Fashion and Famine Part 18

"Not yet--oh, not yet," he pleaded, feeling the strong heart within him sink with each faint struggle that she made; "you cannot stand--the gra.s.s is deep and damp--be still--I am strong as an ox, Ada--I can carry you."

"Is it you, Jacob Strong?" she said, but half conscious.

"Yes," said Jacob in a choked voice, "it's me, your father's bound boy; we are in the old home lot again. I--I--it is a long time since I have carried you in my arms, Ada Wilc.o.x."

"Ada Wilc.o.x!" said the woman, with a start; "let me down, Jacob Strong; my name is not Ada Wilc.o.x; all that bore that name are gone; the homestead is full of strangers; Wilc.o.x is a dead name; that of Leicester has crept over it like night-shade over a grave."

Jacob Strong unfolded his arms so abruptly, that Ada almost fell to the earth.

"I had forgotten that name," he said with mournful sternness.

The poor woman attempted to stand up, but she wavered, and her pale face was lifted with piteous helplessness toward him.

"No, Jacob, I tremble--this blow has taken all my life. Help me to stand up, that I may look on the old homestead once more. How often have we looked upon it from this spot!"

"I remember," answered Jacob, "the moonlight lies upon the roof as it did that night; the old pear tree had stretched its shadow just to the garden fence."

Jacob Strong grew pale in the moonlight. Ada felt his arm shake beneath the grasp of her hand.

"You s.h.i.+ver with the cold," she said.

"It is cold, madam; the dew is heavy; I will go forward and break a path through the gra.s.s. It will not be the first time."

Jacob moved on, tramping down the gra.s.s, and casting his long, uncouth shadow before her, in the moonlight. She followed him in silence, casting back mournful glances at the old homestead.

Jacob paused to let down a heavy set of bars that divided the meadow from the trout stream. He jerked them fiercely from their sockets in the tall chestnut posts, dropping them down on each other with a noise that rang strangely through the stillness. Ada Leicester pa.s.sed through the opening, and moved slowly toward the tavern. She reached the door, but turned again to her attendant.

"Jacob," she said, very sorrowfully, "I am all alone now, in the wide world; you will not leave me?"

"Ada Wilc.o.x, I have not deserved that question," said Jacob, pus.h.i.+ng open the door.

She shrunk through timidly, perhaps expecting her servant to follow; but he closed the door and rushed away, leaping the pile of bars with a bound, and plunging back into the meadow.

"Leave her!" he said, das.h.i.+ng the tall herds-gra.s.s aside with his hand; "Leave her, as if I warn't her slave--her dog--her jackall, and had been ever since I was a shaver, so small that this very gra.s.s would have closed over my head; and yet she don't know why--thinks it's the wages, may be. It never enters her head that I've got a soul to love and hate with. What did I follow her and that man to foreign parts for, but to stand ready when her time of trouble came? What did I give up my freeborn American birthright for, and put that gold lace, and darn'd etarnal c.o.c.kade over my hat, like an English white n.i.g.g.e.r, only because I couldn't stand by her in any other way? What is it that makes me humble as a rabbit, sometimes, and then, again, snarling around like a dog? She don't see it; she believes me when I tell her that it was a hankering to see foreign parts, that sent me over sea; and that I, a freeborn American citizen, have a nat'ral fancy to gold bands and c.o.c.kades, as if the thing wasn't jist impossible! True enough, she don't want me to wear them now; but if she did, it's my solemn belief that I should do it, jist here, in sight of the old homestead.

"The old homestead," he continued, standing still in the gra.s.s, and looking toward the old home, till the bitter mood pa.s.sed from his heart, and his eyes filled with tears. "Oh, if I was only his bound boy again, and she a little girl, and the old folks up yonder. I would be a n.i.g.g.e.r--a hound--anything, if she could only stand here, as she did then--as innocent and sweet a critter as ever drew breath. But he did it--that villain! Oh, if he could be extarminated from the face of the earth! It wan't her fault--I defy the face of man to say that. It was the original sin in her own heart."

Poor Jacob! All his ma.s.sive strength was exhausted now. He even ceased to mutter over the sad, sad memories that crowded on him. But all that night he wandered about the old homestead--now lost beneath its pear trees--now casting his uncouth shadow across the barn-yard, where half a dozen slumbering cows lifted their heads and gazed earnestly after him, as if waiting for the intruder to be gone. There was not a nook or corner of the old place that he did not visit that night, and the morning found him cold, sad and pale, waiting for his mistress at the tavern door.

