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CHAPTER XXVII

"What is that?" exclaimed old Mrs. Bond, as she saw the stage, dimly, through the pelting rain, plowing through the clayey mud, up the steep hill toward her door. "Somebody must be coming here, else the driver would have taken the easier cut to the village," and she pressed her face closer against the moist window-pane to get a clearer view.

"It is going to stop here, sure as the world," she exclaimed. "Who can be coming a visiting in such a rain as this? It is not time for old Cousin Patty, these three months yet."

"Dear heart," she said, as the driver jumped off his box, and opened the stage-door, "if it isn't Rose, and that sick baby! Dear heart – dear heart, it is as much as its life is worth. I hope I shall have grace to forgive that woman, but I don't know, I don't know; who could have believed it?" and by this time, the baby was handed into her outstretched arms, and Rose stepped dripping across the threshold.

"Cry, dear – do cry. I am going to cry myself. It is dreadful hard." And she drew the chairs up to the fire, and gazed by its light into Rose's brimming eyes and Charley's pale face.

"May God forgive her," she said, at last; "can't you say it, dear? Try."

Rose answered by pointing to Charley.

"I know it, dear heart; I know it; but you remember the 'crown of thorns,' and the mocking 'sponge,' and the cruel 'spear,'" said the old lady, struggling down her own incensed feelings.

"Take Charley now, dear, he is quite warm, while I run and make you a cup of hot tea," and the old lady piled fresh wood upon the huge andirons, and drew out her little tea-table, stopping now to wipe her eyes, now to kiss Rose and the baby, and whispering, "Try, dear, do; it will make you feel happier; try."

The cheerful warmth of the fire, and Mrs. Bond's motherly kindness, brought a little color into Rose's pale face, and Charley kicked his little cold toes out of his frock, and winked his eyes at the crackling blaze, as if to say,

"Now, this is something like."

After tea, Rose narrated to Mrs. Bond the visit of the old crone to her attic, and expressed her firm belief that she was Dolly's mother.

This was even worse in Mrs. Bond's eyes than Mrs. Howe's cruelty to Rose, and not trusting herself to speak, she gave vent to her feelings by alternately raising her hands and eyes to heaven.

"There will be a sad reckoning-day – a sad reckoning-day, dear," said the old lady solemnly. "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."

CHAPTER XXVIII

It was Monday morning. Mrs. Bond's little kitchen was full of the steam of boiling clothes. Little Charley, with one of Mrs. Bond's long calico aprons pinned over his frock, was pursuing on all fours his infantile investigations.

On the bench before the door stood two wash-tubs, at one of which stood a strapping Irish girl with red arms and petticoats, scrubbing the plowman's clothes with superhuman energy. At the other stood Rose, her curls knotted up on the back of her head, her sleeves rolled up above her round, white elbows, and her calico skirt pinned away from one of the prettiest ankles in the world; even this homespun attire could not disguise her beauty.

Three hours, by the old-fashioned clock in the corner, she had stood there; and yet, though she had rubbed the skin from her little hands, the pile of clothes before her seemed scarcely to have diminished, owing partly to her unskillfulness, and partly that she was obliged to leave off every few minutes to extricate Charley from some scrape with the shovel, tongs, or poker, or to barricade some door through which he seemed quite determined to go; added to this, her heart was very heavy, and one's fingers are apt to keep time with the heart pulses.

Oh, where was Vincent? Would he never return, as he had promised? Was he still "at his father's dying bed?" How strange she did not hear from him. How strange he had not told her where he was. He loved her? Oh, yes – "more than all the world beside." Had he not told her so? He could not have deserted her? Oh – no – no – and yet, poor Rose, there was such a weary pain at her heart; but see, there is Charley again, little mischief, between the andirons. Rose wipes the suds from her hands, and runs to extricate him for the twentieth time. She pats him petulantly; the boy does not cry, but he looks up at her with his father's eyes. Rose kisses those eyes; she dashes away her tears, and goes back again to her work. She tries to believe it will be all right. Mrs. Bond comes in to make the pudding for dinner. She sees how little progress Rose is making, and though Rose does her best to hide them, she sees the tell-tale tears, trembling on her long eyelashes.

Mrs. Bond has the best heart in the world; she never treads on the little ant-houses in the gravel walks, she says the robins have earned a right to the cherries by keeping the insects from the trees, she has turned veterinary surgeon to keep the breath of life in an old skeleton of a horse which Zedekiah "vowed oughter been shot long ago," she puts crumbs on the piazza for the ground birds, and is very careful to provide for the motherly yellow cat a soft bed. The peddler always is sure of a warm cup of tea, and the wooden-ware man of a bit of cheese or pie. Rose's tears make her quite miserable, so she says to Bridget, in her soft kind way, "I should think you might help wash the baby's clothes, Bridget."

