Читать книгу Lily Pearl and The Mistress of Rosedale - Glenwood Ida - Страница 5

Six years! How short each succeeding round appears when one has almost reached the mountain's top-most peak of life's upward course and knows that soon his feet must be going rapidly down upon the other side, where his journey ends! But almost interminable their length to the weary little foot-sore traveler who wanders alone at its base ever looking upward to the green spots on the hillside with restless longings. Poor little Phebe! The first words that fell upon her unappreciative ear were mingled with the requiem notes over departed summer, and it had come for the sixth time since that eventful night with its soft breezes and sweet melodies – with its beautiful flowers and singing birds, and filled the heart of the lonely child full of the glorious sunshine. Now she could sit upon the beach and watch the white sails that floated away over the waters where the golden beams kept dancing and skipping about upon the waves, and listen to the deep, low murmurings of the sea that seemed to sing to her mysterious songs, until the angry passions within would grow calm and fairy forms would lead her away to that far-off land where in dreams she often wandered. Poor little Phebe! She was an unfortunate child "always in the way, never good for anything, doing nothing she ought but always the very thing she should not." Never in favor, at least with her foster-mother, who almost daily declared "that the paltry hundred and fifty dollars didn't begin to pay for the trouble and expense of the disagreeable child," and yet it would have been no very easy task to compute the cost of the scanty meal which twice each day fell to the little outcast child to whom the thriving, ambitious Mrs. Blunt gave a shelter. Sure it was that a goodly sum was stored away in the old oak chest which would never have been there had the "troublesome child" not found her way into the fisherman's cottage.

True, there was nothing that was winning about the diminutive figure with the sunburnt face. An unusual growth of thick dark-brown hair was kept conveniently "cropped," in defiance of science or taste, close to her well-rounded head, and a pair of large hazel eyes seemed to be always penetrating the secret depths of hearts where no welcome greeted them. Her dress too did not set off her little dumpy figure to the best advantage, although it was often of the finest material, being generally the cast-off garments of the "misses" of the Cliff House, which were duly sent every season by a servant who was commanded to "inquire after the little girl" and always returned with a favorable report. These the child wore regardless of size or fitness, and as she wandered alone upon the beach with her sad face and thoughtful eyes turned upward gazing into the deep blue sky or away in the dreamy distance one might have been pardoned for calling the queer little figure gnome, or witch, as the fancy struck him.

"Where under the sun has that little imp gone to now!" exclaimed Mrs. Blunt entering the room one day where her daughter Maria, a pale, sickly girl of sixteen, was sitting, as she deposited her basket of vegetables upon the bare floor in no very amiable mood.

"I do declare! She's the most provoking creature I ever saw! I told her to have all the knives scoured before I came in from the garden and positively there has only two of them been touched and they are lying out there in the sun growing blacker than ever and she is nowhere to be seen! I don't know what to do with her! It don't do a bit of good to whip her – not a bit – and I don't know as anything but killing would effect her at all!" She smiled feebly as this last observation fell from her lips, while the daughter laughed outright.

"No it don't!" said the girl, quickly seeing that the fury of the storm had for the time passed and the mother was about to lift the basket and pass into the kitchen; "it don't do a bit of good to whip her! It only makes her mad and more willful! Suppose we try coaxing for a time just to see how it will work. I think there is good in her but cross words will never bring it out!"

"There is one thing about it! If we don't hear from that woman before a great while she may go and find some one to coax her besides me; I don't like her well enough to begin!"

"I presume she has not come back from Europe yet," said the daughter musingly; then she spoke more audibly. "I wouldn't send her off yet, Mother; remember we have almost enough for Father to buy a fishing smack of his own, then we shall be quite rich," and the blue eyes of the pale face lighted up with the anticipation.

