Poor Rose sat down in her old quarters, with Charley in her lap, trying
to read in his pale face the probable duration of his sickness. Poor
little fellow! he did not like the change. He missed the sheen of the
pretty satin curtains, and the glitter of their gilded cornices. They
were something for baby eyes to wonder and look at. He had quite
exhausted those ugly attic walls, hung with the cook's dingy wardrobe.
Even the pretty sunbeams in which babies love to see the little motes
glitter and float, had been jealously excluded by the tyrannical Aunt
Dolly; so poor Charley had nothing to do but roll his little restless
head from side to side, and whimper.
Ah, there is something now to look at! The door creaks on its hinges,
and an old crone, bent almost double, her nose and chin meeting, totters
in, leaning on a stick. A striped cotton handkerchief thrown over her
spare gray locks, and tied under her chin, and an old shawl over her
cotton gown, complete her wardrobe.
At any other time this little weird figure, appearing so suddenly,
would have terrified Rose; now her despairing thoughts had crowded out
every other feeling, so she sat quite still as the old woman hobbled,
mumbling, toward her.
"Why, Maria! there now. I _knew_ you were not dead. I told them so, but
they would not believe a word I said. You look as sweet as a lily. Where
is your husband, dear? and little Rose? and all of 'em, and every body?
I can't find any body I want to see. I am so tired and lonely. Don't
_you_ go away now, Maria. Did you buy that little doll for me to play
with?" she asked, catching sight of Charley. "It opens and shuts its
eyes, don't it dear, just like the waxen dolls? I like
it--chut--chut--chut," and the old lady touched Charley under the chin
with her wrinkled fingers. "Pull the wire and make the doll laugh again,
dear," she said, looking up in Rose's face. "I would like it to play
with. I get _so_ tired, _so_ tired. I stole away to-day; Dolly didn't
know it. Do you know Dolly? does Dolly strike _you_? What made you stay
away such a long time, Maria? Let us go to your house. I don't like to
be locked up in Dolly's house. I get _so_ tired, _so_ tired--dearie
me--dearie me--where's little Rose, Maria?"
Rose did not answer, for a fight was struggling dimly through her brain.
She remembered long years ago, when she first came to Dolly's, that an
old woman came there, not so bent as this old crone was now, but yet
gray haired and wrinkled, and that Dolly spoke harshly to her, and tried
to make her go away, and that the old lady cried, and said it was cold
at the poor house, and that she was hungry, and then Dolly said she
would give her a small piece of money, and something to eat, if she
would promise never to come there again; and that Dolly sent her (Rose)
into the kitchen till the old lady was gone, but that she had heard all
they said through the thin green baize door.
"Maria? why don't you speak? where is little Rose?"
"Is not this little Rose?" asked Rose, compassionately, as she pointed
to Charley.
"Sure enough," said the pleased old lady; "I thought it was a doll--sure
enough--why--I shall find 'em all by and by, who knows?--But--Maria, why
don't it grow any? it is just as little as it was when I saw it
last--where did I see it last, Maria?--chut--chut--chut--" she said,
tickling Charley's chin again. "Maria? you won't go away again, will
you?--_you_ won't strike me, will you? I'll be very good. Can't I stay
here, dear, with you, and the little doll, little Rose? Why don't it
grow bigger, Maria? Are you hungry? I am hungry--oh, dearie me--dearie
me--"
"Dear, dear grandmother," sobbed Rose, "I love you."
"Love me! do you! what for? did Dolly make you cry too? Maria, where's
Rose? Maria, what makes you call your mother grandmother? Do you know
Dolly? Dolly is down stairs; I don't go down stairs. See here," and she
touched her old faded gown and shawl, "I can't, you see, Dolly wouldn't
like it. Oh! dearie me--dearie me! I am _so_ tired," and the old lady
laid her wrinkled face against her granddaughter's.
"Voices! and in Rose's room! what new treason now?" and Mrs. Howe
applied her ear to the key-hole. The thin gray locks rested lovingly on
Rose's glossy auburn tresses. Rose's arm was about her withered neck,
and tears fell trickling from her eyes. It was a sweet picture; but the
artist might have found a foil to it, in the demoniac face outside the
door.
Ah! Rose, the hated Rose, in possession of her secret! Her face grew
darker--deadlier. But perhaps she was not _yet_ in possession of it; not
a moment was to be lost.
Opening the door, she said, coaxingly, "Why, Betty, are you in here?
This won't do. What will the doctor say? You must go back to bed,
Betty," and Dolly fixed her basilisk eyes on her cowering victim, who
nestled more closely to Rose.
