ADAH AT TERRACE HILL
The next morning was cold and frosty, as winter mornings in New England
are wont to be, and Adah, accustomed to the more genial climate of
Kentucky, shivered involuntarily as from her uncurtained window she
looked out upon the bare woods and the frozen fields covered with the
snow of yesterday.
Across the track, near to a dilapidated board fence, a family carriage
was standing, the driver unnecessarily, as it seemed to Adah--holding
the heads of the horses, who neither sheered nor jumped, nor gave other
tokens that they feared the hissing engine. She had not seen that
carriage when it drove up before the door, nor yet the young man who had
alighted from it; but as she stood there, a loud laugh reached her ear,
making her start suddenly, it was so like his--like George's.
"It could not be George," she said; that were impossible, and yet she
crept softly out into the hall, and leaning over the banister, listened
eagerly to the sounds from the room below, where a crowd of men were
assembled.
The laugh was not repeated, and with a dim feeling of disappointment she
went back to the window where on Willie's neck she wept the tears which
always flowed when she thought of George's desertion. There was a knock
at the door, and the baggageman appeared.
"If you please, ma'am," he began, "the Terrace Hill carriage is here. I
told the driver how't you wanted to go there. Shall I give him your
trunk?"
Adah answered in the affirmative, and then hastened to wrap up Willie,
glancing again at the carriage, which, now that it was associated with
the gentle Anna, looked far better to her than it had at first. She was
ready in a moment and descended to the room where Jim, the driver, stood
waiting for her.
"A lady," was his mental comment, and with as much politeness as if she
had been Madam Richards herself, he opened the carriage door and held
Willie while she entered, asking if she were comfortable, and peering a
little curiously in Willie's face, which puzzled him somewhat. "A near
connection, I guess, and mighty pretty too. Them old maids will raise
hob with the boy,--nice little shaver," thought the kind-hearted Jim.
Once, as Adah caught his good-humored eye, she ventured to say to him:
"Has Miss Anna procured a waiting maid yet?"
There was a comical gleam in Jim's eye now, for Adah was not the first
applicant he had taken up to Terrace Hill. He never suspected that this
was Adah's business, and he answered frankly:
"No, that's about played out. Madam turned the last one out doors."
"Turned her out doors?" and Adah's face was as white as the snow rifts
they were passing.
The driver felt that he had gossiped too much, and relapsed into
silence, while Adah, in a paroxysm of terror, sat with clasped hands and
closed eyes. Leaning forward, at last she said, huskily:
"Driver, driver, do you think she'll turn me off, too?"
"Turn you off!" and in his surprise at the sudden suspicion which for
the first time darted across his mind, Jim brought his horses to a full
stop, while he held a parley with the pale, frightened creature, asking
so eagerly if Mrs. Richards would turn her off. "Why should she? You
ain't going there for that, be you?"
"Not to be turned out of doors, no," Adah answered; "but I--I--I want
that place so much. I read Miss Anna's advertisement; but please turn
back, or let me get out and walk. I can't go there now. Is Miss Anna
like the rest?"
"Miss Anna's an angel," he answered. "If you get her ear, you're all
right; the plague is to get it with them two she-cats ready to tear your
eyes out. If I'se you, I'd ask to see her. I wouldn't tell my arrent
either, till I did. She's sick upstairs; but I'll see if Pamely can't
manage it. That's my woman--Pamely; been mine for four years, and we've
had two pair of twins, all dead; so I feel tender toward the little
ones," and Jim glanced kindly at Willie, who had succeeded in making
Adah notice the house standing out so prominently against the winter
sky, and looking to the poor woman-girl more like a prison than a home.
It might be pleasant there in the summer, Adah thought; but now, with
snow on the roof, snow on the walk, snow on the trees, snow everywhere,
it presented a cheerless aspect. Only one part of it seemed
inviting--the two crimson-curtained windows opening upon a veranda, from
which a flight of steps led down into what must be a flower garden.
"Miss Anna's room," the driver said, pointing toward it; and Adah looked
wistfully out, vainly hoping for a glimpse of the sweet face she had in
her mind as Anna's.
But only Asenath's grim, angular visage was seen, as it looked from
Anna's window, wondering whom Jim could be bringing home.
"It's a handsome trunk--covered, too. Can it be Lottie?" and mentally
hoping it was not, she busied herself again with bathing poor Anna's
head, which was aching sadly to-day, owing to the excitement of her
brother's visit and the harsh words which passed between him and his
sisters, he telling them, jokingly at first, that he was tired of
getting married, and half resolved to give it up; while they, in return,
had abused him for fickleness, taunted him with their poverty, and
sharply reproached him for his unwillingness to lighten their burden, by
taking a rich wife when he could get one.