"Not for the likes of her," retorted the vixen, with her red arms a-kimbo. "Thank the Virgin, I am an honest woman."

Rose snatched Charley from the floor and darted through the open door, with the fleetness of a deer; not weary now; strong to bear any thing, every thing but that coarse, cruel taunt. Away! – away from it! but where? Oh, Vincent, will it always follow! Strong, is she? Poor Rose! She falls earthward with her tender burden. Charley utters a cry of pain as his temples strike a sharp stone. Rose heeds not his cry, for she is insensible.

When her consciousness returns, some two hours after, she finds herself in her own little bed, with Mrs. Bond beside her. There are phials upon the table, and a strong smell of camphor; a bandage is around her forehead, and the blinds are closed, and Charley is not there, but she hears him crowing below stairs. Mrs. Bond puts her finger on her lip, and says, "Try to sleep, dear," and Rose gladly closes her eyes; she only wishes it were forever.

CHAPTER XXIX

"Six rows of the ruffling, edged with lace, and two tucks between each ruffle. Mind you don't make a mistake, now; had you not better write it down? You will remember to make the upper tuck about a fifth of an inch narrower than the others. Do it very nicely, you know I am particular about my work. Remember – let me have it, without fail, by next Thursday evening," and the speaker gathered her voluminous skirts in her hand and tripped through the door and into her carriage.

"For good gracious' sake, who's that?" asked Miss Snecker.

"Yes – who's that? Every body who sees her fine airs and gay dresses, asks me that question. I suppose you wouldn't believe if I should tell you what caterpillar that butterfly came from;" and Miss Bodkin put her feet upon the cricket, and took up the interminable yards of ruffling and commenced her work and her history.

"Well – that's Mrs. Howe, and how she ever became Howe, is more of a mystery to other people than it is to me. – 'Mrs. John Howe' – a very well sounding name you see, but for all that it never can make a lady of her. 'Mrs. John Howe.' It used to be 'Dolly Smith;' it was 'Dolly Smith' much longer than its owner liked. It was painted in large, green letters over a little milliner's shop in Difftown. Such a fidget as it was in to get its name changed; but nobody seemed to want it. It tried the minister, it tried the deacon, it tried the poor, bony old sexton (mercy knows it never would have taken so much pains, had it known as much about men as I do), however, that's neither here nor there. It was a way it had. Well – by and by a shoe-maker from the city came up to our village for three weeks' fishing, and while he was baiting for fish, Dolly baited for him. She used to stand at the door of an evening, when he came up the village street, with his fishing tackle and basket; by and by he got to stopping a bit, to rest, and to buy a watch-ribbon and one thing and another, as a man naturally would, where he was sure of a welcome. Well, one evening when he came, Dolly was seized with a horrid cramp – I never had no faith in that cramp – such a fuss as she made. Well, John said he might be in the way, and so he would leave, till she was better. Simpleton! That was just what she didn't want him to do. Well, every body else round was sent flying for 'doctors and medicines,' and John staid through that cramp; and the next thing I heard, the bonnets was took down out of the shop, it was shut up, and that's the way Dolly Smith became Mrs. John Howe. Of course it don't set very well on me to have her come in here with her patronizing airs, to bring me her work to do; but a body must pocket their pride such hard times as these. I shall nurse my wrath, any way, till I get a little richer."

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Miss Snecker, "how artful some women is! I suppose now she has every thing she wants, and has a beautiful time – the hateful creature."

"Yes, she is rich enough," said Miss Bodkin, "her husband gave up the shoe business long ago. She is as stingy as she is rich; she beats me down to the lowest possible price for every stitch I do for her.

"She was dreadful mortified about her niece Rose; suppose you know all about that? No! Well, Dolly took her when she was a little thing to bring up, as she said (the child was an orphan), and a poor sorry little drudge she made of her. She didn't have no childhood at all. She had a great faculty for reading, and wanted to devour every book she could get, which wasn't many, you may be sure, where Dolly was round. The child had no peace of her life, day nor night; was worried and hunted round like a wild beast.

"After Dolly married, she sent Rose away to school, making a great talk about her 'generosity in giving her an eddication,' but the fact was, that Mr. Howe was younger than Dolly, and Rose was handsome: you see where the shoe pinched," said Miss Bodkin, giving Miss Snecker a nudge in the ribs.

"Certain," said Miss Snecker; "well, what became of the girl?"

