TERRACE HILL.
The storm which visited Kentucky so wrathfully was far milder among the
New England hills, and in the vicinity of Snowdon, whither our story now
tends, was scarcely noticed, save as an ordinary winter’s storm. There
were no drifts against the fences, no driving sleet, no sheets of ice
covering the valleys, nothing save a dark, sour, dreary day, when the
grey December clouds seemed wading in the piles of snow, which, as the
sun went down, began to fall in those small misty flakes, which betoken
a storm of some duration. As yet it had been comparatively warmer in New
England than in Kentucky; and Miss Anna Richards, confirmed invalid
though she was, had decided not to take her usual trip to the South, so
comfortable was she at home, in her accustomed chair, with her pretty
crimson shawl wrapped around her. Besides that, they were expecting her
brother John from Paris, where he had been for the last eighteen months,
pursuing his medical profession, and she must be there to welcome him.
Anna was proud of her young, handsome brother, for on him and his
success in life, all their future hopes were pending.
_All_ were proud of John, and all had petted and spoiled him, from his
precise lady mother, down to invalid Anna, who, more than any one else,
was anxious for his return, and who had entered, with a good deal of
interest into the preparations which, for a week or more, had kept
Terrace Hill Mansion in a state of bustle and excitement, for John was
so refined and fastidious in his tastes, that he was sure to notice if
aught were amiss or out of place. Consequently great pains was taken
with his room, while Anna, who had a private purse of her own, went into
the extravagance of furnishing a new carpet of more modern style than
the heavy, old-fashioned Brussels, which for years, had covered the
floor.
John had never been very happy at home—and hence the efforts they were
putting forth to make it attractive to him after his long absence. He
could not help liking it now, the ladies said to each other, as, a few
days before his arrival, they rode from the village, up the winding
terraced hill, admiring the huge stone building embosomed in evergreens,
and standing out so distinctly against the wintry sky. And Terrace Hill
Mansion was a very handsome place, exciting the envy and admiration of
the villagers, who could remember a time when it had looked better even
than it did now—when the house was oftener full of city company, when
high-born ladies rode up and down in carriages, or dashed on horseback
through the park and off into leafy woods—when sounds of festivity were
heard in the halls from year’s end to year’s end, and the lights in the
parlors were rarely extinguished, or the fires on the hearth put out.
This was during the lifetime of its former owner, whose covering had
been the tall green grass of Snowdon cemetery for several years. With
his death there had come a change to the inhabitants of Terrace Hill, a
curtailing of expenses, a gradual dropping of the swarms of friends who
had literally fed upon them during the summer and autumn months. In
short it was whispered now that the ladies of Terrace Hill were
restricted in their means, that there was less display of dress and
style, fewer fires, and lights, and servants, and an apparent desire to
be left to themselves.
This was what the village people whispered, and none knew the truth of
the whisperings better than the ladies in question, or shrank more from
having their affairs canvassed by those whom they looked down upon, even
if the glory of their house was departed. Mrs. Richards and her elder
daughters, Miss Asenath and Eudora, were very proud, very exclusive, and
but for the existence of Anna, few of the villagers would ever have
crossed their threshold. Anna was a favorite in the village, and when
confined to her room for weeks, as she sometimes was, there were more
anxious enquiries concerning her than would have been bestowed on
Asenath and Eudora had they both been dying. And yet in her early
girlhood she too had been cold and haughty, but since the morning when
she had knelt at her father’s feet, and begged him to revoke his cruel
decision, and say she might be the bride of a poor missionary, Anna had
greatly changed, and the father had sometimes questioned the propriety
of separating the hearts which clung so tenaciously together. But it was
then too late to remedy the mistake. The young missionary had married
another, and neither the parents nor the sisters ever forgot the look of
anguish which stole into Anna’s face, when she heard the news. She had
told him to do so, it is true, for she knew a missionary to be strictly
useful must have a wife. She had thought herself prepared, but the news
was just as crushing when it came, accompanied though it was with a few
last lines from _him_, such as a husband might write to the woman he had
loved so much, and only given up because he must. Anna kept this letter
yet, reading it often to herself, and wondering, if through all the
changes which fourteen years had wrought, the missionary remembered her
yet, and if they would ever meet again. This was the secret of the
numerous missionary papers and magazines scattered so profusely through
the rooms at Terrace Hill. Anna was interested in everything pertaining
to the work, though, it must be confessed, that her mind wandered
oftenest to the city of mosques and minarets, where _he_ was laboring;
and once, when she heard of a little grave made with the Moslem dead,
the grave of darling Anna, named for her, she wept bitterly, feeling as
if she, too, had been bereaved as well as the parents, across the
Eastern waters. This was sweet Anna Richards, who, on the day of her
brother’s expected arrival from Paris, dressed herself with unusual care
and joined her mother and elder sisters in the parlor below. It was a
raw, chilly evening, and a coal fire had been kindled in the grate, the
bright blaze falling on Anna’s cheek, and lighting it up with something
like the youthful bloom for which she had once been celebrated. The
harsh expression of Miss Asenath’s face was softened down, while the
mother and Eudora looked anxiously expectant, and Anna was the happiest
of them all. Taken as a whole it was a very pleasant family group, which
sat there waiting for the foreign lion, and for the whistle of the
engine which was to herald his approach.
