At Last Part 22

His sister's lips twitched nervously into a sinister smile. It was as if she would have whispered, had she dared, "Heaven forbid!"

"You have chosen a toilsome and a perilous path, Clara," he resumed, by and by. "I do not wonder that you are, with all your courage and sanguine trust in your own powers, sometimes disquieted, and often weary."

"Who says that I am ever weary? And did you ever know me to disquiet myself in vain?" with the low, musical ripple of laughter that belonged to her sunniest mood. "Had I been born in the cla.s.sic age, I should have been a devout disciple of Epicurus. Don't imagine that my success has not, thus far, amply repaid me for my toil and ingenuity. Having lived upon excitement all my days, I should starve without it. Pleasure, like safety, is the dearer for being plucked from that evergreen nettle, Danger!"

CHAPTER XV. -- THE GOOD SAMARITAN.

THE snows of ten winters had powdered the nameless stranger's grave in the servant's burial-ground of the Ridgeley plantation. For nine years the wallet taken from his person had lain unopened in a hidden drawer of Mabel Dorrance's escritoire, and the half-guessed secret been hidden in her breast. Mammy Phillis had followed her mistress to the tomb, six months after her removal from her beloved cottage to the despised "quarters." She never held up her head from the day of her degradation, died from a broken heart, murmured those who best knew her--of a "fit of spleen," said Mrs. Aylett, in cool reprehension of her unmannerly va.s.sal.

Mabel had guarded the mystery well. Her husband examined her--covertly, as he thought; awkwardly, according to her ideas--with regard to the vagaries of her delirium, and was foiled by the grave simplicity of her manner and replies.

"All she knows or remembers is substantially this," Herbert jotted down in his notes for his sister's perusal: "she has a.s.sociated in some way--she cannot tell exactly how or why--the name with the tramp who died in the garret. She is not sure that it was his designation. Thinks it was not, or that, if used by him, it was an alias. Has an impression that it was marked upon his clothing, or upon a paper found in his pocket. Showed no agitation and little interest in the subject, except when she inquired if I saw the stranger at all--living or dead. Was glad I could reply truly, 'No.' Answer seemed to gratify her, which you may consider a disagreeable augury. Am convinced that her illness resulted from natural and unavoidable causes--that neither F---C---nor J----L---had any connection with it. It will be months before mind and body recover their tone."

"Lawyerly! ergo, absurd and unsatisfactory!" p.r.o.nounced the reader, to whom the foregoing leaf had been committed on the morning of her brother's departure with his slowly-convalescing wife for their Albany home. "But until the nettle p.r.i.c.ks more nearly, I shall continue to enjoy my roses."

They had blossomed thickly about her path during this decade. Her matronly beauty was the wonder and praise of the community. The changing seasons that had bleached the locks upon her husband's temples and heightened his forehead had spared the bronzed chestnut of her luxuriant tresses. Her figure was larger and fuller, but graceful, and more queenly than of yore--if that could be. There was not an untuneful inflection in her voice, or a furrow between her brows. Under her careful management the homestead wore every year an air of increased elegance. No other furniture for many miles on both sides of the river could compare with hers; no other servants were so well-trained, no grounds so beautifully ornamented and trimly kept.

"But for all that Ridgeley is a lonely, desolate place to me," said Mrs.

Sutton, one early spring morning to her niece and crony, Mrs. William Sutton. "A house without children is worse than a last year's bird's nest. It is a riddle to me how Clara Aylett contrives to occupy her time."

"She should have some of these socks to darn, if it hangs upon her hands," replied Mrs. William, humorously, running her five fingers through the toe of one she had just picked up from the great willow basket set between the two upon the porch-floor.

"The Lord isn't very apt to make mothers out of that sort of material,"

said the elder lady. "Nor fathers out of Winston Ayletts. They are so wrapped up in their self-consequence as to have no thought for others."

"Yet they say Mr. Aylett regrets that he has no heir. It is a great pity Mabel lost her only child as she did. The family will become extinct in another generation. It is such a n.o.ble estate, too!"

