THE EVENING VISIT.
They have met, they have met--with a warm embrace,
Those panting hearts beat free again;
And joy beams out in each glowing face,--
Together, they fear not grief or pain!
A week elapsed, and Mary Fuller had heard nothing of her little
friend, nor ventured to hint at the keen desire to see her, which grew
stronger every day.
One night, when this wish was becoming almost irresistible, and the
child sat silent and drooping by the kitchen window, she heard a
sweeping sound among the cabbage-heads, and, peering keenly out, saw a
shadow moving through them.
Mary's heart began to leap, and as the shadow disappeared round a
corner of the house, her eyes, bright with expectation, were turned
towards the back door. A footstep sounded from the porch, followed by
a light tread that seemed but the faintest echo of the first.
Slowly, step by step, and holding her breath, Mary crept forward. Aunt
Hannah, who was making a cotton garment, which from its dimensions
could only have belonged to uncle Nathan, looked at her through her
steel spectacles, while the needle glittered sharply between her
fingers, as she held it motionless.
Mary stopped short in the middle of the floor. A pointed bayonet could
not have transfixed her more completely. There was a slight noise
outside, as of some one feeling for a latch, but uncle Nathan, who was
just lifting his head from a doze, took it for a knock, and called out
with sleepy good nature.
"Come in--come in."
"Gracious me, ain't I trying to come in?" called a voice from the
porch. "Why on airth didn't you keep to the old string-latch? One
could always see light enough through the hole to find that by, but
this iron consarn is just about the most tanterlizing thing that I
ever did undertake to handle."
As this speech was uttered, the door swung open, and Salina strode
into the kitchen, leading Isabel Chester by the hand.
"There, now, just have a kissing frolic, you two young 'uns, and be
over with it, while I shake hands with aunt Hannah and uncle Nat,"
exclaimed Salina, pushing Isabel into Mary's outstretched arms.
"There, now, no sobbing, nothing of that sort. Human critters weren't
sent on earth to spend their time in crying. If you're glad to see
each other, say so, take a hug, and a kiss, and then go off up stairs
or into the porch, while I have a chat with uncle Nat and aunt Hannah,
if she's got anything to say for herself."
The children obeyed her. One shy embrace, a timid kiss, and they crept
away to the porch, delighted to be alone.
"Now," said Salina, drawing a splint-bottomed chair close up to uncle
Nathan. "You hain't no idea, uncle Nat, what a time I've had a-getting
here with that little critter. She cried and pined, and sort a-worried
me till I brought her off right in the teeth and eyes of madam. Won't
there be a time when she misses us?"
"Why wouldn't she let the little gal come to see her playmate?" asked
uncle Nathan.
"Playmate--well now, I'd like to hear Madam Farnham hear you call her
that; she'd just tear your eyes out. But Lord-a-mercy, she hain't got
animation enough for anything of the sort; if she had, a rattlesnake
wouldn't be more cantankerous to my thinking. She's got all the pison
in her, but only hisses it out like a cat; in my hull life I never did
see such a cruel, mean varment."
"Then Mrs. Farnham don't want her girl to come here, is that it?"
inquired aunt Hannah, setting the gathers in a neck-gusset with the
point of her needle, which she dashed in and out as if it had been a
poniard, and that cotton cloth her enemy's heart.
"You always hit the nail right on the head when you do strike, aunt
Hannah. She don't want her gal to come here, nor your gal to come
there; that's the long and short on it."
"What for?" inquired uncle Nathan, moving uneasily in his great wooden
chair. "Isn't our little gal good enough?"
"Good enough, gracious me, I wonder if she thinks anybody in these
parts good enough for her to wipe her silk slippers on? Why, she
speaks of Judge Sharp as if he was nobody, and of the country here as
if God hadn't made it."
"But what has she against that poor child?" inquired aunt Hannah,
sternly.
"She ain't handsome, and she came from the Poor-House; isn't that
enough?" answered Salina, stretching forth her hand, and counting each
word down with a finger into the palm of her hand as if it had been a
coin. "She's homely, she came from the poor-house, and more than all,
she lives here."
"So she remembers us, then?" said aunt Hannah, resting the point of
her needle in a gather while she steadied her hand.
"Yes, you are the only people she has asked about, and her way of
doing it was snappish enough, I can tell you."
"I have not seen this woman in sixteen years," said aunt Hannah,
thoughtfully, "we change a good deal in that time."
