Читать книгу The Greatest Romance Novels of Grace Livingston Hill - Grace Livingston Hill - Страница 94

Table of Contents

The ceremony was held in the school-house in the afternoon. Maria Bent lived with her old mother in two small rooms back of the post-office, not a suitable place for the wedding of Nathan Whitney's bride; so Maria, by reason of her years of service as teacher, was granted permission to use the school-house.

The joyful scholars, radiant at the thought of a new teacher,—any teacher so it be not Maria Bent,—and excited beyond measure over a holiday and a festivity all their own, joyously trimmed the school-house with roses, hollyhocks and long trailing vines from the woods, and for once the smoky walls and much hacked desks blossomed as the rose smothered in the wealth of nature.

The only children who did not participate in the noisy decorations were the young Whitneys. Like scared yellow leaves in a hurricane they scurried away from the path of the storm and hid from the scene of action, peering with jealous eyes and welling hearts from safe coverts at the enemy who was scouring the woods and gardens in behalf of her villa was about to invade the sacredness of their homes. Not that they had hitherto cared much about that home; but it was all they had and the world looked blank and unliveable to them now with the terror of their school days installed for incessant duty.

The little girls with down-drooped yellow lashes, and peaked, sallow faces strangely like their father's, hurried home to hide away their treasures in secret places in the attic, known only to themselves, and to whisper awesomely about how it would be when “she” came.

"She smiled at me in school yesterday," whispered Helena, the sharp fourteen year old. "It was like a gnarled spot on a sour apple that falls before it's ripe."

"Oh, be careful," hushed Prudence, lifting her thin little hands in dismay. "What if Aunt Jane should hear you and tell her. You know she's going to be our mother, and she can do what she likes then."^

"Mother nothing!" flouted Helena grandly, "she'll not mother me, I can tell you that. If she lets me alone I'll stay, but if she tries to boss me I'll run away."

Nevertheless Helena took the precaution to tiptoe lightly to the head of the stairs, to be sure the attic door was closed so that no one could hear her.

"Helena!" gasped Prudence, beginning to cry softly. "You wouldn't dare! You wouldn't leave me alone?"

"Well, no," said Helena relenting. "I'd take you with me p’raps; only you'd be so particular we'd get caught like the time I stole the pie and had it all fixed so Aunt Jane would think the cat got it, and you had to explain because you thought the cat might get whipped!"

"Well, you know Aunt Jane hates the cat, and she'd have whipped her worse'n she did us. Besides—”

"Aw, well you needn't cry. We've got enough to do now to keep quiet, and keep out of the way. Where's Nate?"

"I saw him going down toward the saw-mill after school——”

"Nate won't stay here long," stated Helena sagely. "He just despises Maria Bent."

"Where would he go?" said Prudence, drying her tears as her little world broke up bit by bit. "Helena Whitney, he's only ten years old!"

"He's a man!" snapped Helena. "Men are diffrunt. Come on, let's go hide in the bushes and see what they get. The idea of Julia Fargo and Harriet Wells making all that fuss getting flowers for her wedding when they've talked about her so; and only last week she took that lovely book away from Harriet Wells just because she took it out in geography class and began to read."

Hand in hand, with swelling throats and smarting eyes filled with tears they would not shed, the motherless children hurried away to the woods to watch in bitterness of spirit the preparations for the wedding, which was almost like watching the building of their own funeral pyres.

Nevertheless the time of hiding could not be for always and the little brood of Whitneys were still under stern discipline. Aunt Jane held them with no easy hand. Promptly at half-past two they issued forth from the big white house clothed in wedding garments, their respective heads neatly dressed in plait or net or glossy ringlet, or firmly plastered down. Young Nathan's rebellious brown curls were smooth as satin, the water from their late anointing trickling down his clammy back as with dogged tread and downcast, insurgent look he marched beside his frightened, meek little sisters to the ceremony which was to them all like a death knell.

The familiar old red school-house appeared in the distance down the familiar old street, yet the choking sensation in their throats, and the strange beating and blurring of their eyes gave it an odd appearance of disaster. That surely could not be the old hickory tree that Nate had climbed so often and hidden behind its ample friendly trunk to watch Maria Bent as she came forth from the school-house door in search of him. How often had he encircled its shielding trunk to keep out of sight when he saw her looking for him! Now, alas, there would be no sheltering hickory for sanctuary from her strong hand, for Maria Bent would be no longer the school marm merely; she would be at close range in their only home; she would be mother! The name had suddenly taken on a gruesome sound, for they had been told that miming by Aunt Jane as she combed and scrubbed and arrayed them, that such address would be required of them henceforth. Call Maria Bent mother! Never!

