FORESHADOWINGS
So absorbed were Hugh and his mother in that letter as not to hear the
howl of fear echoing through the hall, as Mug fled in terror from the
dreaded new owner to whom Master Hugh was to sell her. Neither did they
hear the catlike tread with which Lulu glided past the door, taking the
same direction Mug had gone, namely, to Alice Johnson's room.
Lulu had been sitting by the open window at the end of the hall, and had
heard every word of this letter, while Mug had reached the threshold in
time to hear all that was said about selling her. Instinctively both
turned for protection to Alice, but Mug was the first to reach her.
Throwing herself upon her knees, she sobbed frantically.
"You buys me, Miss Alice. You give Mar's Hugh six hundred dollars for
me, so't he can get Miss 'Lina's weddin' finery. I'll be good, I will.
I'll learn do Lord's Prar, an' de Possums Creed, ebery word on't; will
you, Miss Alice, say?"
Alice tried to wrest her muslin dress from the child's grasp, asking
what she meant.
"I know, I'll tell," and Lulu, scarcely less excited, but far more
capable of restraining herself, advanced into the room, and ere the
bewildered Alice could well understand what it all meant, or make more
than a feeble attempt to stop her, she had repeated rapidly the entire
contents of 'Lina's letter.
Too much amazed at first to speak, Alice sat motionless, then she said
to Lulu.
"I am sorry that you told me this. It was wrong in you to listen, and
you must not repeat it to any one else. Will you promise?"
Lulu gave the required promise, then with terror in every lineament of
her face she said:
"But, Miss Alice, must I be Miss 'Lina's waiting maid? Will Master Hugh
permit it?"
Alice did not know Hugh as well as we do, and in her heart there was a
fear lest for the sake of peace he might be overruled, so she replied
evasively. It was no easy task to sooth Muggins, and only Alice's direct
avowal, that if possible she would herself become her purchaser, checked
her cries at all, but the moment this was said her sobbing ceased, and
Alice was able to question Lulu as to whether Hugh had read the letter.
"He must be rational," she said, "but it is so sudden," and a painful
uneasiness crept over her as she recalled the look which several times
had puzzled her so much.
"You can go now," Alice said, sitting down to reflect as to her next
best course.
Adah must go to Terrace Hill at once, and Alice's must be the purse
which defrayed all the expense of fitting her up. If ever Alice felt
thankful to God for having made her rich in this world's goods, it was
that morning. Only the previous night she had heard from Colonel Tiffton
that the day was fixed for the sale of his house and that Nell had
nearly cried herself into a second fever at the thoughts of leaving
Mosside. "Then there's Rocket," the colonel had said, "Hugh cannot buy
him back, and he's so bound up in him too, poor Hugh, poor all of us,"
and the colonel had wrung Alice's hand, hurrying off ere she had time to
suggest what all along had been in her mind.
"It does not matter," she thought. "A surprise will be quite as
pleasant, and then Mr. Liston may object to it as a silly girl's fancy."
This was the previous night, and now this morning another demand had
come in the shape of Muggins weeping in her lap, of Lulu begging to be
saved from 'Lina Worthington, and from 'Lina herself asking Hugh for the
money Alice knew he had not got.
"But I have," she whispered, "and I will send it too."
Just then Adah came up the stairs, and Alice called her in, asking if
she still wished to go to Terrace Hill.
"Yes, more than ever," Adah replied. "Hugh is rational, I hear, so I can
talk to him about it before long. You must be present, as I'm sure he
will oppose it."
Meantime in the sickroom there was an anxious consultation between
mother and son touching the fifty dollars which must be raised for
Nellie Tiffton's sake.
"Were it not that I feel bound by honor to pay that debt, 'Lina might
die before I'd send her a cent," said Hugh, his eyes blazing with anger
as he recalled the contents of 'Lina's letter.
But how should they raise the fifty? Alice's bills had been paid
regularly thus far, paid so delicately too, so as a matter of right,
that Mrs. Worthington, who knew how sadly it was needed in their present
distress, had accepted it unhesitatingly, but Hugh's face flushed with a
glow of shame when he heard from his mother's lips that Alice was really
paying them her board.