"Large families were never the rule among the Ayletts," responded Aunt Rachel. "But I did hope my dear Mabel would be an exception to the rest in this respect. She would adopt a little girl, but her husband will not consent. Those Dorrances are a cold-hearted race. He, too, is heaping up riches, without knowing who shall gather them. Heigh-ho!"

Her darning-needle quilted the yawning heel of Tommy Sutton's sock with precision and celerity, and she ruminated silently upon the vicissitudes and failures of mortal life until she was interrupted by Mrs. William's exclamation:

"There is Mrs. Tazewell's carriage at the gate, and the driver has a letter in his hand. I hope the old lady is not worse!"

Aunt Rachel met the man at the steps, with neighborly anxiety.

"How is your mistress, Jack?"

"'Bout the same, ma'am. But Miss Rosa--she came last night very unexpected, and it kinder worsted Mistis to see her so poorly. This note is from Miss Rosa, ma'am, and I am to take back an answer."

Mrs. Sutton read it standing in the porch--the scented leaflet that had a look of the writer all over it, from the scarlet monogram at the top of the sheet and upon the envelope, to the flourish of the signature--"Rosa T. C."--the curl of the C carried around the rest like a medallion frame:

"DEAR, GOOD AUNT RACHEL,--I have come to Old Virginia to try and shake off an uncomfortable cough which has haunted me all winter. The Northern quacks can do nothing for me. One ray of this delicious suns.h.i.+ne is worth all their nostrums. I was not prepared to find mamma helpless, or I should not have descended upon her so unceremoniously. Being here, I cannot retreat in good order or with safety to my health, nor without wounding her. Frederic must return to Philadelphia next week, by which time I hope to be quite invigorated. Now for my audacious proposal.

Can you come over and tell me how to get well in the quickest and least troublesome way? Dear Auntie! you loved me once. When you see what a poor, spiritless shadow I have grown--or lessened--to be, you will care a little bit for me again, for the sake of lang syne."

Mrs. Sutton wiped her spectacles and gave the note to her niece.

"There is but one thing for me to do, you see, my dear. Jack! I shall be ready in twenty minutes."

If the line of duty wavered before her sight during the three-mile drive, it lay straight and distinct ahead of her when she stood in Rosa's chamber.

"My child!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, upon the threshold "you did not tell me that you were confined to your bed!"

"I ought not to be!"

The rebellious pout and tone were Rosa's, as were also the black eyes--unnaturally large and bright though they were--but the pretty lips were wan, and strained by lines of pain; the pomegranate flush was no longer variable, and was nestled in hollows, and the hands were wasted to translucency.

"I am quite strong enough to be up, and would be, if my tyrannical doctors and their tractable tool, my lord and master, had not decreed that I shall lie here until midday, if I am very obedient; eat my meals; take their poisonous medicines, and abstain from coughing. If I offend in any of these particulars I am not to rise until three o'clock--when they are in an especially glum humor--not at all that day. But now you are here, we shall combat them valorously. Dear Auntie!" putting the thin arms about the old lady's plump neck, and laughing through a spring rain of tears, "how good and safe it is to be with you again! And you are the same kind, lovely darling! no older by a day--no uglier by a solitary wrinkle! I couldn't sleep last night, for fearing you would not come to me!"

"You should not have doubted it, dear!" said the motherly voice, blithe as affectionate, while soft, agile fingers undid the tight embrace, and commenced, from the force of habit, to arrange the tumbled bed-clothes.

"Wherever I can be of most use is the place in which I wish to be."

"I know you have always lived for others," answered Rosa, with an involuntary sigh, a shadow glooming her eyes.

"For whom else should I live and work?" laughed Mrs. Sutton, in her cheerful, guileless fas.h.i.+on. "My personal wants are few and easily supplied, and I like to be busy. I account it a privilege to be able to fuss about my friends when they are ailing."

