Helen and Arthur Part 7

"I will go and get it," he cried, starting up, suddenly, his face reddening to his temples. "I will get it, and carry it over to you."

"No, give me the key of the school-house, and I will spare you the trouble. It is on my homeward way."

"I _must_ go myself," he replied, cloaking himself with wonderful celerity, and taking a lantern from the shelf. "You can wait here, till I return."

"No such thing," said Arthur. "Why should I wait here, when I might be so far on my way home?"

The master saw that it was in vain to conceal from him the incarceration of little Helen, an act for which he felt sorry and ashamed; but thinking she might still be asleep, and that he might abstract the book without the young doctor being aware of her presence, he strode on in silence, with a speed almost superhuman.

"You forget what tremendous long limbs you have," exclaimed the young doctor, breathless, and laughing, "or you would have more mercy on your less gifted brethren."

"Yes--yes--I do forget," cried his excited companion, unconsciously betraying his secret, "as that poor little creature knows, to her cost."

"I may as well tell you all about it," he added, answering Arthur's look of surprise and curiosity, seen by the lantern's gleam--"since I couldn't keep it to myself."

He then related the punishment he had inflicted on Helen, and how he had left her, forgotten and alone.

The benevolent heart of the young doctor was not only pained, but alarmed by the recital. He feared for the effects of this long imprisonment on a child so exquisitely sensitive and timid.

"You don't know the child," said he, hastening his pace, till even the master's long strides did not sweep more rapidly over the snowy ground.

"You have made a fatal experiment. I should not be surprised if you made her a maniac or an idiot."

"Heaven forbid!" cried the conscience-stricken teacher, and his huge hand trembled on the lock of the door.

"Go in first," said he to Arthur, giving him the lantern. "She will be less afraid of you than of me."

Arthur opened the door, and shading the lantern, so as to soften its glare, he went in with cautious steps. A little black figure, with white hands and white face, was kneeling between the desk and the stove.

The hands were clasped so tightly, they looked as if they had grown together, and the face had a still, marble look--but life, intensely burning life was in the large, wild eyes uplifted to his own.

"Helen, my child!" said he, setting the lantern on the stove, and stooping till his hair, silvered with the night-frost, touched her cheek.

With a faint but thrilling cry, she sprang forward, and threw her arms round his neck; and there she clung, sobbing one moment, and laughing the next, in an ecstasy of joy and grat.i.tude.

"I thought you'd come, if you knew it," she cried.

This implicit confidence in his protection, touched the young man, and he wrapped his arms more closely round her s.h.i.+vering frame.

"How cold you are!" he exclaimed. "Let me fold my cloak about you, and put both your hands in mine, they are like pieces of ice."

"Helen, you poor little forlorn lamb," cried a rough, husky voice--and the sudden eclipse of a great shadow pa.s.sed over her. "Helen, I did not mean to leave you here--on my soul I did not. I forgot all about you. As I hope to be forgiven for my cruelty, it is true. I only meant to keep you here till school was dismissed--and I have let you stay till you are starved, and frozen, and almost dead."

"It was my fault," replied Helen, in a meek, subdued tone, "but I'll try and study better, if you won't shut me up here any more."

"Bless the child!" exclaimed the master, "what a little angel of goodness she is. You shall have all the suns.h.i.+ne of the broad earth, after this, for all my shutting out one ray from your sweet face. That's right--bring her along, doctor, under your cloak, and don't let the frost bite her nose--I'll carry the lantern."

Wondering that the father had not sought for his lost child, Arthur carried her home, while the master carefully lighted their slippery path.

Great was the astonishment of Mr. Gleason, on seeing his little daughter brought home in such a state, for he imagined her at the fireside of one of her companions, in company with her sister. Her absence had consequently created no alarm.

Not all the regret and compunction expressed by Master Hightower could quell the rising surge of anger in the father's breast. His brow grew dark, and Miss Thusa's darker still.

"To lock up a poor, little motherless thing, such a night as this!"

muttered she, putting her spectacles, the thermometer of her anger, on the top of her head. "To leave her there to perish. Why, the wild beasts themselves would be ashamed of such behaviour, let alone a man."

"Don't, Miss Thusa," whispered Helen, "he is sorry as he can be. I was bad, too, for I didn't mind him."

"I do not wonder at your displeasure, sir," said the master, turning to Mr. Gleason, with dignity; "I deserve to feel it, for my unpardonable forgetfulness. But I must say in my defence, I never should have thought of such a punishment, had it not been suggested by yourself."

"Suggested by me!" repeated Mr. Gleason, angrily; "I don't know what you mean, sir!"

"Your eldest daughter brought me a message, to this effect--that you desired me to try solitary confinement in the dark, as the most effectual means to bring her to obedience; having no other dark place, I shut her in my desk, and never having deposited a living bundle there before, I really think I ought to be pardoned for forgetting her."

"Is it possible my daughter carried such a message to you from _me_,"

cried Mr. Gleason, "I never sent it."

