THE OLD HOMESTEAD.
'Twas a picturesque old homestead,
With a low moss-covered roof;
And trumpet vines flung over it
Their green and crimson woof.
The house at which Judge Sharp stopped was long, low, and terribly
weather-beaten. Once a coating of red paint had ornamented it, but
time had beaten this off in some places, and washed it together in
others, till the color was now a dull brown, with patches of red here
and there, visible beneath the eaves and around the windows. The
highway separated this dwelling from the river, which took a bold,
graceful curve just below the house; leaving a broad expanse of
meadow-land and some fine clumps of trees in full view on the opposite
shore.
Directly in front, ran a picket-fence, old, uneven and dilapidated,
but in picturesque keeping with the building. The gate hung loosely on
its hinges, just opposite an old-fashioned porch, that shot over the
front door, much after the fashion of that hideous thing called a
poke, with which English women disfigure their pretty travelling
bonnets and protect themselves from the sun.
An immense trumpet-flower overran this porch, whose antique
massiveness harmonized with the building, for the straggling branches
shot out in all directions, and its coarse blossoms, then in season,
seemed to have drank up all the red paint as it vanished from the
clapboards. Long, uncut grass, set thick with dandelions, filled the
narrow strip between the front fence and the house, except just under
the eaves, where it was worn away into a little, pebble-lined gutter,
by the water-drops that poured from the roof every rainy day.
A few of those old-fashioned roses, broad and red, but almost single,
so common about old houses beyond the reach of nursery gardens,
struggled up through the grass, along the lower portions of the
fences, and on each side the porch. A garden, at one end of the house,
was red with love-lies-bleeding and coxcombs, their deep hues
contrasting with great clumps of marigolds and bachelor's-buttons, all
claiming a preemption right over innumerable weeds and any amount of
ribbon grass, that struggled hard to drive them out.
With all its dilapidation, there was something picturesque and
attractive about the old homestead--a mingling of rude taste and
neglect, unthrifty, but suggestive of innate character. Mary Fuller
looked around her, with that keen relish of gay colors and rude
outline, that a rich uncultivated taste appreciates best. The glow of
those warmly-tinted, bold garden flowers seemed like a welcome; and
the soft rush of the river, which she had so feared to love, seemed
like the voice of an old friend following her among strangers.
She had some little time for observation, for the gate opened with
difficulty, groaning on its hinges, scraping its way in the segment of
a circle upon the ground, and tearing up grass by the roots in its
progress. Evidently the front door was not in very frequent use, and
the stubborn old gate seemed determined that it never should be again.
A wren shot away from the porch, as the Judge and his protege entered
it, and went fluttering in and out through the green branches waving
over it quite distractedly, as if she had never seen a human being
there in her whole birdhood before.
"Poor little coward," said the Judge, "it's afraid we shall drive its
young ones from their old home."
Mary had followed the fugitive with sparkling eyes, and she now began
peering among the leaves, expecting to find a nest full of darling
little birdlings chirping for food. For aught she knew, poor alley-bred
child, the birds built nests and filled them with eggs all the year
round.
Judge Sharp rapped upon the door with his knuckles, for the old iron
knocker groaned worse than the gate when he attempted to raise it.
After a little, the door opened with a jerk; for, like the gate, it
swung low, grating upon the threshold.
In the entry stood a woman, tall beyond what is common in her sex,
square built and slightly stooping, not from feebleness, however, but
habit. The woman might have been handsome in her youth, for there
still existed a remnant of beauty in that cold, grave face, threaded
with wrinkles, and shaded by hair of a dull iron grey. Her eyes were
keen, and intensely black; they must have had fire in them once; if
so, it had burned itself out years before; for now they seemed clear
and cold as ice.
"How do you do, aunt Hannah?" said the Judge, reaching forth his
hands. "I have brought the little girl, you see."
"What little girl?" inquired the woman, casting her cold eyes on Mary
Fuller. "I know nothing about any little girl."
"Then uncle Nathan didn't get my letter," said the Judge, a little
anxiously.
"He hasn't had a letter these three years," was the concise reply.
"Well, I must see him then. Where is he, aunt Hannah?"
"In his old place."
"Where, on the back porch?"
"Yes."
"Well, aunt Hannah, just see to my little girl, while I go and speak
with uncle Nathan," and the Judge disappeared from the entry, through
a side door.
