The Gold Brick Part 20

"They--who?"

"Every soul on board--no, I remember a negro and a little boy stayed with him."

"And the man Nelson Thrasher left my son on the stormy seas to die?"

"No, no, he only went with the rest; besides, he did not know, 'till I told him, that David was my brother, or your son."

"And they left him alone on the high seas to starve or drown," said the old woman, hoa.r.s.ely. "Katharine Allen, never mention that man's name to me while you live. If you see him pa.s.sing my house, give warning, that I may turn away and not curse him."

"Oh! mother, mother!"

"Be still, girl!"

The old woman's face was bloodless as parchment. She tried to go on with her work, but it fell from her hands, while she, unconscious of the loss, kept on with the motion of knitting, and looked down with her heavy black eyes as if she were counting the st.i.tches that were only made in air.

"Mother, dear mother!"

The old lady did not speak, but the two hands dropped heavily in her lap, and her face fell down upon her bosom. The stillness of her grief was appalling. Katharine knelt before her, pale as death.

"Ob, mother, speak to me!"

All at once the old woman sat upright.

"Katharine Allen, tell me word for word what that man said to you of my son David."

"Be composed, don't look so hard, and I will--you shake so, mother."

"No, I do not shake. Pick up that knitting needle. There, do I knit evenly?" She placed the needle in its sheath, and began taking her st.i.tches with slow precision.

True enough, her nerves were braced like steel, and like steel were her features locked. Katharine, poor soul, repeated what Thrasher had told her of the s.h.i.+pwreck, faithfully; softening it with the sweet tenderness of her voice, and putting in a word of excuse here and there. Then she came to the end, and told how that little boy and his n.o.ble slave insisted upon staying with Rice, after they had been saved from the very jaws of death--a terrible death--like that which threatened him.

Now the old woman's heart began to heave, and her great, heavy eyes kindled with living fire.

"Katharine," she said, "were these three martyrs alive when the cowards left them?"

"Yes, mother."

"Brave spirits," cried the old lady, rising suddenly. "They were in the hands of a merciful G.o.d, and he will save them! We will not mourn David as lost till that wreck is heard from. He is wise, and had courage. Had there been no hope he would have left with the rest."

Katharine's face brightened.

"Oh, mother, if it should prove so!"

"G.o.d did not inspire that brave child and the negro to stand by him for nothing. I _feel_ that he is alive in the return of my own strength.

When a strong man dies, his mother should feel weak, though he were a thousand miles off. But I, look, am I feeble and drooping, as if the staff of my age were torn from under me. If I stand upright, it is because he was, he is a good man. If I feel a power of vitality here, it is a proof that kindred life beats somewhere in response to it."

Katharine gazed at her mother in astonishment. There was something sublime in her great faith, a grandeur in her att.i.tude like that which we give to a prophetess of the Bible. In her language and voice she seemed lifted out of herself.

Katharine always held her mother in profound reverence, in which love and fear were so equally blended, that she was seldom quite at rest in her presence. Now these feelings arose almost to religious exaltation.

With all the softening influence of love and youth about her, she possessed many of the vigorous and n.o.ble traits which gave the old woman an acknowledged superiority in the neighborhood. With her mother's faith her hopes arose, and coming out of their deep grief the two sat down together, and strove to wrest some a.s.surance of the son and brother's safety from the news that had reached them.

"He is alive--I feel that he is alive--my n.o.ble, strong boy!" said the old woman, as she laid her head on the pillow, but a heavy fear lay at her heart all the time.

"He was alive, and while there is life we may hope," whispered Katharine, sadly, as she sank to an unquiet sleep. A heavier sorrow, alas, lay upon her; the sorrow of a corroding secret which the last few hours had rendered almost a guilty burden from the new causes of detestation that had sprung up between her mother and the man she had so rashly married.

Thus every thing conspired to keep that young creature silent--Thrasher's request and the mother's prejudices, made more bitter by that man's desertion of her son in his hour of need, kept the secret weighed down in her bosom. True, this prejudice seemed very unreasonable; no one had compelled Rice to remain on the wreck. The same means of escape which brought the others home in safety was free to him; but a feeling stronger than facts possessed the old lady. Dead or alive, she believed that some treachery had been practiced on her son, and that the traitor was Nelson Thrasher.

Katharine remembered that the man was her husband--that in a few months she might be called upon to choose between the mother whom she regarded with loving reverence and the husband whom she almost adored. No wonder the poor girl shrunk from the moment which was to force the heart-rending decision upon her. It was a terrible position for one so young and so helpless. Between these two strong, positive characters, there was little hope of tranquillity for her, even though a partial reconciliation should take place.

One gleam of consolation did break upon her that night, when she remembered her mother's faith. David Rice was as good, as n.o.ble-hearted a man as ever drew breath. It was the forlorn hope that he yet lived, and would mediate for her and her husband with the stern mother.

It was impossible for Thrasher to visit Mrs. Allen's house; Katharine told him so on their next interview. Thus the young wife had no cause to complain that he spent but little time with her, and seemed both occupied and anxious when they did meet.

After the news which had disturbed her so, the old lady kept her room, and all the duties of the house fell upon Katharine, so that she had little opportunity to go any distance from home, and the gossip of the neighborhood seldom reached her.

Indeed, there was almost nothing for her to hear. Thrasher held very slight intercourse with the neighbors; and as his father's farm was, like Mrs. Allen's house, isolated among the hills, they knew little of his movements. That he occasionally was seen going down the footpath that led to Mrs. Mason's cottage in the pine woods, counted for nothing.

