Edna Browning;

Two weeks after the ride to Millville, Uncle Phil received a letter from Maude, who said that as it was vacation with her now, she was coming for a few days to the farm-house. “So, dear Mr. Overton,” she wrote, “give Bobtail an extra supply of oats, for if it chances to be sleighing, I mean to make you into a gay cavalier, a second Sir Launcelot, of whom all the Guinevres and Elaines of Astolat shall be jealous, as we go driving through the country. Tell dear Aunt Becky to get out her warming pan, and hold her fattest chicken in readiness. She knows my taste. Aunt Burton has sent for me to the parlor, so, dear, darling Mr. Overton, au revoir till next Thursday night. I can scarcely wait for thinking of that north room with the wood fire on the hearth, and Becky waiting upon me as if I were a queen instead of a poor Yankee school-mistress. Yours, forever, Maude.”

Uncle Phil read this letter three times to himself, and then three times to Becky, who was almost as much excited as her master. Edna, on the contrary, thought of Maude’s visit with dread. She had no wish at present to be recognized by any friend of the Leightons. The Miss Overton rôle suited her now that she had become accustomed to it, and began to see that it was for the best. Sometime she meant to see Roy Leighton and his mother, and if she could do so without their knowing who she was, it would add greatly to the interest and excitement of the meeting; but if Maude should discover her secret, her pretty project would be spoiled. Still, the more she reflected upon it, the more she saw how improbable it was that Maude should suspect her of being other than Miss Overton, and her unwillingness to meet Miss Somerton gradually gave way until, at last, she was almost as anxious as Becky herself for the arrival of their guest, who came a train earlier than she was expected, and took them by surprise.

Edna walked home from school that day, and seeing no one as she entered the house, went directly to her chamber, where Maude was sitting in her blue flannel dressing-gown, with her bright, beautiful hair rippling over her shoulders, and the brush lying forgotten on the floor, as she sat gazing into the fire upon the hearth. As Edna entered unannounced, she started to her feet, and shedding back her luxuriant tresses, exclaimed with a merry laugh:

“Oh, you must be Miss Overton, I know; my rival in Becky’s heart, and Mr. Overton’s too; but you see I am not to be vanquished, and have come right back into my old quarters, trusting to your generosity to divide with me the towels and the hooks for my dresses. Let me help you, please. You look tired.”

And she walked up to Edna, who was vainly trying to undo her water-proof. At sight of Maude, who had known Charlie so well, there had swept over Edna a faint, dizzy feeling, which made her for a moment very pale and weak; then the hot blood came surging back to her cheeks, which were bright as carnations by the time the troublesome knot had been untied by Maude Somerton’s skilful fingers.

“What a little dot of a girl you are,” Maude said, when at last Edna was disrobed and stood before the fire.

“And you are so much taller than I had supposed,” Edna replied, looking up into the sunny blue eyes, which were regarding her so intently.

“Yes; I must seem a perfect amazon to one as petite as yourself. I used to want to stop growing, and once actually thought of tying a stone to my head, as Charlie Churchill teasingly suggested.”

Edna felt a great heart throb at the mention of that name, but made no reply, and Maude continued:

“I suppose it is time now to dress for dinner. Becky tells me that on ‘Miss Louise’s’ account, they dine after your school hours, by which I see that your position with Uncle Phil is in all respects ‘comme il fait,’ but you must have commenced on the lower round. Did you try the little back chamber?” and Maude’s eyes brimmed with mischief as she asked the question.

“Yes, and nearly froze for half an hour or so. Were you put in there, too?”

“Yes, and nearly melted. Of course you were promoted to the north-west room next.”

Edna, who knew nothing of the gradation by which she had reached her present comfortable apartment, pleaded not guilty to the north-west room, whereat Maude professed to feeling terribly aggrieved at the partiality shown.

“It must be because you are a little dot,” she said; “and because—,” she hesitated a moment, and then added, softly, “because of your deep mourning and trouble. That always opens one’s heart. Mr. Overton told me all about you.”

Maude’s face was turned away from Edna, and so she did not see the violent start, as Edna asked:

“What did he tell you about me?”

“Oh, nothing improper,” and Maude put a part of her front hair in her mouth, while she twisted her back locks into a massive coil. “He said you had lost your father and mother, and that made me feel for you at once, for I am an orphan, too; he said, also, that since their death, you had had a hard time generally, and was obliged to teach school, every item of which will apply to me. I am a poor schoolma’am,—which, in New York society, don’t pass for much; and if Uncle Burton should close his doors upon me, I should have nowhere to lay my head, and so you see we ought to be friends. I wish you would hold that lock of hair, please; it bothers me to get the last new kink. Can you do it?”