"Come into the out room," said aunt Hannah to Mary, leading the way
through an opposite door.
Mary followed in silence, chilled through and through by this iron
coldness.
The room was chilly and meagre of comforts like its mistress. A
home-made carpet, striped in red and green, but greatly faded by time,
covered the floor. A tall, mahogany bureau, with a back-piece and
top-drawers, stood on one side, and a long, narrow dining-table of
black wood, with slender legs and claw-feet, grasping each a small
globe, stood between the two front windows. Over these windows were
paper curtains of pale blue, rolled up with strings and tassels of
twisted cotton, just far enough to leave the lower panes visible. Half
a dozen chairs of dark brown wood touched with green, stood around the
room; and over the dining-table hung an antique looking-glass, in a
mahogany frame, rendered black by time.
Mary sat down by an end window that overlooked the garden, and peered
through the little panes to avoid the steady gaze that the woman fixed
upon her. A sweet-briar bush grew against the window; and she caught
bright glimpses of marigolds and asparagus laden with red berries,
through the fragrant leaves.
All at once she started and turned suddenly in her chair. The woman
had spoken.
"Who are you?" was the curt question that aroused her.
"I--I--ma'am?"
"Yes, I mean you. What's your name?"
"Mary Fuller, ma'am."
"What brought you in these parts?"
"I came with Isabel and Judge Sharp."
"What for?"
"To live with somebody, ma'am, I--I thought at first it was here!"
"Where did you come from?"
Mary blushed. Poor child! She had a vague idea that there was
something to be ashamed of in coming from the Alms House. As she
hesitated the woman repeated her question, but more briefly, only
saying:
"Where?"
"From the Alms House!"
Aunt Hannah's eyes fell. A faint color crept through the wrinkles on
her forehead, and for a few moments she ceased to interrogate the
child. But she spoke at length in the same impassive voice as before:
"Have you a father?"
"No, ma'am."
"A mother?"
"She is dead."
"Who is Isabel?"
"A little girl that was with me in"--she was about to say in the Alms
House; but more sensitive regarding Isabel than herself, she changed
the term and said, "that was with me in the carriage."
"The carriage," repeated aunt Hannah, moving toward a window and
lifting the paper blind, "did it take four horses to drag you and
another little girl over the mountains?"
"Oh! no, ma'am, there was a lady."
"A lady! Who?"
"A lady who lives down the river in a great square house, with a sort
of short steeple on the roof."
"What, Mrs. Farnham?" said the woman, dropping the blind as if it had
been a roll of fire, while her face turned white to the lips, and a
glow came into her eyes that made Mary's heart beat quick, for there
was something startling in it, as the woman stood searching her face
for the answer.
"Yes, that is the name, ma'am."
Aunt Hannah's lips grew colder and whiter, while the glow concentrated
in her eyes like a ray of fire.
"Is she coming here to live?" broke in low, stern tones from those
cold lips.
"Yes, I heard her say that she was," replied the little girl, gently,
warmed by a touch of sympathy; for even this stern betrayal of feeling
was less repulsive than the chill apathy of her previous manner.
"And this Isabel. Is the girl hers?"
"No, not hers, she is like me--no, not like me--only in having no
father and mother--for Isabel is--oh, how beautiful."
"And what is she doing here?" questioned the woman, still in her
stern, low tones.
"Mrs. Farnham has adopted her," answered the child, "and no wonder;
anybody would like to have Isabel for a child."
"Why?"
"Because she is lovely."
"Why didn't she adopt you?" said the woman, without a change in her
voice.
"Me, ma'am! Oh, how could she?"
The child, as she spoke, spread her little hands abroad, and looked
downward as was her touching habit, when her person was brought in
question.
The woman stood in the centre of the room, pale, and still gazing upon
that singular little face, with a degree of intensity of which its
former coldness seemed incapable. At last she strode up to the window,
and putting her hand on Mary's forehead, bent back her head, while she
perused her face.
"And who will adopt you?" she said, at length, as if communing with
herself.
"I don't know," said the child, sadly. "When I came here I thought
perhaps this house was the one that Mr. Sharp expected me to live in."
The woman continued her gaze during some seconds, then her hand
dropped away from the throbbing little forehead, and she returned to
her seat.
That moment the door opened, and Enoch Sharp looked through, with a
smile that penetrated into the room like a sunbeam.
"Come, aunt Hannah," he said, "we can do nothing without you."