"It makes me hate myself," he said, groaning aloud, "that I should
suffer a girl like her to pay for the bread she eats. Oh, poverty,
poverty! It is a bitter drug to swallow." Then like a brave man who saw
the evil and was willing to face it, Hugh came back to the original
point, "Where should they get the money?"
"He might borrow it of Alice, as 'Lina suggested," Mrs. Worthington
said, timidly, while Hugh almost leaped upon the floor.
"Never, mother, never! Miss Johnson shall not be made to pay our debts.
There's Uncle John's gold watch, left as a kind of heirloom, and very
dear on that account. I've carried it long, but now it must go. There's
a pawnbroker's office opened in Frankfort--take it there this very
afternoon, and get for it what you can. I never shall redeem it. There's
no hope. It was in my vest pocket when I was taken sick."
"No, Hugh, not that. I know how much you prize it, and it's all the
valuable thing you have. I'll take in washing first," Mrs. Worthington
said.
But Hugh was in earnest, and his mother brought the watch from the nail
over the mantel, where, all through his sickness it had ticked away the
weary hours, just as it ticked the night its first owner died, with only
Hugh sitting near, and listening as it told the fleeting moments.
"If I could only ask Alice what it was worth," she thought--and why
couldn't she? Yes, she would ask Alice, and with the old hope strong at
her heart, she went to Alice, whom she found alone.
"Did you wish to tell me anything? Hugh is better, I hear," Alice said,
observing Mrs. Worthington's agitation, and then the whole came out.
"'Lina must have fifty dollars. The necessity was imperative, and they
had not fifty to send unless Hugh sold his uncle's watch, but she did
not know what it was worth--could Alice tell her?"
"Worth more than you will get," Alice said, and then, as delicately as
possible she offered the money from her own purse, advancing so many
reasons why they should take it, that poor Mrs. Worthington began to
feel that in accepting it, she would do Alice a favor.
"She was willing," she stammered, "but there was Hugh--what could they
do with him?"
"I'll manage that," Alice said, laughingly. "I'll engage that he eats
neither of us up. Suppose you write to 'Lina now, saying that Hugh is
better, and inclosing the money. I have some New York money still," and
she counted out, not fifty, but seventy-five dollars, thinking within
herself, "she may need it more than I do."
Easily swayed, Mrs. Worthington took the pen which Alice offered, but
quickly put it from her, saying, with a little rational indignation, as
she remembered 'Lina's heartlessness:
"I won't write her a word. She don't deserve it. Inclose the amount, and
direct it, please."
Placing the money in an envelope, Alice directed it as she was bidden,
without one word of Hugh, and without the slightest congratulation
concerning the engagement; nothing but the money, which was to replace
Ellen Tiffton's bracelet.
Claib was deputed as messenger to take it to the office, together with a
hastily-written note to Mr. Liston, and then Alice sat down to consider
the best means of breaking it to Hugh. Would he prove as gentle as when
delirium was upon him; or would he be greatly changed? And what would he
think of her? Alice would not have confessed it, but this really was the
most important query of all.
Alice was not well pleased with her looks that morning. She was too
pale, too languid, and the black dress she wore only increased the
difficulty by adding to the marble hue of her complexion. Even her hair
did not curl as well as usual, though Mug, who had dried her tears and
come back to Alice's room, admired her so much, likening her to the
apple blossoms which grew in the lower orchard.
"Is you gwine to Mas'r Hugh?" she asked, as Alice passed out into the
hall. "I'se jest been dar. He's peart as a new dollar--knows everybody.
How long sense, you 'spec'?" and Mug looked very wise, as she thus
skirted around what she was forbidden to divulge on pain of Hugh's
displeasure.
But Alice had no suspicions, and bidding Mug go down, she entered Hugh's
presence with a feeling that it was to all intents and purposes their
first meeting with each other.