She looked up suddenly at Edna, who was curiously studying this girl, who mixed things so indiscriminately, poverty, orphanage, friendlessness, and the last style of dressing the hair.

“I don’t try. I curl my hair, and that is all. I don’t know a thing about fashion,” she said, while Maude, who had succeeded in winding her satin braids, coil after coil, about her head, until the last one came almost to her forehead, replied, “Your curls are lovely. I would not meddle with them. Fashion is an exacting dame, but Aunt Burton and Georgie make such a fuss if I do not try to be decent.”

“Who is Georgie?” Edna asked, feeling guilty for the deception she was practising.

“Georgie is Aunt Burton’s adopted daughter and niece, while I am Uncle Burton’s relation, which makes a vast difference,” Maude replied. “She is a belle and a beauty, and an heiress, while I, as I told you, am poor, and a schoolma’am, and nobody but ‘that young girl who lives with Mrs. Burton.’”

Edna had made no attempt at arranging her own toilet, but completely fascinated with her visitor, stood leaning on the bureau, watching the young girl who rattled on so fast, and who, while pleading poverty, arrayed herself in a soft, flowing dress of shining blue silk, which harmonized so admirably with her fair, creamy complexion.

“One of Georgie’s cast-offs,” she explained to Edna. “Most of my wardrobe comes to me that way. I am fortunate in one respect; fortunate in everything, perhaps, for everybody is kind to me. Look, please, at my beautiful Christmas present, the very thing of all others which I coveted, but never expected to have.”

She took from the little box on the bureau a gold watch and chain, and passed it to Edna, who held it in her hand, and with a face as pale as ashes, turned to the window as if to see it better, while only the most superhuman effort at control on her part kept her from crying outright, for there lying in her hand, with the old familiar ticking sounding in her ear, was her watch, the one Charlie had given to her, and which she had left in Albany. There could be no mistake. She knew it was the very same, and through it she seemed again to grasp the dead hand of her husband, just as she had grasped it that awful night when he lay beneath the wreck, with the rain falling on his lifeless face. Edna felt as if she should faint, and was glad of Maude’s absorption in a box of collars and bows, as that gave her a little time in which to recover herself. When she felt that she could speak, she laid the watch back upon the bureau, carefully, tenderly, as if it had been the dead body of a friend, and said:

“It is a charming Christmas gift. Your aunt’s, I suppose?”

She knew she ran the risk of seeming inquisitive by the last remark, but she wanted so much to know how that watch of all others came into Maude Somerton’s possession.

“No, you don’t catch her making me as costly a present as that. She selected it, but Roy Leighton paid for it.”

“Roy Leighton!” Edna exclaimed, her voice so strongly indicative of surprise, that Maude stopped short and glanced quickly at her, saying, “what makes you say ‘Roy Leighton’ in that tragic kind of way? Do you know him?”

The wintry light had nearly faded from the room by this time, and under cover of the gathering darkness, Edna forced down the emotion which had made every nerve quiver, and managed to answer indifferently:

“I have heard Uncle Phil speak of him. He owns the hotel here in town, I believe. He must be a very dear friend to make you so costly a present.”

Edna could not define the nature of the pang which had shot through her heart when she heard that to Roy Leighton Maude owed the watch she had once called hers, and surrendered with so many tears. It certainly was not jealousy, for why should she be jealous of one who had never evinced any interest in her save such as was expressed in the ornaments of jet, and the words “My dear little sister.” Edna did not know how closely those four words had brought Roy Leighton to her until she saw his costly gift to another.

“That’s just what I told Aunt Burton that people would say,” Maude replied; “and I expect Georgie will be highly scandalized, for she it is who expects to be Mrs. Roy Leighton, some day, and not poor, humble I. Mr. Leighton’s half-brother, Charlie, was killed the very day he was married. Perhaps you saw it in the paper. It was a dreadful thing. I’ll tell you all about it sometime. I was with poor Mrs. Churchill a few days, and Roy, who had a broken leg, and could not sit up, greatly overrated my services, and resolved to make me a present. He had heard me say once or twice that I wanted a watch which was a watch, instead of the great big masculine thing of Uncle Burton’s, and so he concluded to give me one, and asked Aunt Burton, who was going up to Albany, to pick it out. I suppose I should be deceiving you if I did not tell you that the watch was second-hand, and the jeweller sold it a little less because he bought it of a lady who had seen better days. Auntie had admired it very much before he told her that, and she took it just the same. I was perfectly delighted, of course, though I have built all sorts of castles with regard to its first owner, who she was and how she looked, and I’ve even found myself pitying her for the misfortune which compelled her to part with that watch.”

