A Little Girl of Long Ago - Amanda Minnie Douglas (top 100 novels of all time txt) 📗

another frock along. She could swim very well. They waded instead. Ben walked up to a little bank that, having lain in the sun all day, was warm and dry, and stretched himself out. Ann was too big to go "larking" about with the girls, so she and Hanny, and one or two others, sat down on the soft, sunburned turf.

How beautiful it all was! The sun was going down behind the New Jersey hills. The little rise of ground between this and the Hudson shut out the river; but it could not shut out the amethystine splendour. Back of it all was heaven, to the child's faith. Miss Lois and her sister were there, and old Mr. Bounett, and the poet's young wife, and ever so many others. It was only the other side of the clouds, with their scarlet and gold and green battlements. She could see the ships sailing into port. She recalled "Pilgrim's Progress," and Christiana going across. In that moment of ecstasy she could have gone herself.

Tony came down the road singing "Oh, Susannah;" Ben answered "Hillo!" and shook himself like a great bear. The two baskets were put into the waggon.

"Now you girls who are too delicate for a long walk, or too much worn out by your day's toil, had better hop in. Ann, you go and keep an eye on Hanny. Now who else?"

They were all pretty tired with their racing about, and the three smallest ones were picked out, as there was but one horse. The others formed the rear-guard, and marched on behind, with their arms about each other. They were too tired for even the tempting game of "tag," or the ambition of running races.

Mr. Odell was waiting at the uncle's, having come around the other way. Supper was ready; but he thought they had better be "gettin' on," as mother would wait supper for them.

Hanny was very tired, and went to bed immediately after the meal.

They had some splendid clam-fritters for breakfast. Ben had proposed to divide the crabs; but Mr. Odell reckoned, "He'd go crabbing the first leisure day," and was satisfied with part of the clams.

And then, unexpected delight, Stephen and Dolly and the two babies came up to dinner. Little Stevie captured everybody, he was so merry and cunning; and Polly wished they could keep him.

"When he gets to be a big boy, and has a school vacation, I'll be very glad to send him up, I dare say," was the response.

"But, dear me, we'll be big too," said Polly; "and it won't be any fun."

Dolly told her little sister-in-law all the news, and what everybody was doing. It seemed as if she had been away so long. Mother had spent a day with Martha, which she had been promising to do ever since Martha was married.

The little girl almost wanted to go home with them; but no one invited her, and she would not have been so silly or ungracious as to plead homesickness, for she really wasn't homesick a bit.

Then, on Tuesday, Joe came up with a letter from Daisy, who had gone to some German baths, and was drinking water twice as horrid as that at Saratoga. The things you had to eat were so very queer; but the music everywhere was perfectly bewitching. Everything was so different. She was taking lessons of a Fraeulein, and had to talk German at the table. They had been through several churches, and one picture gallery that was magnificent. A little withered-up old German was giving her some painting lessons. If Hanny could only be there, she would be quite content; yet she did think she loved America best.

Hanny was so delighted that her eyes shone, and her cheeks were pink as a rose-leaf.

But Mrs. Odell said she could notice that her appetite was better, and she was doing her best to fat her up a little, and make her look like a country girl.

Mr. Odell took her about with him when he could. There were so many beautiful places up and down the valley of the Bronx. They went up to White Plains, and took everybody by surprise. Grandmother up there was quite feeble now.

Then it happened, rather oddly, that when Cousin Jennie came down for her, as there was no one scarcely at Fordham but the regular family, Mrs. Odell was going to have a houseful of relatives from the West. She just wished they had their new house at such times as these. She could make a bed on the floor for Janey and Polly, and that would give her two spare rooms.

The girls didn't feel so badly, as there were two Western cousins of their age, and they would bring them up to Fordham.

The little girl was not at all tired of her pleasant hosts; but there was a romantic side to the coming visit that she could not talk over with Polly and Janey; and she was most famished for reading, as the Odells were not of the intellectual sort. Mrs. Odell didn't like the children to handle her parlour books, in their red morocco bindings, that were spread around on the centre-table.

Hanny's favourite place at the Fordham house was up on the high piazza. To be sure, it was sunny in the morning; but then Doctor Joe said sunshine was good for her, and one corner soon grew shady. There was some one passing up and down continually: the priests from St. John's College, in their long black coats and queer hats, generally reading as they walked; the labourers who worked on the railroad; the people going to the station; and the girls out calling in the afternoons in their pretty white gowns. There was no Jerome Park for stylish driving. Indeed, it was a plain little country village, and most of the life centred about the corner grocery and the blacksmith shop, where men talked politics and the discovery of California, and discussed the merits of the heroes of the Mexican War.

