POPULAR NOVELS.
_By Mrs. Mary J. Holmes._
I. —TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.
II. —ENGLISH ORPHANS.
III. —HOMESTEAD ON THE HILLSIDE.
IV. —LENA RIVERS.
V. —MEADOW BROOK.
VI. —DORA DEANE.
VII. —COUSIN MAUDE.
VIII. —MARIAN GREY.
IX. —DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.
X. —HUGH WORTHINGTON.
XI. —CAMERON PRIDE.
XII. —ROSE MATHER.
XIII. —ETHELYN’S MISTAKE.
XIV. —MILLBANK.
XV. —EDNA BROWNING. (_New._)
Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books
are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the
sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention
to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.
All published uniform with this volume. Price $1.50 each, and sent
_free_ by mail, on receipt of price by
G. W. CARLETON & CO.,
New York.
EDNA BROWNING;
OR,
THE LEIGHTON HOMESTEAD.
A Novel.
BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,
AUTHOR OF
TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.—LENA RIVERS.—MARIAN GREY.—MEADOWBROOK.—ENGLISH
ORPHANS.—COUSIN MAUDE.—HOMESTEAD.—DORA DEANE.—DARKNESS AND
DAYLIGHT.—HUGH WORTHINGTON.—THE CAMERON PRIDE.—ROSE MATHER.—ETHELYN’S
MISTAKE.—MILLBANK.—ETC.—ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
_G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers._
LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.
M.DCCC.LXXII.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
DANIEL HOLMES,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Stereotyped at the
WOMEN’S PRINTING HOUSE,
Corner Avenue A and Eighth Street,
New York.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ROY, OUR HERO 7
II. AT LEIGHTON HOMESTEAD 15
III. GEORGIE’S TELEGRAM 25
IV. GEORGIE 31
V. ROY’S DECISION 40
VI. NEWS OF EDNA 44
VII. MISS PEPPER’S LETTER 50
VIII. THE BRAVE LITTLE WOMAN 60
IX. AFTER THE ACCIDENT 69
X. GEORGIE AND JACK 77
XI. EDNA’S FIRST WEEKS AT MRS. DANA’S 84
XII. HOW AUNT JERUSHA RECEIVED THE NEWS 89
XIII. JACK’S HOME 97
XIV. EDNA AND ANNIE 101
XV. AUNT JERRY 107
XVI. AUNT JERRY AND EDNA 114
XVII. WHERE EDNA WENT 123
XVIII. AT UNCLE PHIL’S 127
XIX. UNCLE PHIL 135
XX. UP IN THE NORTH ROOM 150
XXI. MISS OVERTON 158
XXII. MAUDE’S VISIT 166
XXIII. PAYING DEBTS 181
XXIV. GEORGIE AND JACK 186
XXV. IN THE SUMMER 199
XXVI. AFTER ANOTHER YEAR 206
XXVII. EDNA ACCEPTS 215
XXVIII. EDNA GOES TO LEIGHTON 219
XXIX. GEORGIE’S SECRET 232
XXX. AT LEIGHTON 240
XXXI. OVER AT OAKWOOD 246
XXXII. THE CROQUET PARTY 252
XXXIII. HOW THE ENGAGEMENT WAS RECEIVED 270
XXXIV. HOW THEY GOT ON AT LEIGHTON 281
XXXV. LETTERS 289
XXXVI. ANNIE HEYFORD 299
XXXVII. THE NIGHT OF THE PARTY 311
XXXVIII. AFTER ANNIE’S DEATH 323
XXXIX. MAUDE AND EDNA VISIT UNCLE PHIL 328
XL. GETTING READY FOR THE BRIDAL 333
XLI. THE BURGLAR 343
XLII. THE ALARM 355
XLIII. ROY 361
XLIV. LAST DAYS 371
XLV. DEATH AT OAKWOOD 378
XLVI. JACK’S MARRIAGE AND JACK’S STORY 381
XLVII. ROY FINDS EDNA 395
XLVIII. MRS. CHURCHILL AND EDNA 407
XLIX. THE WEDDING 411
L. CONCLUSION 420
EDNA BROWNING;
OR,
THE LEIGHTON HOMESTEAD.
CHAPTER I.
ROY, OUR HERO.
