St. Elmo Part 2

"But I am in the habit of paying for my work."

"It is not worth talking about. Good day, sir."

Mr. Hunt turned and walked into his shop.

"There is a dollar, it is the only small change I have." He rode up to the door of the shed, threw the small gold coin toward the blacksmith, and was riding rapidly away, when Edna darted after him, exclaiming, "Stop, sir! you have left your shawl!"

He turned in the saddle, and even under the screen of her calico bonnet she felt the fiery gleam of his eyes, as he stooped to take the shawl from her hand. Once more his fingers touched his hat, he bowed and said hastily:

"I thank you, child." Then spurring his horse, he was out of sight in a moment.

"He is a rude, blasphemous, wicked man," said Mr. Hunt as Edna reentered the shop, and picked up the coin, which lay glistening amid the cinders around the anvil.

"Why do you think him wicked?"

"No good man swears as he did, before you came; and didn't you notice the vicious, wicked expression of his eyes?"

"No, sir, I did not see much of his face, he never looked at me but once. I should not like to meet him again; I am afraid of him."

"Never fear, Pearl, he is a stranger here, and there's little chance of your ever setting your eyes on his ugly, savage face again. Keep the money, dear; I won't have it after all the airs he put on. If, instead of shoeing his wild brute, I had knocked the fellow down for his insolence in cursing me, it would have served him right.

Politeness is a cheap thing; and a poor man, if he behaves himself, and does his work well, is as much ent.i.tled to it as the President."

"I will give the dollar to grandma, to buy a new coffee-pot; for she said to-day the old one was burnt out, and she could not use it any longer. But what is that yonder on the gra.s.s? That man left something after all."

She picked up from the spot where he had thrown his shawl a handsome morocco-bound pocket copy of Dante, and opening it to discover the name of the owner, she saw written on the fly-leaf in a bold and beautiful hand, "S. E. M., Boboli Gardens, Florence. Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate."

"What does this mean, grandpa?"

She held up the book and pointed out the words of the dread inscription.

"Indeed, Pearl, how should I know? It is Greek, or Latin, or Dutch, like the other outlandish gibberish he talked to that devilish horse. He must have spent his life among the heathens, to judge from his talk; for he has neither manner nor religion. Honey, better put the book there in the furnace; it is not fit for your eyes."

"He may come back for it if he misses it pretty soon."

"Not he. One might almost believe that he was running from the law.

He would not turn back for it if it was bound in gold instead of leather. It is no account, I'll warrant, or he would not have been reading it, the ill-mannered heathen!"

Weeks pa.s.sed, and as the owner was not heard of again, Edna felt that she might justly claim as her own this most marvellous of books, which, though beyond her comprehension, furnished a source of endless wonder and delight. The copy was Gary's translation, with ill.u.s.trations designed by Flaxman; and many of the grand, gloomy pa.s.sages were underlined by pencil and annotated in the unknown tongue, which so completely baffled her curiosity. Night and day she pored over this new treasure; sometimes dreaming of the hideous faces that scowled at her from the solemn, mournful pages; and anon, when startled from sleep by these awful visions, she would soothe herself to rest by murmuring the metrical version of the Lord's Prayer contained in the "Purgatory." Most emphatically did Mrs. Hunt disapprove of the studious and contemplative habits of the ambitious child, who she averred was indulging dreams and aspirations far above her station in life, and well calculated to dissatisfy her with her humble, unpretending home and uninviting future. Education, she contended, was useless to poor people, who could not feed and clothe themselves with "book learning;" and experience had taught her that those who lounged about with books in their hands generally came to want, and invariably to harm. It was in vain that she endeavored to convince her husband of the impropriety of permitting the girl to spend so much time over her books; he finally put the matter at rest by declaring that, in his opinion, Edna was a remarkable child; and if well educated, might even rise to the position of teacher for the neighborhood, which would confer most honorable distinction upon the family. Laying his brawny hand fondly on her head, he said, tenderly:

"Let her alone, wife! let her alone! You will make us proud of you, won't you, little Pearl, when you are smart enough to teach a school? I shall be too old to work by that time, and you will take care of me, won't you, my little mocking-bird?"