Maude’s toilet was finished by this time, and as Uncle Phil’s voice was heard in the south room below, she asked if they should not go down.

“Yes, you go, please. Don’t wait for me, I have my hair to brush yet,” Edna said, feeling that she must be alone for a few moments, and give vent to the emotion she had so long been trying to repress.

She opened the door for Maude to pass out, and stood listening till she heard her talking to Uncle Phil; then with a sob she crouched upon the hearth and wept bitterly. Maude’s presence had brought back all the dreadful past, and even seemed for a time to have resuscitated her girlish love for Charlie, while in her heart there was a fierce hungering for Charlie’s friends, for recognition by them, or at least recognition by Roy, who had called her his “dear little sister.” It was the memory of these words which quieted Edna at last. He had had her in his mind when he sent the jet, and perhaps he would think of her again, and sometime she might see him and know just how good he was; and as Becky called to say supper was waiting, she hastily bathed her face, and giving a few brushes to her hair, went down to the room where Maude, full of life and spirits, was chatting gayly with Uncle Phil, and showing him the watch which Roy Leighton had given her.

As Edna came in, Uncle Phil glanced anxiously at her, detecting at once the traces of agitation upon her face, and as Maude suddenly remembered leaving her pocket-handkerchief upstairs, and darted away after it before sitting down to the table, he improved her absence by saying, softly:

“What is it, little Lu? Has Maude brought the past all back again? Yes, yes, I was afraid she would.”

“Not that exactly,” Edna said, with a quivering lip and smothered sob; “but, Uncle Phil, that was my watch once,—Charlie gave it to me, and—and—I sold it, you remember, in Albany. I knew it in a moment.”

“Yes, yes. Lord bless my soul! things does work curis. Your watch, and Roy Leighton bought it for Maude! there couldn’t a likelier person have it, but that don’t help its hurting. Poor little Lu! don’t fret; I’ll buy you one, handsomer than that, when I sell my wool. You bet I will. Yes, yes.”

He took a large pinch of snuff, and adroitly threw some of it in Edna’s eyes, so that their redness, and the tears streaming from them, were accounted for to Maude, who came tripping in, all anxiety to know what was the matter with “Little Dot,—that’s what I call her, she is so very small,” she said to Uncle Phil, as she took her seat at the table, talking all the time,—now of her school, now of Aunt Burton, and Georgie who was in Chicago, and at last of Charlie Churchill’s tragical death, and the effect it had on his mother.

When she reached this point Uncle Phil tried to stop her, but Maude was not to be repressed. Uncle Phil knew Charlie, and of course he must be interested to hear the particulars of his death. And she told them, as she had heard them from Georgie, and said she pitied the poor girl for whom nobody seemed to care,—unless it was Roy, who was lame at the time and could do nothing for any one. And Edna heard it all, with an agony in her heart which threatened to betray itself every moment, until Maude spoke of “the poor young wife, for whom nobody seemed to care but Roy.” Then there came a revulsion; the terrible throbbing ceased; her pulse became more even, and though she was paler than usual, she seemed perfectly natural, and her voice was firm and steady as she said, “Then the wife did not come to Leighton?”

“Lord bless me! That is curis,” Uncle Phil muttered to himself, as, having finished his dinner, he walked hastily to the window, while Maude, without heeding him, replied:

“No, and I was so sorry. I had her room ready for her, too,—Charlie’s old room, because I thought she would like it best. You see, Mrs. Churchill was sick, and I had it all my own way, except as I consulted Roy, who evinced a good deal of interest, and I think was really disappointed that Edna did not come. That was her name,—Edna,—and I think it pretty, too, because it is not common.”

Supper was over by this time; and the conversation concerning Charlie Churchill was not resumed until the two girls had said good-night to Uncle Phil, and were alone in their room. Their acquaintance had progressed rapidly, and, girl-like, they sat down before the fire for a good long talk before going to bed. Passing her fingers through Edna’s flowing curls, Maude made some remark about Georgie’s hair, and then added, “Georgie said Edna had handsome curls. Poor thing! I wonder where she is.”

“Don’t they know?” Edna asked, feeling that she must say something.

“No; they only know that she is somewhere working to pay the debt she fancies she owes to Roy.”

“I almost wonder Roy told anybody about that; seems to me he should have kept it to himself,” Edna said, feeling a little hurt that her affairs should be so generally known to strangers.

