Rutledge Part 26

"Where's the rest of your baggage? In the closet?"

(She was leaning over the bal.u.s.ters when my trunk was brought up, and knew, as well as I did, that there was only one.)

"No," I said, blus.h.i.+ng, "I didn't have but that trunk."

Grace squeezed up her mouth a little, but didn't make any rejoinder.

"Do you like your room?" she asked, after a minute.

As I had just been contrasting it mentally with the blue room at Rutledge, I could not help another blush, and a little confusion, as I replied that it did very well.

"Mamma seemed to have an idea that you were quite a little girl," she continued, "and that this was very nice for you. It opens out of the nursery, you see, and if you don't mind Esther's squalling, it _is_ very nice."

She laughed a little, and I tried to smile as I answered that I liked children, and should not mind being near my little cousin.

"I hope you'll like Esther," said Grace, with a shrug of her shoulders.

"When she isn't kicking Felicie, or howling to be taken out, or squalling after mamma, she's sitting on the floor in the sulks, and as that's the least troublesome of her moods, n.o.body interferes with her.

Oh, she's a sweet child!"

And Grace's laugh sounded more like thirty than fifteen. I was ashamed of myself for being so embarra.s.sed and abashed by a girl so much my junior, but there was something about Grace that I was not used to; a sort of gutta-percha insensibility, a lazy coolness that I had not expected from her drawling, listless way. Nothing of the woman seemed developed in her but the sharpness; and with that she was born, I suppose. She was still a little girl in her tastes and pursuits; loved to play with Esther, whom I afterward found she bullied and teased shamefully; did not aspire to beaux and young-ladyhood, but contented herself with keeping the sharpest imaginable lookout upon the concerns of every one in the house, and having a finger in every possible pie; being at once the pertest and most persevering of medlers.

She kept up a desultory talk while I was unbraiding my hair and preparing for bed; asked questions that galled me, told facts that discouraged me, till I was fairly heartsick, and would have been willing to have bought her off at any price; and looked upon the advent of Felicie with a summons from madame for her, as the most blessed release that could have been.

I locked the door after her with a bursting heart, and threw myself upon the bed in an agony of crying. What would have been merely a fit of homesickness, and a loneliness soon to be conquered and forgotten with girls of a different temperament, was a longer and more lasting struggle with me. It was wholesome discipline, no doubt; but now, disheartened, I recognized no hope in all the dark horizon; saw nothing in the future that was worth living through the present for; disappointment, pain, and loneliness had taken the color out of every hope, and made what should have been morning, a night, and that of the blackest.

"Would it last?" was a question I asked myself even then, the dawning reason of the woman within me combating the pa.s.sion of the child. "No, no," reason whispered; "'to mortals no Sorrow is immortal;' the storm will spend itself, and calm of some kind will come."

But the child's heart refused to be comforted, and pa.s.sionately rejected reason; there was no truth in friends.h.i.+p, there was no kindness in any one; there was nothing but loneliness, and coldness, and cruelty in all the world.

CHAPTER XVIII.

"A month ago, and I was happy! No, Not happy--yet encircled by deep joy, Which, though 'twas all around, I could not touch.

But it was ever thus with Happiness: It is the gay to-morrow of the mind, That never comes."

BARRY CORNWALL.

Sleep, which proverbially forsakes the wretched, paid but little court to me that first night in my new home; my swollen eyelids were sullied with too many tears, in truth, to win his favorable regard; but toward morning, exhaustion and unconsciousness came compa.s.sionately to relieve the misery and wakefulness that had guarded my pillow all night; and the dull light of a winter morning, struggling in through the half-drawn curtains, was the next summons that I had to consciousness again. I started up, aroused more fully by a sharp pain in my arm, that had momentarily been growing harder, till it had succeeded, with the aid of the advancing daylight, in waking me thoroughly. It was some seconds before I knew what it was caused by; the bracelet on the arm that had been under my head had been pushed up from the wrist, and in that way, had grown tighter and tighter, till, indeed, the pain had been unendurable. It brought Mr. Rutledge's words to my mind strangely enough; with a blush of shame and pleasure, I bent over the souvenir; "I will never doubt again," I whispered, sincerely repentant. Heaviness had endured, bitterly, for the night, but joy, or a faint and tiny promise of it, had as surely come in the morning; and with energy and something like happiness, I set myself to make the best of my little room, and my new position. No Kitty to braid my hair, no Kitty to unpack my trunk; so the sooner I got used to performing those little offices for myself, the better, decidedly.