“Robert, son of Arthur and Anna Leighton, born April 5th, 18——,” was the
record which the old family Bible bore of our hero’s birth, parentage,
and name, but by his mother and those who knew him best, he was always
called _Roy_, and by that name we introduce him to our readers on a
pleasant morning in May, when, wrapped in a heavy shawl, he sat in a
corner of a car with a tired, worn look upon his face, and his teeth
almost chattering with the cold.
A four-month’s acquaintance with the chill fever, taken at the time the
river rose so high, and he worked all day to save some of his tenants
who lived along the meadows, had wasted him to a shadow, and he was on
his way to the West, hoping that change of air and scene would
accomplish what bottles and bottles of quinine, with all the usual
remedies for fever and ague, had failed to do.
Beside him sat his mother, a fair-haired, proud-faced little lady of
fifty, or more, who conducted herself with a dignity becoming the
mistress of Leighton Homestead, her son’s beautiful home on the Hudson.
Anna Leighton had been much younger than her husband, and at the time of
her marriage there were rumors of another suitor in whose brown beard
there were no threads of gray, and of whom Mr. Leighton had been
fearfully jealous. If this were true, it accounted in part for his
strange will, by which only a small portion of his large fortune was
left to his wife, who was to forfeit even this in the event of a second
marriage. In her case, love proved more potent than gold, and, two years
after her husband’s death, she married Charlie Churchill, who made up in
family and blood what he lacked in lands and money. There was a trip to
Europe, a _dolce far niente_ dream of happiness for eighteen months amid
the glories of the eastern hemisphere, and then, widowed a second time,
Anna Churchill came one dreary autumn day to the Leighton Place, on the
river side, where, six months after, she gave birth to a little boy, for
whom Roy, then a mere lad, stood as one of the sponsors in the old
ivy-grown church at the foot of the hill.
Since that time, Mrs. Churchill had lived at the Leighton Homestead, and
been, with her younger son, altogether dependent upon her eldest born,
who had made her, to all intents and purposes, the honored and welcome
mistress of his house. Only one sore point was there between them, and
that was handsome and winning, but unprincipled Charlie,—who, looking
upon his brother’s fortune as his own, would, if uncontrolled, have
spent it with a recklessness which would soon have brought the Leighton
Homestead under the auctioneer’s hammer.
Charlie was a spoiled boy, the neighbors said; and when, at sixteen, he
coolly appropriated his brother’s gold watch, together with a hundred
dollars in money, and went off to Canada, “to travel and see a little of
the world,” they shook their heads, and said Roy would be justified in
never taking him again into favor.
But Roy did not think so, and when Charlie had fished all summer among
the Thousand Islands, and spent his hundred dollars, and pawned his
watch, and fallen sick in Montreal, Roy went for the young scamp, who
cried like a child at sight of him, and called him “a brick,” and a
“dear old Roy,” and promised he would never be bad again, and in proof
thereof would, if Roy said so, join the church, or take a class in
Sunday-school, or go through college, he did not care which. And so Roy
took him to the Academy in Canandaigua, and said that to the teachers
which resulted in Mr. Charlie’s being kept rather closer than was
altogether agreeable to him. After a time, however, the strict
surveillance was relaxed, and by his winning ways, he grew to be very
popular with both teachers and pupils, and many a slight misdemeanor was
winked at and overlooked, so powerfully did his soft blue eyes and
pleasant smile plead for him.
At the time our story opens he had been in Canandaigua nearly a year and
a half, and Mrs. Churchill and Roy were intending to stop for a day at
the hotel and visit him. There were but few passengers in the car
occupied by Roy and his mother, and these were mostly of the quiet,
undemonstrative kind, who nodded in their seats, or read the newspaper,
and accepted matters, _air_ included, as they found them; consequently,
poor Roy, who, shaking with ague, had a morbid dread of open windows,
had for hours luxuriated in an atmosphere which made a group of young
girls exclaim with disgust, when at a station thirty miles or so from
Canandaigua they came trooping in, their cheeks glowing with health and
their eyes sparkling with excitement.