She sewed some patchwork for Cousin Jennie, who was making several bed-quilts, and who had a lover,--a tall, bright-eyed young man who drove a very handsome horse. Hanny felt quite wise on the subject of lovers; and though no one said anything special, she understood what the preparations meant.

"Now," Cousin Jennie said the next afternoon, "I am going up to Mr. Poe's, to return some books and get others. Will you go along?"

Hanny was very glad. She had seen Mr. N. P. Willis and General Morris, and some others, on the street; but that wasn't like going to their houses. The dead young wife lent him a glamour of romance, to her girlish imagination.

Mrs. Clemm sat on the farther end of the porch. It almost seemed as if she had not stirred since Hanny caught the first glimpse of her. She rose, a tall, rather thin woman with a sad, quiet face and a grave smile; and the two had a little chat.

There was no hall to the house, at least the door opened into the front room. A half closet stood at one side of the chimney, piled with books and papers, an old sofa and some chairs, a table in the centre, strewn with pamphlets and writing-materials, and the poet sitting beside it in a melancholy pose, marking passages in a book.

He glanced up and spoke. The little girl had an impression of a pallid face framed in dark, tumbled hair, and luminous eyes that seemed to be of some other world in their abstracted light.

"You are quite welcome to any of the books, as you well know," said the poet. "I am glad to have some one interested in them."

Then the white hand went on turning pages and making notes. The little girl stood by the window, almost expecting the frail ghost to walk down from the graveyard and enter the door again. Later on, she understood the impression of weirdness, the almost ghostly stillness of the room; and she found herself thinking over the poem that had so impressed her.

Fordham, in those days, was neither poetical nor intellectual. That a man should starve on writing poetry, when there was other work to be done in the world, seemed rather absurd. In some of the centres, literature was becoming an honourable employment; but country places had not emerged from the twilight of respect for brawn rather than brain.

Jennie made her selections, and expressed her obligation. The poet nodded absently.

Mrs. Clemm rose, as they emerged from the door, and walked to the end of the porch with them. There was something wonderfully pathetic in the care-worn face, the reticent air, and gentle voice.

"I wonder if you have a few eggs to spare," she asked, in a hesitating manner. "My poor Edgar's appetite is so wretched. He has had a bad spell, and eats next to nothing."

"Yes, I can find you half-a-dozen, I know. Our hens are afflicted a little with summer laziness," and Jennie smiled. "We have been baking to-day, and I wish you would accept a loaf of bread. I'll send this little cousin up with them."

"Oh, don't trouble! I will come down."

"I shall be glad to do it," said Hanny, with a gentle eagerness.

Cousin Jennie put the bread and the eggs,--she found seven,--and part of a cake, in a little basket, and said, "Run along, Little Red Riding Hood. There are no wolves to catch you."

They teased Cousin Jennie a little because the tall young man with bright eyes was named Woolf.

Mrs. Clemm received the little girl's parcel with her usual quiet air, and thanked her for coming. And before she could hunt up her ever-scanty purse the child had said Good-evening, and vanished.

Hanny heard the "spells" rather rudely explained a day or two after, and understood the melancholy shadow that hung about the house. People were not any more delicate in gossiping about their neighbour's short-comings then than now, when all the little faults and frailties of heroes are paraded to the public gaze and comment.

But the exquisite care with which the mother watched over the son of her heart, made her one of the little girl's heroines later on, when she could fully appreciate the tender solicitude that tried to shield him and save him from temptation, when possible, bearing her burthen with such heroic dignity that she was fain to persuade her own soul that she covered it from critical eyes. When one woman suffers bravely to the death, amid untold privation, and another takes up the dropped burthen with a devotion no anxiety can wear out, is it not proof that there must have been some charm in the poet seen more clearly by those who loved him?

There was a new book by Miss Macintosh among those they had brought home; and this Hanny devoured eagerly, sitting on her high perch, while the rest were busy in the household routine. In the afternoon, she read aloud while the others sewed. Sometimes the Major came in to listen; but he thought there were no novels written nowadays like "The Mysteries of Udolpho," "The Children of the Abbey," and "The Vicar of Wakefield."

"Oh," said the little girl, "isn't this funny! We have the first volume of 'The Grumbler' and the second of 'The Grandfather.' I don't believe I can piece them together," with a bright, mirthful expression.

"And I picked those up myself. No; we are interested in the 'Grumbler' now and must know what became