“I wonder if he has changed,” said the mother, glancing at the opposite
mirror and arranging the puffs of glossy false hair which shaded her
aristocratic forehead.
“Of course he has,” returned Miss Asenath. “Nearly two years of Paris
society must have imparted to him that _air distingue_ so desirable in a
young man who has travelled.”
“He’ll hardly fail of making a good match now,” Miss Eudora remarked. “I
think we must manage to visit Saratoga or some of those places next
summer. Mr. Gardner found his wife at Newport, and they say she’s worth
half a million.”
“But horridly ugly,” and Anna looked up from the reverie in which she
had been indulging. “Lottie says she has tow hair and a face like a
fish. John would never be happy with such a wife.”
“Possibly you think he had better have married that sewing girl about
whom he wrote us just before going to Europe,” Miss Eudora suggested.
“No, I don’t,” Anna answered, mildly. “I am almost as anxious as
yourselves for him to marry rich, for I know you need money sadly, and
my income is not so large as for your sakes I wish it was, but poverty
and love are better than riches and hatred, and I have always felt a
strange interest in that young girl, whom I know John loved, or he would
never have written to see how we would bear his taking a portionless
bride.”
“I told him plainly how _I_ would bear it. She should never cross _my_
threshold,” and the face of Mrs. Richards, the mother, was highly
indicative of the feeling she entertained for the young, penniless girl,
whom it would seem John Richards M. D., had thought to marry.
“I trust he is over that fancy,” she continued, “and ready to thank me
for the strong letter I wrote him.”
“Yes, but the girl,” and Anna leaned her white cheek in her whiter hand.
“None of us know the harm his leaving her may have done. Don’t you
remember he wrote how much she loved him—how gentle and confiding her
nature was, how to leave her then might prove her ruin?”
“Our little Anna is growing very eloquent upon the subject of sewing
girls,” Miss Asenath said, rather scornfully, and Anna rejoined,
“I am not sure she was a sewing girl. He spoke of her as a school girl.”
“But it is most likely he did that to mislead us,” said the mother. “The
only boarding school he knows anything about is the one where Lottie
was. He often visited her, but I’ve questioned her closely, and she
cannot think of a single young lady whom he fancied more than another.
All were in love with him, she said, herself included. If he were not
her uncle by marriage I should not object to Lottie as a daughter,” was
the next remark, whereupon there ensued a conversation touching the
merits and demerits of a certain Lottie Gardner, whose father had taken
for a second wife Miss Laura Richards.
During this discussion of Lottie, Anna had sat listlessly looking up and
down the columns of an old Herald which Dick, Eudora’s pet dog, had
ferreted out from the table and deposited at her feet. She evidently was
not thinking of Lottie, nor yet of the advertisements, until one struck
her notice as being very singular from the fact that a name was appended
to it, a thing she had never seen before. Holding it a little more to
the light and bending forward she said, “Possibly this is the very
person I want—one who will be either a companion or a waiting-maid, only
the child might be an objection, though I do love the little things.