There were four of them, and appropriating the two seats directly
opposite Roy, they turned one of them back, and to the great horror of
the invalid opened both the windows, thereby letting in a gust of air
which blew directly across Roy’s face, while Mrs. Churchill received an
ugly cinder in her eye, which nearly blinded her. In blissful ignorance
of the discomfort they were causing, or of the very uncomplimentary
things the sick man and his mother were thinking, the girls chattered
on, and the cool wind blew the ribbons on their hats far out behind, and
tossed their veils airily, and lifted the golden brown curls of the one
who seemed to be the life of the party, and who talked the most, and
kept the others shrieking with laughter, while her bright eyes glanced
rapidly around the car, noting everything and everybody, until at last
they lighted upon the pair just across the aisle, Mrs. Churchill working
away at the obstinate cinder, and Roy wrapping his shawl more closely
about him, and wondering why girls would always persist in keeping the
windows open when everybody else was freezing. Roy was not in a very
amiable state of mind, and he showed it in his eyes, which flashed a
savage glance at the girl with the curls of golden brown, whom her
companions addressed as Edna. She was the worst of them all, for she had
opened both the windows, and then with the exclamation that she was
“roasted alive,” sat fanning herself briskly with the coquettish little
hat she had taken from her head. As she met Roy’s angry glance, the
smile which a moment before had wreathed her lips, vanished suddenly,
and she looked at him curiously, as if half expecting him to speak. But
Roy was silent for a time; then, as the bright, restless eyes of the
offender kept meeting his own inquiringly, he mustered courage to say:
“Young lady, you’ll oblige me by shutting that window. Don’t you see I
am catching cold?” and a loud sneeze attested to the truth of what he
said.
It was not like Roy Leighton thus to address any one, and he repented of
his surliness in an instant, and wished he might do something to atone.
But it was now too late. He had shown himself a savage, and must abide
the result.
The window was shut with a bang, and the gay laughter and merry talk
were hushed for a time, while the girl called Edna busied herself with
writing or drawing something upon a bit of paper, which elicited peals
of laughter from her companions to whom it was shown. Roy could not help
fancying that it in some way related to himself, and his mother thought
the same, and was mentally styling them “a set of ill-bred, impertinent
chits,” when the train stopped before the Canandaigua depot, where, as
usual, a crowd of people was assembled. This was the destination of the
girls, who, gathering up their satchels and parasols, hurried from the
car in such haste that the bit of paper which had so much amused them
was forgotten, and fluttered down at Mrs. Churchill’s feet. Her first
impulse, as she stooped to pick it up, was to restore it to its owner,
but when she saw what it was, she uttered an angry exclamation, and
thrust it into her son’s hand, saying:
“Look, Roy, at the caricature the hussy has made of us.”
No man likes to be ridiculed, and Roy Leighton was not an exception, and
the hot blood tingled in his pale cheeks as he saw a very correct
likeness of himself, wrapped in a bundle of shawls, with his eyes cast
reproachfully toward a shadowy group of girls across the aisle, while
from his mouth issued the words, “Shut that window, miss. Don’t you see
I am freezing?”
Beside him was his mother, her handkerchief to her eye, and the
expression of her face exactly what it had been when she worked at the
troublesome cinder. Instead of a hat, the mischievous Edna had perched a
bonnet on Roy’s head, and under this abominable picture had written,
“Miss Betty and her mother, as they looked on their travelling
excursion. Drawn by Edna Browning, Ont. Fem. Sem., May 10th.”
It was only a caricature; but so admirably was it done, and so striking
was his own likeness in spite of the bonnet, that Roy could not help
acknowledging to himself that Edna Browning was a natural artist; and he
involuntarily began to feel an interest in the young girl who, if she
could execute this sketch in so short a time, must be capable of better
things. Still, mingled with this interest was a feeling of indignation
that he should have been so insulted by a mere school-girl, and when, as
he alighted from the car, he caught the flutter of her blue ribbons, and
heard her merry laugh as she made her way through the crowd to the long
flight of stairs, and then with her companions walked rapidly toward
Main street, he felt a desire to box her ears, as she deserved that they
should be boxed.
Thrusting the picture into his pocket, he conducted his mother through
the crowd, and then looked about in quest of his brother, who was to
have been there to meet them, and who soon appeared, panting for breath
and apologizing for his delay.
