AUNT JERRY.
Edna had planned it so as to reach home on Thanksgiving day, thinking
within herself:
“Her heart will be softer on that day, sure, and she will not be so hard
on me.”
Fortunately for her she saw no one in Canandaigua whom she knew, for the
morning train, which was a little behind time, arrived just before the
departure of the stage which would take her to the Hill. She was the
only passenger, and as she rode along over the rough, uneven road, she
had ample time for reviewing the past, and living over in fancy all she
had experienced since last she traversed that route, drawn by Deacon
Williams’s old white horse, with Aunt Jerry beside her, prim and
straight, and grimly silent, save when she gave her niece some wholesome
advice, or reproved her for what she had not done quite as much as for
what she had. Then she was Edna Browning, the happy school-girl, who
knew no care sharper than Aunt Jerry’s tongue, and from that she was
escaping for a time, for she was going back to school, to all the fun
and frolic which she always managed to extract from her surroundings;
and Charlie was there to meet her,—aye, did meet her right by the gate,
as the old white horse drew up, and would have helped her out, but for
the signal she gave that he must not notice her. Aunt Jerry was death on
academy boys, and her face assumed a still more vinegary expression as
she asked:
“What young squirt was that who looked as if he was going to speak?”
Edna had not replied, as she was busily occupied in climbing over the
wheel, and so Aunt Jerry had never heard of Charlie Churchill until the
telegram was brought to her announcing his death. That scene was very
fresh in Edna’s mind, and her tears flowed like rain as she thought of
herself as she was then, and as she was now, scarcely three months
later. A wife, a widow, friendless and alone, going back to Aunt Jerry
as the only person in the world on whom she had a claim.
“She won’t turn me off,” she said to herself. “She can’t, when I’ve
nowhere to go; and I mean to be so humble, and tell her the whole story,
and I’ll try to please her harder than I ever did before.”
Thus Edna reasoned with herself, until from the summit of a hill she
caught sight of the tall poplars, and saw in the distance the spire of
St. Paul’s. Behind it was Aunt Jerry’s house; she was almost there, and
her heart beat painfully as she tried to think what to say, how to word
her greeting so as not to displease. It did not occur to her that
probably Aunt Jerry was at church, until the stage left her at the gate,
and she tried the door, which was locked. Fortunately, she knew just
where to look for the key, and as she stooped to get it, Tabby, who had
been sitting demurely on the windowsill, with one eye on the warm room
from which she was shut out, and one on the church whence she expected
her mistress to come, jumped down, and with a _meow_ of welcome came
purring and rubbing against Edna’s dress, and showing,—as much as a dumb
creature can show,—her joy at seeing her young playmate again. Edna took
the animal in her arms, and hugging it to her bosom, let fall a shower
of kisses and tears upon the long, soft fur, saying aloud:
“You, at least, are glad, old Tabby, and I’ll take your welcome as a
good omen of another.”
She let herself into the house, and with Tabby still nestled in her
arms, stood looking around the familiar room. It seemed to her years
since she was there, and she found herself wondering to find it so
unchanged. The same rag carpet which she had helped to make, with what
weariness and tears she could not recall without a shudder. The same
calico-covered lounge, with Aunt Jerry’s work-basket and foot-stove
tucked away under it, the same fall leaf table with its plaid spread of
red and green, Aunt Jerry’s straight-back chair by the oven door, the
clock upon the mantel, and could she believe her senses, a picture of
herself upon the wall above the fireplace; a photograph taken three
years before by a travelling artist, whose movable car had ornamented
the common in front of the church, a terror to all the horses, and a
thing of wonder and fascination to all the school boys and girls, most
of whom first and last saw the inside of the mysterious box, and came
out reproduced. Edna had picked blackberries to pay for her picture, and
sat unknown to Aunt Jerusha, whose comment on the likeness was, “Better
have saved the money for something else. You ain’t so handsome that you
need want to be repeated. It looks enough sight better than you do.”
Edna knew that the picture did not look half as well as she did. The
mouth was awry, the chin elevated, the hands immense, and the whole body
indicative of awkwardness, and lack of taste on the artist’s part. But
it was herself, and Edna prized it and kept it hidden away from Aunt
Jerry, who threatened to burn it when she found her niece looking at it
instead of knitting on her stocking. Latterly, Edna had ceased to care
for it, and did not know where it was, but Aunt Jerry had found it and
put it in a little frame made of hemlock twigs, and hung it over the
mantel; and Edna took heart from that, for it showed that Aunt Jerry had
a warm place for her memory at least, or she would not preserve that
horrid caricature of her.
“She is not so hard after all,” Edna said, as she laid aside her wraps,
and then, as she remembered something she had read about there being a
parlor and a kitchen in every person’s heart, and the treatment one
received depending very much upon which room they get into, she thought,
“I guess I’ve always been in the kitchen, but hereafter I’ll stay in the
parlor.”
The stove, which Aunt Jerry used in winter, was closed tightly, but Edna
caught the odor of something cooking in the oven, and opening the door,
saw the nicely dressed turkey simmering slowly in preparation for Miss
Pepper’s dinner, and then the impulse seized her to hasten the fire, and
have the dinner ready by the time her aunt came in from church. The
vegetables were prepared and standing in pans of water, and Edna put
them on the stove, and basted the turkey, and set the table with the
best cloth and dishes, just as she used to do on Thanksgiving day, and
felt her old identity coming back as she moved about among the familiar
things, and wondered what Aunt Jerry would say, and how long before she
would come.
