AUNT JERRY AND EDNA.
If Miss Pepper had owned the truth, she was not sorry to see Edna, and
the feeling of loneliness which all the morning had been tugging at her
heart, began to give way at once; but she was one of those people who
feel bound to “stick to their principles,” whether right or wrong, and
as one of her principles was that her niece had behaved very shabbily
and deserved punishing, she steeled her heart against her, and putting
on her severest look and manner, said to her:
“Edna Browning, how dare you come here after disgracing me so?”
This was the speech with which Miss Pepper had intended to greet her
niece if she ever came back unannounced, and she had repeated it many
times to herself, and to Tabby, and to the teakettle boiling on the
stove, and the clock ticking upon the mantel, and from having said it so
often, she had come to repeat it without any great amount of genuine
indignation; but this Edna did not know, and the eager, expectant look
on her face died out in a moment as she heard the words of greeting.
“Oh, auntie,” she cried, and her little hands clasped each other more
tightly as she took a step forward, “don’t speak so to me. I am so
desolate, and I had not anywhere else to go. I thought you would be
lonely eating dinner alone, and might be glad to see me.”
“Glad to see you after all you’ve done! You must think me a saint, which
I don’t pretend to be,” was the harsh reply, as Aunt Jerusha hurried
past Edna, without noticing the hand involuntarily stretched out toward
her.
Going into her bedroom to lay her bonnet and cloak aside, Miss Pepper’s
lip quivered a little as she said to herself,—
“The child has suffered, and no mistake, but I’m not going to be talked
over at once. She deserves a good lesson. If she was a youngster, I’d
spank her smartly and be done with it, but as I can’t do that I shall
carry a stiff upper lip a spell, till she’s fairly cowed.”
With this intention Miss Pepper returned to the attack, and once having
opened her volley of abuse,—reproof she called it,—she did not know
where to stop, and said far more than she really felt or had at first
any intention of saying. The runaway match with a mere boy; the
meanness, aye the dishonesty of breaking the contract with the principal
of the seminary, and leaving that four hundred dollars for some one else
to pay; the littleness of wearing jewelry which a stranger must pay for,
and the wickedness of decoying a young man into marriage, and thereby
causing him to lose his life, and making her a murderess, were each in
turn brought up and eloquently handled; while Edna stood with bowed head
and heard it quietly, until her aunt reached the _ring_, and asked if
she was not ashamed to wear it. Then it was that the “pale-gray look
came over her face and the steel-gray look in her eye,” as she took the
golden band from her finger, and laid it away in her purse, saying in a
voice Miss Pepper would never have recognized as Edna’s,—
“You are right, auntie. I am a murderess, and I ought not to wear this
ring until I have paid for it myself, and I never will.”
Something in her tone and manner stopped Miss Pepper, and for a moment
she gazed curiously at this young girl who seemed to expand into a
dignified, self-assured woman as she drew off her wedding ring, and,
putting it away from her sight, walked quietly to the window, where she
stood looking out upon the dull November sky from which a few snowflakes
were beginning to fall. Miss Pepper was puzzled, and for an instant
seriously contemplated taking back a part, at least, of what she had
said, but that would not have been in accordance with her theory of
managing young people, and so she contented herself with doing instead
of saying. She made the kind of gravy for the turkey which she
remembered Edna liked, and put an extra lump of butter in the squash,
and brought from the cellar a tumbler of cranberry jelly and a pot of
peach preserves, and opened a bottle of pickled cauliflower, and warmed
one of her best mince pies, and made black tea instead of green, because
Edna never drank the latter, and then, when all was ready, said, in a
half-conciliatory tone, “Come now, the victuals is ready.”
Then Edna came away from the window and took her seat at the table, and
took the heaped-up plate offered to her, and made some casual remarks
about the _price of butter_, and asked if Blossom gave as much milk as
ever, but she did not eat. She had been very hungry, but the hunger was
gone now, and so she sipped her tea and toyed with her fork, and
occasionally put it to her lips, but never with anything on it which
Aunt Jerusha could see. In short, the dinner was a failure; and when it
was over Aunt Jerry removed her turkey nearly as whole as when it went
upon the table, and carried back her cranberries and peaches untouched,
and felt as if she had been badly used that her dinner was thus
slighted. Edna did not offer to help her as she cleared the dinner away,
but sat with folded hands looking out to where a brown, blighted
rose-bush was gently swayed by the wind.
Once when Aunt Jerry could endure the silence no longer, she said:
“What under the sun do you see out there? What are you looking at?”
“My future life,” Edna replied, without so much as turning her head, and
Aunt Jerry gave an extra whisk to her dish towel as she went on washing
her dishes.
