Hugh Worthington

The storm which visited Kentucky so wrathfully was far milder among the New England hills, and in the vicinity of Snowdon, whither our story now tends, was scarcely noticed, save as an ordinary winter’s storm. There were no drifts against the fences, no driving sleet, no sheets of ice covering the valleys, nothing save a dark, sour, dreary day, when the grey December clouds seemed wading in the piles of snow, which, as the sun went down, began to fall in those small misty flakes, which betoken a storm of some duration. As yet it had been comparatively warmer in New England than in Kentucky; and Miss Anna Richards, confirmed invalid though she was, had decided not to take her usual trip to the South, so comfortable was she at home, in her accustomed chair, with her pretty crimson shawl wrapped around her. Besides that, they were expecting her brother John from Paris, where he had been for the last eighteen months, pursuing his medical profession, and she must be there to welcome him.

Anna was proud of her young, handsome brother, for on him and his success in life, all their future hopes were pending.

All were proud of John, and all had petted and spoiled him, from his precise lady mother, down to invalid Anna, who, more than any one else, was anxious for his return, and who had entered, with a good deal of interest into the preparations which, for a week or more, had kept Terrace Hill Mansion in a state of bustle and excitement, for John was so refined and fastidious in his tastes, that he was sure to notice if aught were amiss or out of place. Consequently great pains was taken with his room, while Anna, who had a private purse of her own, went into the extravagance of furnishing a new carpet of more modern style than the heavy, old-fashioned Brussels, which for years, had covered the floor.

John had never been very happy at home—and hence the efforts they were putting forth to make it attractive to him after his long absence. He could not help liking it now, the ladies said to each other, as, a few days before his arrival, they rode from the village, up the winding terraced hill, admiring the huge stone building embosomed in evergreens, and standing out so distinctly against the wintry sky. And Terrace Hill Mansion was a very handsome place, exciting the envy and admiration of the villagers, who could remember a time when it had looked better even than it did now—when the house was oftener full of city company, when high-born ladies rode up and down in carriages, or dashed on horseback through the park and off into leafy woods—when sounds of festivity were heard in the halls from year’s end to year’s end, and the lights in the parlors were rarely extinguished, or the fires on the hearth put out. This was during the lifetime of its former owner, whose covering had been the tall green grass of Snowdon cemetery for several years. With his death there had come a change to the inhabitants of Terrace Hill, a curtailing of expenses, a gradual dropping of the swarms of friends who had literally fed upon them during the summer and autumn months. In short it was whispered now that the ladies of Terrace Hill were restricted in their means, that there was less display of dress and style, fewer fires, and lights, and servants, and an apparent desire to be left to themselves.

This was what the village people whispered, and none knew the truth of the whisperings better than the ladies in question, or shrank more from having their affairs canvassed by those whom they looked down upon, even if the glory of their house was departed. Mrs. Richards and her elder daughters, Miss Asenath and Eudora, were very proud, very exclusive, and but for the existence of Anna, few of the villagers would ever have crossed their threshold. Anna was a favorite in the village, and when confined to her room for weeks, as she sometimes was, there were more anxious enquiries concerning her than would have been bestowed on Asenath and Eudora had they both been dying. And yet in her early girlhood she too had been cold and haughty, but since the morning when she had knelt at her father’s feet, and begged him to revoke his cruel decision, and say she might be the bride of a poor missionary, Anna had greatly changed, and the father had sometimes questioned the propriety of separating the hearts which clung so tenaciously together. But it was then too late to remedy the mistake. The young missionary had married another, and neither the parents nor the sisters ever forgot the look of anguish which stole into Anna’s face, when she heard the news. She had told him to do so, it is true, for she knew a missionary to be strictly useful must have a wife. She had thought herself prepared, but the news was just as crushing when it came, accompanied though it was with a few last lines from him, such as a husband might write to the woman he had loved so much, and only given up because he must. Anna kept this letter yet, reading it often to herself, and wondering, if through all the changes which fourteen years had wrought, the missionary remembered her yet, and if they would ever meet again. This was the secret of the numerous missionary papers and magazines scattered so profusely through the rooms at Terrace Hill. Anna was interested in everything pertaining to the work, though, it must be confessed, that her mind wandered oftenest to the city of mosques and minarets, where he was laboring; and once, when she heard of a little grave made with the Moslem dead, the grave of darling Anna, named for her, she wept bitterly, feeling as if she, too, had been bereaved as well as the parents, across the Eastern waters. This was sweet Anna Richards, who, on the day of her brother’s expected arrival from Paris, dressed herself with unusual care and joined her mother and elder sisters in the parlor below. It was a raw, chilly evening, and a coal fire had been kindled in the grate, the bright blaze falling on Anna’s cheek, and lighting it up with something like the youthful bloom for which she had once been celebrated. The harsh expression of Miss Asenath’s face was softened down, while the mother and Eudora looked anxiously expectant, and Anna was the happiest of them all. Taken as a whole it was a very pleasant family group, which sat there waiting for the foreign lion, and for the whistle of the engine which was to herald his approach.