By way of doing as she liked, she attacked the disorderly room. Rosa's three trunks stood in a row against the wall--all of them open--the tray of the largest lying beside it upon the carpet, the lid of this thrown back and the contents in utter confusion; laces hanging over the sides and trailing upon the floor. A casket of medicines was uppermost in the next trunk, crus.h.i.+ng a confused medley of collars, ribbons, gloves, and handkerchiefs. A dressing-gown lay upon the seat of one chair, a skirt over the back of another; boots and slippers peeped from the valance of the antique bedstead; there was a formidable array of bottles upon mantel and bureau--conspicuous among them cod-liver oil, cologne, and laudanum--incongruous appendages to the various appliances of the toilette scattered between them.

Mrs. Sutton understood it all--the hurry and agitation of the unlooked-for arrival; the faintness and prostration of the consumptive; the restless night, and the well-meant but inefficient ministrations of negroes in an establishment where the mistress had been feeble for years, and was now chained to her room and chair by paralysis.

"And Rosa was always an indolent flyabout in health; accustomed to have a score of servants at her heels to pick up whatever she dropped or threw aside," she said to herself. "My Mabel was a pink of neatness and order compared with her. Dear me! here is a bottle of oil, cracked, and an immense grease-spot in the front breadth of a splendid silk dress! I hope these things do not annoy her as they would me!"

Whether the universal disarray made Rosa uncomfortable or not, she enjoyed the aspect of the tidy apartment, when her nurse brought her noiseless labors to a close by exchanging her night-gown for a flannel wrapper; putting clean linen upon her and the bed; combing the tangled hair and was.h.i.+ng her hands, wrists, and face in tepid water, interfused with cologne.

"It prevents a sick person from taking cold when bathed, and freshens her up wonderfully, I think," was her explanation of the fragrant preparation.

"YOU freshen me more than all things else combined!" said Rosa, gratefully. "Ah, auntie! how often I have thought of, and wished for you this tedious and dismal winter! I used to spend entire weeks in bed, attended by a horrid hired nurse, who took snuff and drank--ugh! and snubbed and terrified me whenever I--as she described it--'took a notion into my head;' that is, when I asked for something she thought was too troublesome for her ladys.h.i.+p to prepare, or wanted Fred to stay all night in my room, or sit by me in the evening, and pet me. She 'couldn't bear to have men around, cluttering up everything!' she would growl the instant his back was turned, with a deal more of the same talk, until I was afraid to ask him to take a seat the next time he came in. He was continually bringing home baskets of fruit, and game, and bouquets for me. She let me have the flowers, but she ate nine-tenths of the nice things herself, I never suspecting her, and he was too delicate to ask if I enjoyed his presents. At length he surprised her in the act of devouring a bunch of hot-house grapes, for which he had paid almost their weight in gold, and then all came to light, and he sent her off in a hurry. Poor Fred, there were great tears in his eyes when he learned what persecution I had undergone, rather than vex him by complaints."

"It would have been better had you told him sooner, dear! It would have spared you and him much suffering."

"I knew how engrossed he was by his business, and how ignorant he was of household or medical matters, and I saved him all the bother I could.

I have tried, in some things and some times, to be a good wife, Aunt Rachel! But often I have failed, O, how egregiously! and"--beginning to weep--"the thought pierces my heart by day and by night. What if I never have an opportunity of doing any better, of covering up the traces of my footsteps?"

Mrs. Sutton patted the wasted hand with her cool one, but essayed no other soothing.

"Where is your husband now? I understood from your note that he was with you."

"He rode over to Dr. Ritchie's this morning, directly he had given me my breakfast. He thinks highly of his skill, and he would not be contented without bringing him to see me. I really believe he is anxious I should get well! Strange--isn't it? when I am such a burden upon his mind and hands."

Aunt Rachel smiled.

"Not at all strange, you ridiculous child! Two of the most dearly-loved wives I ever knew were invalids, and bedridden, not for weeks only, but for years. You can best show your grat.i.tude for his affection and kindness by getting better rapidly while he is here, that he may leave you with a lighter heart."

"He is kind! too kind!" murmured Rosa, composing herself among the cus.h.i.+ons, as if to sleep.