ROY FINDS EDNA.
Edna had promised Georgie that not a long time should elapse before she
would make herself known to Roy and his mother. She had also promised
Uncle Phil an early visit to Rocky Point; and within a week or so after
Jack’s departure for Europe, she asked and obtained permission from Mrs.
Churchill to go to her old home. It was very lonely at Leighton without
her; and Roy found the time hanging heavily on his hands, and was trying
hard to make himself believe that his property at Rocky Point required
personal looking after, when he received through Miss Pepper a letter
from Edna, expressing her sympathy with him in his recent loss, and
saying that if he would come to Allen’s Hill, at such a time, she would
be there to meet him.
Roy had not heard from Edna before in a long, long time. Indeed, she had
written to him but once since his engagement with Georgie. Then she had
sent him a hundred dollars toward the payment of her debt, and had said
a few words about his intended marriage, hoping he might be happy with
his bride, but declining to tell him where she was living. And that was
all he knew of her; and he was not quite as enthusiastic on the subject
as he had once been. Miss Overton was his absorbing thought. Still he
felt glad that at last he was to see and know his mysterious
sister-in-law, and felt especially glad of any excuse which would take
him away from home and into the vicinity of Rocky Point; for he meant to
go there first. It would be only a short run from Albany, and detain him
but a day at the most, and Brownie was sure to be glad to see him. It is
true she had never said much to him of Edna, or evinced any great
interest in her; but she would be glad because he was glad; and he hoped
the two young girls would like each other; for of course Edna would now
live at Leighton, which was also to be Brownie’s home forever. He had
settled that last point satisfactorily with himself, and he meant to
settle it with Brownie before long. Georgie herself had hinted it to
him. Georgie had been willing, and had bidden him not to wait because
she was dead. And he would not; he would speak to her and tell her of
his love; and if she could love him in return, they would wait a
reasonable time, and then he would make her his wife, and install her
mistress of Leighton, where Edna should always have a place as the
sister of the house.
This was his plan; and he found his pulse quickening as he drew near to
Rocky Point, where he expected to find his Brownie. But the bird had
flown,—had gone, Uncle Phil said, to visit some of her kin. And when Roy
asked where her kin lived, the old man answered, “Oh, in forty places.
She is goin’ to Albany first, and then to Schenectady, and Utica, and
Canestoty, and Syracuse, and Auburn, for what I know. You’d better let
her run a spell whilst you hunt up t’other one; two gals at a lick is
too much.”
There was a knowing twinkle in Uncle Phil’s eyes; but it was lost on
Roy, who, in his disappointment, did not once think that Uncle Phil had
mentioned the different points along the railroad line through which it
was necessary to pass in order to reach Allen’s Hill. He only felt that
he must bear his suspense a little longer, and that it was hard to do
so.
The next day he took the train for Canandaigua, where he spent the
night, and the following morning drove himself out to Allen’s Hill, just
as he had done once before, when Edna as now was the object he sought.
There was no soap boiling in the caldron kettle this time, and no
Macbethian witch bending over it in wonderful costume, as Roy came round
the corner of the church, and tied his horse to the post. Aunt Jerry was
expecting him, and welcomed him cordially, and invited him in, and then
tortured him by talking for ten or fifteen minutes upon every topic but
the one uppermost in his mind. At last, when he could wait no longer, he
said to her, abruptly:
“Your niece wrote me that she would meet me here any day this week, and
I have lost no time in coming. She will not disappoint me now, I trust.
I am very anxious to find her.”
“Yes, I s’pose so. She’s here, though not in the house this minute. She
went to the woods an hour or so ago.”
“Can I find her there, do you think? Show me the way, please, and I’ll
try it,” Roy said with sudden animation, rising to his feet, and seeming
full of eagerness and impatience.
It could not have been anything in Aunt Jerry’s manner which
communicated itself to him, nor anything in the atmosphere of the house.
It was rather a presentiment of the coming happiness, a remembrance of
Uncle Phil’s demeanor and mysterious hints, which, put together, came
over Roy with a sudden suspicion of the truth, or rather a suspicion
that it might be just possible, nothing more. It was too delightful a
possibility to be true; and he must not harbor the hope for a moment, he
said to himself, as, waiting only for Aunt Jerry’s somewhat indefinite
directions, he started for the west woods, where Edna was to be found.
“There’s a brook down there, and a bank under a tree: maybe you’ll find
her there,” Aunt Jerry had said, and Roy kept on his way down the hill,
past the site of the old school-house where Edna had learned her
alphabet; through the bars, which he did not wait to let down, but over
which he vaulted at one bound; and on across the grassy patch until the
border of the woods was reached, and there he paused a moment to look
about and reconnoitre a little.
