THE GOVERNESS.
It was a bright September afternoon, and the dense foliage of the trees
looked as fresh and green as when watered by the Summer showers, save
here and there a faded leaf came rustling to the ground, whispering to
those at whose feet it fell of the Winter which was hastening on, and
whose breath even now was on the northern seas. Softly the Autumnal
sunlight fell upon the earth, and the birds sang as gayly in the trees
as if there were no hearts bereaved—no small, low rooms where all was
darkness and gloom—no humble procession winding slowly through the
crowded streets and out into the country, where, in a new-made grave, a
mother’s love was buried, while the mourners, two in number, a young man
and a girl, held each other’s hand in token that they were bound
together by a common sorrow. Not a word was said by either; and when the
solemn burial rite was over, they returned as silently to the carriage,
then were driven back to their desolate home—the tenement where Frederic
Raymond had watched the curtained window and the geranium growing there.
For many days that window had been darkened, just as it was when Marian
Grey lay there with the fever in her veins; but it was open now, and the
west wind came stealing in, purifying the room from the faint sickening
smell of coffins and of death, for the Destroyer had been there. And
when the mourners came back from the grave in the country, one threw
himself upon the lounge, and burying his face in the cushions, sobbed
aloud:
“Oh, Marian, it’s terrible to be an orphan and have no mother.”
“Yes, Ben, ’tis terrible,” and Marian’s tears dropped on the hair of the
honest-hearted Ben.
Up to this hour he had restrained his grief, but now that he was alone
with Marian, he wept on until the sun went down and the night shadows
were creeping into the room. Then lifting up his head, he said, “It is
so dark—so dismal now—and the hardest of all is the givin’ up our dear
old home where mother lived so long, and the thinkin’ maybe you’ll
forget me when you live with that grand lady.”
“Forget you! Oh, Ben, I never can forget how much you have done for me,
denying yourself everything for my sake,” said Marian, while Ben
continued, “Nor won’t you be ashamed of me neither, if I should come
sometimes to see you? I should die if I could not once in a while look
into your eyes; and you’ll let me come, won’t you, Marian?”
“Of course I will,” she replied, continuing after a moment, “It is not
certain yet that I go to Mrs. Sheldon’s. I have not answered her last
letter because—You know what we talked about before your mother died!”
“Yes, yes, I know,” returned Ben, “but I had forgot it—my heart was so
full other things. I’ll go out there to-morrow. I’d rather you should
teach at Riverside, even if you’d never heard of Frederic, than go to
that grand lady, who might think, because you was a governess, that you
wan’t fit to live in the same house.”
“I have no fears of that,” said Marian. “Mrs. Harcourt says she is an
estimable woman; but still, I too, would rather go to Riverside, if I
were sure Frederic would not know me. Do you think there is any danger?”
“No,” was Ben’s decided answer, and in this opinion Marian herself
concurred, for she knew that she had changed so much that none who saw
her when first she came to Mrs. Burt’s would recognize her now.
About three months before the night of which we are writing, she had
been graduated at Mrs. Harcourt’s school with every possible honor, both
as a musician and a scholar. There had never been her equal there
before, Mrs. Harcourt said, and when her friend, Mrs. Sheldon, who lived
in Springfield, Mass., applied to her for a family pupil, she warmly
recommended her favorite pupil, Marian Grey, frankly stating, however,
that she was of humble origin—that her adopted mother or aunt was a poor
sewing woman, and her adopted brother a peddler. This, however, made no
difference with Mrs. Sheldon, and several letters had passed between
herself and Marian, who would have accepted the liberal offer at once,
but for a lingering hope that Ben would carry out his favorite plan, and
procure her a situation as teacher at Riverside. She had forgotten what
she once said about learning to hate Frederic, and the possibility of
living again beneath the same roof with him made her heart beat faster
than its wont. She had occasionally met him in the street, and once she
was sure his eye had rested upon her in passing, but she knew by its
expression that she was not recognized, and when Ben suggested offering
her services as Alice’s governess she readily consented.