“Roy didn’t tell of it,” Maude replied. “Mrs. Churchill told it first to auntie, and then to Georgie. She tells them everything, and against Roy’s wishes, too, I am sure; for he is not a gossip. Roy Leighton is splendid everyway,—the best man I ever knew.”

Edna looked up at her with a peculiar smile, which Maude readily understood; and, shaking her head, she said:

“No; I am not in love with him. I would as soon think of aspiring to the moon; but I admire him greatly, and so does every one. He is very different from Charlie, with whom I used to flirt a little.”

Edna would rather hear about Roy than Charlie; and so she asked:

“Do you think he cares anything about his sister-in-law?”

“Of course he does. He wrote her a letter to Chicago; but she had left before it reached there; and once, in speaking of her to Georgie, he called her ‘a brave little woman;’ and, if you believe me, I think Georgie didn’t quite like it.”

There were little throbs of joy quivering all along through Edna’s veins, and softly to herself she repeated: “Brave little woman,” trying to imagine how Roy looked when he said that of her, and how his voice sounded. She did not care for Georgie Burton’s liking or disliking what Roy said. She did not care even if Georgie became his wife, as Maude said she probably would. If he only gave her a place in his heart as his sister, and esteemed her “a brave little woman,” she was more than content; and in Edna’s eyes there was a brightness not borrowed from the fire-light, as, long after Maude was in bed, she sat upon the hearth, combing her curls, and thinking of Roy Leighton, who had called her “a brave little woman,” and acknowledged her as his sister.

Maude’s visit did Edna a world of good, for it brought her glimpses of a life widely different from any she had known, and stirred her up to higher aims, by inspiring her with a desire to make herself something of which Roy should not be ashamed, if ever she chanced to meet him. And she should meet him sometime, she was sure of that; and Maude would be the medium, perhaps; for, if necessary, she would tell her everything, knowing she could trust her as her own sister. They grew to liking each other very much during the few days Maude stayed at the farm-house; and Edna roused herself from a certain morbid listlessness into which she had fallen, with regard to herself and her personal appearance, thinking it did not matter how she looked or what she wore, as black was black anyway. But Maude did not think so.

“Needn’t look like a Guy, if you do wear black,” she said.

And so she coaxed Edna into white collars and cuffs, and, spying the jet, made her put it on, and screamed with delight when she saw how it brightened her up, and relieved the sombreness of her attire.

“If you were a widow, you could not go into deeper mourning than you have,” she said, as she was trying the effect of arranging Edna’s curls a little more fashionably, and twisting in a bit of lavender ribbon taken from her own box.

“Oh, no, not that,” Edna cried, as she looked at herself in the glass, and thought of the driving rain, the terrible wreck, and the white, drenched face beneath.

But Maude, who knew nothing of this as connected with Edna, insisted upon the ribbon just for that evening, and managed to have Uncle Phil praise the effect, and say he liked bright, pretty things, and wished Edna would wear ribbons and jet all the time.

The next day was Sunday; and Maude suggested that Uncle Phil should drive herself and Edna over to St. Jude’s, at Millville.

“Dot tells me she has never been there, and I think it’s a shame,” she said.

“Yes, yes; maybe ’tis; but she never came right out as you do, rough shod, on a feller. She reads her prayer-book at home, and adorns her profession that way. Yes, yes; you want to go to the true church,” Uncle Phil said, adding that he “didn’t think no great things of that persuasion, or leastwise never had till he knew Louise and Maude. They were the right stripe, if they were ’Piscopals; and maybe for once he’d go to the doin’s; but they mustn’t expect him to jine in the performance, nor bob his head down when he went in, nor keep jumping up like a dancing-jack. He should jest snuggle down in the pew, and sleep it out,” he said.

Maude gave him full permission to do as he liked, and, just as the bell of St. Jude’s was pealing forth its last summons, old Bobtail drew up in front of the church, and deposited his load upon the steps. Whether it was from a wish to surprise his young ladies, or because of the softening influence around him, Uncle Phil did not lounge or sleep in one corner of the pew, but, greatly to Edna’s astonishment, took a prayer-book from the rack in front, and followed the service tolerably well for a stranger. Only in the Creed he was silent, and in the fourth response to the Litany; “The Trinity part,” he “couldn’t go;” and he took a pinch of snuff on the sly, and glanced furtively at the two young maidens kneeling so devoutly at his side.

“They act kinder as if they did mean it, and were not puttin’ on, and thinkin’ of their neighbors’ bunnets,” he thought, as he listened to the services, which he decided were “confoundedly long, and a very trifle tedious.”