It was one of those balmy, autumnal days when earth and sky seem more
beautiful even than in early summer. A recent frost had just tinged the
leaves of the maple with scarlet, and here and there a leaf was falling
from the trees, and a ripe, brown nut was dropping through the hazy air
down to the ground, while the murmur of the brook was plainly heard as
it ran singing on its way, now through the bed of ferns whose broad
leaves dipped themselves in its cool waters, and now widening out into a
broader channel, with little fishes playing in it, and tall trees
reaching their arms across it, making a delicious shade, on that warm,
sunny morning. Roy followed the brook until he reached the point where
it began to widen, then a little farther on, and then he stopped again,
and felt every nerve quivering with an ecstasy of delight, so great and
overpowering, that for an instant he leaned for support against a tree,
while his lips framed the words, “I thank Thee, my Heavenly Father, for
this great joy of which I never dreamed.”
Twenty rods or so in advance, and sitting under a tall maple, with her
hat on the ground beside her, and her back to Roy, was a little girlish
figure, which Roy was certain he knew. The attitude, the poise of the
head, and more than all, the curls of golden brown, and the dress of
blue cambric, which he had always admired so much in Brownie, proclaimed
that it was Brownie herself, the woman whom he felt at this moment he
loved more than his life. Everything he had said to Georgie concerning
his disapproval of disguises, was forgotten in that moment of supreme
delight, when, with a few rapid strides he reached the figure on the
bank, and met the soft, laughing eyes he knew so well, and saw the
blushes deepen on the beautiful face upturned to his when Edna first
became aware of his close proximity to her.
“My darling,” was all he said, all he could say, as he took her in his
arms, and laid his mouth to the sweet lips which kissed him back without
a moment’s hesitation.
There was little need for more open declaration and acceptance of love
than was expressed in that first embrace. Roy had confessed himself in
the kisses he rained upon her lips, her forehead and her hands, while
she, in suffering it, had accepted him; and both felt that they were
pledged to each other, when at last Roy released her and drew her to a
seat beside him on the grass.
“Now, tell me,” he said, as he put his arm around her, and held her hand
in his, “tell me the whole story, why you deceived us so, and how you
did it so successfully?”
“You are not angry with me then, for being such an impostor? Oh, Mr.
Leighton, I have hated myself so much for the imposition,” she said; and
Roy replied:
“Angry? I should think not; but please drop that formal Mr. Leighton.
Let me be Roy to you.”
She always called him Roy to herself, when thinking of him, and the name
came readily enough.
“Well, Roy, then,” she began, “I wanted you and your mother to like me,
and I fancied I should succeed better as a stranger, than as Charlie’s
wife;” and then she told him of her life at Uncle Phil’s; of Maude’s
recognition of her; of the watch she sold, and which by some strange
chance had come round to Maude, who did not know until just before she
sailed whose watch it was she was carrying; of Uncle Phil’s wish that
she should take another name than her own; of Maude’s arranging for her
to go _incog._ to Leighton; and of the various devices she had resorted
to in order to keep up the delusion, and mystify him with regard to her
whereabouts.
She uttered no unkind word against poor Georgie. She merely said, “Had
you married Miss Burton, I should have gone away at once, and never have
let you know who I really was. _She_ knew me from the first, but kindly
kept my secret.”
“Ye-es,” Roy rejoined, between a sigh and a groan, for he remembered
many things Georgie had said in Edna’s presence, and which were far from
being kind in her if she knew, as it seemed she did, who Miss Overton
was.
But Georgie was dead; he had buried her from his sight, and he would put
from him even the memory of her faults, and remember only that at the
last she had sanctioned his love for the young girl beside him, whose
bright head he drew to his bosom, while he kissed the white brow, and
said, “Never to have found you, darling, would have been a calamity,
indeed, both to my mother and myself. She could not love an own daughter
better than she loves you, and I long so to see her joy when she learns
the truth, and that you are ours for ever.”
Then they talked of that adventure in the cars, and laughed over the
Miss Bettie Edna had so hurriedly dashed off, and spoke sadly and softly
of poor Charlie in his far-off grave; and then, bending his head so low
that his face touched hers, Roy said, “Georgie foretold this thing, and
bade me not to wait because she was dead. Shall it not be as she said,
my darling? Shall we be married at once?”
Then Edna’s love of mischief broke out, and withdrawing herself from
him, she answered saucily, “Married! who has said anything to me about
marriage? Surely not you, and here you ask for an early day. I am
astonished at you, Mr. Leighton.”