"Poor crazed thing," said Mrs. Howe, "she imagines every body is going
to hurt her; by and by she will think so of you. She may kill Charley. I
ought to send her to the Lunatic Asylum; but she is an old servant who
used to live in Mr. Howe's family, and so I keep her, though she is so
troublesome. Come, Betty!"
"Maria!" whispered the old lady, hoarsely, clutching at Rose's
dress--"Maria, tell her _you_ love me, Maria."
"I do--I do!" sobbed Rose, unable to restrain herself, as she threw her
arms around her.
"Love that lunatic? What should you love her for, I'd like to know?"
asked the startled Dolly.
"Because she is my grandmother--my own dear grandmother. Oh Aunt Dolly!
hate me, if you will, but love her; she will not live long to trouble
any body," and Rose kissed the furrowed temples and stroked back the
thin gray locks.
"Well, if I ever!" said Dolly, looking innocent; "I believe the whole
world is going mad! Come along, Betty."
"Maria! Maria!" whispered the old lady, again nestling up to Rose.
"There, you see, she is quite out; she fancies you are somebody she has
seen before."
"No--she takes me for Maria, my mother," said Rose; "you say that I look
like her exactly."
"Come along, Betty!" said the infuriated Mrs. Howe. "Mother and
grandmother! you are both as mad as March hares," and seizing "Betty" by
the arm, she drew her across the entry into her own den, and turning
the key on her, put it in her pocket, and went down into the
dining-room.
We have no desire to record her reflections as she sat down to "Moses in
the Bulrushes," upon which she had already expended pounds and pounds of
German worsted, and who, if ever found by his mother "Miriam," would
scarcely have been recognized.
John was in his arm-chair reading the _Daily Bulletin_. He was perfectly
aware of the late overthrow of his domestic authority by Dolly; not that
it was by any means the first instance of the kind, but the others had
been known to no third party. He trusted for the perpetuity of the
declaration of domestic independence which he had lately set up, to its
being made publicly before the servants. Mistaken man! Dolly's pride lay
in a different direction. Well, it was all over now; he only wondered in
his cool moments how he had ever been so mad as to attempt to make Rose
more comfortable; but let no man ever say what he will or will not do
till he has seen a pretty woman in tears.
Still, John had a rod in pickle for Dolly; his publicly-wounded pride
must have some satisfaction. He saw by the gleam of her eye, as she sat
down to Moses, that she was that morning particularly deficient in his
"meekness." It was a good chance. John cleared his throat, preparatory
to improving it.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Mrs. Howe," said he, laying down his
newspaper, as if a sudden thought had struck him, "Finels asked me the
other day who Rose was?"
"Finels! Finels!" screamed Mrs. Howe, sticking her needle vigorously
into Moses, "how came Finels to see Rose?"
John's eyes gleamed. "When I waited upon him to the door the other day,
Rose was just passing through the entry, with a pitcher of water."
"Just like her, and I told her expressly to go down the back stairs."
"But the carpenter was fixing the back stairs, that day," said John,
"she couldn't pass, I suppose."
"I don't suppose any such thing," said Mrs. Howe, "she did it on
purpose; I know she did. Well, what did Finels say of her?"
"He said she had the loveliest eyes he ever saw, and that her face was
without a flaw."
"What o'clock is it?" asked Mrs. Howe, in a husky voice.
"Just one," said John, "Why?"
"What time does the stage go to Exeter?"
"Three, I believe."
"Believe! don't you know?"
"Yes, I know it goes at three."
"Well, go and order it here at our door by that time. Rose shall go back
to old Bond this very day; I won't stand it."
"Is the baby well enough?" asked John, not looking for this painful
termination to his little bit of connubial fun.
"I don't care whether it is or not; if you don't get that stage, I
will."
"I'll get it," said John, "but--"
"There's no but about it, I tell you she shall go, if that child dies on
the road; that's all there is to that," and Mrs. Howe went up stairs to
inform Rose of her determination.
Rose had just succeeded in lulling the restless baby to sleep upon her
bosom. Upon Mrs. Howe's violent bang of the door after entering the
room, he uttered a loud, frightened cry.
"Stop that child, will you?" said Mrs. Howe, "I have something to say to
you."
The quick blood rushed to Rose's face, as she nestled Charley to her
bosom.
"It is now one o'clock," said Mrs. Howe, drawing out her gold watch,
with its glittering chain and trinkets; "the stage will be at the door
to take you to Exeter, at three o'clock precisely. Do you understand?"
said she, as Rose bent an anxious glance at the sick baby's face.
"I will be ready," said Rose, in a trembling voice.