As it began to grow dark, Miss Pepper brought out her candle, and was
about to light it, when Edna started suddenly, and turning her white,
stony face toward her aunt, said:
“Don’t light the candle now. I like the dark the best. I want to talk
with you, and can do it better if I do not see your face.”
There was a ring in the voice which puzzled Aunt Jerry a little, but she
humored her niece, and felt glad that at last Edna was going to talk.
But she was not quite prepared for what followed when her niece, who had
suddenly outgrown all fear of her aunt, spoke of some things in the
past, which, had they been different, might have borne a different
result and have kept her from doing what she had done.
“I believe you meant well, Aunt Jerry,” she said, “and perhaps some
would say you did well. You gave me a home when I had none; gave me food
and clothes, and taught me many things; but for the one great thing
which children need the most and miss the most, I did hunger so
terribly. I wanted some love, auntie; some petting, some kind, caressing
act which should tell me I was more to you than the poor orphan whom you
took from charity. But you never gave it, never laid your hand upon me
fondly, never called me a pet name, never kissed me in your life, and we
living together these dozen years. You chide me for turning so readily
to a stranger whom I had only known for a few months, and preferring him
to my own flesh and blood. Auntie, in the few months I knew Charlie
Churchill, he gave me more love, more kindness than I had ever known
from you in the twelve years we lived together, and when he asked me to
go with him, as I did, I hesitated, for I knew it was wrong; but when
your letter came threatening to bring me home, the thought of the long,
dreary winter during which scarcely a kind, pleasant word would be
spoken to me, was more than I could bear, and so I went with Charlie.”
Edna paused a moment with the hope that what she had said might bring
some expression of regret from the woman sitting so straight, and prim,
and silent in the chair near by. But it did not, and as Edna could not
see her face she never dreamed of the effect her words had produced, and
how the great lumps were swelling in her aunt’s throat, as that peculiar
woman forced down the impulse of her better nature which did prompt her
to say she had been to blame. To confess herself in error was a hard
thing for Miss Pepper to do, and glad that the darkness prevented her
niece from seeing the tear which actually rolled down her cheek, she
maintained a perfect silence while Edna told her more of Charlie, and of
her life in Chicago, and her indebtedness to Roy, and her resolve to
cancel it as well as to pay for her education if her aunt would wait
patiently till she could earn it.
“I am very tired,” she said, when she had finished her story. “I rode
all night, you know, and if you don’t mind being left alone so early, I
think I’ll go to bed. I shall find my room the same as ever, I suppose.”
Then Aunt Jerry arose and struck a light, and without looking at her
niece, said to her: “Hadn’t you better go up to the front chamber? It’s
a nicer bed, you know; nicer every way. I guess you better try it.”
This was a great concession on Aunt Jerry’s part, and Edna was touched
by it, but she preferred her old room, she said; she should not feel at
home elsewhere, and taking the candle from Aunt Jerry’s hand she said
good-night, and went up the steep, narrow stairs she had so often
climbed in childhood. As she reached the landing, Aunt Jerry called
after her:
“You’ll find a blanket in the chest if there ain’t clothes enough. You
better take it, anyway, for it is cold to-night.”
This was another olive branch, and Edna accepted it as such, and took
the blanket more to please her aunt than because she needed it. Her room
was the same as ever, with the exception of a few rolls of carpet-rags
which were lying in one corner, and at which Edna looked with a kind of
nervous dread, as if they had been cut and sewed by her own unwilling
hands. It was too dark outside to distinguish more than the faint
outline of the tombstones in the graveyard, but Edna singled out her
father’s, and putting out her candle knelt down by the low window and
gazed long and earnestly at the spot where her father slept. She was
bidding his grave farewell, it might be forever, for her resolution was
taken to go away from there, and find a place among entire strangers.
“It is better so,” she said, as she leaned her hot forehead against the
cool window-pane. “’Tis better so, and father would bid me go, if he
could speak. Oh, father, if you had not died, all this might have been
spared to me.”
Then, as she remembered her other Father, her Heavenly one, and His
promise to the orphan, she clasped her hands over her face and prayed
earnestly for His protection and blessing upon her wherever she might
go. And then she thought of Aunt Jerry, and asked that God would bless
her, too, and if in what she had said that night there was any thing
harsh and wrong, He would forgive her for it, and help her to make
amends. Her prayers ended, she crept into her bed, which seemed, with
its softness and warmth, to embrace and hold her as a mother might have
done, and so embraced and held, she soon fell away to sleep, and forgot
all that was past, and ceased to dread what might be in store for her.