"Oh, Grandy; that I will. But do you really think I ever shall have sense enough to be a teacher? You know I ought to learn everything, and I have so few books."

"To be sure you will. Remember there is always a way where there's a will. When I pay off the debt I owe Peter Wood, I will see what we can do about some new books. Put on your shawl now, Pearl, and hunt up old Brindle, it is milking time, and she is not in sight."

"Grandpa, are you sure you feel better this evening?" She plunged her fingers in his thick white hair, and rubbed her round, rosy cheek softly against his.

"Oh! yes, I am better. Hurry back, Pearl, I want you to read to me."

It was a bright day in January, and the old man sat in a large rocking-chair on the porch, smoking his pipe, and sunning himself in the last rays of the sinking sun. He had complained all day of not feeling well, and failed to go to his work as usual; and now, as his grandchild tied her pink calico bonnet under her chin, and wrapped herself in her faded plaid shawl, he watched her with a tender, loving light in his keen gray eyes. She kissed him, b.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt collar, which had become unfastened, drew his homespun coat closer to his throat, and springing down the steps bounded away in search of the cow, who often strayed so far off that she was dispatched to drive her home. In the grand, peaceful, solemn woods, through which the wintry wind now sighed in a soothing monotone, the child's spirit reached an exaltation which, had she lived two thousand years earlier, and roamed amid the vales and fastnesses of cla.s.sic Arcadia, would have vented itself in dithyrambics to the great "Lord of the Hyle," the Greek "All," the horned and hoofed G.o.d, Pan. In every age, and among all people--from the Pa.r.s.ee devotees and the Gosains of India to the Pantheism of Bruno, Spinoza, and New England's "Illuminati"--nature has been apotheosized; and the heart of the blacksmith's untutored darling stirred with the same emotions of awe and adoration which thrilled the wors.h.i.+pers of Hertha, when the veiled chariot stood in Helgeland, and which made the groves and grottoes of Phrygia sacred to Dindymene. Edna loved trees and flowers, stars and clouds, with a warm, clinging affection, as she loved those of her own race; and that solace and amus.e.m.e.nt which most children find in the society of children and the sports of childhood this girl derived from the solitude and serenity of nature. To her woods and fields were indeed vocal, and every flitting bird and gurgling brook, every pa.s.sing cloud and whispering breeze, brought messages of G.o.d's eternal love and wisdom, and drew her tender, yearning heart more closely to Jehovah, the Lord G.o.d Omnipotent. To-day, in the boundless reverence and religious enthusiasm of her character, she directed her steps to a large spreading oak, now leafless, where in summer she often came to read and pray; and here falling on her knees she thanked G.o.d for the blessings showered upon her. Entirely free from discontent and querulousness, she was thoroughly happy in her poor humble home, and over all, like a consecration, shone the devoted love for her grandfather, which more than compensated for any want of which she might otherwise have been conscious. Accustomed always to ask special favor for him, his name now pa.s.sed her lips in earnest supplication, and she fervently thanked the Father that his threatened illness had been arrested without serious consequences.

The sun had gone down when she rose and hurried on in search of the cow. The shadows of a winter evening gathered in the forest and climbed like trooping spirits up the rocky mountain side, and as she plunged deeper and deeper into the woods, the child began a wild cattle call that she was wont to use on such occasions. The echoes rang out a weird Brocken chorus, and at last, when she was growing impatient of the fruitless search, she paused to listen, and heard the welcome sound of the familiar lowing, by which the old cow recognized her summons. Following the sound, Edna soon saw the missing favorite coming slowly toward her, and ere many moments both were running homeward. As she approached the house, driving Brindle before her, and merrily singing her rude 'Ranz des vaches', the moon rose full and round, and threw a flood of light over the porch where the blacksmith still sat. Edna took off her bonnet and waved it at him, but he did not seem to notice the signal, and driving the cow into the yard, she called out as she latched the gate:

"Grandy, dear, why don't you go in to the fire? Are you waiting for me, out here in the cold? I think Brindle certainly must have been cropping gra.s.s around the old walls of Jericho, as that is the farthest off of any place I know. If she is half as tired and hungry as I am, she ought to be glad to get home." He did not answer, and running up the steps she thought he had fallen asleep. The old woolen hat shaded his face, but when she crept on tiptoe to the chair, stooped, put her arms around him, and kissed his wrinkled cheek, she started back in terror. The eyes stared at the moon, the stiff fingers clutched the pipe from which the ashes had not been shaken, and the face was cold and rigid. Aaron Hunt had indeed fallen asleep, to wake no more amid the storms and woes and tears of time.