This mild, acquiescent reply was not what Mrs. Howe desired; she would
have preferred something upon which to hinge her pent-up wrath.
"How came that rocking-chair up here, I should like to know?"
"Betty brought it up for old Mrs. Bond."
"Likely story; and Betty told you, I suppose, to parade yourself through
the front entry, when Mr. Howe was talking with a gentleman; I know your
tricks. I should think you had had enough of _gentlemen_ to last you one
while."
"The carpenter was--"
"Don't talk to me about 'carpenters;' where there is a will there is a
way; you might have waited for the water."
"It was to mix Charley's medicine," said Rose, with brimming eyes.
"I dare say--such things don't go down with me; pick up your things
quick and get ready."
Rose attempted to lay Charley down on the bed, but he began to cry most
piteously.
"There is no need of your stopping for him now; he might as well cry for
one thing as another; he is always crying, I am sick to death of hearing
him; he is perfectly spoiled."
"He is sick," said Rose, stooping to kiss Charley as if he could be
pained by Mrs. Howe's heartlessness.
"Well--any how, I am sick of both of you; so hurry, and don't think you
are going to stay, because it is beginning to sprinkle," said she,
drawing carefully aside one corner of the cook's petticoat as she
peered out the window--"come, make haste now," and Aunt Dolly swept
down stairs.
Poor afflicted Mrs. Howe! Flynn had robbed the pelerine and bracelet of
their power to charm, and the "marked passages" no longer gave her
consolation, for Finels had admired Rose's eyes. Consuelo, too, lies
wheezing in his embroidered blanket; dear little Consuelo! it could not
be that _he_ was going to be sick! And Mrs. Howe takes him up gently,
strokes his long silken ears, looks into his eyes, and offers him some
food, which the pampered little cur refuses.
A scrambling in the blanket!
Consuelo is in a fit!
So is his mistress.
"O, John, for heaven's sake, run for Thomas, he knows all about dogs.
Supposing he should die? O dear--make haste; my darling, my darling!"
and Mrs. Howe ran up stairs, and ran down stairs, ran for water, and ran
for physic, opened the windows, and shut them, pulled round Betty, and
Sally, and Bridget, and threatened the whole crew, unless they helped
Consuelo, to turn them all out of doors. And then Thomas came, and
manipulated Consuelo as only his humbug-ship knew how, and restored the
convalescent jewel to its mistress, who wept with delight, and crossed
his palm with a five-dollar gold piece, and then Thomas retired, calling
down blessings on all over-fed puppies in particular, and credulous
women in general.
And Rose!
She crept down stairs as well as her tears would let her, stopping to
kneel before the door through which the wailing "dearie me--dearie me,"
was issuing.
Wrapping Charley in the only shawl she owned, to defend him from the
falling rain, she clambered unassisted, up into the stage. The
passengers growled when they saw the baby; the rain spattered on the
roof, and windows, and the coachman slamming to the door with an oath,
cracked his whip, and the stage rolled away.
What pen can do justice to the atmosphere of a stage, omnibus, or
railroad car, of a rainy day?
The fumes of alternate whisky and onions, the steaming, cigar-odored
coats, the dirty straw soaking under foot, a deluge if you open the
window, poison by inhalation if you do not. Charley became more and more
restless, while Rose grew still paler, and the drops stood on her
forehead, in dread of his prolonged cry.
"I think he will be good with me; let me take him, please," pleaded a
sweet voice at her side.
Rose turned, and saw a lady dressed in black, whom she had not before
noticed, extending her arms for Charley. Her face was sufficient to win
confidence, and Rose accepted her offer. Handling him as only an
experienced hand can handle a babe, she changed him with perfect ease
from side to side, laid him now up on her shoulder, now down on her
lap, without the slightest appearance of discomfort to herself.
Rose looked the thanks she could not speak; then, stupified with
exhaustion and sorrow, she leaned back in the dark corner where she sat,
and closed her eyes.
The lady made no attempt to draw her into conversation, but gazed
lovingly upon Charley's face. Living sorrows, she had none; but on a
little tombstone in a church yard far away, the stranger's foot paused
as he read:
"OUR FRANK!"
Oh, how many visions of home joys and home sorrows, did those two little
words call up!
_Our_ Frank! More than one heart had bled when that little tombstone was
reared, and though the hands which placed it there were far away, yet
the little grave had ever its garland, or its wreath, for even stranger
eyes involuntarily dropped tears, when they read,
"OUR FRANK."
And so Frank's mother sat gazing on Charley's little cherub face, and
wondering what grief a _mother_ could know, with her _breathing_ babe
beside her.
Pity us, oh God! for every heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a
stranger intermeddleth not therewith.