CHAPTER XXI.
A QUARREL WITH FATE.
Mrs. Flint would have been very lonely after her brother’s departure, but for the fact that she had her hands and her mind both full with helping the nurse to care for the poor wayfarer so strangely thrown on her hands.
As it was, her anxiety over Cinthia was soon dissipated by the receipt of a telegram from Mr. Dawn, announcing that he had found his daughter safe in Washington, and that they would go on a trip to New York.
Several days later a short letter followed the telegram, saying they had concluded to take a run over to Europe for an indefinite stay. He believed that change of scene was the best way to wean Cinthia from her infatuation for Arthur Varian.
No mention was made of the legacy that had so opportunely fallen to Cinthia, but Mr. Dawn inclosed a liberal check to his sister, and asked that she would use some of it in behalf of the woman he had brought home that night, stating that he had recognized in her a former servant of Cinthia’s mother.
Mrs. Flint began to take considerable more interest in the invalid when she learned this interesting fact.
She had always cherished a lively curiosity over Cinthia’s mother, and it had never been properly gratified, but the little knowledge she had made her thirsty for more. That she was beautiful, vain, and unprincipled, Everard Dawn had acknowledged; but he did not even possess a picture of her, although Mrs. Flint fancied he must have loved her well from the way he had exiled himself at her death.
She was anxious for the sick woman’s recovery, for she fancied the woman could tell her more of Everard’s dead wife than her brother had ever chosen to divulge himself.
So she was unremitting in her care, as were also Doctor Savoy and the trained nurse; but for several weeks the woman’s life hung on a thread, and it was evident that exposure of that wintery night had been preceded by keen privation and almost starvation, making her hold on life so frail that she had almost let it go.
It was far into December before she became convalescent enough to impart her name and some curt information about herself.
“My name is Rachel Dane, and I came from Florida in search of work,” she said, rather sullenly; adding: “I’m a capital sick-nurse, but I could get no more work of that kind, and I thought I’d hire out for a ladies’-maid, or even a cook, for I can do anything I have a mind to turn my hand to.”
Old Doctor Savoy to whom she was talking, smiled benevolently, and beaming on Mrs. Flint, remarked:
“I don’t think you’ll have to fare any further for a job as maid of all work when you get strong enough, for my old friend here certainly needs a good domestic, now that she isn’t as young as she once was.”
Mrs. Flint had never thought of the subject in that way before, but when her old friend, Doctor Savoy, presented it so artfully to her mind, she consented to the plan, knowing that she would be very lonely in the quiet house, now that willful Cinthia’s bright presence was removed.
So when the snows of Christmas lay deep on the ground, the new servant was up and about the little house, serving her new mistress skillfully and well, but preserving a rather sullen and taciturn demeanor, as if somehow she had a quarrel with fate and could not be reconciled to some scurvy trick it had played upon her now or in past days.
While Mrs. Flint was wondering how to put to her some plain questions as to her service with her brother’s wife, Rachel Dane forestalled her by saying, in a sort of casual way:
“When I got off the train at the station, I saw a man I used to know—Mr. Everard Dawn. Does he live hereabout?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Flint.
“Visiting, maybe?” with veiled anxiety.
“Yes.”
“Oh! At whose house?”
“At mine; but he has gone to Europe, now,” returned Mrs. Flint, succinctly.
The woman started, and muttered some inaudible words, as though she had received an unpleasant surprise.
“Perhaps you don’t know that it was Everard Dawn—my brother—who brought you in here out of the snow that night?” added Mrs. Flint.
“So he saved my life,” Rachel Dane muttered, grimly; “and you say he is your brother, Mrs. Flint?”
“Yes, and he told me he recognized you as a former servant. Is it true?”
“Yes; I lived with Mrs. Dawn two years. It was when her eldest child was born—before they left the South and moved North. I suppose she has several children now, ma’am?” with eager inquiry.
Mrs. Flint stared at her in surprise.
“Then you haven’t heard—you don’t know—that Mrs. Dawn died when little Cinthia was five years old and there never was any other child?”
“Dead! Mrs. Dawn dead!” the woman cried with sharp regret, while a spasm of pain passed over her face, and she sprung excitedly to her feet.
“You must have been very fond of her,” remarked Mrs. Flint, curiously.
“Fond of her! Oh, yes, naturally. I lived with her some time, you see, as maid of all work. Mr. Dawn wasn’t rich then, but perhaps he’s better off now,” with keen interest.