During these years Ben had not lost sight of Frederic’s movements,
though it so chanced that they had met but twice, once just after the
receipt of Alice’s picture, which had been greeted by Marian with a
shower of kisses and tears, and once the previous Autumn, when Frederic
was about returning to Kentucky, for, with his changed feelings toward
Marian, Mr. Raymond felt less delicacy in using her money—less aversion
to Redstone Hall, where his presence was really needed, for a portion of
the year at least, and which he intended making his Winter residence.
But he was at Riverside now, and Ben was about going there to see what
arrangements could be made, when his mother’s sudden death caused both
himself and Marian to forget the subject until the night after the
burial, when, without a moment forgetting the dead or the dreary blank
her absence made, they talked together of the future, and decided that
on the morrow Ben should go to Riverside and see if there were room in
Frederic’s house for Marian Grey. The morning came, and at an early hour
Ben started, bidding Marian keep up her spirits as he was sure of
bringing her good tidings.
Frederic was sitting in his arm-chair, which stood near the window, just
where Marian had placed it three years and a half ago. Not that it had
never been moved since that April morning, for, freed from old Dinah’s
surveillance, Mrs. Huntington, who was still at Riverside, proved
herself a pattern housekeeper, and the chair had probably been moved a
thousand times to make room for the broom and brush, but it was in its
old place now, and Frederic was sitting in it, thinking of Marian and
his hitherto fruitless efforts at finding her. He was beginning to get
discouraged, and still each time he went to the city he thought “perhaps
I may meet her to-day,” and each night, as the hour for his return drew
near, Alice waited upon the piazza when the weather was fine, and by the
window when it was cold, listening intently for another step than
Frederic’s—a step which never came, and then Alice grew less hopeful,
while Marian seemed farther and farther away as month after month went
by bringing no tidings of her. Frederic knew that she must necessarily
have changed somewhat from the Marian of old, for she was a woman now,
but he should readily recognise her, he said. He should know her by her
peculiar _hair_, if by no other token. So when his eye once rested on a
face of surpassing sweetness, shaded by curls of soft chesnut hair,
which in the sunlight wore a rich red tinge, he felt a glow like that
which one experiences in gazing for a single instant on some picture of
rare loveliness; then the picture faded, the graceful figure glided by,
and there was nothing left to tell how, by stretching forth his hand, he
might have grasped his long lost Marian. Moments there were when she
seemed near to him, almost within his reach, and such a moment was the
one when Mrs. Huntington announced _Ben Butterworth_, whom he had not
seen for a long time.
Involuntarily he started up, half expecting his visitor had come to tell
him something of her. But when he saw the crape upon Ben’s hat, and the
sorrow on his face, he forgot Marian in his anxiety to know what had
happened.
“My mother’s dead,” said Ben, and the strong man, six feet high, sobbed
like a little child, bringing back to Frederic’s mind the noiseless
room, the oddly shaped box, the still, white face, and tolling bell,
which were all he could distinctly remember of the day when he, too,
said to a boy like himself, “My mother’s dead.”
These three words. Alas, how full of anguish is their utterance, and how
their repetition will call up an answering throb in the heart of every
one who has ever said in bitterness of grief, “My mother’s dead.”
Frederic felt it instantly, and it prompted him to take again the rough
hand, which he pressed warmly in token of his sympathy.
“He _is_ a good man,” thought Ben, wiping his tears away; and after a
few choking coughs and brief explanations as to how and when, he came at
once to the object of his visit.
“He should peddle now just as he used to do, of course, but wimmen wan’t
so lucky, and all Marian could do was to teach. He had given her a
tip-top larnin’, though she had earnt some on’t herself by sewin’. She
had got a paper thing, too, with a blue ribin, from Miss Harcourt, who
praised her up to the skies. In short, if Mr. Raymond had not any
teacher for Alice, wouldn’t he take Marian Grey?” and Ben twirled his
hat nervously, while he waited for the answer.