Edna fell on her knees and grasped the icy hands. "Grandpa! wake up!

Oh, grandpa! speak to me, your little Pearl! Wake up! dear Grandy! I have come back! My grandpa! Oh!--"

A wild, despairing cry rent the still evening air, and shrieked dismally back from the distant hills and the gray, ghostly mountain- -and the child fell on her face at the dead man's feet.

Throughout that dreary night of agony, Edna lay on the bed where her grandfather's body had been placed, holding one of the stiffened hands folded in both hers, and pressed against her lips. She neither wept nor moaned, the shock was too terrible to admit of noisy grief; but completely stunned, she lay mute and desolate.

For the first time in her life she could not pray; she wanted to turn away from the thought of G.o.d and heaven, for it seemed that she had nothing left to pray for. That silver-haired, wrinkled old man was the only father she had ever known; he had cradled her in his sinewy arms, and slept clasping her to his heart; had taught her to walk, and surrounded her with his warm, pitying love, making a home of peace and blessedness for her young life. Giving him, in return, the whole wealth of her affection, he had become the centre of all her hopes, joys and aspirations; now what remained? Bitter, rebellious feelings hardened her heart when she remembered that even while she was kneeling, thanking G.o.d for his preservation from illness, he had already pa.s.sed away; nay, his sanctified spirit probably poised its wings close to the Eternal Throne, and listened to the prayer which she sent up to G.o.d for his welfare and happiness and protection while on earth. The souls of our dead need not the aid of Sandalphon to interpret the whispers that rise tremulously from the world of sin and wrestling, that float up among the stars, through the gates of pearl, down the golden streets of the New Jerusalem. So we all trust, and prate of our faith, and deceive ourselves with the fond hope that we are resigned to the Heavenly Will; and we go on with a show of Christian reliance, while the morning sun smiles in gladness and plenty, and the hymn of happy days and the dear voices of our loved ones make music in our ears; and lo! G.o.d puts us in the crucible. The light of life--the hope of all future years is blotted out; clouds of despair and the grim night of an unbroken and unlifting desolation fall like a pall on heart and brain; we dare not look heavenward, dreading another blow; our anchor drags, we drift out into a hideous Dead Sea, where our idol has gone down forever--and boasted faith and trust and patience are swept like straws from our grasp in the tempest of woe; while our human love cries wolfishly for its lost darling. Ah! we build grand and gloomy mausoleums for our precious dead hopes, but, like Artemisia, we refuse to sepulchre--we devour the bitter ashes of the lost, and grimly and audaciously challenge Jehovah to take the worthless, mutilated life that his wisdom reserves for other aims and future toils. Job's wife is immortal and ubiquitous, haunting the sorrow-shrouded chamber of every stricken human soul, and fiendishly prompting the bleeding, crushed spirit to "curse G.o.d and die." Edna had never contemplated the possibility of her grandfather's death--it was a horror she had never forced herself to front; and now that he was cut down in an instant, without even the mournful consolation of parting words and farewell kisses, she asked herself again and again: "What have I done, that G.o.d should punish me so? I thought I was grateful, I thought I was doing my duty; but oh! what dreadful sin have I committed, to deserve this awful affliction?" During the long, ghostly watches of that winter night, she recalled her past life, gilded by the old man's love, and could remember no happiness with which he was not intimately connected, and no sorrow that his hand had not soothed and lightened. The future was now a blank, crossed by no projected paths, lit with no ray of hope; and at daylight, when the cold, pale morning showed the stony face of the corpse at her side, her unnatural composure broke up in a storm of pa.s.sionate woe, and she sprang to her feet, almost frantic with the sense of her loss:

"All alone! n.o.body to love me; nothing to look forward to! Oh.

grandpa! did you hear me praying for you yesterday? Dear Grandy--my own dear Grandy! I did pray for you while you were dying--here alone! Oh, my G.o.d! what have I done, that you should take him away from me? Was not I on my knees when he died? Oh! what will become of me now? n.o.body to care for Edna now! Oh, grandpa! grandpa! beg Jesus to ask G.o.d to take me too!" And throwing up her clasped hands, she sank back insensible on the shrouded form of the dead.

