THE BRAVE LITTLE WOMAN.
Backward now we turn to Edna herself, who _was_ a brave little woman,
though she did not know herself of what she was capable, or how soon her
capabilities were to be tested on that October morning when she entered
the cars, at Buffalo, a happy bride,—save when something whispered to
her that perhaps she had not done the wisest thing in marrying so
_secretly_. What would her teachers say when they heard the use she had
made of their permission for her to accompany her sick friend home? And
what would Aunt Jerry say to the runaway match when she was so great a
stickler for the proprieties of life?
“She’ll charge it all to my High Church proclivities,” Edna said to
herself, trying to laugh as she recalled her aunt’s peculiarities, and
the probable effect the news would have on her. “I don’t care! I’m glad
to be free from her any way,” she thought, as she remembered, with a
shudder, all the dreariness and longing for something different which
she had felt in that house by the graveyard where her childhood was
passed.
It had never been hers to know the happiness which many children know.
No mother had ever put her to bed, and tucked her up, with loving words
and the good-night kiss. No hand had smoothed her locks of golden brown,
as she said her little prayer. No pleasant voice had waked her in the
morning from her dreamless sleep, and found excuse when the slumber was
so hard to break, the eyes so unwilling to unclose. No little extra pie
or cake was ever baked for her on the broken bit of plate, or cracked
saucer. No sled, with her name upon it, stood out by gate, or door-step;
and no genuine doll-baby ever lay in any box, or basket, or drawer in
that prim, silent house, for Aunt Jerry did not believe in such useless
things. “She gave the child enough to eat of good, plain, wholesome
food, and that was all any one could ask.” She knew, too, that Edna said
her prayers, and she saw that her Sunday-school lesson was always
learned, and heard her say the Creed and Commandments every Sunday
afternoon; but there were no gentle words and kind caresses, no tucking
up on winter nights, no loving solicitude to see if the little hands and
feet were warm. Edna knit or sewed till eight o’clock, and then, prompt
with the first stroke, put by her work and took the tallow candle from
the mantle piece, and without a word stole up the steep back stairs to
her little bed in the room which looked out upon the graveyard just
across the lane, where the white headstones shining through the darkness
seemed to her like so many risen ghosts. She was afraid of the
graveyard; and many a night she crept trembling into bed, and hiding her
face under the clothes, said her prayers, not from any sense of duty,
but because of the question sure to be put to her next morning, “Did you
say your prayers, Edna?”
At the time of her father’s death Aunt Jerry had contended with his
parishioners about his body, and, coming off victorious, had brought it
home with her and buried it just by the fence under the shadow of her
own cherry-tree, where regularly every Sunday in summer she took Edna
and talked to her of her father, and told her how sorry he would be if
he knew what a bad girl she was, and how he would rest better in his
coffin if she would try to be good and learn the creed and catechism, so
as to be confirmed the next time the Bishop came. And, more from fear
than anything else, Edna learned the catechism and was confirmed, and
hoped her father would be easy in his coffin, as Aunt Jerusha said he
would.
As a child, Edna shunned her father’s grave, and thought only with
terror of him who slept there; but after a time there came a change, and
she no longer stood in fear of that grassy mound, but tended it with the
utmost care, and sometimes, when no one saw her, knelt or rather
crouched beside it, and whispered softly:
“Dear father, I am trying to be good: but oh, it is so hard, and Aunt
Jerry is so cross. I wish you had not died. Help me,—can’t you, father?”
In this prayer there was no direct appeal to God; but He who knew all
the trials and sorrow of the poor orphan girl, heard that cry for help,
and the world was always brighter to Edna after a visit to that grave,
and Aunt Jerusha’s tongue had less power to sting.
Aunt Jerusha meant to do her duty, and thought she did it when she tried
to repress her naturally gay, light-hearted niece, and make her into a
sober, quiet woman, content to sew the blessed day through and knit the
livelong evening.
But Edna was like a rubber ball,—she could be crushed, but she would not
stay so, and the moment the oppressor’s foot was removed she bounded
back again as full of fun, and frolic, and life as ever! So when at the
age of fifteen she became, in one sense, a charity scholar in
Canandaigua Seminary, she recovered all her elasticity of spirits, and,
freed from her aunt’s scrutiny, seemed constantly bubbling over with
happiness and joy.
She was very popular, and, in spite of her plain dress, became the
goddess by whom every academy boy swore, dreaming of her by night, and
devising ways and means of seeing her by day.
Charlie Churchill was in love with her at once,—desperately,
irretrievably in love, and, though she snubbed him at first, and made
laughable caricatures of him in his foppish clothes, with his eye-glass,
which he carried for no reason except to be dandyish, she ended by
returning his affection and pledging herself to him on the fly-leaf of
her algebra, that being the only bit of paper available at the time.
