AT UNCLE PHIL’S.
It was one of those old-fashioned farm-houses rarely found outside of
New England, and even there growing more and more rare, as young
generations arise with cravings for something new, and a feeling of
having outgrown the old homestead with its “front entry” and crooked
stairway leading to another “entry” above; its two “square rooms” in
front and its huge kitchen and smaller sleeping apartment in the rear.
Those who do not emigrate to some more genial atmosphere, where their
progressive faculties have free scope to grow, have come to feel a
contempt for the old brown houses which once dotted the New England
hills so thickly; and so these veterans of a past century have gradually
given way to dwellings of a more modern style, with wide halls and long
balconies and bay-windows, and latterly the much-admired French roofs.
But Uncle Phil Overton was neither young nor a radical, nor was there
anything progressive in his taste. As his house had been forty years
ago, when by his father’s death and will it came to him, so it was that
day when Edna stood knocking at the door. It had been yellow then and it
was yellow now; it had been void of shade-trees then and it was so now,
if we except the horse-chestnut which grew near the gate, and which
could throw no shadow, however small, upon the house or in the great,
glaring rooms inside.
Uncle Phil did not like trees, and he did like light, and held it a sin
to shut out Heaven’s sunshine; so there never was a blind upon his
house; and the green-paper shades and curtains of Holland linen, which
somehow had been smuggled in and hung at a few of the windows, were
rolled up both day and night. Uncle Phil had no secrets to shut out, he
said, and folks were welcome to look in upon him at any time; so he sat
before the window, and washed before it, and shaved before it, and ate
before it, and dressed before it; and when his housekeeper, old Aunt
Becky, remonstrated with him, as she sometimes did, and told him “folks
would see him,” he answered her, “Let ’em peek, if they want to;” and so
the curtains remained as they were, and the old man had his way.
Many years ago, it was said that he had thought to bring a wife to the
farm-house, which he had brightened up a little, putting a red and green
carpet on the floor of the north room, painting the wood-work a light
blue, and covering the walls with a yellowish paper of most wonderful
design. Six chairs, and a looking-glass, and bureau, and table, had
completed the furnishing of that room, to which no bride ever came; and,
as Uncle Phil had been wholly reticent with regard to her, the story
came gradually to be regarded as a mere fabrication of somebody’s busy
brain; and Uncle Phil was set down as one whose heart had never been
reached by anything fairer than old black Becky, who had lived with him
for years, and grown to be so much like him that one had only to get the
serving-woman’s opinion to know what the master’s was. Just as that
stiff, cold north room had looked years ago, when made ready for the
mythical bride, so it looked now, and so, too, or nearly so, looked the
south room, with its Franklin fireplace, its painted floor, and the two
strips of rag carpet before the fire, its tall mantel-piece, with two
cupboards over it, holding a most promiscuous medley of articles, from a
paper of sage down to the almanacs for the last twenty years. Uncle Phil
didn’t believe in destroying books, and kept his almanacs as religiously
as he did his weekly paper, of which there were barrels full, stowed
away in the garret. Besides being the common sitting-room, the south
room was also Uncle Phil’s sleeping apartment, and in one corner was his
turned-up bed, with its curtain of copperplate, and beyond it the
clock-shelf and the clock, and a tall writing-desk, where Uncle Phil’s
valuables were kept. Two or three chairs, one on rockers, and one an
old-fashioned wooden chair with arms and a cushion in it, completed the
furniture, if we except the table, on which lay Walker’s Dictionary, and
the big Bible, and a book of sermons by some Unitarian divine, and Uncle
Phil’s glasses. The pleasantest room in the whole house was the kitchen,
where Aunt Becky reigned supreme, even Uncle Phil yielding to her here,
and never saying a word when she made and put down a respectable rag
carpet at the end of the long room in which she kept her Boston rocker
for company, and her little stuffed sewing chair for herself, and her
square stand covered with a towel, and on it a pretty cushion of blue,
which matched the string of robins’ eggs ornamenting the little glass
hanging beside the window, with its box for brush and combs made of
pasteboard and cones. This was Aunt Becky’s parlor, and her kitchen was
just as neat and inviting, with its nicely painted floor, and unpainted
wood-work, scoured every week, and kept free from dust and dirt by daily
wipes and dustings, and a continued warfare against the luckless flies
and insects, to whom Becky was a sworn foe. Out in the back room there
was a stove which Becky sometimes used, but she would not have it in her
kitchen; she liked the fireplace best, she said, and so in winter nights
you could see from afar the cheerful blaze of the logs Becky piled upon
the fire, giving the “forestick” now and then a thrust by way of
quickening the merry flames, which lit up her old black face as she
stooped upon the hearth to cook the evening meal.