All this John had repeated to Anna in the dim twilight of the morning,
as he stood by her bedside to bid her good-by; and she, as usual, had
soothed him into quiet, speaking kindly of his bride-elect, and saying
she should like her.
He had not told her all of Lily's story, as he meant to do. There was no
necessity for that, for the matter was fixed. 'Lina should be his wife,
and he need not trouble Anna further; so he had bidden her adieu, and
was gone again, the carriage which bore him away bringing back Adah and
her boy.
Jim opened the wide door for her, and showing her first into the parlor,
but finding that dark and cold, he ushered her next into a little
reception-room, where the Misses Richards received their morning calls.
Willie seemed perfectly at home, seating himself upon a little stool,
covered with some of Miss Eudora's choicest worsted embroidery, a piece
of work of which she was very proud, never allowing anything to touch
it lest the roses should be jammed, or the raised leaves defaced. But
Willie cared neither for leaves, nor roses, nor yet for Miss Eudora, and
drawing the stool to his mother's side, he sat kicking his little heels
into a worn place of the carpet, which no child had kicked since the
doctor's days of babyhood. The tender threads were fast giving way to
the vigorous strokes, when two doors opposite each other opened
simultaneously, and both Mrs. Richards and Eudora appeared.
"Are you--ah, yes--you are the lady who Jim said wished to see me," Mrs.
Richards began, bowing politely to Adah, who had not yet dared to look
up, and who when at last she did raise her eyes, withdrew them at once,
more abashed, more frightened, more bewildered than ever, for the face
she saw fully warranted her ideas of a woman who could turn a waiting
maid from her door just because she was a waiting maid.
Something seemed choking Adah and preventing her utterance, for she did
not speak until Mrs. Richards said again, this time with a little less
suavity and a little more hauteur of manner, "Have I had the honor of
meeting you before?"--then with a low gasp, a mental petition for help,
Adah rose up and lifting to Mrs. Richards' cold, haughty face, her soft,
brown eyes, where tears were almost visible, answered faintly: "We have
not met before. Excuse me, madam, but my business is with Miss Anna, can
I see her please?"
There was something supplicating in the tone with which Adah made this
request, and it struck Mrs. Richards unpleasantly. She answered
haughtily, though still politely, "My daughter is sick. She does not see
visitors. It will be impossible to admit you to her chamber, but I will
take your name and your errand."
Adah felt as if she should sink beneath the cold, cruel scrutiny to
which she knew she was subjected by the woman on her right and the woman
on her left. Too much confused to remember anything distinctly, Adah
forgot Jim's injunction; forgot that Pamelia was to arrange it somehow;
forgot everything, except that Mrs. Richards was waiting for her to
speak. An ominous cough from Eudora decided her, and then it came out,
her reason for being there. She had seen Miss Anna's advertisement, she
wanted a place, and she had come so far to get it; had left a happy home
that she might not be dependent but earn, her bread for herself and her
little boy, for Willie. Would they take her message to Anna? Would they
let her stay?
"You say you left a happy home," and the thin, sneering lips of Eudora
were pressed so tightly together that the words could scarcely find
egress. "May I ask, if it was so happy, why you left it?"
There was a flush on Adah's cheek as she replied, "Because it was a home
granted at first from charity. It was not mine. The people were poor,
and I would not longer be a burden to them."
"And your husband--where is he?"
This was the hardest question of all, and Adah's distress was visible as
she replied, "I will be frank with you. Willie's father left me, and I
don't know where he is."
An incredulous, provoking smile flitted over Eudora's face as she
returned, "We hardly care to have a deserted wife in our family--it
might be unpleasant."
"Yes," and the old lady took up the argument, "Anna is well enough
without a maid. I don't know why she put that foolish advertisement in
the paper, in answer, I believe, to one equally foolish which she saw
about 'an unfortunate woman with a child.'"
"I am that woman. I wrote that advertisement when my heart was heavier
than it is now, and God took care of it. He pointed it out to Miss Anna.
He caused her to answer it. He sent me here, and you will let me see
her. Think if it were your own daughter, pleading thus with some one."
"That is impossible. Neither my daughter, nor my daughter-in-law, if I
had one, could ever come to a servant's position," Mrs. Richards
replied, not harshly, for there was something in Adah's manner and in
Adah's eyes which rode down her resentful pride; and she might have
yielded, but for Eudora, whose hands had so ached to shake the little
child, now innocently picking at a bud.