Charlie had the reputation of being very rich,—heir, or joint heir with
his brother of Leighton Place, on the Hudson. And Edna fully believed
him when he talked so largely of “my house, my horses, my hounds, my
park.” All _mine_, and nothing Roy’s, “Old Roy,” as he usually
designated his brother, whom Edna thought of as a sober, middle-aged
man, who was at Leighton rather on sufferance than as its rightful
owner.
After her adventure in the cars, and she learned that the man she had
caricatured was the veritable Roy, she thought him rather younger and
better-looking than she had supposed, but still esteemed him a kind of
supernumerary, who would be dreadfully in her way when she was mistress
at Leighton, and of whom she would dispose as soon as possible.
She would do nothing unkind, she thought,—nothing for which any one
could blame her; but it was so much better for young folks and old folks
to live apart, that she would fit up some one of the numerous cottages
which Charlie had told her were on his place.
There was one near the river, a Gothic cottage, he said, somewhat out of
repair. This she would improve and beautify, and furnish tastefully, and
move Roy and his mother thither, where they could not be disturbed by
the gayeties at Leighton. For she meant to be very gay, and have the
house full all the time, and had made out a list of those who were to be
her guests.
Aunt Jerry was to come during _Lent_, and the carriage was to take her
every day to morning service in the little church; while, every Friday,
they would have omelets for breakfast, and baked salmon trout for
dinner. Edna had the programme of her future life all marked out, even
to the dresses she would wear on different occasions. And she knew just
how beautiful her future home was; for Charlie had described it so
minutely that she had made a little sketch of it, and, with Charlie to
suggest, had corrected and improved and enlarged it, until it was a very
accurate picture of the grounds and house at Leighton; with Edna herself
on the steps, fastening a rose in Charlie’s button-hole.
The likeness to Charlie was perfect, and Edna prized it most for this,
and put it away in her portfolio of drawings; and went on dreaming her
bright dreams of the glorious future opening so joyfully before her.
She was not mercenary, and would have loved and married Charlie all the
same if he had not been rich, as she believed him to be. But she was
very glad that he had money, for her tastes were naturally luxurious.
She liked beautiful things about her; and then she could do so much
good, and make so many happy, she said to Charlie, when he asked her
once how she would feel to know he was poor as a church mouse.
Charlie had almost made up his mind to tell her the truth, for his
conscience troubled him greatly; but when, among other things, she said:
“I do not care for your money, Charlie; and should love you just the
same if you had not a penny. The only thing that could change me toward
you, would be losing confidence in you,” he could not tell her that he
was deceiving her; and so he let her dream on, and tried to remember if
he ever had told her positively that he was the heir of Leighton, and
concluded that he had not. She had taken it for granted, and he was not
responsible for the mistake.
Then, he trusted much to Roy’s generosity. Roy would let them live at
Leighton, of course; and it would be Edna’s home just the same as if he
owned it, only he did not know about _moving_ his mother and Roy into
that cottage by the river.
But he would not worry; it would all be right; and, in any event, Edna
would be _his_, and could not “go back on him,” when she did find out;
and he could easily persuade her it was all done from love and his fear
of losing her.
So he silenced his conscience, and let her go on blindly toward her
fate, and surprised her one day with a proposition to elope.
At first, Edna refused; but when the mail brought her a letter from Aunt
Jerusha, she began to waver. She had asked her aunt for a dollar of
pocket money, and her aunt had written a stinging reply, telling her she
_had_ a dollar when she left home three weeks ago, and asking what had
become of that.
“I know,” she wrote, “that if you follow my instructions, you have put
five cents every Sunday on the plate; that makes fifteen cents; then,
you may have wanted some boot-lacings,—you always do,—and possibly some
elastics, but that is _all_ you have any business to want; and you ought
to have on hand _fifty cents_ at least, and still allow for some
extravagance I can’t think of. No; I shan’t send you any dollar for
three weeks to come; then, if the roads are not too muddy, I shall be in
town with some butter, and eggs, and poultry, and, if I hear a good
account of you, shall give you, maybe, seventy-five cents.
“P.S. I’ve been half sorry that I let you go back to school this winter,
for I ain’t feeling very well, and I shouldn’t wonder if I took you home
with me for a spell. I’ve got stuff enough together to make a nice
carpet, and you could cut and sew the rags.”
Now Edna had not spent her dollar of pocket money in ways of which her
aunt would at all approve. Fifteen cents had gone on the plate, and five
cents more to Sunday-school. Fifteen more had gone for chocolates, and
twenty-five more for the blue ribbon on her hair which Charlie liked so
much; twenty-five more to a poor woman, carrying one child in her arms
and leading another by the hand, while the remaining fifteen had been
paid for a saucer of ice-cream which she shared with two of her
companions; nothing for shoe-lacings, nothing for elastics, and only
twenty cents for anything which would commend itself to her stern aunt,
who would call the beggar woman an impostor, the blue ribbon trash and
vanity, which Edna had promised to renounce, while the chocolates and
cream would be classed under the head of _gormandizing_, if, indeed, the
literal Miss Jerusha did not accuse her of “gluttony and stuffing.”