“Edna,” Roy said, bringing her again to his side, and holding her so
closely that she could not get away. “This is no time to trifle. You
know well what my kisses meant when I first saw you here, and found that
Edna was the same with the girl whom I named Brownie to myself, and whom
I now think I have loved almost since I first saw her standing at my
mother’s side, and answering to the name of Miss Overton. But lest you
misunderstand me, and deem yourself not wooed _au fait_, I formally ask
you to be my wife, feeling confident that after what has passed between
us you will not refuse me.”
She wanted to tease him dreadfully, but something in his manner forbade
it; she must deal openly with him, and so she replied frankly and
honestly, “I do love you, Roy, and am willing to be your wife, only I
had promised myself never to marry until the whole of my indebtedness to
you was paid. I have been extravagant since I have been at Leighton,
where I saw so much of dress. I have not paid you as fast as I might
have done. I still owe you——”
“Seventy-five dollars, I believe,” Roy said, interrupting her, and
adding, laughingly: “It was a foolish thing, your trying to be so
independent, but since you have been, and there is still something my
due, suppose we make it an even thing, and you give yourself in lieu of
the money——”
“Which will make me worth just seventy-five dollars to you. I hoped you
valued me higher than that,” Edna said, pretending to look aggrieved,
while Roy bent down and kissed her pouting lips, and said that to her
which told that money could not liquidate the price at which he held
her, and that to lose her now would be to lose the very brightness of
his life, and leave it all a blank.
While they sat there too much absorbed in each other to heed the lapse
of time, or hear first the bell, and then the tin horn, which Aunt Jerry
in her impatience had used alternately as a reminder of dinner, that
worthy spinster herself suddenly appeared before them, her brow clouded,
and her mouth puckered up in the peculiar fashion which Edna knew was
indicative of displeasure.
Aunt Jerry’s first act after Roy had left the house in quest of Edna,
was to unhitch the check-rein of the horse standing at the gate, and her
second to give it water and handfuls of the tall grass growing near.
Kindness to brutes was a part of her nature, and nothing which had life
was ever in danger of being ill-used where she was, unless it were a
child. For children she had not a great deal of love; but where animals
were concerned she was a second Bergh, and she cared for Roy’s horse and
patted its neck, and when she saw how high it threw its head at first,
and how it shrank from her, she said:
“Poor critter! I know by the way you act that your keeper abuses you. No
horse kindly used is ever as nervous as that. The wretch! I wish I had
him by the nape of the neck!”
When the horse was cared for, the dame, with thoughts intent on dinner,
pounced upon a group of fowls feeding at her back-door, and catching the
youngest, fattest one, had its neck off in a trice, and picked, and
dressed, and had it in the pot within an hour after. Aunt Jerry’s forte
in cookery was _pot-pie_, and she now did her best, and made such a
crust, as, to use a common culinary phrase, would almost “melt in one’s
mouth.” White and light, and flaky, it looked like bats of cotton wool,
and her spirits rose proportionably as she arranged her table and
prepared her vegetables.
Everything was done at last. The baked tomatoes were browned just right;
the corn pudding was white, and creamy, and sweet; the custard was
delicious, and the coffee sent a fragrant odor through the house; but
the guests did not come. She had rung the bell, and blown the horn, and
at last, as the clock struck one, she started herself for the
delinquents, exclaiming when she saw them, “Well, you are smart!” but
ere she got farther, Roy arose, and taking Edna’s hand in his, said to
her:
“I have found her, you see, and she has promised to live with me always.
She is to be my wife, if you do not object.”
“Umph! a pretty time of day to ask if I object, after it’s all cut and
dried, and dinner spoiling in the oven. Didn’t you hear the bell, nor
the horn I blew an hour ago?”
Both culprits pleaded guilty, and both made haste to follow Miss
Jerusha, who never spoke again until the house was reached, and contrary
to her prediction, she found that the pot-pie was not spoiled, though
she insisted that it would have been better half an hour before.
By the time dinner was over, Aunt Jerry was completely mollified, and
after her dishes were washed and put away, and her floor swept, and the
cat fed, and the horse watered again, she was ready to hear Roy on the
subject uppermost in his mind. He loved Edna; he wanted her for his
wife; and wanted to know if Miss Pepper had any objections to the match.
“It’s most too late to give them, if I have,” Aunt Jerry said. “But
that’s the way nowadays. Young folks have got the whip row of us, and
will keep it, I suppose. No, I have no objections. If she must marry,
and I suppose she must, I’d as soon she’d have you as anybody, and she
won’t go to you poverty-stricken either. Every dollar she paid me, I put
in Beals’s bank, in her name, and added another to it, so that she has
now as good as a thousand laid up. I shall give her another thousand,
too, and a feather bed, and I want it secured to her and her heirs
forever.”