"Something to do" was the kindest boon that could have been given me, and as such, I received it, and before the house was astir at all, I had unpacked my trunk, arranged my books upon the table, my dresses in the wardrobe, and the little knick-knacks that were regarded as decorative, on the mantelpiece and under the dressing-gla.s.s. The crayon-sketch never saw the daylight in Gramercy Square. A stolen look at it, now and then, under the half-raised lid of my trunk, was all I ever ventured on.

Mine was not a very cheerful or attractive room, certainly; but I should soon be used to it, I reflected, and it would seem nice enough. Then I drew up the shades, and looked out with much interest upon my first daylight-view of the great metropolis. Certainly, the wrong side of city houses is no more advantageous a view of them than is the wrong side of other fabrics; and in proportion as the velvet is rich and gorgeous, so is the reverse dull and plain. My room being in the rear of the house, I of course had the benefit of the wrong side of the neighboring houses; which, I will do them the justice to say, were as dismal and unpretending as houses need be. They had all of them, with one consent, put their best foot foremost; the gorgeous foot presented to the street, was of brown stone, plate gla.s.s, and carving; the slip-shod foot left in the background, was dingy for want of paint, unsightly with clothes-lines and ash-barrels, neglected and forlorn. However, I thought cheerfully, some strange comfort attends even so exalted a state as "two pair back;" there was an unlimited view of the sky, much greater than the lower rooms could command. Indeed, when there was anything but lead-color overhead, I concluded that these windows must be very cheerful. The spire of a church, however, not far off (which, I was happy to observe, had no wrong side), was the one grace of the prospect. It would not do to think of the way in which the mists were rolling up from the lake, this grey, hazy morning, nor how the pines on its bank were reflected in its still surface; nor, indeed, at all of the scene, bold and picturesque even in its wintry desolation, that had met my waking vision for the last few happy weeks.

Late breakfasts were apparently the order of the day in this establishment; the hands of my watch were creeping around toward nine o'clock, and still no indication of the approach of that meal. Beyond the occasional smothered sound of a broom or duster in the hall, there had been nothing to suggest that any one was awake throughout the house, except a fretful little voice that I had heard at intervals since dawn, in the room next mine. Listening very attentively, I found that it proceeded from the young troublesome, whose picture had been so feelingly drawn for me last night by Grace. She was evidently importuning Felicie to get up and dress her; and the tone, peevish and whining as it was, had a sort of pathos for me, remembering, as I too distinctly did, the cruel punishment that it is to a child to lie in bed after being once thoroughly awake. For two hours, little Esther had been tossing about, and crying to get up, and the only response she had received from her nurse, had been now and then a sleepy growl or an impatient threat. Injustice always irritated me; besides, I had a curiosity to see this child, who evidently met with so little favor, and time was hanging rather heavy on my hands just then, so I went to the door that communicated with the nursery, and opening it softly, looked in. The shutters being darkened, it was still not many removes from dawn, and I could but dimly make out the dimensions of the large, scantily furnished room; but there was light enough for me to see the figure of the child, sitting up in her little bed, crying piteously, "_Leve-toi, Felicie, j'ai si froid._"

She stopped suddenly on seeing me, and looked up in my face as I approached her.

"Is this my little cousin Essie?" I said, sitting down on the bed and taking one of her icy little hands in mine. Cold she certainly was; the fire had gone out entirely, and she had been sitting up undressed so long, that her teeth were chattering and her lips fairly blue. I kissed her wet cheeks, and giving her to understand that this was her new cousin, asked if she was not going to be very fond of me? She looked more amazed than before, but beyond a cessation of her tears, she made no attempt at a rejoinder. I rubbed her hands, and tried to warm her cold little feet, talking to her kindly all the time.