And this was the house where Edna stood knocking for admission, and
wondering why her knock remained so long unanswered. Old Becky was at
the barn hunting for eggs with which to make her master’s favorite
custard pie, and never dreamed that she had a guest, until, with her
woollen dress pinned up around her waist, and a wisp of hay ornamenting
her hair, she returned to the house, and entering the kitchen by the
rear door, heard the knock, which by this time was loud and imperious.
No one but strangers ever came to the front door in winter, consequently
Aunt Becky, who had a good deal to do that morning, bristled at once,
and wondered “who was making that _to do_, and why they didn’t come to
the kitchen door, and not make her all that extra trouble.”
“Whale away,” she said, as Edna again applied herself vigorously to the
knocker. “I shan’t come till I’ve put up my _aigs_ and let my petticoats
down.”
This done, she started for the door, and, catching sight through the
window of Edna’s trunk, exclaimed:
“For Heaven’s sake, if thar ain’t a chist of clothes, a visitor; Miss
Maude, perhaps, and I nothin’ for dinner but a veal stew, or,—yes, I can
open a bottle of tomarterses, and roast some of them fall pippins.”
And with this consoling reflection, old Becky undid the iron bolt and
opened the door; but started back when, instead of the possible Miss
Maude, she saw a young girl dressed in black, “with just the sweetest,
sorriest, anxiousest face you even seen, and which made my bowels yearn
to oncet,” she said to Miss Maude, to whom she afterward related the
particulars of her first introduction to Edna.
“Does Mr. Philip Overton live here?” Edna asked so timidly that Becky,
who was slightly deaf, could only guess at what she said from catching
the name Overton.
“Yes, miss, he does; walk in, please,” and she involuntarily courtesied
politely to the young lady, who, save that she was shorter and smaller
every way, reminded her of her favorite Miss Maude. “You’ll have to come
right into my kitchen, I reckon; for when master’s out all day we never
has a fire in the south room till night,” she continued, as she led the
way through the “south room” into her pleasant quarters, which, in spite
of the preparations going on for dinner, looked home like and inviting,
especially the bright fire which blazed upon the hearth.
Edna went up to this at once and held her cold hands near the blaze, and
Becky, who was a close observer, noticed first the cut of her dress, and
then decided that “it had as long a tail as Miss Maude’s” (the reader
will bear in mind that this was before the days of short dresses), “but
was not quite as citified.” She noticed, too, the little, plump, white
hands which Edna held up to the fire, and said within herself,—
“Them hands has never done no work; I wonder who she can be?”
Edna told her after a moment that she had come from Chicago, from Mrs.
Dana’s, whom Becky might perhaps remember, as she was once an inmate for
a time of the farm-house. Becky did remember Miss Susan, and after
expressing her surprise and regret at her sudden death, she continued:
“You’ve come to visit yer uncle,—have you ever seen him?”
Edna had never seen him, and she had not exactly come visiting either.