It was many a year since Uncle Phil had heard our church service; and something in its singular beauty and fitness impressed him as he never was impressed before. All those kneeling people around him were not “putting on.” Some of them surely were earnest and sincere, and were actually talking to somebody who heard, and whose presence even he could almost feel, as he sat listening to the sermon, which was from the text, “For he loveth our nation, and hath builded us a synagogue.” The sermon was a plain, straightforward one; and, as the clergyman took the ground, as an inducement for good works, that the building of a synagogue was the direct means of commending the centurion to the Saviour’s notice, Uncle Phil, who believed more in works than in faith, began to prick up his ears, and to wonder if he hadn’t better do something which would be put to his credit in Heaven’s great book of record.

“I can’t snivel, and say I’m sorry when I ain’t, but I should like to have a balance sheet in my favor, when I get on t’other side,” he thought; and then he began to wonder if “it wouldn’t please the gals, and the Lord, too,” if he was to build a chapel at Rocky Point.

If that synagogue had really been a help to the centurion, and led the Saviour to deal mercifully with him, what might not the building of a chapel do for Uncle Phil? He did not believe in the divinity of Christ; but he had a warm feeling in his heart for the man who had lived on earth thirty-three years, and known all the sorrows which could be crowded into a human life. He believed, too, in heaven, and, in a kind of mystical half way, he believed in hell, or in purgatory, at least, and deemed it well enough, if there was a route which led away from that place, to take it. That chapel might be the very gate to the road of safety; and when, during the last prayer, he put his head down with the rest, his thoughts were on a little knoll, half way between his house and the village proper, and he was wondering how much lumber it would take, and if Carson would cheat his eye-teeth out if he gave him the job.

As from little streams mighty torrents sometimes flow, so from that Sunday at St. Jude’s sprang the beautiful little Gothic structure, whose spire you may see just behind a clump of trees, as you whirl along in the cars through the mountain passes between Albany and Pittsfield. “St. Philip’s,” they call it, though the old man who planned it, and paid for it, and run it, as the people said, would have liked it better if “they had called it St. Maude or St. Louise, he didn’t care which.” Both girls were perfect in his estimation, though for a time he gave the preference to Maude, as having been the first who had torn the thick coating away from his heart, and made it vibrate with a human interest. He liked Maude wonderfully well, and when, on the Monday following the ride to St. Jude’s, she said good-by to them all, and went back to her school on the Hudson, he stole out behind the smoke-house, and, after several powerful sneezes, wiped his eyes suspiciously upon his butternut coat-sleeve, and wondered to himself “why the plague he wanted to be a snivelin’ when he didn’t care shucks for the neatest woman in the land.”

Uncle Phil was terribly out of sorts that day, and called poor Beck a nigger, and yelled furiously at some boys who were riding down hill on his premises, and swore at Bobtail because he didn’t trot faster on his way from the depot, and forgot all about the chapel, and was generally uncomfortable and disagreeable, till Edna came from school, and he found her waiting for him in the south room, with the ribbon in her hair, just as he had said he liked to see it, and the jet brightening her up, and making her a very pretty picture to contemplate, as she came forward to meet him. Hearing from Becky how forlorn he was, she put aside her own longing for the girl, who had brought so much sunshine with her, and made herself so agreeable to her uncle, that the frown between his eyes gave way at last, or rather she kissed it away, telling him she knew why it was there, and did not like to see it, and was going to be just as much like Maude as it was possible to be.

“Bless my soul, a gal’s lips feel mighty curis on such a tough old rhinoceros hide as mine,” he said; but he caught the little hands which were smoothing his hair, and held them in his own, and talked of his dead sister, whom Edna was like, and of the old days at home when he was young; and then the conversation drifted to Aunt Jerusha and Roy Leighton, and the payments Edna hoped to make them both in the spring when her first quarter was ended.

She would have one hundred and fifty dollars, she said, and fifty should go to Roy, and one hundred to her aunt; and she drew a comical picture of that dame when the money was received, proving that her niece’s promise had been no idle thing.

“And you don’t mean to keep a cent for yourself, Dot?” Uncle Phil asked, adopting the name Maude had given to his niece, and which suited her so well.

“No, not a cent till my debts are paid. I’ve clothes enough to last until that time, I guess, if I am careful. At all events I shall buy nothing unnecessary, I assure you,” Edna said; and then Uncle Phil fell into a fit of musing, and thought how for every dollar Edna paid to Jerusha Pepper and Roy, he would put a corresponding dollar in the Millville Savings Bank to the credit of Louise Overton, who might one day find herself quite a rich little woman.