"Humph! Well she has got to do better than she has if she wants to stay here!" and with this satisfactory conclusion she disappeared with her basket through the narrow door into the kitchen. Maria quietly laid aside her knitting and went out where upon a wooden bench standing on one side of the humble cottage lay the neglected knives which she in a very short time polished and put away in the narrow wicker basket on the dresser, then taking her neatly starched sun bonnet from its nail in the entry and placing it on her head passed out through the garden down a narrow footpath across the common to the sea shore. She was in quest of the truant Phebe, and well did she know where to find her. Walking along a few rods by the sandy beach she came suddenly to the foot of a steep ascent whose side facing the sea was almost entirely composed of precipitous rocks unevenly thrown together, while here and there a stunted pine or a yellow clump of moss struggled for existence. Here too, half way down the rugged descent Phebe lay concealed in her cozy retreat, sheltered from the summer sun by the rocks above her, with an uninterrupted view of the boundless ocean spread out to her delighted gaze. In a few moments Maria was sitting by her side. She did not seem at all surprised at the presence of her visitor, but raising herself remarked quietly: "Maria how can those birds stand on the water out there? I can't do it. I wish I could lie down on that wave that keeps rocking – rocking and singing – why can't I Maria? Hark! Do they talk to you – the waves? Did they ever say 'come here? come here?' They do to me."

"You are a queer child!" replied Maria impatiently, forgetting for the time the grand purpose of her visit. "But why don't you try to be a good girl and do as Mother wants to have you? This morning she told you to scour the knives which you know is your work every day, and why didn't you stay and do it and not make her so cross with you?"

"'Cause – " interrupted the child; "I don't like to scour knives and I ain't a-going to!"

"You don't like to be whipped either," answered Maria; "but you know Mother will do it if you don't mind her!"

"I don't much care," said the child, shrugging her shoulders, as she settled herself down with calm composure.

"I don't care much. I'll be big some day, and then she won't dare! O Maria, see that wave dash up on the rock, and break all to pieces. Somehow – "

"Never mind the waves; I want to talk to you. Do you love me, Phebe?"

"Love you? What is that? I don't love nothing," and then starting up and rubbing both her dirty hands across her brown forehead, an act she always performed when some new thought flashed up from within, she exclaimed: "O, Maria! last night, when Father and Mother thought I was asleep in my trundle-bed, I heard her say that somebody had paid lots of money for me or something; and then she laughed and said I didn't look much like a 'lily,' and guessed that if my mother could see me now, she'd be glad 'cause my name wasn't 'Lily-Pearl.' O Maria! What did she mean? 'Lily-Pearl!' I keep saying it all the time. That's my name; and O it's such a pretty one. Lily-Pearl! Pearls come up out of the ocean. The teacher said so the other day, and I guess that's what makes me love the sea so much. Who is my mother, Maria? And what makes you call me Phebe Blunt, when it's Lily-Pearl? I don't like it, and I won't have such an ugly name. Tell me, who is my mother?" Maria was a long time silent, while a deeper pallor overspread her face. But the large, wondering eyes of her interrogator were fixed intently upon it. How could she answer? It was a secret that never was to be mentioned; yet well did she know that Phebe would never rest with this sly peep into the exciting mystery, and it would be as well to satisfy her now as any time, and so she said mildly:

"I don't know, Phebe, who your mother is; but she was beautiful, and without doubt rich, and, I think, would have been very glad to have kept you, had it not been for her proud, wicked mother, who did not think it best, and so you came to live with us. Now, wasn't Mother kind to take care of you when a little baby, and shouldn't you try to be good, and do as she tells you, to pay her for her trouble?"

Phebe was silent for a moment, while her thoughtful eyes were penetrating the deep blue far away. "No," she said at last. "She might have thrown me back into the sea, where the pearls grow. But I knew she wasn't my mother," she continued musingly, as she pointed her finger in the direction of the cottage.

"What made you think so?" asked Maria.

"Because, if she was, she would kiss me like Lutie Grant's mother does. She always says, 'good morning, daughter,' and kisses her when she goes to school. I wonder what good it does, though," she continued, musingly. "I was never kissed in my life."

"That is one way to love," answered Maria with a smile. "Now will you be a good little girl if I kiss you and love you?"