"Is this your dressing-gown, Essie?" I asked, taking up a little blue flannel garment from the foot of the bed. She nodded an a.s.sent, and I put it around her.

"Now," I continued, taking her up in my arms, "will you go into my room and get warm by my fire?"

"Yes," said Esther, laconically. So picking up her shoes and stockings, I raised her in my arms and carried her into the other room. She was between five and six years old, but so slight and childish that her weight was nothing. I sat down by the fire and held her in my lap, while I put on her shoes and stockings, and warmed her into something like animation.

"So Felicie wouldn't wake up," I said, at length.

I had touched the right chord; the vehement childish sense of wrong was stirred, and with eager, blundering earnestness, she detailed her grievances. Felicie never would wake up; Felicie wouldn't give her a drink of water some nights when she was _so_ thirsty; Felicie left her alone sometimes when it was _so_ dark; and Felicie was cross, and Felicie was wicked, and, in fine, she hated her.

I shook my head at this, and gave her a little moral lecture upon the wickedness of hating nurses, further ill.u.s.trating and embellis.h.i.+ng my subject by the story of a little girl who had once indulged in that dreadful pa.s.sion, and had come to a very sad end in consequence. The moral lecture, I am afraid, was overlooked; but the story was most greedily received, and I was obliged to succeed it with another and another, before I could induce her to go and get her clothes, and let me put them on for her. When she was nearly dressed, Felicie woke up, and not finding her young charge in bed, was somewhat startled and unmistakably angry, and in no dulcet tones was calling her name, when she looked into my room, and, on seeing me, sank suddenly into a softer strain, and apologized for oversleeping: she had had such a wakeful night, was not well, etc., and would Mademoiselle Esther come and have her hair brushed now?

Mademoiselle Esther, a moment before the quietest, gentlest child alive, had, at the sound of that voice, flushed up into angry defiance, and planting herself at my side, met her nurse's advance with a very ugly scowl. She wouldn't go and have her hair brushed; she didn't want a nice clean ap.r.o.n on; she didn't care if she was late for breakfast; and Felicie, though she never lost the bland tone she had a.s.sumed, looked malignant enough to have "shaken her out of her shoes and stockings." At length I persuaded her to submit to Felicie's proposals, and be made ready to go down to breakfast with me, and she held very firm possession of my hand, as, after the bell had rung, we descended the stairs.

My aunt was already below; Grace and Josephine straggled in after long intervals; indeed, we were half through breakfast before they came down.

My aunt looked charmingly in her fresh morning dress and pretty cap, was very kind, gave Esther and me her cheek to kiss, and, after reading the paper, talked to me somewhat. Esther seemed not to have much appet.i.te; but having set her heart upon a roll and some cold chicken, her mamma had graciously allowed her to be gratified, and she was very tranquilly eating her breakfast, when the entrance of Grace, who made some teasing little gesture as she pa.s.sed, made her pout and whine, and disturbed her serenity considerably. It was not, however, till Grace, calling to the servant for some marmalade, suggested a forbidden dainty to her mind, and she exclaimed, "I want marmalade, too," that the worst came.

Grace interposes pertly, "You can't have any--mamma says you can't;"

Essie pa.s.sionately protests, "I will;" mamma sharply interposes, "You shall not;" a burst of tears from Essie, and a smothered t.i.tter from Grace, then Essie pa.s.sionately pushes back her plate, and refuses to touch another mouthful; whereon mamma a.s.serts her authority, and sternly orders her to resume her biscuit and chicken under pain of banishment.

The sobbing child does not, cannot, _I_ think, obey, and, at the end of an ominous silence, mamma motions John to remove her from the table, which is effected after violent resistance and struggling, and amid a tempest of screams and protestations, exit Essie in the arms of John.

It was well that my aunt did not order me to resume my breakfast. After that little episode, I am afraid I should have been unable to obey, and I should not have liked to have been carried out in the arms of John.