"When some beloved voice that was to you Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly, And silence against which you dare not cry, Aches round you like a strong disease and new-- What hope? what help? what music will undo That silence to your senses? Not friends.h.i.+p's sigh, Not reason's subtle count. Nay, none of these!

Speak Thou, availing Christ! and fill this pause."

CHAPTER III.

Of all that occurred during many ensuing weeks Edna knew little. She retained, in after years, only a vague, confused remembrance of keen anguish and utter prostration, and an abiding sense of irreparable loss. In delirious visions she saw her grandfather now struggling in the grasp of Phlegyas, and now writhing in the fiery tomb of Uberti, with jets of flame leaping through his white hair, and his shrunken hands stretched appealingly toward her, as she had seen those of the doomed Ghibelline leader, in the hideous Dante picture. All the appalling images evoked by the sombre and embittered imagination of the gloomy Tuscan had seized upon her fancy, even in happy hours, and were now reproduced by her disordered brain in mult.i.tudinous and aggravated forms. Her wails of agony, her pa.s.sionate prayers to G.o.d to release the beloved spirit from the tortures which her delirium painted, were painful beyond expression to those who watched her ravings; and it was with a feeling of relief that they finally saw her sink into apathy--into a quiet mental stupor--from which nothing seemed to rouse her. She did not remark Mrs. Hunt's absence, or the presence of the neighbors at her bedside. And one morning, when she was wrapped up and placed by the fire, Mrs. Wood told her as gently as possible that her grandmother had died from a disease which was ravaging the country and supposed to be cholera. The intelligence produced no emotion; she merely looked up an instant, glanced mournfully around the dreary room, and, s.h.i.+vering slightly, drooped her head again on her hand. Week after week went slowly by, and she was removed to Mrs. Wood's house, but no improvement was discernible, and the belief became general that the child's mind had sunk into hopeless imbecility. The kind-hearted miller and his wife endeavored to coax her out of her chair by the chimney-corner, but she crouched there, a wan, mute figure of woe, pitiable to contemplate; asking no questions, causing no trouble, receiving no consolation. One bright March morning she sat, as usual, with her face bowed on her thin hand, and her vacant gaze fixed on the blazing fire, when, through the open window, came the impatient lowing of a cow. Mrs. Wood saw a change pa.s.s swiftly over the girl's face, and a quiver cross the lips so long frozen. She lifted her head, rose, and followed the sound, and soon stood at the side of Brindle, who now furnished milk for the miller's family. As the gentle cow recognized and looked at her, with an expression almost human in the mild, liquid eyes, all the events of that last serene evening swept back to Edna's deadened memory, and, leaning her head on Brindle's horns, she shed the first tears that had flowed for her great loss, while sobs, thick and suffocating, shook her feeble, emaciated frame.

"Bless the poor little outcast, she will get well now. That is just exactly what she needs. I tell you, Peter, one good cry like that is worth a wagon-load of physic. Don't go near her; let her have her cry out. Poor thing! It ain't often you see a child love her granddaddy as she loved Aaron Hunt. Poor lamb!"