"She hasn't changed much, though; fallen away a little; her red cheeks
have turned to a kind of papery white; her mouth has grown thin and
_meachen_; there's something kind o' lathy and unsartin about her; as
for temper that's just the same, only a little more so, sharp as a
muskeeters bill, tanterlizing as a green nettle. The rattlesnake is a
king to her; there's something worth while about his bite, it's strong
and in arnest, it kills a feller right off; but she keeps a nettling
and harrering one about all the time, without making an end on't, I
wish you could see her with that poor little gal, dressing her up as
if she was a rag-baby, scolding her one minute, kissing her the next,
calling her here, sending her there, I declare to man, it's enough to
put one out of conceit with all womankind."
"Where is Mrs. Farnham's son now?" inquired uncle Nathan, to whose
genial heart the sharp opinions of his visitor came unpleasantly; "he
ought to be a smart young fellow by this time."
"I don't know who he'd take after then," observed the housekeeper,
drily.
"His father was an enterprising man, understood business, knew how to
take care of what he made," said uncle Nathan. "We never had many
smarter men than Farnham here in the mountains."
"Farnham was a villain!" exclaimed aunt Hannah, whose face to the very
lips had been growing white as she listened.
Uncle Nathan started as if a shot had passed through his easy-chair.
"Hannah!"
The old woman did not seem to hear him, but lowering her face over her
work sewed on rapidly, but the whiteness of her face still continued,
and you could see by the unequal motion of the cotton kerchief folded
over her bosom, that she was suppressing some powerful emotion.
Uncle Nathan was not a man to press any unpleasant subject upon
another; but he seemed a good deal hurt by his sister's strange
manner; and sat nervously grasping and ungrasping the arm of his
chair, looking alternately at her and Salina, while the silence
continued.
"Well," said Salina, who had no delicate scruples of this kind to
struggle with, "you do beat all, aunt Hannah; I hadn't the least idea
that there was so much vinegar in you. Now Mr. Farnham was a kind of
father to me, and I'm bound to keep any body from raking up his ashes
in the grave."
"Let them rest there--let them rest there!" exclaimed aunt Hannah,
slowly folding up her work. "I did not mean to speak his name, but it
is said, and I will not take anything back."
"Well, nobody wants you to, that I know of; it's a kind of duty to
defend one's friends, especially when they can't do it for themselves;
but after all Mr. Farnham up and married that critter, I don't know as
it's any business of mine, what you call him."
"I remember his mother," said uncle Nathan, striving to shake off the
heavy feeling that his sister had created.
"I remember her well, for she took me for sort of company," said
Salina. "I was a little gal then; Farnham hadn't made all his money,
and he was glad enough for me to settle down and do his work. But it
was awful lonesome, I can tell you, after she was gone; and I used to
go down into the grave-yard and set down by her head-stone for
company, day after day. But it was afore this then your sister came to
help spin up the wool--wasn't she a harnsome critter?--your sister
Anne."
Aunt Hannah seemed turning into marble, her face and hands grew so
deathly white; but she neither moved nor spoke.
Uncle Nathan did not speak either, but he pressed both hands down on
the arms of his chair, and half rose; but he fell back as if the
effort were too much, and with one faint struggle sat still, with the
tears of a long-buried grief stealing down his cheeks.
"Well, what have I done wrong now?" asked Salina, looking from the old
man to the pallid sister, and shaking her head till the horn comb rose
like a crest among her fiery tresses.
"We haven't mentioned Anne's name between us in more than fifteen
years; and it comes hard to hear it now," answered uncle Nathan,
drawing first one plump hand and then another across his eyes.
"I didn't mean any harm by it," answered the housekeeper, penitently,
"she was a sweet, purty crittur as ever lived; and no one felt worse
than I did when she died in that strange way."
"Hush!" said aunt Hannah, standing up, pale even to ghastliness. "It
is you that rake up the ashes of the dead--ashes--ashes"--
The words died on her pale lips; she reached out her hands as if to
lay hold of something, and fell senseless to the floor.
Salina seized a pitcher that stood on the table, rushed out to the
water trough and back again, so like a spirit that the two little
girls in the porch broke from each other's arms and shrieked aloud.
But they recognized her when she came back and stood trembling by the
door, while she dashed the contents of her pitcher both over the
fainting woman and the kind old man that knelt by her.
It had no effect. Aunt Hannah opened her eyes but once during the next
hour. Neither the chilly water nor the old brother's terror had power
to reach the numbed pulses of her life.