Meantime Aunt Jerry sat in the room below, with her feet on the stove
hearth, her hands locked together around her knees, and her head bent
forward until her forehead almost touched her dress. Perhaps she
maintained this attitude to accommodate Tabby, who had mounted upon her
back and nestled across her neck, and perhaps she did it the better to
think intently, for she was thinking of all Edna had said to her with
reference to her childhood, and wondering if, after all, her theory was
wrong, and children were like chickens, which needed brooding from the
mother hen.
“But sakes alive, how was I to know that,—I, a dried-up old maid, who
never had a baby of my own, and never held one either, except that young
one of Mrs. Atwood’s that I stood sponsor for, and almost dropped when I
presented it? If things had turned out different, why, I should have
been different.”
And with a little sigh as she thought of the yellow brocade in the chest
upstairs, Miss Pepper put Tabby from her neck, and bringing out her
prayer-book read the Gospel and Epistle and Collect for the day, and
then kneeling by her chair said the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and a
few words of her own improvising, to the effect that if she was too hard
the Lord would thaw her out and make her softer, and help her somehow to
make it up to Edna, and then she went to bed.
Edna was hungry the next morning, and did full justice to the cold roast
turkey and nicely browned potato, and when her aunt asked if she would
like some cranberry jelly, she said she would, for she felt that her
aunt wanted her to have it, and did not begrudge the journey to the
cellar in quest of it. There was but little talk on either side, until
Edna asked if the stage went out the same hour as usual, and announced
her intention of going away. Then Aunt Jerry spoke her mind again, and
said Edna “was a fool to go sky-larkin’ off alone, when she was welcome
there, and could get plenty of scholars too, if that was what she
wanted;” and she even went so far as to say “they might as well let
bygones be bygones, and begin anew, and see if they couldn’t pull
together a little better.”
But Edna was not to be persuaded from her purpose. She did not know
exactly where she was going, she said, but would let her aunt know when
she was located, and if she did not succeed she might perhaps come back.
“That is, if you will let me. This is all the home I have at present,
you know,” she added, looking wistfully up in her aunt’s face, as if for
some token that she was cared for by that undemonstrative woman, who
scolded the driver for bringing in so much snow and mud when he came for
Edna’s trunk, and scolded the boy who came to help him for leaving the
door open, and did it all to hide what she really felt at parting with
her niece.
“Of course I’ll let you. I’d be a heathen to turn out my own flesh and
blood,” she said, in reply to Edna’s remark, and then as the driver’s
shrill “all ready” was heard, she gave her hand to Edna, who would have
kissed her but for the forbidding look upon her face, and the pin
between her teeth.
Aunt Jerry went with her to the stage, and stood looking on until she
was comfortably seated, and then, as the driver mounted to his box and
gathered up his reins, she said, “Wall, good-by again,” with a tone in
her voice which made Edna throw back her veil to look at her more
closely. But the horses, obedient to the lash, had started forward, and
Aunt Jerry was left, feeling more alone than she had ever before felt in
her life.
“I wonder if she would have staid if I’d been more outspoken, and told
her how much I really wanted her?” Aunt Jerry said, as she returned to
the house and began to put it to rights. “But that’s the way with me. I
can’t say what I feel. I guess I’m ugly, if I do belong to the Church. I
let him go when a word would have kept him, only I was too proud to
speak it; and now I’ve lost her, just as I was beginning to know that I
did like her some. I wish she knew how near crying I was when she said
so queer-like, ‘You never kissed me, auntie, in my life, and we living
together these dozen years.’ Don’t she know I ain’t the kissing sort?
Still, I might have kissed her when a little child, and not hurt
myself.”
She was dusting the clock and the mantel, and when she came to the
little picture in the rustic frame, she stopped, and continued her
soliloquy:
“I wonder if she noticed that. If she did, she must know I think
something of her, if I never did kiss her, and make a fuss. The likeness
ain’t much like her, any way, but still it’s her picture, and I’ve half
a mind,—yes, I b’lieve I will;” and reaching up her hand, the strange
woman, who in twelve years had never shown her orphan niece a single
mark of genuine affection, took down that photograph and kissed it.
That was a great deal for her to do, and being done, she began to feel
as if she had made atonement for all that had, been wrong in herself
heretofore, and that Edna really ought now to come back. But Edna had
gone, and as the days went by and brought no news of her, Aunt Jerry
began to grow indignant, and finally relieved herself by writing to Mrs.
Churchill the letter we have seen. Roy’s reply and the check threw her
into a violent rage, and after letting him know her mind, she washed her
hands, as she said, of the whole of them, and settled back into her
lonely life, sharper, harsher than before, and more disposed to find
fault with her clergyman and battle with his decided tendency to High
Church and Ritualism.