Just listen,” and Anna read as follows:
“WANTED—by an unfortunate young married woman, with a child a few
months old, a situation in a private family either as governess,
seamstress, or lady’s maid. Country preferred. Address ——”
Anna was about to say whom, when a violent ringing of the bell and a
heavy stamping of feet on the steps with out announced an arrival, and
the next moment a tall, handsome young man, exceedingly Frenchified in
his appearance, entered the room, and was soon in the arms of his
mother, who, kissing his bearded cheek, welcomed him as her son.
John, or Dr. Richards, did not care particularly to be caressed by
ladies unless he could choose them, and releasing himself as soon as
practicable from his lady mother’s embrace, he submitted himself a
moment to his two elder sisters, and then, hastening to where Anna sat,
wound his arms around her light figure, and lifting her as he would have
lifted a little child, kissed her white lips and looked into her face
with an expression which told that, however indifferent he might be to
others, he was not so to Anna.
“You have not changed for the worse,” he said, replacing her in her
chair and sitting down beside her.
“And you are vastly improved,” was Anna’s answer, as she smoothed
playfully the Parisian mustache, her brother’s special pride.
Then commenced from mother and sisters a volley of questions. Had he
been well? Did he like Paris? Was he glad to be home again? And why had
he gone off without coming out to say good-bye?
This last was put by his mother, who continued, “I thought, perhaps, you
were offended at my plain letter concerning that girl, and resented it
by not coming, but of course you are glad now, and see that mother was
right. What could you have done with a wife in Paris?”
“I should not have gone,” John answered, moodily, a shadow stealing over
his face.
It was not good taste for Mrs. Richards thus early to introduce a topic
on which John was really so sore, and for a moment an awkward silence
ensued, broken at last by the mother again, who, feeling that all was
not right, and anxious to know if there was yet aught to fear from a
poor, unknown daughter-in-law, asked, hesitatingly,
“Have you seen her since your return?”
She is _dead_ was the reply, and then anxious to change the
conversation, the Doctor began talking to Anna until the supper bell
rang, and his mother led the way to the dining room where a most
inviting supper was prepared in honor of _the Doctor’s_ return. How
handsome he looked in his father’s place at the head of the table. How
gracefully he did the honors, and how proud all were of him as he
repeated little incidents of Parisian life, speaking of the Emperor and
Eugenie as if they had been every day sights to him. In figure and form
the fair Empress reminded him of Anna, he said, except that Anna was the
prettier of the two—a compliment which Anna acknowledged with a blush
and a trembling of her long eyelashes. It was a very pleasant family
reunion, for John did his best to be agreeable, and by the time they
returned to the parlor his mother had quite forgiven him the flagrant
act of loving an unknown girl.
“Oh, John, please be careful where you tear that paper. There’s an
advertisement I want to save,” Anna exclaimed, as she saw her brother
tearing a strip from the Herald with which to light his cigar, but as
she spoke, the smoke and flame curled around the narrow strip, and Dr.
Richards had lighted his cigar with the name and address appended to the
advertisement which had so interested Anna.
How disturbed she was when she found that nought was left save the
simple wants of the young girl who, with a breaking heart had penned the
lines, and who now lay so still beneath a Kentucky rift of snow!
“Let’s see,” and taking the mutilated sheet, Dr. Richards read the
“Wanted, by a young unfortunate married woman.”
“That unfortunate may mean a great deal more than you imagine,” he said,
in order to quiet his sister, who quickly rejoined,
“Yes, but she distinctly says married. Don’t you see, and I had really
some idea of writing to her, or at least I think I had, now that ’tis
too late.”
“I’m sorry I was so careless, but there are a thousand unfortunate women
who would gladly be your maid, little sister. I’ll send you out a score,
if you say so, either with or without babies,” and John laughed, as with
the utmost nonchalance he smoked the cigar lighted with the name of
_Adah Hastings_!
“Has any thing of importance occurred in this slow old town?” he
inquired, after Anna had become reconciled to her loss. “Has there been
any desirable addition to Snowdon society?”
“Yes,” returned Anna. “A Mrs. Johnson, who is every way cultivated and
refined, while Alice is the sweetest girl I ever knew. You have a rare
pleasure in store in forming their acquaintance.