“Oh, auntie, how kind you have been to me, when I thought, sometimes,
you did not care,” Edna said.
The money in the bank was new to her, and she felt the tears rush into
her eyes as she thought how she had misjudged her aunt. As for Roy, he
could scarcely repress a smile at the woman’s eagerness to have the two
thousand dollars settled on Edna beyond his reach, but he promised to
see that it was done, and then said it was also his intention to give
his bride, out and out, such a sum as would make her independent in case
of his dying insolvent, a catastrophe by the way, which he did not
anticipate. When he asked for an early day, and named Christmas as the
time when he hoped Edna would come to him, Aunt Jerry demurred.
“It was not decent,” she said, “and did not show proper respect for that
dead woman with the boy’s name.”
Roy reassured her on that point by telling her what Georgie’s wish had
been, and she gave way at last, but her face wore a very forbidding
look, and reminded Edna of the days when she used to cut carpet-rags up
in the back chamber. Roy could not tear himself from Edna at once, so he
remained all night, and made himself thoroughly at home in Aunt Jerry’s
house, and interested himself in whatever he saw interested her. First,
however, he wrote to his mother that he had found Edna, and that he
should stop at Allen’s Hill a few days, and then bring her home with
him. He wished to surprise her, and so did not tell her _who_ Edna was.
He only wrote, “You will like her. She is a pretty little creature, and
will be a great acquisition to our family circle. I need not bespeak a
welcome for her, I am sure, for you will receive her as a daughter, I
know, and love her with a mother’s love.”
It was rather late when he retired, and he would not have gone when he
did, if Aunt Jerry had not told him it was after her bedtime, and she
shouldn’t sit up any longer for anybody. Roy felt that he would gladly
have dispensed with her company, and enjoyed himself quite as well, but
he refrained from giving expression to his thoughts, and taking the lamp
she brought him, went to his room at the end of the hall.
Meantime, Edna had been longing for some expression of sympathy from her
aunt. Her heart was so full of happiness that she wanted to share it
with some one, to talk with some one, who ought to know something how
she felt; and after Roy had said good-night, she drew a little stool to
her aunt’s side, and laying her head in her lap, as she had never lain
it before, said to her:
“Auntie, have you no word of congratulation, for me? Are you not glad
because I am so happy, oh, so much happier than I ever thought I could
be, when—”
Here she stopped abruptly, feeling that she was treading on dangerous
ground, but her aunt took up the unfinished sentence and said, “When you
lived with _me_, and I made a little nigger of you; that’s what you
mean. Don’t spoil a story for relations’ sake. I was hard on you at
times, and mean as pussley, too. But, Edna,” and the voice began to
tremble, “I never meant to be bad. I didn’t understand children, or that
they could grow up to be a comfort, as I know now you would be, and
since you come back I’ve thought how nice it would be to have you live
with me, and now he’s come, and you’ll go with him, and the old woman
will be alone again, all alone.”
There was a pitiful sound in Aunt Jerry’s voice, and it brought the
tears to Edna’s eyes, but before she could speak, Aunt Jerry went on. “I
am glad for you, child; it’s the ordained way to marry, and you’ve got a
good man, I believe, and you’ll be happy with him. You think, of course,
old Aunt Jerusha don’t know what it is to love, but I do. I was nearer
once to being married than you are now; so near, that the day was set,
and my wedding dress was made, and my hot temper got the better of me,
and we quarrelled about a trivial thing, and I wouldn’t yield an inch,
and got so mad at last that I vowed I’d never marry him, and I never
have, and we have lived our lives alone, he in his way, I in mine.”
“Oh, auntie, I never suspected such a thing; and he is living yet, you
say, and maybe sometime—you’ll—”
“No we shan’t,” and Aunt Jerry spoke quickly. “I ain’t such a fool as
that. We have not met in thirty years, and the sight of me now would
make him sick at the stomach. I was young then, and not bad-looking
either; now I’m old and wrinkled, and hard and gray, and he is old, and
fat, and queer, and pussy, I have no doubt. No, child, don’t build
castles for me. Be happy yourself and I am satisfied.”
She stroked Edna’s hair softly for a moment, and then said abruptly but
kindly, “There, now, you’ve got just what you wanted; be off to bed.
Don’t you see it is going on to twelve o’clock.”
So Edna left her with a good-night kiss, and stole up to her room, there
to muse over her own great happiness, and to think of the story Aunt
Jerry had told her of her early love affair, which terminated so
disastrously. Who, and where was the man, she asked herself without ever
a thought of the truth, and while speculating upon it, and thinking how
queer it seemed that Aunt Jerry was ever young and had a lover like
herself, she fell asleep and dreamed that the lover was Mr. Freeman
Burton!