“I wonder if he has changed,” said the mother, glancing at the opposite mirror and arranging the puffs of glossy false hair which shaded her aristocratic forehead.

“Of course he has,” returned Miss Asenath. “Nearly two years of Paris society must have imparted to him that air distingue so desirable in a young man who has travelled.”

“He’ll hardly fail of making a good match now,” Miss Eudora remarked. “I think we must manage to visit Saratoga or some of those places next summer. Mr. Gardner found his wife at Newport, and they say she’s worth half a million.”

“But horridly ugly,” and Anna looked up from the reverie in which she had been indulging. “Lottie says she has tow hair and a face like a fish. John would never be happy with such a wife.”

“Possibly you think he had better have married that sewing girl about whom he wrote us just before going to Europe,” Miss Eudora suggested.

“No, I don’t,” Anna answered, mildly. “I am almost as anxious as yourselves for him to marry rich, for I know you need money sadly, and my income is not so large as for your sakes I wish it was, but poverty and love are better than riches and hatred, and I have always felt a strange interest in that young girl, whom I know John loved, or he would never have written to see how we would bear his taking a portionless bride.”

“I told him plainly how I would bear it. She should never cross my threshold,” and the face of Mrs. Richards, the mother, was highly indicative of the feeling she entertained for the young, penniless girl, whom it would seem John Richards M. D., had thought to marry.

“I trust he is over that fancy,” she continued, “and ready to thank me for the strong letter I wrote him.”

“Yes, but the girl,” and Anna leaned her white cheek in her whiter hand. “None of us know the harm his leaving her may have done. Don’t you remember he wrote how much she loved him—how gentle and confiding her nature was, how to leave her then might prove her ruin?”

“Our little Anna is growing very eloquent upon the subject of sewing girls,” Miss Asenath said, rather scornfully, and Anna rejoined,

“I am not sure she was a sewing girl. He spoke of her as a school girl.”

“But it is most likely he did that to mislead us,” said the mother. “The only boarding school he knows anything about is the one where Lottie was. He often visited her, but I’ve questioned her closely, and she cannot think of a single young lady whom he fancied more than another. All were in love with him, she said, herself included. If he were not her uncle by marriage I should not object to Lottie as a daughter,” was the next remark, whereupon there ensued a conversation touching the merits and demerits of a certain Lottie Gardner, whose father had taken for a second wife Miss Laura Richards.

During this discussion of Lottie, Anna had sat listlessly looking up and down the columns of an old Herald which Dick, Eudora’s pet dog, had ferreted out from the table and deposited at her feet. She evidently was not thinking of Lottie, nor yet of the advertisements, until one struck her notice as being very singular from the fact that a name was appended to it, a thing she had never seen before. Holding it a little more to the light and bending forward she said, “Possibly this is the very person I want—one who will be either a companion or a waiting-maid, only the child might be an objection, though I do love the little things. Just listen,” and Anna read as follows:

“Wanted—by an unfortunate young married woman, with a child a few months old, a situation in a private family either as governess, seamstress, or lady’s maid. Country preferred. Address ——”

Anna was about to say whom, when a violent ringing of the bell and a heavy stamping of feet on the steps with out announced an arrival, and the next moment a tall, handsome young man, exceedingly Frenchified in his appearance, entered the room, and was soon in the arms of his mother, who, kissing his bearded cheek, welcomed him as her son.