“I wish you had applied to me sooner,” said Frederic, “for in that case
I would have taken her, but a Mrs. Jones, from Boston, came on only a
week ago, so you see I am supplied. I am very sorry, for I feel an
interest in Miss Grey, and will use my influence to procure her a
situation.”
“Thank you; there’s a place she can have, but I wanted her to come
here,” returned Ben, who was greatly disappointed and began to cry
again.
Frederic was somewhat amused, besides being considerably disturbed, and
after looking at the child-man for a moment, he continued:
“Mrs. Jones is engaged for one year only, and if at the end of that time
Miss Grey still wishes to come, I pledge you my word that she shall do
so.”
This brought comfort at once. One year was not very long to wait, and by
that time Marian would certainly be past recognition, and as all Ben’s
wishes and plans centered upon one thing, to wit: Mr. Raymond’s falling
in love with his unknown wife, he was readily consoled, and wiping his
eyes, he said apologetically, as it were, “I’m dreadful tender-hearted,
and since I’ve been an orphan it’s ten times wus. So you must excuse my
actin’ like a baby. Where’s Alice?”
Frederic called the little girl, who, childlike, waited to put on her
bracelet, “so as to show the man that she still wore it and liked it
very much.” She seemed greatly pleased at meeting Ben again, asking him
why he had not been there before, and if he had received her picture.
“Yes, wee one,” said he, taking her round white arm in his hand and
touching the bracelet. “I should have writ, only that ain’t in my line
much, and I don’t always spell jest right, but we got the picter, and
Marian was so pleased she cried.”
“What made her?” said Alice, wonderingly. “She don’t know me.”
“But she knows you’re blind, for I told her,” was Ben’s quick reply,
which was quite satisfactory to Alice, who by this time had detected a
note of sadness in his voice, and she asked what was the matter.
To her also Ben replied, “My mother’s dead,” and the mature little girl
understood at once the dreary loneliness that a mother’s death must
bring even to the heart of a big man like Ben. Immediately, too, she
thought of Marian Grey, and asked “What she would do?”
“I come out to see if your pa—no, beg your pardon—to see if the Square
didn’t want her to hear you say your lessons,” was Ben’s answer, and
Alice exclaimed, “Oh, Frederic. Let her come. I know I shall like her
better than Mrs. Jones, for she’s young and pretty, I am sure. May she
come?”
“Alice,” said Frederic, “Mrs. Jones has an aged mother and two little
children dependent upon her earnings, and, should I send her away, the
disappointment would be very great. Next year, if we all live, Miss Grey
shall come, and with this you must be satisfied.”
Alice saw at once that he was right, and she gave up the point, merely
remarking that “a year was a heap of a while.”
“No, ’taint,” said Ben, who each moment was becoming more and more
reconciled to the arrangement.
One year’s daily intercourse with fashionable people, he thought, would
be of invaluable service to Marian, and as he wished her to be perfect
both in looks and manners when he presented her to Frederic Raymond, he
was well satisfied to wait, and he returned to New York with a light,
hopeful heart. Marian, on the contrary, was slightly disappointed, for
like Alice, a year seemed to her a long, long time. Still there was no
alternative, and she wrote to Mrs. Sheldon that she would come as early
as the first day of October. It was hard to break up their old home, but
it was necessary, they knew, and with sad hearts they disposed of the
furniture, gave up the rooms, and then, when the appointed time came,
Marian started for her new home, accompanied by Ben, who went rather
unwillingly.
“We ain’t no more alike than ile and water,” he said, when she first
suggested his going, “and they won’t think as much of you for seein’
me.”
But Marian insisted, and Ben went with her, mentally resolving to say
but little, as by this means he fancied “he would be less likely to show
how big a dolt he was!”