“Professor Hollister wouldn’t let me out till the last minute, and then
I stopped an instant to speak to some girls who came on this train. How
are you, mother, and you, old Roy? I don’t believe I should have known
you. That ague has given you a hard one, and made you shaky on your
legs, hasn’t it? Here, lean on me, while we climb these infernally steep
stairs. Mother, I’ll carry that satchel. What ails your eye? looks as if
you’d been fighting. Here, this way. Don’t go into that musty parlor.
Come on to No. —. I’ve got your rooms all engaged, the best in the
hotel.”
And thus talking, with his invalid brother leaning on his arm, Charlie
Churchill led the way to the handsome rooms which overlooked the lake
and the hills beyond. Roy was very tired, and he lay down at once, while
his mother made some changes in her toilet, and from a travel-soiled,
rather dowdy-looking woman in gray, was transformed into a fair, comely
and stylish matron, whose rich black silk trailed far behind her, and
whose frills of costly lace fell softly about her neck and plump white
hands as she went in to dinner with Charlie, who was having a holiday,
and who ordered claret and champagne, and offered it to those about him
with as much freedom as if it was his money instead of his brother’s
which would pay for it all.
Roy’s dinner was served in his room, and while waiting for it he studied
Edna Browning’s sketch, which had a strange fascination for him, despite
the pangs of wounded vanity he felt when he saw what a guy she had made
of him.
“I wonder if I do look like that,” he said, and he went to the glass and
examined himself carefully. “Yes, I do,” he continued. “Put a poke
bonnet on me and the likeness is perfect, hollows in my cheeks, fretful
expression and all. I’ve been sick and coddled, and petted until I’ve
grown a complete baby, and a perfect boor, but there’s no reason why I
need to look so confounded cross and ill-tempered, and I won’t either.
Edna Browning has done me some good at least. I wonder who the little
wretch is. Perhaps Charlie knows; she seems to be here at school.”
But Roy did not ask Charlie, for the asking would have involved an
explanation, and he would a little rather not show his teasing brother
the picture which he put away so carefully in his pocket-book. They
drove that afternoon in the most stylish turnout the town afforded, a
handsome open barouche, and Roy declined the cushion his mother
suggested for his back, and only suffered her to spread his shawl across
his lap instead of wrapping it around him to his chin. His overcoat and
scarf were all he should need, he said, and he tried to sit up straight,
and not look sick, as Charlie, who managed the reins himself, drove them
through the principal streets of the town, and then out into the country
for a mile or two.
On their way back they passed the seminary just as a group of girls came
out accompanied by a teacher, and equipped apparently for a walk. There
were thirty or more of them, but Roy saw only one, and of her he caught
a glimpse, as she tossed back her golden brown curls and bowed
familiarly to Charlie, whose hat went up and whose horses sheered just
enough to make his mother utter an exclamation of fear. She, too, had
recognized the wicked Edna by her dress, had seen the bow to Charlie,
with Charlie’s acknowledgment of it, and when the gay horses were
trotting soberly down the street, she asked,—
“Who was that girl you bowed to, Charlie? the bold-faced thing with
curls, I mean.”
Now if she had left off that last, the chances are that Charlie would
have told her at once, for he knew just whom she meant. A dozen of the
girls had bowed to him, but he had had but _one_ in his mind when he
lifted his hat so gracefully, and it hurt him to hear her called “a
bold-faced thing.” So he answered with the utmost nonchalance.
“I don’t know which one you mean. I bowed to them all collectively, and
to no one individually. They are girls from the seminary.”
“Yes, I know; but I mean the one in blue with the long curls.”
“Big is she?” and Charlie tried to think.
“No, very small.”
“Dark face and turned-up nose?” was the next query.
“No, indeed; fair-faced, but as to her nose I did not notice. I think
she was on the same car with us.”
“Oh, I guess you must mean Edna Browning. She’s short, and has long
curls,” and Charlie just touched his spirited horses, causing them to
bound so suddenly as to jerk his mother’s head backward, making her
teeth strike together with such force as to hurt her lip; but she asked
no more questions with regard to Edna Browning, who had recognized in
Charlie Churchill’s companions her fellow-passengers in the car, and was
wondering if that dumpy woman and that muff of a man could be the
brother and mother whom Charlie had said he was expecting when she met
him that morning in the street.