"Well, Rose was handsome, as I told you, though she didn't know it, and good as she was handsome; but sad-like, for she never had any body to love her. I don't think she was sorry to leave her aunt, but still you know the world is a great wide cold place to push a young thing like that out into. However, she started off with her little trunk to Mrs. Graw's school.

"Mrs. Graw used to be chambermaid to a real Count's wife, and as soon as she found out that Rose was a poor relation, she kinder trod her down, and the school-girls disliked her, because she was handsomer than they, and so she was miserable enough, till she made the acquaintance of Captain Vincent, who took her away from school, to be married, as he said, and then ran off and left her. Of course, her aunt was dreadful hard on her, and drove her almost crazy with her reproaches. She wouldn't believe any thing she said about her being really married; and was just as bitter as if she herself hadn't been man-hunting all her life.

"She held Rose off at arm's length, as if the poor betrayed child's touch were poison; shut her doors in her face, and all that; and why the poor thing didn't take to bad ways nobody knows. She went to a Lying-in Hospital, and staid there till the babe was born, and then there was a great noise, when it was found out how rich her aunt was; and when Mrs. Howe found out that people's tongues were wagging about it, she came forward and offered to pay her board in the country awhile.

"Mrs. Howe herself lives up in St. John's Square. She is trying to ride into fashionable society with her carriage and liveried servants; and that poor girl so heart-broken.

"Well, the Lord only knows what is going to become of poor Rose! Beauty and misery – beauty and misery – I've seen what came of that partnership before now."

CHAPTER XXX

Mrs. Bond had drank her cup of tea and eaten her one slice of toast. Rose had not yet come down to breakfast, and she hesitated to disturb her slumbers. So she put the tea-pot down by the fire, covered over the toast, and sat back in her great leathern chair.

How beautiful they looked, Rose and the boy, the night before, when she crept in, shading her lamp with her hand, to see if they were comfortable. The boy's rosy cheek lay close to his mother's blue-veined breast, and one of his little dimpled arms was thrown carelessly about her neck. Rose with her long hair unbound vailing her neck and shoulders, the tears still glistening on her long lashes, heaving now and then a sigh that it was pitiful to hear.

"Ah!" thought Mrs. Bond, "the father of the child should have looked in upon that scene! Those sighs, those tears, went they not up to heaven as swift witnesses against him?"

And so Mrs. Bond, the previous night, extinguished her small lamp, and knelt by the bed-side; she prayed for those wronged sleepers from the gushing fullness of her Christian motherly heart. Poor children! – for what was Rose but a child?

And now Mrs. Bond sat there over her breakfast-table thinking it all over. Her own life had been as placid as the little lake you could see from the cottage door; it was pitiful to her the storm of sorrow beating down upon that fair young head. She tried to see something bright in her future. She knew that though she herself had no wish beyond those humble walls, save to lie in the pleasant church-yard when her work was done, yet that life must be monotonous and dull there for one like Rose. She knew that the heart, when wretched and inactive, must prey upon itself. She wished she knew how to interest Rose in something. There was Charley, to be sure, dear little fellow, but he was at once a pain and a pleasure – a comfort and a reproach. Poor little lamb! he did not know why the caress he proffered was at one time so joyfully welcomed, then again repulsed with coldness; he did not know how cruelly the poor heart against which he nestled was rent with alternate hopes and fears; he did not know why he involuntarily hid his head from the strange, cold look, in those sometime – loving eyes.

Mrs. Bond sat a long time thinking of all this; yes, very long, for an hour and a half was a great while for her to sit still of a morning. She thought she might as well creep up softly, and see if Rose were waking. She knocks gently – no answer; they still sleep, she must waken them. She opens the door – there is no one there but herself; the clothes have all gone from their pegs, and a note lies upon the table.

Mrs. Bond takes her spectacles from their leathern case, and her hand trembles as she breaks the seal. It is in a delicate, beautiful hand. Her dim eyes can scarce see the small letters; her hand trembles too, for an indefinable fear has taken possession of her.

The letter ran thus: —

"Mother, —

"For so I will call you always, even though I am going to leave you. You thought I was sleeping when you knelt by my bed-side last night, and prayed for Charley and me. Every word I heard distinctly – every word was balm to my heart, and yet I leave you.

Oh! do not ask me why – I love him, the father of my child – it is life where he is, it is death where he is not. I go to seek him, the wide earth over. What else is left me, when my heart wearies even of your kindness, wearies of poor Charley? Mother! pray for

"Your Rose."

Mrs. Bond did "pray," long and earnestly; she shed reproachful tears, too – good, motherly Mrs. Bond, that she had not done impossibilities. Would that none of us more needed forgiveness.