All this Edna knew was in store for her whenever the state of the roads
would admit of her aunt’s journey to town with her butter, eggs, and
poultry; but, aside from these, there was the dreadful possibility of
being taken from school and compelled to pass the dreary winter in that
lonely house by the graveyard, with no companions but the cat and her
own gloomy thoughts, unless it were the balls of carpet-rags she hated
so terribly. When Edna thought of all this, and then remembered that
Charlie had said, “I shall see you again to-night, when I hope to find
you have changed your mind and will go with me yet,” she began to
hesitate, and balance the two situations offered for her acceptance.
One, the lonely house, the dreary winter, the rasping aunt, and the
carpet-rags; the other, Leighton Place, with its freedom from all
restraint, its life of perfect ease, and Charlie! Can we wonder that she
chose the latter, and told Charlie yes instead of no, and planned the
visit to Mrs. Dana, her mother’s cousin, and looked upon the proposition
to accompany her sick friend home as something providential. There was
no looking back after that, and Edna hardly stopped to think what she
was doing, or to consider the consequences, until she found herself a
bride, and stepped with Charlie on board the train at Buffalo. She was
very happy, and her happiness showed itself in the sparkle of her eye,
and the bright flush on her cheeks, and the restlessness of her little
head, which tossed and turned itself airily, and kept the golden brown
curls in constant motion.
Charlie, too, was happy, or would have been, could he have felt quite
sure that Roy would send some money, without which he would be reduced
to most unpleasant straits, unless he pawned his watch. He could do
that, and he decided that he would; but as it could not be done until he
reached Chicago, and as his purse, after paying the clergyman, and
paying for his tickets, and paying for the book which Edna wanted, was
none the heaviest, he feigned not to be hungry when they stopped to
dine, and so had only Edna’s dinner to pay for, and contented himself
with crackers and pop-corn for his supper; and when Edna proposed
sharing them with him, he only made a faint remonstrance, and himself
suggested that they should travel all night, instead of stopping at some
_horrid hotel_ where the fare was execrable.
And Edna consented to everything, and, as the evening advanced, and she
began to grow weary, nestled her curly head down on Charlie’s shoulder,
and slept as soundly as if she had been at home in her own room looking
out upon the graves behind the churchyard. Once, about midnight, as they
stopped at some station, Charlie went out for a minute, and when he
returned and took his seat beside her, he said, hurriedly, as if it were
something for which he was not very glad:
“I have just recognized two old acquaintances in the rear car, Jack
Heyford and Georgie Burton. I hope they won’t see us. I like Jack well
enough; but to have that Georgie’s great big eyes spearing at you I
could not bear.”
“Who is Georgie Burton, and who is Jack Heyford?” Edna asked; and
Charlie replied, “Georgie lives at Oakwood, near Leighton, and is the
proudest, stuck-up thing, and has tried her best to catch old Roy. I
think she’ll do it, too, in time, and then, my ——, won’t she snub you,
because—”
He hesitated a moment, while Edna said:
“Because what? Tell me, please, why Georgie Burton will snub me.”
“Well, because you are poor, and she is rich,” Charlie jerked out; and
Edna said, innocently:
“But I shall be rich, too, as rich as she, won’t I, Charlie?”
Her clear, honest eyes were fixed upon his without a shadow of
suspicion; and Charlie could not undeceive her, and tell her that ten
dollars was all the money he had in the world; that to defray the
expenses of that journey he had sold a diamond stud in Buffalo, and, if
Roy did not come to the rescue, his watch must get them back to
Leighton.
“Even if you were not rich you would be worth a hundred Georgie
Burtons,” he said, as he drew her closely to his side; and then he spoke
of Jack Heyford, Georgie’s half-brother, and the best fellow in the
world, and Edna listened awhile, until things began to get a little
mixed in her brain, and her head lay again on Charlie’s shoulder, and
her eyes were closed in sleep.
The day had been very warm and sultry, and although somewhat out of
season, a heavy thunder-storm had come up, and the darkness without grew
darker as the rain beat against the windows, and flashes of lightning
showed occasionally against the inky sky. Faster and faster the train
sped on; and Charlie’s head drooped till his locks mingled with Edna’s
curls of golden brown, and in his sleep his arm tightened around her
waist, and he was dreaming perhaps of Roy and his mother, and what they
would say to his wife, when suddenly, without a moment’s warning, came
the fearful crash, and the next flash of lightning which lit up the
gloom showed a dreadful sight of broken beams, and shattered boards, and
shivered glass, and a boyish form wedged tightly in, its white face
upturned to the pitiless sky, while beside it crouched the girlish
bride, trying in vain to extricate her lover, as her quivering lips kept
whispering, “Charlie, oh, Charlie!”