Josephine exclaimed upon the nuisance of crying children; Grace laughed slily, as if she thought it capital fun; mamma sighed over the strange perverseness and dreadful temper of that child; but my heart ached for the wretched little exile. How Felicie would gloat over her disgrace, I knew; how indigestion, injustice, and mortification, would bring on a fit of the sulks that would last half the day, and pave the way for the repet.i.tion of a similar scene at lunch. Perhaps because I had been a willful, sensitive, and pa.s.sionate child myself, I knew how to appreciate the disadvantages under which poor little Essie labored. I knew what exquisite tenderness and gentleness were necessary to guard that sensitiveness from turning into the very gall of bitterness, and that quick temper from becoming the uncontrollable and d.a.m.ning pa.s.sion that would blight her whole life. More watchful care, more prayerful earnestness, does such a child's rearing require, than if she had been laid upon her mother's love, a moaning cripple, or a blind and helpless sufferer. Just as soul is more precious than body, so is the responsibility heavier, the task more awful, of training and molding such a sensitive nature, to whose morbid fancy a cold repulse is a cruel blow, and an impatient word a rankling wound. The tenderest and most yearning love should surround and guard such a child's career, putting aside with careful hand the snares and trials that beset the way of life, till the maturing judgment shall have learned to control the exaggerated fancy. The winds of heaven should not be suffered to visit too roughly such a restless and unquiet heart, till the uncertain mists of dawn and early morning have melted before the clear and certain day.

Between the rough and torturing world and the scared and shrinking soul, the mother's love should interpose, s.h.i.+elding, soothing, rea.s.suring. G.o.d meant it to be so; may His pity be the guard of the little ones, whom death, the world, the flesh, or the devil, have defrauded of their right!

No one could look at my hollow-eyed and puny little cousin, with that unhappy and unchild-like contraction of the brow, and that troubled expression of the eyes, without knowing that she was of a nervous temperament the most excitable and keen, and of a will and temper the strongest. To Josephine's spirit and Grace's acuteness, she added an almost morbid sensitiveness and delicacy of organization, of which they were entirely innocent, and which they could in no way comprehend. That she did not inherit it from her mother, was pretty evident; Grace was the nearest copy of the maternal model; "la pet.i.te" was altogether a stranger and an alien, not understood and not attractive. Her mother had never forgiven her s.e.x; a boy had been the darling wish of both parents, and this third disappointment had not been graciously received, at least by the mother; for I believe "the baby" had held a tender part in her father's heart during the two years of her life which he lived to see. Perhaps my uncle would have understood the wayward child better than his wife did, had he lived to see her develop; there must have been, I was sure, depths of gentleness and tenderness in his heart; for though he was almost a stranger to me, living as we had done, so far from the world in which he had held a busy part, still he was my mother's only brother, and they had never forgotten their early affection. The recollection of it helped me to bear with patience the caprices and willfulness of his little daughter; for, pity her as I might, there was no denying that Esther was a very vexatious and trying child, and there certainly was a very fair excuse for the disaffection of the household. How far the household had to thank themselves for it, however, was another matter, and one which I thought would have repaid investigation.

The scene consequent upon the Marmalade Act, must have been no novelty in the Churchill breakfast, for the waves closed over poor Essie's banishment in an instant, and things resumed their smooth and unruffled appearance almost immediately. The next disturbance they received, was in the form of a sharp ring at the bell, which caused Josephine, without raising her eyes from the paper she was reading, to adjust with better grace the sweep of her dress upon the carpet, and to present to view an eighth of an inch more of the rosette on her slipper; while Grace, looking up from her plate, said saucily:

"What's the use, Joseph? It's too early for anybody but Phil; and you know you don't care for Phil."

Josephine gave her a snapping look out of her black eyes, and if there had been time, no doubt would have made good their promise of a tart rejoinder, but the opening of the door, and the entrance of the six feet two inches of manliness, known and described as "Phil," prevented its consummation. I did not know at the time, but I soon did know, who and what this privileged Phil was, who was so much at home at my aunt's house, and so well received and constant a guest.