“Whose, the old or the young lady’s?” John asked, carelessly knocking
the ashes from the end of his cigar.
“Both,” was Anna’s reply. “The mother is very youthful in her
appearance. Why, she scarcely looks older than I do, and I, you know, am
thirty-two.”
As if fearful lest her own age should come next under consideration,
Miss Eudora hastened to say,
“Yes, Mrs. Johnson does look very young, and Alice seems like a child,
though I heard her say she was almost twenty. Such beautiful hair as she
has. It used to be a bright yellow, or golden, so the old nurse says,
but now it has a darker, richer shade, midway between golden and
chestnut, while her eyes are the softest, handsomest blue.”
Alice Johnson was evidently a favorite at Terrace Hill, and as this
stamped her somebody John began to ask who the Johnsons were, and where
they came from.
Mrs. Richard seemed disposed to answer these questions, which she did as
follows:
“Mrs. Johnson used to live in Boston, and her husband was grandson of
old Governor Johnson, one of the best families in that State.”
“Ah, yes,” and John began to laugh. “I see now what gives Miss Alice’s
hair that peculiar shade, and her eyes that heavenly blue, over which my
staid sister Dora waxed so eloquent. Miss Alice is an ex-Governor’s
great grand daughter—but go on, mother, only come to Alice herself and
give her _figure_ as soon as may be.”
“What do you mean?” asked Anna, who took things literally. “I should
suppose you’d care more for her face than her form.”
John smiled mischievously, while his mother continued.
“I fancy that Mrs. Johnson’s family met with a reverse of fortune before
her marriage, but know nothing certainly except that she was greatly
beloved in Boston. Her husband has been dead some years, and recently
she has bought and fitted up that pretty cottage down by the river. I do
not see her as often as I would like to, for I am greatly pleased with
her, although she has some habits of which I cannot approve, such as
associating with the poor of the town to the extent she does. Why, I
hear that Alice had a party the other day consisting wholly of ragged
urchins.”
“They were her Sunday school scholars,” interposed Anna. “Alice has
picked up a large class of children, who before her coming, used to run
the streets on Sundays breaking up birds’ nests and pilfering gardens. I
am sure we ought to be much obliged to her, for our fruit and flowers
are now comparatively safe.”
“I vote that Anna goes on with Alice’s history. She gives it best,” said
John, and so Anna continued,
“There is but little to tell. Mrs. Johnson and her daughter are both
nice ladies, and I am sure you will like them—every body does; and rumor
has already given Alice to our young clergyman, Mr. Howard.”
“And she is worth fifty thousand dollars, too,” rejoined Asenath, as if
that were a powerful reason why a poor clergyman should not aspire to
her hand.
“I have her _figure_ at last,” said John, winking slily at Anna, who
only looked bewildered. And, the $50,000 did seem to make an impression
on the young man, who made numerous inquiries concerning the heiress,
asking how often she came to Terrace Hill, and where he would be most
likely to see her.
“At church,” was Anna’s reply. “She is always there and their pew joins
ours.”
Dr. Richards did not much like going to church, unless it were where the
music was grand and operatic. Still he had intended honoring the
benighted Snowdonites with a sight of himself for one half day, though
he knew he should be terribly bored; but now the case was different, for
besides being, to a certain extent, a kind of _lion_, he should see Miss
Alice, and he reflected with considerable satisfaction that as this was
Friday night, only one day intervened ere his curiosity and that of the
villagers would be gratified. He was glad there was something new and
interesting in Snowdon in the shape of a pretty girl, for he did not
care to return at once to New York, where he had intended practising his
profession. There were too many sad memories clustering about that city
to make it altogether desirable, but Dr. Richards was not yet a hardened
wretch, and thoughts of another than Alice Johnson, crowded upon his
mind as on that first evening of his return, he sat answering questions
and asking others of his own.
It was late ere the family group broke up, and the storm beating so
furiously upon Spring Bank, was just making its voice heard round
Terrace Hill Mansion, when the doctor took the lamp the servant brought,
and bidding his mother and sisters good night, ascended the stairs
whither Anna, who kept early hours, had gone before him. She was not,
however, in bed, and when she heard his step passing her door she called
softly to him,
“John, brother John, come in a moment, please.”