Nate as he trudged, thought over all the long list of disrespectful appellations that it had been their custom among themselves to call their teacher, beginning with "Bent Maria" and ending with "M’wry-faced-straighten-er-out"; and inwardly resolved to call her nothing at all, or anything he pleased, all the time knowing that he would never dare.

Miranda, on the other side of the street, watched the disconsolate little procession, with their Aunt Jane bringing up the rear, and thanked her stars that she was not going forth to bind herself to their upbringing.

She had purposely lingered behind the Spaffords as they started to the wedding, saying she would follow with little Rose; and she came out of the front door and locked it carefully, just as the Whitneys issued forth from Aunt Jane's grooming. Rose jumped daintily down the steps, one at a time, watching the toes of her little new pink slippers, and tilting the ruffled pink silk parasol her father had brought her from New York. She looked like a sweet pink human rose, and the little prim Whitneys, sleek and scared though they were, turned envious eyes to watch her, almost forgetting for the moment the lump in their throats and the hot, angry feeling in their hearts, while they took in the beauty of the parasol, the grace of the small light feet, and the bobbing floss of golden curls as Rose skipped along by Miranda's side.

Miranda herself was wearing a new green and brown plaid silk, the pride and glory of her heart, bought with her own money and selected by her beloved Mrs. Marcia on her last trip to New York. Her bonnet was green shirred silk with a tiny green feather, and her red hair looked like burnished copper glinting out beneath. Miranda did not know it, never would, but she was growing to be a most attractive woman, and the twinkle of mischief in her eyes made one always look a second time at her cheerful freckled face.

Proudly she looked down at the dainty Rose, and compared her with the unhappy Whitneys doing the funeral march to their father's wedding. Not for any money would she be to-day in Maria Bent's place, but she walked the prouder and the more contented that she had had the chance.

There was a pleasant bustle about the school-house door when they all arrived. But the little Whitneys, their feuds laid aside at this time of their common sorrow, huddled together just inside the door of the school room, as far from the scene of action as possible, with dropped eyes and furtive sidewise glances, never daring even to whisper.

There were wreaths of flowers on each desk, zinneas, peonies, asters, roses, pansies, larkspurs and columbine; some of the smaller flowers were wreathed around a plateau of velvety moss on which in white pebbles and with varying designs the letters M.B. and N.W. were tastefully entwined. Each scholar had taken pride in getting up an original design for his or her own desk, and the result was unique and startling.

"How touching of them to want to please teacher!" exclaimed Ann Bloodgood, who lived in the next township and therefore did not know the current feeling.

But, however touching, the decorations only served to remind the three older Whitneys of their own mother's funeral. Nate hung his head and frowned hard behind the golden-rod-embowered stove, trying not to see or think of that other day five years ago when odors of flowers filled the air and he had had that same lump in his throat and gasp in his chest. That had been bad enough, but this day was worse. He had half a mind even now to bolt through that school-house door and never come back. But when he looked out to calculate how likely he was to get off without being seen, his father came walking up the school-house path. Maria Bent was hanging on his arm, in bright blue silk with a white lace bonnet, white kid gloves and a lace parasol. She was smirking and smiling to this side and that, and bestowing unwontedly loving greetings on the festive row of school-girls lined up on either side of the path, stiff and straight all in their best dresses. "Walking pride," Miranda called it, and secretly exulted that she might have been there if she would; yet did not regret her choice.

Miranda had taken up her position where she could stand Rose on a desk to get a good view of the ceremony, and from her point of vantage she also got a vision of handsome little Nathan Whitney, his well-brushed Sunday suit squeezed between the stove and the wall, his soapy curls rumpled by the golden rod, his stiff collar holding up a very trembling chin surmounted by hard little lips and an angry frown. It was plain that young Nathan was by no means happy at his father's wedding. Something in the whole slouch of his sturdy little figure touched Miranda and she watched him with a hitherto unsuspected sympathy. It was not to be expected of course that a bad boy like Nate Whitney would like to have a stern school-teacher for his new mother. A gleam of something like pity shone in her eyes as she reflected how often Maria Bent would probably get her "comeuppance" for marrying Nathan Whitney; and how often little Nate Whitney would probably get his "comeuppance" for his pranks. Of the two Miranda was just the least bit inclined to side with the boy for the sake of his half-brother Allan with whom she had gone to school.

