UP IN THE NORTH ROOM.
“Oh, how pleasant and nice. Am I to sleep here?” Edna asked, as she
skipped across the floor, and knelt upon the hearth-rug in front of the
fire. “What’s become of that little room? I thought——”
She did not say what she thought, for Becky interrupted her with:
“Oh, dat’s no ’count room; jes’ put folks in thar when they fust comes,
then moves ’em up higher, like they does in Scripter. Marster’s mighty
quare.”
“How long have you lived with him?” Edna asked, and Becky replied:
“Oh, many years. I was a slave on the block, in Car’lina, and Marster
Phil comed in and seen me, and pitied me like, and bid me off, and kep’
me from gwine South with a trader, an’ brought me home and sot me free,
and I’ve lived with him ever since, an’, please Heaven, I will sarve him
till I die, for all he’s done for me. Is you gwine to stay, Miss
Overton?”
Edna told her that she was, and that she was sure she should like it
very much if she could get something to do.
“You likes to work then, and so did Miss Maude, though she ’pears more
of a lady than ’nough I’ve seen what wouldn’t lift thar finger to fotch
a thing,” Becky said, and Edna asked:
“Who is Maude? Uncle Phil has spoken of her once or twice.”
“Why she’s Maude Somerton, from New York,” Becky replied; “and she came
fust to Prospect Cottage, as they call a house way up on the hills whar
the city gentry sometimes stay summers for a spell, and whar Miss
Maude’s Aunt Burton was onct with her daughter called Georgie, though
she was a girl.”
Edna was interested now, and moved a little nearer to Becky, who
continued:
“I know precious little ’bout them Burtons, only they was mighty big
feelin’, and Miss Maude was a kind of poor relation, I s’pects;
leastwise she wanted to teach school, and Uncle Phil was committee-man
and let her have it, and she was to board round, and didn’t like it, and
went at Marster Phil till he took her in, though he hated to like pison,
and it was allus a mystery to me how she did it, for he don’t hanker
after wimmen much, and never could bar to have ’em ’round.”
Here Aunt Becky paused a moment, and taking advantage of the pause, we
will present our readers with a picture which Aunt Becky did not see,
else she would have known just how Maude Somerton persuaded Uncle Philip
to let her have a home beneath his roof. The time, five o’clock or
thereabouts, on a warm summer afternoon: the place, a strip of meadow
land on Uncle Phil’s premises: the _Dramatis Personæ_, Uncle Phil and
Maude Somerton: She, with the duties of the day over, wending her way
slowly toward the small and rather uncomfortable gable-roofed house up
the mountain-road, where it was her fate to board for that week, aye,
for two or three weeks, judging by the number of children, who seldom
left her alone for a moment, and who each night contended for the honor
of sleeping with the “school marm.” He, industriously raking up into
mounds the fragrant hay, and casting now and then a wistful glance at a
bank of clouds which threatened rain; when suddenly, across the field,
and bearing swiftly down upon him, came an airy form, her blue linen
dress held just high enough to clear the grass, and at the same time
show her pretty boots, with the Broadway stamp upon them, and her dainty
white petticoat, whose tucks and ruffles were the envy of all the girls
in Rocky Point, and the bane of the wash-woman’s life. Uncle Phil saw
the apparition, and saw the tucks and ruffles, and thought what pretty
feet Miss Somerton had, and what tall boots she wore, and wondered why
she was coming toward him in such hot haste.
“Most likely some of those Beals’ boys have been raisin’ Cain, and so
she comes to me as committee-man. I’ll be blamed if I don’t throw up the
office, for I can’t have wimmen taggin’ after me this way,” he thought,
and pretending not to see the young girl, now so near to him, he kept on
with his raking, until right before his very face came the vision of
blue and white, and a little, fat, dimpled hand was laid upon his rake,
and a pair of soft, blue eyes looked up into his with something like
tears in them, while a pleading voice told him how terrible it was to
board round, to eat the best cake every day, to be company all the time,
and never feel at home; besides, having from one to three children
fighting to sleep with you every night, when you wanted so much to be
alone. And then, still grasping the rake, Maude asked if she might stay
altogether at his house, where everything was so nice, and cool, and
quiet, and she could have a room to herself, undisturbed by children.
“You will, I know you will, Mr. Overton,” and she stopped for his reply.