Philip Arbuthnot was, it appeared, my Aunt Edith's only nephew, and the most invaluable and untiring of escorts; supplying the place, in short, only too willingly, of son and brother to his aunt and her unprotected daughters. In the matter of securing opera boxes and concert tickets, cas.h.i.+ng drafts, looking after the family interest in Wall street, having a general supervision of the stable, keeping coachman, footman, and waiter in wholesome awe, and in a thousand other ways, he was of inestimable service. What the family would have come to without him, is too painful a speculation to be entered upon unnecessarily. Figaro-ci, Figaro-la, and Figaro liking nothing better than his occupation. He bent his whole mind to it; I never could discover that, he had any other interest or employment in life; lounging around to Gramercy Square after breakfast, embellis.h.i.+ng the library sofa with his listless length till lunch, while Josephine practised, or my aunt talked business with him.

Then, at one o'clock, after putting them in the carriage (he was not a ladies' man, and hated morning visits), Phil would lounge back to the Clarendon, and by dint of a series of smokes in the reading-room, an hour or so at billiards, and a drive on the road, would manage to get rid of the day, and, at or about five o'clock, would lounge back again to Gramercy Square for dinner and the engagements of the evening. He had been educated at West Point, and though he had not, strictly speaking, covered himself with glory, at the rather searching examination of that rigorous old inst.i.tution, just pa.s.sing and that was all, they said, escaping emphatically by the skin of his teeth, still he had been in a very fair way of promotion, when, just before the departure of his aunt's family for Europe, he had unexpectedly and abruptly resigned, and accompanied them. Having inherited a fortune just large enough to serve as a narcotic to ambition and energy, and just moderate enough to prevent his playing any prominent part in Vanity Fair, Phil seemed in the enjoyment of an existence very much to his taste, and entirely satisfying to him. If, in my crude and enthusiastic view of life, it struck _me_ as an existence at once debasing to his nature, and dishonest to his manliness, it was because I had not yet learned that what one-third of the men, and two-thirds of the women in society look upon as the proper business of their lives, must, in the nature of things, be the correct view of the subject. "The night cometh when no man can work," I thought, in my simplicity; the day, at best, is but a short and uncertain one; for every soul sent on earth there is a work allotted; what less than madness is it for the strong man to lie down in his strength and sleep away this day of grace? Seeing that the undone work does not fade with the fading daylight, but an evergrowing and thickening shadow, will horribly increase the blackness of that night; will be a treasure of wrath against that time of wrath, and the perdition of such men as have chosen to be unG.o.dly.

Such nave and unpracticable ideas as these, would, no doubt, have brought an avalanche of ridicule on my head, had I been unwise enough to impart any of them to my new friends; but a protective instinct kept me from such a blunder; and as I hourly saw with clearer eyes the dissimilarity between them and me, so I hourly grew more reserved and silent.

"Don't she ever say anything?" I could not help overhearing Phil ask, as I left the breakfast-room. I longed to hear Josephine's reply; but an inconvenient sentiment of honor prevented my stopping to listen for it.

I could not, however, avoid being auditor to the lazy laugh that it elicited from Phil, and the blood mounted to my temples at the sound.

"I wonder if they think me stupid or sulky," I said to myself. "I wonder if they ever thought how it must feel to be a stranger in the midst of people who know and understand each other. I wonder if I ever shall be one of them."

There was another, however, of the household that I felt pretty sure was as much a stranger and an alien as I was, though she had spent nearly six years in it, and I turned my steps naturally to the nursery. Poor little Essie had, as I expected, fretted and cried herself into a sick headache, and was sitting sulkily in a remote corner of the room, her doll untouched beside her, and her hands in her lap. Felicie, sitting by the window with a sardonic smile on her lips, employed herself about ripping up an evening dress of Josephine's. I called to Essie to come into my room; she pouted and averted her head. I made a coaxing promise of "something pretty," when Felicie interposed "that she was in disgrace, and perhaps mademoiselle had better not speak to her, as her mamma had sent her up for a punishment."

"Her mamma did not mean that she should be made unhappy for all the morning, however," I said, advancing boldly.