Rose Clark Part 21

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 b.u.t.terfly 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 n.o.body seemed to want it. It tried the minister, it tried the deacon, it tried the poor, bony old s.e.xton (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' fis.h.i.+ng, 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 st.i.tch 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 n.o.body 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 partners.h.i.+p before now."

CHAPTER x.x.x.

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 gus.h.i.+ng 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 x.x.xI.

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 _tete-a-tetes_, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 unsurpa.s.sable; 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 fas.h.i.+on, provided it did not meddle with his "pipe."