Uncle Phil was more astounded than when asked by Edna to kiss her. Of
his own accord, he would quite as soon have taken a young alligator into
his family as a _girl_, a _woman_; but there was something about this
one standing there before him, and now actually grasping his hand
instead of the rake, which completely unmanned him. Those eyes, and the
touch of the white fingers clinging so closely to his own, could not be
resisted, and with a quick, nervous motion, he began to step backwards,
and sideways, and then forwards, ejaculating meanwhile, “Lord bless
me,—yes, yes! I feel very queer; yes I do. Let go my rake. This is
sudden. Yes, yes. You don’t like sleepin’ with all the young ones in the
deestrict. Don’t blame you. I’d as soon sleep with a nest of woodchucks.
Yes, yes. This is curis. I must have some snuff.”
He got his hand free from Maude, took two or three good pinches of his
favorite Macaboy, offered her some, and then, giving a hitch to his
suspender, replied to her question, repeated, “May I stay with you, Mr.
Overton?”
“Yes, yes; I s’pose you’ll have to, if Beck is willin’. I’ll see her
to-night, and let you know.”
He said this last by way of giving himself a chance to draw back, for
already he began to repent, and feel how terrible it would be to have a
young woman in his house all the time,—to-day, to-morrow, and next day.
It was a great deal worse than sleeping with every child in town, and he
brought up Beck as the pack-horse who was to carry the burden of his
refusal on the morrow. But Maude outwitted him there.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” she cried. “You are the dearest man in the
world. Becky is all right. I saw her first, and she said if you were
willing, she was. I shall move this very day, for I cannot stay with
Mrs. Higgins another hour. Thank you again, ever so much, you dear,
darling man.”
She was tripping off across the fields, leaving the enemy totally routed
and vanquished, and sick at his stomach, and dizzy-headed, as he tried
to think how many more weeks there were before vacation.
“Nine, _ten_, TWELVE!” he fairly groaned. “I can’t stand it. I won’t
stand it. I’ll put a stop to it,—see if I don’t. Yes, yes; to have them
boots trottin’ up and down the stairs, and them petticoats whiskin’
through the doors, and makin’ me feel so curis. I’ll go crazy,—I feel
like it now.”
He tried snuff,—six pinches; but that didn’t answer. Then he tried
raking hay so fast, that to use his own words, “he sweat like a
butcher;” then he tried cooling his feet in the brook near by, and
wiping them on his bandanna; but nothing was of avail to drive away
“that curis feelin’ at the pit of his stomach,” and long before sunset
he left his work, and wended his way homeward.
The enemy was there before him, or, at least, a part of her equipments,
for two of the Higgins’ boys had brought over Maude’s satchel, and
sun-umbrella, and water-proof, and two or three books, and a pair of
overshoes; all of which were on the kitchen-table, while the boys were
swinging on the gate in the front yard.
Uncle Phil ordered the boys home, and “the traps” up in the little “back
chamber.”
“That’ll start her. She’ll find that worse than sleepin’ with the
Higginses,” he thought, as he gave the order, and then went and took a
dose of something he called “jallup.” “He had an awful headache,” he
said to Aunt Becky, when she inquired what was the matter; and his
headache increased, and sent him to bed before Maude arrived, flushed,
delighted, and full of spirits that her boarding ’round was over.
He heard her go up to her little hot back room, and wondered how she
liked it, and how long she’d stay in it, and half wished he had nailed
the window down so she could not open it.
She was up bright and early the next morning, and drove the cows to
their pasture, a distance of half a mile, and brought back a bunch of
flowers, which she arranged upon the table; and she looked so fresh and
pretty in her blue gown, which just matched her eyes, and ate cold beans
so heartily, that Uncle Phil began to relent, and that night she slept
in the _north-west_ room instead of the little back one. There she
stayed a week; and then, after having helped Uncle Phil rake up his hay
one day when a shower was coming up, she was promoted to the _north_,
and best chamber, and some nice striped matting was bought for the
floor, and a pretty chestnut set took the place of the high-post
bedstead and old-fashioned bureau; and some curtains were hung at the
windows, for Uncle Phil said “he didn’t want the whole town to see the
_girl_ undress, if they did him.”
And here for weeks Maude reigned, a very queen, and cheered and
brightened up the old farm-house until, when in the fall she left and
went back to Oakwood, Aunt Becky cried for sheer loneliness, and Uncle
Phil took a larger dose of “jallup” to help the feeling at his stomach,
than when she first came to him.