Miranda looked up to find him again after the prayer was over, but though her eyes searched quite carefully behind the stove, and under the bowers of golden-rod, he was gone. High in the branches of the friendly hickory, his Sunday clothes bearing a jagged tear in the seat of the trousers, his collar awry, and the shine of his Sunday shoes hopelessly marred and scratched, Nathan Whitney the second surveyed the scene. The prayer had been long enough for him to reach his old shelter in safety, and only the Whitney twins, Julia and Julius, and the five-year-old brother Samuel had seen his escape; and they were too frightened to tell. Miranda's searching gaze finally caught the uplifted look of the twins and Sammy, and following it presently saw the tremble of old hickory. She quickly lowered her eyes, knowing instinctively what had happened, but before she lowered them she caught the gleam of a pair of sorrowful brown eyes so like another pair of brown eyes she knew, looking between the leaves, and they haunted her all through the day.

The ceremony was long over and all the guests had gone home to discuss at length how "he looked," and how "she looked," and the prospect of happiness for the two who had been united in marriage.

Miranda had changed her green and brown plaid silk for a brown calico and a white apron, and was stirring up muffins for tea when she thought she saw a stealthy little figure stealing through the yard close by the hedge, but the early dusk was coming down and it was quite easy to fancy it had been only the shadows on the grass. Miranda was just about to light a candle and begin to set the table, but it was early yet for Mr. David would be late coming home from the office to-day on account of the time be had taken off for the wedding; and instead she took a bowl and went out to see if she could find some late yellow raspberries on the vines, though she knew quite well there were not likely to be any.

Humming a lively little tune she approached the berry vines, her sharp eyes studying the while the great leaves of pieplant growing next the hedge. They were moving now, stirring gently, almost imperceptibly, one minute, the next bobbing vigorously back and forth as if they had suddenly become animate. Miranda watched them stealthily, the while walking deliberately past them and humming her tune. The leaves became absolutely still as she passed them, though she did not turn her eyes down to them noticeably, but went on a little further and knelt down by the berry bushes voicing her tune in words now :

"Thur wuz a man in our town,

An' he wuz wondrus wise,

He jumped into a bramble bush

An' scratched out both his ey-i-es;

An' when he saw his eyes were out

'ith all his might an' main,

He jumped into another bush

An' scratched 'em in again."

"Land sakes!" she ejaculated suddenly. "Wisht I hed a boy t'hep hunt berries. Guess I'm gettin' near-sighted in the dark. Here's three whole ras’berries right clost together an' I come real nigh missin’ ’em."

She cast an eye toward the pieplant leaves, but they remained motionless. Perhaps she had made a mistake after all. Perhaps there had been no dark little figure stealing along by the hedge. Perhaps her imagination had played her false.

She kept on feeling after berries that were not there, and finally after having secured not more than a handful, she crept softly back by the pieplant bed, for she thought she had heard a soft gasp like the catching of breath, and something stirred within her. She must find out what was moving the leaves.

Suddenly she set her bowl down on the grass and made a soft dive with her hands, lifting up two or three broad leaves and peering under.

It was almost dark now and the forlorn little figure close under the hedge could scarcely be seen, but Miranda's eyes were keen and kind, and she made out the outline of Nate Whitney's curly head, so sleek in the morning, now tousled and rough. He shrank back with his face in the grass, as she lifted the leaves, hoping to escape her notice, but she reached out her two strong hands and drew him forth resisting furiously.

"Lemme alone. I ain't doin' you any harm!" he declared sulkily as she drew his head and shoulders out from the entangling stalks.

There was light enough in the garden to see his face, tear-stained and smeared with mud streaks. His collar was crushed and twisted awry, and his jacket had a great jagged tear in one elbow.

"You poor little motherless sinner! " ejaculated Miranda in a tone she had never used in her life before except for little Rose.

Suddenly she sat down plump on the garden walk and took the forlorn little fellow into her arms, at least as much as she could get hold of, for he was still wriggling and twisting away from her strong hand with all his discomfited young might.

She stooped over his dirty fierce young face and laid her lips on his forehead.

"You poor little soul, I know how you feel and don't blame you one mite," she whispered, her strong young arms enwrapping him gently.

Then quite suddenly the struggling ceased, the fierce wiry body relaxed, the dirty face and curly head buried themselves quite childishly in her arms, the boy sobbed as if his heart would break, and clung to her as if his life depended on it.