John, or Dr. Richards, did not care particularly to be caressed by ladies unless he could choose them, and releasing himself as soon as practicable from his lady mother’s embrace, he submitted himself a moment to his two elder sisters, and then, hastening to where Anna sat, wound his arms around her light figure, and lifting her as he would have lifted a little child, kissed her white lips and looked into her face with an expression which told that, however indifferent he might be to others, he was not so to Anna.

“You have not changed for the worse,” he said, replacing her in her chair and sitting down beside her.

“And you are vastly improved,” was Anna’s answer, as she smoothed playfully the Parisian mustache, her brother’s special pride.

Then commenced from mother and sisters a volley of questions. Had he been well? Did he like Paris? Was he glad to be home again? And why had he gone off without coming out to say good-bye?

This last was put by his mother, who continued, “I thought, perhaps, you were offended at my plain letter concerning that girl, and resented it by not coming, but of course you are glad now, and see that mother was right. What could you have done with a wife in Paris?”

“I should not have gone,” John answered, moodily, a shadow stealing over his face.

It was not good taste for Mrs. Richards thus early to introduce a topic on which John was really so sore, and for a moment an awkward silence ensued, broken at last by the mother again, who, feeling that all was not right, and anxious to know if there was yet aught to fear from a poor, unknown daughter-in-law, asked, hesitatingly,

“Have you seen her since your return?”

She is dead was the reply, and then anxious to change the conversation, the Doctor began talking to Anna until the supper bell rang, and his mother led the way to the dining room where a most inviting supper was prepared in honor of the Doctor’s return. How handsome he looked in his father’s place at the head of the table. How gracefully he did the honors, and how proud all were of him as he repeated little incidents of Parisian life, speaking of the Emperor and Eugenie as if they had been every day sights to him. In figure and form the fair Empress reminded him of Anna, he said, except that Anna was the prettier of the two—a compliment which Anna acknowledged with a blush and a trembling of her long eyelashes. It was a very pleasant family reunion, for John did his best to be agreeable, and by the time they returned to the parlor his mother had quite forgiven him the flagrant act of loving an unknown girl.

“Oh, John, please be careful where you tear that paper. There’s an advertisement I want to save,” Anna exclaimed, as she saw her brother tearing a strip from the Herald with which to light his cigar, but as she spoke, the smoke and flame curled around the narrow strip, and Dr. Richards had lighted his cigar with the name and address appended to the advertisement which had so interested Anna.

How disturbed she was when she found that nought was left save the simple wants of the young girl who, with a breaking heart had penned the lines, and who now lay so still beneath a Kentucky rift of snow!

“Let’s see,” and taking the mutilated sheet, Dr. Richards read the “Wanted, by a young unfortunate married woman.”

“That unfortunate may mean a great deal more than you imagine,” he said, in order to quiet his sister, who quickly rejoined,

“Yes, but she distinctly says married. Don’t you see, and I had really some idea of writing to her, or at least I think I had, now that ’tis too late.”

“I’m sorry I was so careless, but there are a thousand unfortunate women who would gladly be your maid, little sister. I’ll send you out a score, if you say so, either with or without babies,” and John laughed, as with the utmost nonchalance he smoked the cigar lighted with the name of Adah Hastings!

“Has any thing of importance occurred in this slow old town?” he inquired, after Anna had become reconciled to her loss. “Has there been any desirable addition to Snowdon society?”

“Yes,” returned Anna. “A Mrs. Johnson, who is every way cultivated and refined, while Alice is the sweetest girl I ever knew. You have a rare pleasure in store in forming their acquaintance.