Church was out at last, she knew by the pealing of the organ, and by
seeing Mr. Swift go behind the church and unhitch his gray horses. There
was a brisk step outside the gate; Aunt Jerry was coming, and with her
hands clasped together, and her head slightly bent forward in the
attitude of intense expectancy, Edna stood waiting for her.
There was a heightened color on her cheek, and her eyes shone with such
brilliancy as to make them seem almost black, while her long curls fell
forward and partly covered her face like some bright satin veil.
To say that Miss Pepper was surprised, would but faintly express the
perfect amazement with which she regarded the apparition which met her
view as she hastily opened the door, her movements accelerated by the
mysterious smells of savory cooking which had greeted her olfactories
when outside the gate. And yet Edna had really been much in the
spinster’s mind that Thanksgiving morning, when she bustled about here
and there and made her preparations for her solitary dinner,—solitary
unless Miss Martha Ann Barnes, the only intimate friend Miss Pepper had,
could be induced to spend the remainder of the day with her.
“It will seem more Christian-like and pleasant to have somebody sit
opposite you at table on such a day as this, won’t it, Tabby?” Miss
Pepper said to her cat, to whom she was sometimes given to talking, and
who showed her appreciation of the remark by a friendly mew and by
rubbing against her mistress’ dress.
And then Miss Pepper’s thoughts went straying back into the past, forty
years ago, and she saw a group of noisy, happy children, of which she
had been the merriest, the ringleader, they had called her at first, and
afterward the flirt, who cared but little how many hearts she broke
when, at the gay Thanksgiving time, she joined them at her grandfather’s
house among the Vermont hills, and with her glowing beauty, set off by
some bright bit of ribbon or string of beads, made sad havoc with the
affections of her young male relatives. There was a slight jerking of
her shoulders, and a bridling of her head, as Miss Pepper remembered
those far-off days, and then her thoughts came a little nearer to the
present time, to thirty-five years ago that Thanksgiving day, and the
dress of white brocade, with its bertha of dainty lace, and the orange
flowers sent by a city cousin who “could not be present on the happy
occasion.” The flowers were never worn, neither was the lace, nor the
brocade; and yellow and soiled with time, they lay together, far down in
the old red chest, where the linen sheets and the sprigs of lavender
were, and where no one had ever seen them but Miss Pepper herself.
As regularly as Thanksgiving day came round, she opened the red chest,
and undoing the precious parcel, shook out the heavy folds of the
brocade, and held the orange flowers a moment in her hands, and wondered
where _he_ was to-day, and if he thought of thirty-five years ago, and
what had almost been.
As she had always done so, Miss Pepper did now on the day of which we
write; and did it, too, earlier than had been her wont. Usually her
visit to the chest was reserved for the afternoon, but this morning
there was a strange yearning at her heart, a longing for something her
life had missed, and before her breakfast dishes were washed she had
made her yearly visit to the chest, and sitting down beside it, as by an
open grave, with the faded brocade across her lap, and the orange
flowers in her hand, said softly to herself, “If this had come to pass I
mightn’t have been alone to-day.” And then, as she remembered the girl
of thirty-five years ago, and thought of herself as she was now, she
arose, and going to the glass, inspected, with a grim kind of
resignation, the face which met her view; the thin, sharp features, the
straight nose, with its slightly glaring nostrils, the firmly compressed
lips, the broad, low forehead, and the round black eyes which age had
not dimmed one whit, though it had given them a sharper, harder
expression than in their youth they had worn.
“And they called me handsome,” she said, as she stood contemplating
herself. “I was Jerry then, pretty Jerry Pepper, but now I’m nobody but
Aunt Jerusha, or worse yet, old Mother Pepper, as the school boys call
me.”
And with a sigh, the lonely woman locked up her treasures till another
year, and went back to her household cares and her lonely life. But
there was a softer look upon her face, and when, as she was dusting, she
came to Edna’s picture, which from some unaccountable impulse she had
only a few days before framed and hung upon the wall, she held her
feather duster suspended a moment, and looked earnestly at the face of
the young girl who for twelve years had been with her on Thanksgiving
day. And as she looked there arose a half wish that Edna was there now,
disgraced though she thought her to be by her unlucky marriage.
“She bothered me a sight, but then it’s kind of lonesome without her. I
wonder what she’s doing to-day,” she said, as she resumed her dusting
and thought again of Martha Ann Barnes, who might be induced to occupy
Edna’s old seat at the table.
But Martha Ann was not at church. Miss Pepper must eat her dinner alone;
and with the thought that “it did not pay to buy that head of celery and
make a parade just for herself,” she turned to the Prayer-Book and
minister, and felt her ire rise so high at his bowing so low in the
creed, that, as she wrote to Mrs. Churchill, she withheld a dollar and
gave as her offering only fifty cents; taking care as she came out of
church to tell what she had done to one who she knew would communicate
it to her pastor. Excellent Miss Pepper! the Thanksgiving sermon must
have done her a world of good, and she went home prepared to enjoy as
best she could her solitary dinner, but not prepared to find her niece
waiting there for her.