"Just like Mittie," cried Miss Thusa, "she's always doing something to spite Helen. I heard her say myself once, that she despised her, because everybody took her part. Take her part--sure enough. The Lord Almighty knows that a person has to be abused before we _can_ take their part."

"Hus.h.!.+" exclaimed Mr. Gleason, mortified as this disclosure of Mittie's unamiable disposition, and shocked at the instance first made known to him. "This is not a proper time for such remarks; I don't wish to hear them."

"You ought to hear them, whether you want to or not," continued the indomitable spinster, "and I don't see any use in palavering the truth.

Master Hightower and Mr. Arthur knows it by this time, and there's no harm in talking before them. Helen's an uncommon child. She's no more like other children, than my fine linen thread is like twisted tow. She won't bear hard pulling or rough handling. Mittie isn't good to her sister. You ought to have heard Helen's mother talk about it before she died. She was afraid of worrying you, she was so tender of your feelings. 'But Miss Thusa,' says she, 'the only thing that keeps me from being willing to die, is this child;' meaning Helen, to be sure. 'But, oh, Miss Thusa,' says she, and her eyes filled up with tears, 'watch over her, for my sake, and see that she is gently dealt by.'"

A long, deep sigh burst from the heart of the widower, sacred to the memory of his buried wife. Another heaved the ample breast of the master for the disclosure of his favorite pupil's unamiable traits.

The young doctor sighed, for the evils he saw by antic.i.p.ation impending over his little favorite's head. He thought of his gentle mother, his lovely blind sister, of his sweet, quiet home, and wished that Helen could be embosomed in its hallowed shades. Young as he was, he felt a kind of fatherly interest in the child--she had been so often thrown upon him for sympathy and protection. (His youth may be judged by the epithet attached to his name. There were several young physicians in the town, but he was universally known as _the_ young doctor.) From the first, he was singularly drawn towards the child. He pitied her, for he saw she had such deep capacities of suffering--he loved her for her dependence and helplessness, her grateful and confiding disposition. He wished she were placed in the midst of more genial elements. He feared less the unnatural unkindness of Mittie, than the devotion and tenderness of Miss Thusa--for the latter fed, as with burning gas, her too inflammable imagination.

"The next time I visit home," said the young doctor to himself, "I will speak to my mother of this interesting child."

When Mittie was brought face to face with her father; he upbraided her sternly for her falsehood, and for making use of his name as a sanction for her cruelty.

"You did say so, father!" said she, looking him boldly in the face, though the color mounted to her brow. "You did say so--and I can prove it."

"You know what I said was uttered in jest," replied the justly incensed parent; "that it was never given as a message; that it was said to her, not you."

"I didn't give it as a message," cried Mittie, undauntedly; "I said that I had heard you say so--and so I did. Ask Master Hightower, if you don't believe me."

There was something so insolent in her manner, so defying in her countenance, that Mr. Gleason, who was naturally pa.s.sionate, became so exasperated that he lifted his hand with a threatening gesture, but the pleading image of his gentle wife rose before him and arrested the chastis.e.m.e.nt.

"I cannot punish the child whose mother lies in the grave," said he, in an agitated tone, suffering his arm to fall relaxed by his side. "But Mittie, you are making me very unhappy by your misconduct. Tell me why you dislike your innocent little sister, and delight in giving her pain, when she is meek and gentle as a lamb?"

"Because you all love her better than you do me," she answered, her scornful under lip slightly quivering. "Brother Louis don't care for me; he always gives every thing he has to Helen. Miss Thusa pets her all the day long, just because she listens to her ugly old stories; and you--and you, always take her part against me."

"Mittie, don't let me hear you make use of that ridiculous phrase again; it means nothing, and has a low, vulgar sound. Come here, my daughter--I thought you did not care about our love." He took her by the hand and drew her in spite of her resistance, between his knees. Then stroking back the black and s.h.i.+ning hair from her high, bold brow, he added,

"You are mistaken, Mittie, if you do not think that we love you. I love you with a father's tender affection; I have never given you reason to doubt it. If I show more love for Helen, it is only because she is younger, smaller, and winds herself more closely around me by her loving, affectionate ways; she seems to love me better, to love us all better. That is the secret, Mittie; it is love; cling to our hearts as Helen does, and we will never cast you off."

"I can't do as Helen does, for I'm not like her," said Mittie, tossing back her hair with her own peculiar motion, "and I don't want to be like her; she's nothing but a coward, though she makes believe half the time, to be petted, I know she does."

"Incorrigible child;" cried the father, pus.h.i.+ng back his chair, rising and walking the room back and forth, with a sad and clouded brow. He had many misgivings for the future. The frank, convivial, generous spirit of Louis would lead him into temptation, when exposed to the influence of seducing companions. Mittie's jealous and unyielding temper would embitter the peace of the household; while Helen's morbid sensibility, like a keen-edged sword in a thin, frail scabbard, threatened to wear away her young life. What firmness--yea, what gentleness--yea, what wisdom, what holy Christian principles were requisite for the responsibilities resting upon him.