How she did long to box his ears, and while her mother talked, she had
taken a step forward more than once, but stopped as often, held in check
by the little face and soft blue eyes, turned so trustingly upon her,
the pretty lips once actually putting themselves toward her, as if
expecting a kiss. Frosty old maid as she was, Eudora could not harm that
child sitting on her embroidery as coolly as if he had a right; but she
could prevent her mother from granting the stranger's request; so when
she saw signs of yielding, she said, decidedly, "She cannot see Anna,
mother. You know how foolish she is, and there's no telling what fancy
she might take."
"Eudora," said Mrs. Richards in a low tone, "it might be well for Anna
to have a maid, and this one is certainly different from the others who
have applied."
"But the child. We can't be bothered with a child. Evidently he is not
governed at all, and brother's wife coming by and by."
This last caught Adah's ear and changed the whole current of her
thoughts and wishes. Greatly to Mrs. Richards' surprise, she said
abruptly, "If I cannot see Miss Anna, I need not trouble you longer.
When does the next train go west?"
Adah's voice never faltered, though her heart seemed bursting from her
throat, for she had not the most remote idea as to where the next train
going west would take her. She had reached a point when she no longer
thought or reasoned; she would leave Terrace Hill; that was all she
knew, except that in her mind there was a vague fancy or hope that she
might meet Irving Stanley again. Not George, she did not even think of
him, as she stood before Dr. Richards' mother, who looked at her in
surprise, marveling that she had given up so quietly what she had
apparently so much desired.
Very civilly she told her when the next train went west, and then added
kindly, "You cannot walk. You must stay here till car-time, when Jim
will carry you back."
At this unexpected kindness Adah's calmness gave way, and sitting down
by the table, she laid her face upon it and sobbed almost convulsively.
"Mamma tie, mam-ma tie," and he pulled Mrs. Richards' skirts vigorously
indicating that she must do something for mamma.
Just then the doorbell rang. It was the doctor, come to visit Anna, and
both Mrs. Richards and Eudora left the room at once.
"Oh, why did I come here, and where shall I go?" Adah moaned, as a sense
of her lonely condition came over her.
"Will my Father in heaven direct me? will He tell me what to do?" she
murmured brokenly, praying softly to herself that a way might be opened
for her, a path which she could tread.
She could not tell how it was, but a quiet peace stole over her, a
feeling which had no thought or care for the future, and it had been
many nights since she had slept as sweetly or soundly as she did for
one half hour with her head upon the table in that little room at
Terrace Hill, Dr. Richards' home and Anna's. She did not see the
good-humored face which looked in at her a moment, nor hear the
whispering in the hall; neither did she know when Willie, nothing loath,
was coaxed from the room and carried up the stairs into the upper hall,
where he was purposely left to himself, while Pamelia, the mother of
Jim's two pairs of twins, went to Anna's room, where she was to sit for
an hour or so, while the ladies had their lunch. Anna's head was better;
the paroxysms of pain were leas frequent than in the morning, and she
lay upon her pillow, her eyes closed wearily, and her thoughts with
Charlie Millbrook. Why had he never written?--why never come to see her?
So intently was she thinking of Charlie that she did not hear the patter
of little feet in the hall without. Tired of staying by himself, and
spying the open door, Willie hastened toward it, pausing a moment on the
threshold as if to reconnoiter. Something in Anna's attitude, as she lay
with her long hair falling over the pillow, must have reminded him of
Alice, for, with a cry of delight, he ran forward, and patting the white
cheek with his soft baby hand, lisped out the word "Arn-tee, arn-tee,"
making Anna start suddenly and gaze at him in wondering surprise.
"Who is he?" she said, drawing him to her at once and pressing a kiss
upon his rosy face.
Pamelia told her what she knew of the stranger waiting in the
reception-room, adding in conclusion: "I believe they said you did not
want her, and Jim is to take her to the depot when it's time. She's very
young and pretty, and looks so sorry, Jim told me."
"Said I did not want her! How did they know?" and something of the
Richards' spirit flashed from Anna's eyes. "The child is so beautiful,
and he called me 'Auntie,' too! He must have an auntie somewhere. Little
dear! how she must love him! Lift him up, Pamelia."
"I must see his mother," Anna said. "She must be above the ordinary
waiting maids. Perhaps I should like her. At all events I will hear what
she has to say. Show her up, Pamelia; but first smooth my hair a little
and arrange my pillows."
Pamelia complied with her request; then leaving Willie with Anna, she
repaired to the reception-room, and arousing the sleeping Adah, said to
her hurriedly:
"Please, miss, come quick; Miss Anna wants to see you. The little boy is
up there with her."