Just after daylight, the one-horse chaise crossed the ferry again. The old boatmen would gladly have conversed a little with its inmates, but Jacob only answered them in monosyllables, and they could not see the lady's face, so closely was it shrouded with the folds of her travelling veil.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CITY COTTAGE.

Alas, that woman's love should cling To hearts that never feel its worth, As prairie roses creep and fling Their richest bloom upon the earth.

Overlooking one of those small parks or squares that lie in the heart of our city like tufts of wild flowers in a desert, stands one of those miniature palaces, too small for the very wealthy, and too beautiful in its appointments for any idea but that of perfect taste, which wealth does not always give. A cottage house it was, or rather an exquisite mockery of what one sees named as cottages in the country. The front, of a pale stone color, was so ornamented and netted over with the lace-work of iron balconies and window-gratings, that it had all the elegance of a city mansion, with much of the rustic beauty one sees in a rural dwelling.

A little court, full of flowers, lay in front, with a miniature fountain throwing up a slender column of water from the centre of a tiny gra.s.s-plat, that, in the pure dampness always raining over it, lay like a ma.s.s of crushed emeralds hidden among the flowers. The netted iron-work that hung around the doors, the windows, and fringed the eaves, as it were, with a valance of ma.s.sive lace, was luxuriously interwoven with creeping plants. Prairie roses, crimson and white, clung around the lower balconies. Ipomas wove a profusion of their great purple and rosy bells around the upper windows; cypress vines, with their small crimson bells; petunias of every tint; rich pa.s.sion flowers, and verbenas with their leaves hidden in the light balconies, wove and twined themselves with the coa.r.s.er vines, blossoming each in its turn, and filling the leaves with their gorgeous tints. Crimson and fragrant honeysuckles twined in ma.s.sive wreaths up to the very roof, where they grew and blossomed in the lattice-work, now in ma.s.ses, now spreading out like an embroidery, and everywhere loading the atmosphere with fragrance.

The cool, bell-like dropping of the fountain, that always kept the flowers fresh; the fragrance of half a dozen orange trees, snowy with blossoms and golden with heavy fruit; the gleam of white lilies; the glow of roses, and the graceful sway of a slender labarnum tree, all crowded into one little nook scarcely large enough for the pleasure-grounds of a fairy, were enough to draw general attention to the house, though another and still more beautiful object had never presented itself at the window.

On a moonlight evening, especially when a sort of pearly veil fell upon the little flower nook, an air of quiet beauty impossible to describe, rested around this dwelling--beauty not the less striking that it was so still, so lost in profound repose, that the house might have been deemed uninhabited but for the gleam of light that occasionally broke through the vines about one or another of the windows. Sometimes it might be seen struggling through the roses around the lower balcony, but far oftener it came in faint gleams from a window in the upper story, and at such times the shadow of a person stooping over a book, or lost in deep thought, might be seen through the muslin curtains.

No sashes, flung open in the carelessness of domestic enjoyment, were ever seen in the dwelling; no voices of happy childhood were ever heard to ring through those cl.u.s.tering vines. Sometimes a young female would steal timidly out upon the balconies, and return again, like a bird afraid to be detected beyond the door of its cage. Sometimes an old lady in mourning might be seen pa.s.sing in and out, as if occupied with some slight household responsibility. This was all the neighborhood ever knew of the cottage or its inmates. The face of the younger female, though always beautiful, was not always the same, but no person knew when one disappeared and another took her place.

The cottage had been built by a private gentleman, and its first occupant was the old lady. She might have been his mother, his tenant, or his housekeeper, no one could decide her exact position. He seldom visited the house. Sometimes during months together he never crossed the threshold. But the old lady was always there, scarcely ever without a young and lovely companion; and, what seemed most singular, year after year pa.s.sed and her mourning garments were never changed.

Servants, the universal channel through which domestic gossip circulates in the bas.e.m.e.nt strata of social life, were never seen in the cottage.

