
next year, maybe!" (for Louis was to be married to a New York young
lady in the winter).
But she would, and when she asked, half laughing, half frightened:
"_Am I to do what I have longed for all my life, at last?_" and
stripped off the rotting blossoms, _yes, no, yes, no_--the last one
fell.
And before ever we reached The Cedars the Colonel had gone blind!
Well, for five years she was never from his side one half hour at a
time. He said he blessed the blindness that gave him her hand at every
moment, and it was a beautiful sight to see them together. Riches
makes such an affliction as light as it can ever be, that's certain,
and he lived in luxury. He held Louis's twin daughters in his arms and
hoped to "see," as he called it, smiling, the next brother's, but it
was not to be.
Dr. Stanchon, as I learned at last to call Master Dick, said that he
couldn't have had a moment's pain, and his own boy, named for the
Colonel, carried him to the grave with our three.
Mrs. Stanchon was a sweet soul, tied to a wheel-chair for life after
five years married, and Miss Lisbet was forever doing things for her
entertainment and to make her forget, like. She never did too much,
but just enough, and didn't stop with grapes and books, as many rich
folk will, you know, but sat with her every other day, at least, with
the Colonel by her side, listening to her bright talk. I doubt the two
of them realized, at those times, how afflicted they were!
She never talked as if he was gone--always as if they'd only parted for
a little. Her hair was soon whiter than his, and she walked and moved
very slow, for her, but the boys seemed to see no difference.
Louis's wife was delicate and came to us, finally, till he should have
an easier post, and the twins were not strong, like our babies. Once
we nearly lost them, and after that Granny Lisbet (as they called her)
never took her eye off them, and pulled them through. It seemed the
village was full of sick children that year, and the mothers were crazy
for her to look at every one.
She was anxious to set up a regular nurse for the district, and gave a
room for that purpose, with a lending closet, and arranged money for
the nurse to be paid for ten years. (They are quite common, now, but
hers was the first in our parts.)
"She's working too hard, Rhoda, my girl," says Dr. Stanchon. "Her
heart's not what she thinks. Keep her quiet, can't you?" But what
could I do?
I nearly cried, last June, when I'd got her out in the garden, that
day, for a bit of quiet, and she began on her plans for the villages to
be taxed for nurses and doctors, to keep off sickness!
"The babies are all well, now," says she, "and Louis comes for his
family to-morrow, and the twins are no trouble. The nurse is all
started in the village and I am going to see the Governor at Albany
next week--I have an appointment. Isn't it strange, Rhoda, that I am
all but fifty, and only ready now to do something with my
opportunities? I've ten good years before me, and the Colonel shall be
proud of me yet!"
I felt so weak and sad all of a sudden--God knows why. She rarely
spoke of him. I held her hand.
"Why, look, Rhoda, there's a stalk of larkspur out!" she said. "Go
pick it for me, will you?"
I started to say no, but then I saw but one bud on it and I thought to
myself, "I'll see her pleased for once, I will!" knowing she'd never
notice, and so brought it. She waved it, blue above her white head
(and me only iron grey to-day!)
"_Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,_
_Or never again I'll trust to you,_"
she mumbled like, and I thought her voice sounded strange and far away,
somehow.
"_Is a change coming at last in my narrow little life?_"
"Oh, hush, Miss Lisbet! you that have been so much to so many!" says I,
sobbing at her dear stupidness, and then she begins, yes--and that was
all.
"Why, Rhoda!" she cries, "at last, at last I've won!" and half rises in
the garden-chair. Then suddenly her hands went to her heart.
"Why, Louis--Louis! My dear!" she said, staring at the cedar hedge.
"_Can you see?_" And fell back.
The change had come, indeed, and I and all that loved her hope that now
she knows what a life like hers meant to those she lived among and
blessed!
THE END