CHAPTER XXXI

The setting sun streamed in upon a parlor on St. John's Square. One might have mistaken it for an upholsterer's ware-room, so loaded was it with chairs, sofas, and tête-à-têtes, of every conceivable size and pattern. The same taste had hung the walls with pictures, whose coloring, perspectives, and foreshortening would have driven a true artist mad; the gaudy frames, with their elaborate gildings, being the magnet which had drawn the money from the pocket of the lady hostess.

Distorted mythology, in various forms, looked down from little gilt roosts in the corners, peeped at you from under tables, stared at you from out niches. Books there were, whose principal merit was their "pretty binding," the exception to this being in the shape of a large Family Bible, splendidly bound, and on the present occasion ostentatiously placed on the center-table, for Mrs. Howe had at last a baby, and this was christening-day.

Mrs. Howe had an idea that it was more exclusive and genteel to have this little ceremony performed in the house. There was to be a splendid christening – cake and wine, after the baptism, and only the appreciative select were to be present.

Mrs. Howe had expended a small fortune on the baby's christening-cap and robe, not to speak of her own dress, which she considered, coiffure and tournure, to be unsurpassable; and now she was flying in and out, with that vulgar fussiness so common to your would-be-fine-lady; giving orders, and countermanding them in the same breath, screaming up stairs and down to the servants; at one moment foolishly familiar with them, and at the next reprehensibly severe; pulling the furniture this way and that, and making her servants as much trouble, and herself as red in the face as possible. "Dolly Smith," was too much for "Mrs. John Howe." St. John's Square had an odor of the milliner's shop.

The baby slept as quietly as if it were not the heroine of the day; as if all the novels, and poems, and newspaper stories had not been ransacked for fitting appellations; as if its mother had not nudged its father in the ribs for fourteen consecutive nights, to know if "he had thought of any thing."

Mr. John Howe! who had married on purpose to get rid of thinking; who had no more sentiment than a stove funnel; who would not have cared had his baby been named Zerubbabel or Kerenhappuch; who was contented to let the world wag on in its own fashion, provided it did not meddle with his "pipe."

Yes, Mr. Howe smoked "a pipe." Mrs. Howe got up several hysteric fits about it, but on that point only he was immovable, spite of smelling-salts and burned feathers. Finally, Mrs. Howe made up her mind to remove the odium by artistifying it, and with the sweetest conjugal smile presented him with an expensive chibouk, to take the place of that leveling clay pipe. She also added a crimson velvet smoking-cap, in which she declared he looked "as Oriental as a dervish."

"Thunder!" exclaimed Mr. Howe, as he caught sight of himself in a glass, "you have made me look like that foreign fool of a conjuror we went to see the other evening, who turned eggs into watches. You don't expect me to wear this gimcrack?"

Mrs. Howe whispered something in Mr. Howe's ear. Whatever it was, the effect was electrifying. Husband's have their weak points like other mortals. The smoking-cap was received into favor – so was the chibouk.

In default of any preference of Mr. Howe's for the baby's name, Mrs. Howe had selected "Fenella Fatima Cecilia." It was written on a card, all ready for the Reverend Doctor Knott, who had the misfortune to be a little deaf, laid by the side of the gilt Bible, and held down to the table by an alabaster hand, with a real diamond ring on the third finger.

The baptismal basin was of silver, with two doves perched on the edges. The water to be used on the occasion, said to have come from the river Jordan, was in a state of preparedness in a corked bottle in the china closet.

All the preparations were completed, but still the baby slept on. Mrs. Howe was rather glad than otherwise, partly because it gave her plenty of time to survey her new apparel in a full-length mirror, partly because the baby always had "such a pretty color in its cheeks when it first 'woke," and she wanted to carry it in when the flush was on.

The last pin was adjusted in the maternal head-dress; the Reverend Dr. Knott had arrived, so had the appreciative select; Mr. Howe's cravat and waistcoat had been duly jerked into place by his wife, and now the baby "really must be woke." Mrs. Howe sprinkles a little jockey-club on Mr. Howe's handkerchief, takes one last lingering look in the mirror, readjusts a stray ribbon, changes the latitude of a gold head pin, then steps up to the rose-wood cradle, and draws aside the lace curtains.

What a pity! There is no flush on the babe's face! and how very pale she looks! Mrs. Howe takes hold of the plump little waxen hand that lies out upon the coverlid. What is there in the touch of her own flesh and blood to blanch her lip and palsy her tongue?

Ah! she can not face death, who could gaze with stony eyes on misery worse than death?

"Vengeance is mine – I will repay, saith the Lord."