An old colored woman came two or three times a week and performed certain household duties; but she spoke only in a foreign language, and probably had been selected for that very reason. Thus all the usual avenues of intelligence were closed around the cottage. True, a colored man came occasionally to prune and trim the little flower nook, but he was never seen to enter the house, and appeared to be profoundly ignorant of its history and its inmates. Some of the most curious had ventured far enough into the fairy garden to read the name on a silver plate within the latticed entrance. It was a single name, and seemed to be foreign; at any rate, it had no familiar sound to those who read it, and whether it belonged to the owner of the cottage or the old lady, still continued a mystery.

Thus the cottage remained a tiny palace, more isolated amid the surrounding dwellings than it could have been if buried in the green depths of the country. But at the season when our story commences, the profound quietude of the place was broken by the appearance of a new inmate. A fair young girl about this time was often noticed early in the morning, and sometimes after dusk hovering about the little fountain, as if enticed there by the scent of the orange trees; still, though her white garments were often seen fluttering amid the shrubbery, which she seemed to haunt with the shy timidity of a wild bird, few persons ever obtained a distinct view of her features.

On the night, and at the very hour when Ada Leicester and Jacob Strong met beneath the old elm tree in sight of the farm-house which had once sheltered them, two men gently approached this cottage and paused before the gate. This was nothing singular, for it was no unusual thing, when that lovely fountain was tossing its cool shower of water-drops into the air, and the flowers were bathed in the moonlight, for persons to pause in their evening walk and wonder at the gem-like beauty of the place.

But these two persons seemed about to enter the little gate. One held the latch in his hand, and appeared to hesitate only while he examined the windows of the dwelling. The other younger by far and more enthusiastic, grasped the iron railing with one hand, while he leaned over and inhaled the rich fragrance of the flower garden with intense gratification.

"Come," said Leicester, gently opening the gate, "I see a light in the lower rooms--let us go in!"

"What, here? Is it here you are taking me?" cried the youth, in accents of joyful surprise--"how beautiful--how very, very beautiful. It must be some queen of the fairies you are leading me to!"

"You like the house then?" said Leicester, in his usual calm voice, gently advancing along the walk. "It does look well just now, with the moonlight falling through the leaves, but these things become tiresome after a while!"

"Tiresome!" exclaimed the youth, casting his glance around. "Tiresome!"

"I much doubt," added Leicester, turning as he spoke, and gliding, as if unconsciously, along the white gravel walk that curved around the fountain--"I much doubt if any thing continues to give entire satisfaction, even the efforts of our own mind, or the work of our own hands, after it is once completed. It is the progress, the love of change, the curiosity to see how this touch will affect the whole, that gives zest to enjoyment in such things. I can fancy the owner of this faultless little place now becoming weary of its prettiness."

"Weary of a place like this--why the angels might think themselves at home in it!"

"They would find out their mistake, I fancy!"

As Leicester uttered these words the moonlight fell full upon his face, and the worm-like curl of his lip which the light revealed, had something unpleasant in it. The youth happened to look up at the moment, and a sharp revulsion came over his feelings. For the moment he fell into thought, and when he spoke, the change in his spirit was very evident.

"I can imagine nothing that is not pure and good, almost as the angels themselves, living here!" he said, half timidly, as if he feared the scoff that might follow his words.

"We shall see," answered Leicester, breaking a cl.u.s.ter of orange flowers from one of the plants. He was about to fasten the fragrant sprig in his b.u.t.ton-hole, but some after-thought came over him, such as often regulated his most trivial actions, and he gave the branch to his companion.

"Put it in your bosom," he said, with a sort of jeering good humor, as one trifles with a child: "who knows but it may win your first conquest?"

The youth took the blossoms, but held them carelessly in his hand. There was something in Leicester's tone that wounded his self-love; and without reply he moved from the fountain. They ascended to the richly latticed entrance, and Leicester touched the bell k.n.o.b.

The door was opened by a quiet, pale old lady, who gravely bent her head as she recognised Leicester. After one glance of surprise at his young companion, which certainly had no pleasure blended with it, she led the way into a small parlor.

Nothing could be more exquisitely chaste than that little room. The ceilings and the enamelled walls were spotless as crusted snow, and like snow was the light cornice of grape leaves and fruit, that scarcely seemed to touch the ceiling around which they were entwined. No glittering chandelier, no gilded cornices or gorgeous carpets disturbed the pure harmony of this little room; delicate India matting covered the floor; the chairs, divans and couches were of pure white enamel.