Mason had been his captain, and it was but kind and right that he should offer sympathy to the widow. All the neighborhood was excited to pity in her behalf. What could she do, so proud and helpless, with that pretty child to support?

The widow was very desponding at first, and went about the house mournfully, her beautiful eyes heavy with tears, and her red lips ready to tremble if any one spoke to her. Compa.s.sion for her became general.

The kind farmers stopped on their way from mill, and insisted on leaving a baking of flour at the gate. Pretty girls came with their ap.r.o.ns full of newly-laid eggs; and a little fellow, diverging every morning from his way to school, set a small tin pail, bright as silver, through the fence, and ran away as if he had been stealing. The pail always contained milk, with more cream in it than ever came there naturally, and sometimes, on the gra.s.s close by it, Mrs. Mason found a roll of golden b.u.t.ter folded up in a cool cabbage leaf.

Was it these kindnesses that softened the widow's grief, and brought the rich bloom back to her cheek so early after her loss? or had she some hidden source of consolation which kindled her face into more superb beauty, as the earth looks fresher and more heavenly after a tempest?

Certain it was, her step soon regained its firmness, and her person its haughty poise. She spoke of Captain Mason less frequently, and there was in her manner something that surprised the good neighbors and repelled their sympathies. She seemed ashamed of the meagre attempts at mourning that she had been enabled to make; and exhausted quant.i.ties of vinegar and cold tea in refres.h.i.+ng bits of French c.r.a.pe and breadths of bombazine, which would look worn and rusty spite of all she could do, and this brought tears into her eyes when they had ceased to weep for deeper cares.

But, as I have said, after awhile all her beauty and animation came back. She began to talk hopefully of an uncle, who lived away off in the South, who would, perhaps, send for her and little Rose, when he received her letter, informing him of the helpless state in which they had been left. No one of the neighbors had ever heard of this uncle before, and her constant boasting about his wealth and the style in which he lived, rather set them aback. It cast their own little kindness quite into the shade. How could they offer fresh eggs and rolls of b.u.t.ter to a woman who wore her cheap black dress like a queen, and talked of pearls and diamonds all the day long, as if she had discovered a mine, and wanted to find out its exact value.

CHAPTER XIX.

MRS. MASON LEAVES THE PINE WOODS.

At last, Mrs. Mason announced that the expected letter had arrived, with money for her expenses to the South--she never told the exact locality--and that she and little Rose would set forth at once, taking the steamboat from New Haven to New York, where her pa.s.sage southward was already engaged.

All this was very magnificent and almost startling, but corroborated by a supply of money which the widow evidently possessed, and by the disposition of her little household furniture, which she distributed among her friends with the careless prodigality of a princess.

The preparations for her departure went on spiritedly. With nothing to prepare; for all her new mourning dresses, she announced, were to be made in New York; it was only packing a small trunk, and taking leave of the old neighbors, and she was ready with little Rose to go forth into her new life. A neighbor had been engaged to take her to town in a das.h.i.+ng, one horse wagon, which he had just bought, and in this way the whole arrangement promised to go off with the eclat which the widow Mason always affected.

Thus time pa.s.sed until the night before her journey. The furniture had not yet been removed, and every thing retained the old homelike aspect; from any appearance of confusion that existed, you would have fancied that the mistress of the house was only going out for a morning drive.

She seemed rather elated than otherwise, and received her friends with half royal condescension, not absolutely offensive, but calculated to check the honest grief with which old neighbors parted on those days when a household was breaking up. Many kind wishes were, however, exchanged, little presents were brought in, such as patchwork holders, work bags, and pincus.h.i.+ons, besides a pair of fine, lambs' wool mittens, knitted by the oldest woman in the town, was presented to her with a gentle message of farewell, followed by various other trifles, calculated to appeal eloquently to a kind heart. All these, the widow received with concealed and smiling indifference, thinking in her soul how paltry such things were to a person of her expectations.

But little Rose made up for all her mother's lack of feeling. She was broken-hearted at the thought of leaving her playmates, burst into tears when the old people patted her on the head, and refused to be comforted by all the promises of grandeur which were whispered in her ear, either by her mother or her friends.

That night--after the neighbors had gone away, and Rose was in bed hugging a home-made doll which one of the little girls had brought her--a boy who had been kept late with his lessons, climbed softly over the door yard fence. He was afraid that the gate would creak, and disturb the family if Rose should be in bed; so with a long string of robins' eggs held in one hand, he leaped into the gra.s.s and stole softly up to one of the front windows. A corner of the paper blind was turned up by the back of a chair which it had fallen against, and through this opening, our little adventurer saw clearly into the room. First, he looked for Rose, the object of his juvenile idolatry; but her little chair was empty, and her tiny morocco shoes and red worsted stockings lay in a heap on the seat, sure proofs that she had gone to bed.

This was a sad disappointment to the lad, but he soon forgot it in the surprise which followed. Mrs. Mason and some strange man were sitting by a work table, which stood near the window. A tallow candle shed its light on the widow's face, but the man sat with his back to the window, his features all in deep shadow. His hand was extended half over the table, clutching a quant.i.ty of gold or silver coins, the boy could not tell which, for gold money he had never seen, and the pieces that escaped between the man's fingers, and fell ringing on the table, might have been Spanish quarters, or guineas, for aught he knew. At any rate, that great handful of money seemed a marvellous sum to him, and when Mrs. Mason received it in her two hands, he wondered that she did not jump for joy. But instead of this, she took a variegated work bag from the table drawer, poured the money into it with some smiling remark, and crossing the room, unlocked her trunk and placed the bag in one corner.