And this was how Maude Somerton chanced to be an inmate of Uncle Phil’s
family, and enshrined in his heart, as well as in old Becky’s, as a kind
of divinity, whom it was not so very wrong to worship.
“’Pears like we never could get over hankerin after her,” Becky said to
Edna, “she was so chirk and pert-like, and made the house so different.”
Edna was longing to ask another question, but did not quite know how to
get at it. At last she said:
“Does Miss Somerton live in New York all the time? Has her Aunt Burton
no country residence?”
“Yes, bless you, a house as big as four of this, down to Oakwood, whar
thar’s looking-glasses as long as you be, Miss Maude said, and furniture
all covered with satin.”
Edna was no nearer her point than before, and so she tried again.
“Have they any neighbors at Oakwood, any families they are intimate
with?”
“Yes, thar’s the Leightons, to my way of thinkin’ quite as sot up as the
Burtons, and thar place, Miss Maude say, is handsomer and bigger than
the one to Oakwood.”
“Oh, indeed, Mrs. Leighton must be a happy woman. Did you ever see her?”
Edna asked, and Becky replied,
“Thar ain’t no Miss Leighton; she’s Miss Churchill, married twicet; her
oldest boy, Mr. Roy, owns the property, and is the nicest man I reckon
you ever seen. He stayed to the hotel oncet a few weeks, and I done his
washin’, ’case he couldn’t find nobody handy, and Marster Phil let me do
it and keep the pay. He wore a clean shirt a day, and cuffs and collars,
and white vests, and pocket handkerchiefs, and socks without end; and
gave me seventy-five cents a dozen just as they run, which made me a
nice handful of money.”
“Yes,” Edna said, musingly; “I suppose he must be very rich? Is he the
only child?”
“Ne-oo,” and Aunt Becky spoke a little scornfully, while Edna moved so
as to hide her burning face.
She had reached the point at last, and her heart beat almost audibly as
Aunt Becky continued:
“Or he wasn’t the only child when they was here. Thar was a younger one,
a Charles Churchill, who got killed on the railroad a spell ago. You
should speak well of the dead, and I mean to; but I reckon he wasn’t of
so much ’count in these yer parts as Master Roy.”
“Did he do anything bad,” Edna asked, and her voice was very low and
sad.
“No, not bad, only wan’t of much ’count. He druv fast horses, and smoked
all the time, and bragged about his money when he hadn’t a cent, and
flirted with the girls awfully. Thar’s Miss Ruth Gardner, all of three
years older than him, thought she should catch him sure, and little
Marcia Belknap was fairly bewitched; and both on ’em cried when they
heard he was dead, though he left a wife, the papers said, married that
very day.”
“Oh, dreadful,” and Edna groaned aloud, for she saw again that awful
scene, and the white, still face upturned to the angry sky, and it
seemed wrong to sit there and make no sign while Becky went on.
“I hain’t seen Miss Maude since, so I don’t know nothin’ about his wife,
who she was, nor whar she is. Down to the Leighton Place, maybe, though
it’s been surmised that she warn’t much,—kind of poor white folksy, I
reckon; and if that’s so, Miss Churchill ain’t a-goin’ to own her, ’case
she’s mighty big feelin’, and turned up her nose at Miss Ruth, and took
her boy home to git shet of her. But Miss Ruth is enough for her, and
I’ve hearn she talked awful about that wife of Charlie’s, and said she
jest wished she could see her long enough to tell her she had the best
and fustest right to her husband. Oh, she’s a clipper, Miss Ruth is.”
Edna’s hands were locked firmly together, and the nails were making red
marks upon her flesh, while she longed for Aunt Becky to leave her. She
had heard enough, and she looked so white and tired, that Becky noticed
it at last, and asked if she was sick.
“No, only tired,” she said; and then Becky said good-night, and left her
alone with her sad thoughts, which, however, were not all sad and
bitter.
She had lost her first love in more ways than one, and as, with her head
bent down, she sat thinking of him and all she had heard, she felt a
fresh pang of remorse cut through her heart at her own callousness in
feeling that perhaps for herself it was better that Charlie died. But
only for herself. When she thought of _him_, and what he might have
been, had space for repentance been granted him, her tears flowed like
rain, and, prone upon her face, she prayed that if the prayers of the
living for the dead could avail, hers might be heard and answered for
her lost, wayward Charlie.