“Whose, the old or the young lady’s?” John asked, carelessly knocking the ashes from the end of his cigar.

“Both,” was Anna’s reply. “The mother is very youthful in her appearance. Why, she scarcely looks older than I do, and I, you know, am thirty-two.”

As if fearful lest her own age should come next under consideration, Miss Eudora hastened to say,

“Yes, Mrs. Johnson does look very young, and Alice seems like a child, though I heard her say she was almost twenty. Such beautiful hair as she has. It used to be a bright yellow, or golden, so the old nurse says, but now it has a darker, richer shade, midway between golden and chestnut, while her eyes are the softest, handsomest blue.”

Alice Johnson was evidently a favorite at Terrace Hill, and as this stamped her somebody John began to ask who the Johnsons were, and where they came from.

Mrs. Richard seemed disposed to answer these questions, which she did as follows:

“Mrs. Johnson used to live in Boston, and her husband was grandson of old Governor Johnson, one of the best families in that State.”

“Ah, yes,” and John began to laugh. “I see now what gives Miss Alice’s hair that peculiar shade, and her eyes that heavenly blue, over which my staid sister Dora waxed so eloquent. Miss Alice is an ex-Governor’s great grand daughter—but go on, mother, only come to Alice herself and give her figure as soon as may be.”

“What do you mean?” asked Anna, who took things literally. “I should suppose you’d care more for her face than her form.”

John smiled mischievously, while his mother continued.

“I fancy that Mrs. Johnson’s family met with a reverse of fortune before her marriage, but know nothing certainly except that she was greatly beloved in Boston. Her husband has been dead some years, and recently she has bought and fitted up that pretty cottage down by the river. I do not see her as often as I would like to, for I am greatly pleased with her, although she has some habits of which I cannot approve, such as associating with the poor of the town to the extent she does. Why, I hear that Alice had a party the other day consisting wholly of ragged urchins.”

“They were her Sunday school scholars,” interposed Anna. “Alice has picked up a large class of children, who before her coming, used to run the streets on Sundays breaking up birds’ nests and pilfering gardens. I am sure we ought to be much obliged to her, for our fruit and flowers are now comparatively safe.”

“I vote that Anna goes on with Alice’s history. She gives it best,” said John, and so Anna continued,

“There is but little to tell. Mrs. Johnson and her daughter are both nice ladies, and I am sure you will like them—every body does; and rumor has already given Alice to our young clergyman, Mr. Howard.”

“And she is worth fifty thousand dollars, too,” rejoined Asenath, as if that were a powerful reason why a poor clergyman should not aspire to her hand.

“I have her figure at last,” said John, winking slily at Anna, who only looked bewildered. And, the $50,000 did seem to make an impression on the young man, who made numerous inquiries concerning the heiress, asking how often she came to Terrace Hill, and where he would be most likely to see her.

“At church,” was Anna’s reply. “She is always there and their pew joins ours.”

Dr. Richards did not much like going to church, unless it were where the music was grand and operatic. Still he had intended honoring the benighted Snowdonites with a sight of himself for one half day, though he knew he should be terribly bored; but now the case was different, for besides being, to a certain extent, a kind of lion, he should see Miss Alice, and he reflected with considerable satisfaction that as this was Friday night, only one day intervened ere his curiosity and that of the villagers would be gratified. He was glad there was something new and interesting in Snowdon in the shape of a pretty girl, for he did not care to return at once to New York, where he had intended practising his profession. There were too many sad memories clustering about that city to make it altogether desirable, but Dr. Richards was not yet a hardened wretch, and thoughts of another than Alice Johnson, crowded upon his mind as on that first evening of his return, he sat answering questions and asking others of his own.

It was late ere the family group broke up, and the storm beating so furiously upon Spring Bank, was just making its voice heard round Terrace Hill Mansion, when the doctor took the lamp the servant brought, and bidding his mother and sisters good night, ascended the stairs whither Anna, who kept early hours, had gone before him. She was not, however, in bed, and when she heard his step passing her door she called softly to him,

“John, brother John, come in a moment, please.”