“No, and never will be; for it sort of took the heart out of him when Cinthia’s mother died. He brought me the child to raise, and went off wandering over the world to drown his sorrow.”
Rachel Dane’s glum face related in surprise, as she exclaimed:
“Humph! I never thought he was so fond of her as that! All the love seemed to be on her side!”
“So she was fond of him?”
“Fond ain’t no word for it. She just worshiped the ground he walked on. Her sun rose and set in him. She was grateful for a smile or a kind word, and mighty few she got for all that; for of all the glum, moody men I ever saw, Mr. Dawn was the worst. I believe he hated his own life!”
“It was a guilty conscience maybe,” suggested Mrs. Flint, watching her out of the corner of her eye, to see how much she knew.
“You mean that he had treated his first wife bad for her sake—yes, maybe it was remorse. I don’t rightly know the facts, but I heard whispers,” answered Rachel Dane, coolly; adding: “There was something strange about it—his indifference to his wife, even after the child was born, that she thought would bring them closer together. But, la,” bringing herself up with a jerk, “this is all guesswork on my part. Maybe he loved her in a reserved kind of way. Anyway, I’m mighty sorry she’s dead. But where’s the child?”
“Cinthia? Her father came and took her away while you were sick. They have gone to Europe.”
“There! the kettle’s boiling over!” exclaimed Rachel Dane, rushing to the stove; and after that she avoided the subject of the deceased Mrs. Dawn.
But there could be no doubt that she was sincerely sorry over her death, for she became glummer and more taciturn from that hour, and her quarrel with fate grew more bitter.
But she stayed on and on with the lonely widow, giving good service, and perhaps grateful for the comfortable home she enjoyed, while she certainly relieved the loneliness of the quiet home that echoed no more to the girlish footsteps of Cinthia.
Mrs. Flint missed the girl more than she could have deemed possible. She had secret spasms of remorse over the rigid life she had led the poor girl, all on account of having had a poor opinion of her mother.
“I was trying to bring her up right, so she might not follow in her mother’s footsteps; but maybe I was too hard on her,” she mused, “and if I had her back here, I’d try to act a little different to the poor girl. Still, I can’t think that anything I did to her was half as bad as Everard’s refusing to let her marry Arthur Varian. To the day of my death that’ll be a mystery to me why he refused such a good chance for Cinthy. A poor girl like her ain’t never going to get such another offer. And they do say that since the Varians came back to Idlewild, that Arthur looks like a ghost. Mrs. Bowles says they have a house-party for Christmas, with lots of awful pretty girls, but that he don’t care for any of them, though his proud mother’s trying her hardest to marry him off to one of them. Well, well, maybe his luck and Cinthy’s may turn, and they’ll marry yet. I do hope so, for I love to see a girl marry her first love.”
There was one thing about her hand-maid that did not altogether please the pious Mrs. Flint.
She discovered that Rachel Dane was wholly irreligious.
She neither attended church, read the Bible, nor said her prayers at night—three facts that quite shocked her employer.
In kindly remonstrating with the woman, the widow found out that she cherished a grievance.
Her quarrel with fate was poverty.
“I will not worship a Being who makes such a difference between His creatures, blessing some with riches and happiness, and cursing others with poverty and woe,” she said, rebelliously.
And all Mrs. Flint’s pious arguments made no change in her mood. She only answered, flatly:
“I beg that you will not waste arguments on me, ma’am. I’ve heard all that before, and it don’t alter my opinion at all.”
Mrs. Flint found out that the desire of the woman’s heart was to have a snug little fortune of her own, and she would never have a good opinion of the Lord until her desire was gratified.
One day, while she was looking out of the front window, she saw Arthur Varian going past in a sleigh with his mother, the silver bells ringing out gayly as they sped over the snow, while their rich fur robes and seal-skin garments gave evidence of their wealth and position.
“Who are those grand, rich people?” she asked, enviously.
Mrs. Flint told her, and added with pardonable pride, that the young man had been a suitor for Cinthia’s hand, but her father had separated the lovers.
“He was very foolish, unless he had some good reason,” exclaimed Rachel Dane.
“He did not have any good reason that I could find out,” returned Mrs. Flint; adding, regretfully: “It would have been a splendid match for Cinthia. I have heard that Arthur’s grandfather, a Southern planter, left him a million dollars in his own right.”
“I wish I knew how to get some of it from him!” murmured Rachel Dane, gazing with covetous eyes after the vanishing sleigh with its fortunate occupants.
And no thought crossed her mind that she was the possessor of a secret that the rich Arthur Varian would have sacrificed his whole great fortune to know.