"Maybe so," was the laconic reply.

Maria put her arms around the child's neck and drew her towards her, imprinting upon her lips a hearty kiss.

"Pshaw! That's nothing!" she replied, disdainfully. "Is that love, Maria?"

"No; it was a kiss. If you loved me, you wouldn't say pshaw! but kiss me as I did you. Now come, let us go to the house. Remember, I have told you a secret about your mother and this will make us friends. You must not tell any one, or even speak about the beautiful lady for Mother would be very angry because I talked about it; and don't forget that you promised to be just as good as you can be, which I am sure will be all right, and by and by we shall all love you. Come!"

"I shan't go! She will want me to wash potatoes, or something, and I won't do it."

"But you promised that you would be a good girl if I would love you, and this is not keeping your promise."

"O you don't love me; you only want me to go home and scour knives, and I don't like to scour knives, and I won't, either."

"But Mother will whip you when you do come home, and I don't like to see you whipped; why won't you come now?"

Phebe looked at her companion with surprise. She had never heard her talk so gently and feelingly before. For a moment she was almost tempted to yield. Maria saw her advantage and once more urged the willful child to accompany her. Phebe's eyes turned again towards the sea.

"O Maria, Maria! see that big wave chase the other clear up on the sand!"

And the little dumpy form swayed to and fro while her large eyes glistened. Maria turned hopelessly away. Her experiment had failed. "The child is past redemption," she thought, as she walked moodily home. Phebe sat a long time gazing out from her rocky "eyrie" by the sea, thinking over and over again the little story to which she had just listened, and wondering how the beautiful lady looked; and if she really was her mother, and if, instead of being brought by an angel, as Lutie Grant said her little sister was, she had been picked up from off the ocean by somebody she had never seen, and so they called her "Lily-Pearl!" By and by a sudden impulse took possession of her.

"I must go and see where that sail boat was going that had just rounded the point yonder!" It had disappeared from sight, but where had it gone? With rapid steps she ascended the rocks, and ran up the hill with her utmost speed and then descended into a broad, thick woodland, where for a time she forgot her haste, listening to the music of the birds and gathering wild flowers that were growing all about her. Still she wandered on. It was past noonday when she emerged from the woods and espied just before her, on a slight elevation, a beautiful house – the house where she was born! There was nothing here, however, to reveal the interesting fact to the little wanderer, and so she traveled on, stopping only for a moment to peep through the heavy iron gate at two pretty children who were playing in the yard, skipping and jumping along the gravel walk; and then, as if fearful of being discovered, started off as fast as possible, leaping down the edge of the cliff until she reached the sandy beach far below. Here she stopped. The pretty sail boat that had allured her hither was nowhere to be seen, and weary and heated, she threw herself upon the ground and watched the rising tide as it came dashing upon the beach. It had risen rapidly, when suddenly she became aware that a dark object was floating near her on the water. It was a small row boat often used by the inmates of Cliff House, but which the tide had washed from its moorings, and was now with its bow still clinging to the sandy beach, swaying impatiently at her feet, restless as her own adventurous spirit. With a scream of delight she sprang into the frail bark, and soon found herself floating steadily and rapidly away from the shore. Now, for the first time, she was out upon the waves where she had so longed to be, amid the sparkling gems which the sunbeams were scattering all around her, while the huge billows just beyond beckoned her to follow. A small oar lay by her feet, and with this she caressed the ripples and drew, now and then from the unknown depths, the dark-green seaweed that floated by.

Thus she was borne away, unmindful of the danger into which her wild spirit was leading her, and heeding not the sun descending into the dark, gloomy clouds that hung about his ocean bed, for she was happy now; alone upon the boundless sea, her life had become the fairy dream in which she had so often revelled while closeted in her rocky retreat, from which she was floating forever.

She was no more a child, but a wave – a billow – one of those which had sung to her so often while she sat and watched them, and her low, sweet voice joined in the anthem of the sea as if it said —