Something wonderfully sweet and new sprang up in Miranda's breast, motherhood stirring in her soul. The clinging hands, the warm wet face, the pitiful sight of this sorrowful child in place of the saucy, impudent, self-possessed boy who dared any mischief that his bright restless mind suggested, touched her heart in a new way. A fierce desire seized her to protect and love him, this boy who needed some one sorely, and for the first time a regret stole into her heart that she was not his new mother. What a thing it would be to have those clinging arms belong to her! Then a wicked exultant thrill passed through her. She had not "walked pride" with Nathan Whitney, but his son had turned to her for comfort, and she loved the boy for it with all her heart. Maria Bent might hold her head high and reign severely in his home, but she, Miranda Griscom, would love the little son and help him out of his scrapes from this time forth.

"There, there," she soothed, passing her rough, work-worn hand over the tumbled curls and exulting in their tendency to wrap about her fingers. How soft they were, like a baby's, and yet they belonged to that hard, bad little boy she had always called a "brat!"

“There, there! Just cry it out,” she murmured. "I know. I jest guess I know all how you feel. You needn't to mind me. I've been fixed myself, so I didn't like things pretty much, an' I kin see you ain't overly pleased at the change over to your house. You jest cry good an' hard oncet, an' it'll make you feel better. Ef you can't do it hard 'nough by yerself he'p you—" and Miranda laid her freckled face on the little muddy cheek of the boy and let her tears mingle with his.

Perhaps it was those hot tears falling on his face, tears that were not his own, that called him back to his boy senses and brought to an end the first crying spell he remembered since he was six years old when Aunt Jane sneered at him and called him a cry-baby, that time he had cut his foot on a scythe. He had been a self-contained, hard, bad, little man ever since till now, when all the foundations of his being seemed shaken with this unexpected sympathy from one whom he had hitherto ranked among his enemies.

His sobs stopped as suddenly as they had begun and for some time he lay still in her arms, his head pressed against her shoulder where she had drawn it, his breath coming hot and quick against her face.

"Can't you tell me what's the matter? Is't anythin' special?" asked the girl gently. One would scarcely have known Miranda's voice. All the hardness and sharpness and mirth were gone. There was only gentleness and tenderness, and a deep understanding. "Course I know 'tain't altogether pleasant hevin' a stranger—especially ef she's one you've known afore an' ain't fond of —”

"I hate her! " came with sudden fierce vehemence from the lips of the boy. There was a catch in his throat, hut his lips were set and no more tears were allowed to come.

"Well, 'course that ain't the way you're expected t' feel, but I onderstand, and I guess they wouldn't enny of 'em do much better in your place. I never did admire her much myself, so I ken see how you look at it."

"I hate her!" reiterated the boy again, but this time not so fiercely. "I hate her and I won't let her be my mother, ever! Say, why didn't you be it?"

The question was balm and pride to the heart of Miranda. She put her arms the closer around the lonely boy and rocked him gently back and forth, and then smoothed his hair back from his hot dirty fore-head. The marvel was he let her do it and did not squirm away.

"Why didn't I? Bless him! Well, I didn't think I'd like it enny better'n you do her. B'sides, ef I had, you'd a hated me then."

The boy looked at her steadily through the twilight as though he were turning it over in his mind and then suddenly broke into a shy smile.

"Mebbe I would," he said with honest eyes searching her face, and then half shamefaced, he added shyly:"But anyhow I like you now."

A wild sweet rush of emotion flooded Miranda's soul. Not since she left her unloved, unloving grandmother Heath who lived next door, and came to live with David and Marcia Spafford receiving wages, doing honest work in return, and finding a real home, had such sweet surprise and joy come to her. Sweeter even than the little cherished Rose's kisses was this shy, veiled admiration of the man-child whose lonely life she seemed somehow strangely to understand. All at once she seemed to know how and why he had got the name of being a bad boy, and her heart went out to him as to a kindred spirit. She had seen the soul of him looking out of his beautiful brown eyes in the dusk at her, and she knew he was not all bad, and that it had mostly been the fault of other people when he had really done wrong.

Miranda's arms in their warm pressure answered the boy's words, and she stooped again and laid her lips on his forehead lingeringly, albeit as shyly as a boy might have done it. Miranda was not one to show deep emotion and she was more stirred than ever before.

"Well, I guess we sort o' b'long to each other somehow. Ennyhow we'll be friends. Say, didn't you tear your cloes when you went up that hick'ry?"

The child in her arms suddenly straightened up and became the boy with mischief in his eyes and a knowing tilt to his handsome head.

"Say, did you see me go up that tree?"

"No, but I saw you gone; and I saw Sammy's eyes lookin' up, an' I saw the hick'ry movin' some, so I calc’lated you was up there, all right."