In fact she hardly knew why she had come, and now that she was here, and
had a faint inkling of matters, she began to wish she had staid away,
and to wonder herself why she was there. To her uncle she intended to
tell everything, but not to Becky, though she instinctively felt that
the latter was a person of a great deal of consequence in her uncle’s
family, and must have some explanation, even though it was a very lame
one. So she said:
“I lived with Mrs. Dana when she died. I have lost all my friends. I
have no home, and so I came to Uncle Overton, hoping he would let me
stay till I find something to do. Mrs. Dana said he was kind and good.”
“Yes, but mighty curis in his ways,” was Becky’s rejoinder, as she
wondered how her master would receive this stranger, who had no home nor
friends unless he gave her both. “It’s jest as the fit catches him,” she
thought, as she asked Edna to lay aside her wrappings, and then told her
to make herself at home till the “marster came.” “He’s gone over to
Millville, six or eight miles or so, and rode old Bobtail, who never
trots faster than an ant can walk, so he won’t be home till three
o’clock, and I’m goin’ to have dinner and supper all to oncet, but if
you’re hungry, and I know you be, I’ll jest clap on a cold bite and
steep a drawin’ of tea,” she said.
But Edna was not hungry; she had breakfasted at the station not many
miles from Albany, and could wait until her uncle came.
“I’ll fetch yer things in, only I dunno whar marster’ll have ’em put.
Any ways, I’m safet in the back bedroom,” Becky continued, and with
Edna’s help, the trunk was brought into the house and carried up the
back stairs to a little room directly over the kitchen, where the bare
floor and the meagre furniture struck cold and chill to Edna’s heart, it
was so different from anything she had ever known.
That room at Aunt Jerry’s, looking out upon the graveyard, was a palace
compared to this cheerless apartment; and sitting down upon her trunk
after Becky left her, she cried from sheer homesickness, and half
resolved to take the next train back to—she did not know where. There
was no place for her anywhere, and in utter loneliness and despair she
continued to cry until Becky came up with a pitcher of warm water and
some towels across her arm. She saw that Edna was crying, and half
guessing the cause, said very kindly:
“I reckon you’re some homesick, and ’tain’t to be wondered at; this room
ain’t the chirkest in the house, and ’tain’t no ways likely you’ll stay
here, but I dassen’t put you in no other without marster’s orders; he’s
curis, and if he takes to you as he’s sure to do, you’re all right and
in clover right away. He sarves ’em all dis way, Miss Maude an’ all, but
now nothin’s too good for her.”
Edna did not ask who Miss Maude was, but she thanked Becky for her
kindness, and after bathing her face and eyes, and brushing her hair,
went down to the kitchen to wait with fear and trembling for the coming
of the “marster who was so curis in his ways.”
Becky did not talk much that morning. She had “too many irons in the
fire,” she said, and so she brought Edna a book which Miss Maude had
left there more than a year ago, and which might help to pass the time.
It was “Monte-Cristo,” which Edna had never read, and she received it
thankfully, and glancing at the fly-leaf saw written there, “Maude
Somerton, New York, May 10th, 18——”
Becky’s Miss Maude, then, was Maude Somerton, who lived in New York, and
whom some wind of fortune had blown to Rocky Point, where she seemed to
be an immense favorite; so much Edna inferred, and then she sat herself
down to the book, and in following the golden fortunes of the hero she
forgot the lapse of time until the clock struck two, and Becky, taking a
blazing firebrand from the hearth, carried it into the south room, with
the evident intention of kindling a fire.
“Marster always has one thar nights,” she said, “and when we has company
we sets the table thar. His bed ain’t no ’count, turned up with the
curtain afore it.”
And so in honor of Edna the table was laid in the south room, and Aunt
Becky, who had quietly been studying the young girl, and making up her
mind with regard to her, ventured upon the extravagance of one of her
finest cloths, and the best white dishes instead of the blue set, and
put on napkins and the silver-plated forks and butter-knife, and thought
how nicely her table looked, and wished aloud that “Marster Philip”
would come before her supper had all got cold.
As if in answer to her wish there was the sound of some one at the gate,
and looking from the window Aunt Becky joyfully announced that “marster
had come.”