Mrs. Wood wiped her own eyes, and went back to her weaving; and Edna turned away from the mill and walked to her deserted home, while the tears poured ceaselessly over her white cheeks. As she approached the old house she saw that it was shut up and neglected; but when she opened the gate, Grip, the fierce yellow terror of the whole neighborhood, sprang from the door-step, where he kept guard as tirelessly as Maida, and, with a dismal whine of welcome, leaped up and put his paws on her shoulders. This had been the blacksmith's pet, fed by his hand, chained when he went to the shop, and released at his return; and grim and repulsively ugly though he was, the only playmate Edna had ever known; had gamboled around her cradle, slept with her on the sheepskin, and frolicked with her through the woods, in many a long search for Brindle. He alone remained of all the happy past; and as precious memories crowded mournfully up, she sat upon the steps of the dreary homestead, with her arms around his neck, and wept bitterly. After an hour she left the house, and, followed by the dog, crossed the woods in the direction of the neighborhood graveyard. In order to reach it she was forced to pa.s.s by the spring and the green hillock where Mr. and Mrs. Dent slept side by side, but no nervous terror seized her now as formerly; the great present horror swallowed up all others, and, though she trembled from physical debility, she dragged herself on till the rude, rough paling of the burying-ground stood before her. Oh, dreary desolation; thy name is country graveyard! Here no polished sculptured stela pointed to the Eternal Rest beyond; no cla.s.sic marbles told, in gilded characters, the virtues of the dead; no flowery-fringed gravel-walks wound from murmuring waterfalls and rippling fountains to crystal lakes, where trailing willows threw their flickering shadows over silver-dusted lilies; no spicy perfume of purple heliotrope and starry jasmine burdened the silent air; none of the solemn beauties and soothing charms of Greenwood or Mount Auburn wooed the mourner from her weight of woe. Decaying head-boards, green with the lichen-fingered touch of time, leaned over neglected mounds, where last year's weeds s.h.i.+vered in the sighing breeze, and autumn winds and winter rains had drifted a brown shroud of shriveled leaves; while here and there meek-eyed sheep lay sunning themselves upon the trampled graves, and the slow- measured sound of a bell dinged now and then as cattle browsed on the scanty herbage in this most neglected of G.o.d's Acres. Could Charles Lamb have turned from the pompous epitaphs and high-flown panegyrics of that English cemetery, to the rudely-lettered boards which here briefly told the names and ages of the sleepers in these narrow beds, he had never asked the question which now stands as a melancholy epigram on family favoritism and human frailty. Gold gilds even the lineaments and haunts of Death, making Pere la Chaise a favored spot for fetes champetres; while poverty hangs neither veil nor mask over the grinning ghoul, and flees, superst.i.tion- spurred, from the hideous precincts.

In one corner of the inclosure, where Edna's parents slept, she found the new mounds that covered the remains of those who had nurtured and guarded her young life; and on an unpainted board was written in large letters:

"To the memory of Aaron Hunt: an honest blacksmith, and true Christian; aged sixty-eight years and six months."

Here, with her head on her grandfather's grave, and the faithful dog crouched at her feet, lay the orphan, wrestling with grief and loneliness, striving to face a future that loomed before her spectre-thronged; and here Mr. Wood found her when anxiety at her long absence induced his wife to search for the missing invalid. The storm of sobs and tears had spent itself, fort.i.tude took the measure of the burden imposed, shouldered the galling weight, and henceforth, with undimmed vision, walked steadily to the appointed goal. The miller was surprised to find her so calm, and as they went homeward she asked the particulars of all that had occurred, and thanked him gravely but cordially for the kind care bestowed upon her, and for the last friendly offices performed for her grandfather.

Conscious of her complete helplessness and physical prostration, she ventured no allusion to the future, but waited patiently until renewed strength permitted the execution of designs now fully mapped out. Notwithstanding her feebleness, she rendered herself invaluable to Mrs. Wood, who praised her dexterity and neatness as a seamstress, and predicted that she would make a model housekeeper.

Late one Sunday evening in May, as the miller and his wife sat upon the steps of their humble and comfortless looking home, they saw Edna slowly approaching, and surmised where she had spent the afternoon. Instead of going into the house she seated herself beside them, and, removing her bonnet, traces of tears were visible on her sad but patient face.

"You ought not to go over yonder so often, child. It is not good for you," said the miller, knocking the ashes from his pipe.

She shaded her countenance with her hand, and after a moment said, in a low but steady tone:

"I shall never go there again. I have said good-bye to everything, and have nothing now to keep me here. You and Mrs. Wood have been very kind to me, and I thank you heartily; but you have a family of children, and have your hands full to support them without taking care of me. I know that our house must go to you to pay that old debt, and even the horse and cow; and there will be nothing left when you are paid. You are very good, indeed, to offer me a home here, and I never can forget your kindness; but I should not be willing to live on anybody's charity; and besides, all the world is alike to me now, and I want to get out of sight of--of--what shows my sorrow to me every day. I don't love this place now; it won't let me forget, even for a minute, and--and--"

Here the voice faltered and she paused.