"An' you won't tell?" doubtfully.

"Course I won't tell. It's none o' my business, an' b'sides I could see you wasn't enjoyin' yerse'f to the weddin'. What's more, I'll mend them cloes. There ain't no reason fer M'ria Bent as was, to come inspectin' you yet a whiles. You kin shin up the kitchen roof, can't yeh, to my winder, an' you take off them rips an' tears an' bop into my bed? I'll come up an' mend yeh so's she won't know. Then you ken shin up a tree to yer own winder t' hum an' go to bed, an' like's not she'll never notice them does till yer Aunt Jane's gone, an' she'll think they been tore an' mended sometime back, an' she ain't got no call to throw 'ern up to yeh. Hed yer supper?"

"Naw. Don't want any."

"That's all right. I’ll bring you up some caraway cookies. You like 'em don't yeh? Er hev yeh et too much weddin' cake?"

"Didn't touch their old wedding cake," said the boy sulkily.

"Boy, didn't you go home 'tall since you was in the hick'ry? Wall, I swan! To think you'd miss the reception with all them good things to eat! You must a felt pretty bad. Never mind you, honey. You do's I tell yeh. Just shin right up that roof. Here, eat them raspberries first, they ain't many but they'll stay yeh. I got some fried chicken left over. Don't you worry. Now, let's see you get up there."

Miranda helped Nate from the back kitchen window to mount to the roof and saw him climb lightly and gleefully in at her window, then she bustled in to put supper on the table. Mr. David was not home yet when everything was ready, so with a glass of milk, a plate of bread, jelly, and chicken, and another of cookies she slipped up the back stairs to her small boy, and found him quite contentedly awaiting her coming, his eyes shining a welcome to her through the gathering darkness of the room, as he might have done to any pal in a youthful conspiracy.

"I've got a boarder," she explained grimly a few minutes afterward to the astonished Mrs. Marcia, coming downstairs with her lighted candle, a small pair of trousers and a jacket over her arm.

"A boarder!" Mrs. Marcia had learned to expect the unusual from Miranda, but this was out of the ordinary even for Miranda, at least without permission.

"Yes, you ken take it off my wages. I don't guess he'll remain more'n an hour or so, leastways I'll try to get him off soon fer his own sake. It's that poor little peaked Nate Whitney, Mrs. Marcia. He's all broke up over hevin' that broomstick of a M'ria Bent fer his mother, an' seem' as I sorta shirked the job myself I thought 'twas only decent I should chirk him up a bit. He was out behind the pieplant cryin' like his heart would break, an' he ast me, why didn't I be his mother, 'at he hated her, an' he was all tore up with climbin' trees to get out of sight, so I laid out to mend him up a little 'fore he goes home. I know M’ria Bent. I went to school to her one year 'fore I quit, an' she's a tartar! It ain't reasonable fer him to start in with her the first day all tore up. She'd get him at a disadvantage. Ain't you got a patch would do to put under this tear, Mrs. Marcia? I took him up some supper. I knowed you wouldn't care, an' I want you should take it off my wages. Yes, that's right. I’ll feel better about it ef you do, then I could do it agin ef the notion should take me I owe a little sumpin' to that boy fer my present state of freedom an' independence, an' I kinda take a likin' to him when he's cryin' you know. After all, I do’ no's'e was ever so awful bad."

Mrs. Marcia laid a tender understanding touch on her handmaiden's arm, and with a smile in the dimple by the off-corner of her mouth, and a tear in the eye that Miranda could not see, went to get the patch.

Young Nathan inside of two hours departed by the way of the roof, washed and combed, mended and pressed, as well as Aunt Jane could have done it; but with more than he had had for years, a heart that was almost comforted. He felt that now he had at least one friend in the world who understood him, and meditated as he slid down the kitchen-shed roof, whether it might not be practicable for him to grow up fast and marry Miranda so no one else would carry her off. By the time he had scaled his own kitchen roof and cautiously removed his clothing, hung it up and crept to his own little bed, he had, it is true, quite forgotten this vague idea; but the comfort in his heart remained, and made it possible for him to waken cheerfully the next morning to his new world without that sinking feeling that had been in his heart and stomach ever since he knew that Maria Bent was to be his father's wife.

So that was how it all came about that Miranda Griscom became mother-confessor and chief-comforter to Nathan Whitney's second son, and Nathan became the slave and adorer of little Rose Schuyler Spafford when she was five-years-old-going-on-to-six; and it all began in the rear 1838.