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

imagination. I can shut my eyes now, and see them come trooping down that lonely road by twos and threes."

Herbert laughed again. "A vivid imagination is worth a good deal at times," he said. "There ought to be a ghost-walk about here; and next time you come over, we'll arrange one so perfectly that he shall defy detection. I'll walk a bit with you, if I am not a ghost."

When he put on his wide-brimmed, rather high-crowned hat, he looked more Spanish than English. They went through another room that opened on a porch, and, from thence, through the garden, or an attempt at one that did not betoken signal success.

The cemetery sloped down from a high hill that was such a thicket of woods it hid all indications of the City of the Dead. The placid river, in which there was only a gentle tide up here, lapped the shores with a little murmur as it came up from the bay. The green, irregular shore opposite showed here and there a house. The wood-robins were beginning their vespers already. Hanny thought them the sweetest singers she had ever heard.

Just here there was a terraced garden-spot and an old house adorned with all kinds of blossoming shrubbery.

"You see we two are guardians of the place, at either end. Miss Whitney, this house could tell some interesting tales of the bygone time; but the glory is departing. In a few years the city will stretch out and invade our solitude."

A wild spot of ground it was below, hilly, gravelly, sloping sharply down to the river. But people were beginning to take advantage of the shore-edge for business. There were shops, and a foundry stretching out smoky, dingy arms in various directions.

They said their good-byes here, as they were in sight of the old Gouverneur mansion. And no one guessed then that a tragedy of love and desperation to madness was soon to follow, and that in the dreary old house "Frank Forrester" was to lie, slain by his own hand, that he waved so jauntily to them as he bade them "Come again."

They scrambled up the small ascent, and sprang over the wall. Here was where the Nine Worthies used to come for their merry-making in their exuberant youth, and, as one of their number said afterward, "enlivened the solitude by their mad-cap pranks and juvenile orgies." The house had not been much modernised up to that period. Its young owner, Mr. Kemble, who was the Patroon of the merry company, still held it. They found the old honeydew cherry-tree standing; but some of its long-armed branches were going to decay. The odd, octagonal summer-house had not then fallen down.

They went up to the old room in the south-western angle, the green moreen chamber, as it had been called, where the Nine Worthies used to congregate, and where Irving concocted some choice bits of fun for the Salamagundi Club. And here was the great drawing-room where they disposed themselves to sociable naps on Sunday afternoons, the vine-covered porch on which they sat and smoked starlit evenings, and the grassy lawn over which they rambled. And now Mr. Washington Irving had been minister to Spain, and the guest of noted people in England and on the continent. He had won fame in more than one line, and hosts of appreciative readers.

Hanny could hardly realise it all, as she thought of the still handsome though rather delicate man, past middle life, gracious and dignified and kindly, sitting on his own porch at Sunnyside. She couldn't help going back to her first love, the old "Knickerbocker History" that seemed so real to her, even now.

The hand of improvement touched Cockloft Hall shortly after. The old summer-house was taken down; the famous cherry-tree, where the robins sang and reared their young for so many generations, succumbed to old age and wintry blasts; but she was glad she had seen it in its romantic halo.

They were not far from the upper railroad station then,--the old Morris and Essex that had stirred up the country people mightily when it first went thundering through quiet vales, and screaming out at little way-stations. They were just in time for a train. The sun had dropped down behind the Orange Mountain, though the whole west was alive with changeful gold and scarlet, melting to fainter tints, changing to indescribable hues and visionary islands floating in seas of amber and chrysoprase.

Hanny was quite tired, and leaned her head on Joe's shoulder. Ben and Delia were in front, and Mr. Whitney in the seat behind. They kept up an animated conversation, and thought it had been a delightful afternoon.

"And I feel like quoting a bit out of a letter of the Poet Gray," said Ben. "'Do you not think a man may be the wiser, I had almost said better, for going a hundred or two miles?' We have gone a tenth or so of that, and I feel ever so much richer as well as wiser. How is it with you, little Hanny?"

"I've been to the land of heroes," she replied, with a soft smile. "I shall insist that Jim must honour New Jersey in the future."

"Bravo!" said Mr. Whitney. "And there are many more heroes in it, and I think some heroines, that we must hunt up at a leisure day. There was Ann Halsted of Elizabethtown, who saw the British foraging expedition coming over from Staten Island, where the ship lay at anchor; and, donning a suit of her father's clothes, and taking an old musket, she went down to the only road they could come up, and blazed away at them with such intrepidity that the red-coats were alarmed lest a whole squad might be quartered there, and retreated in haste. It was said when Washington heard of it, he toasted the young lady. And there were the brave women of Valley Forge."

"And Moll Pitcher, don't forget her," put in Ben. "We in New York don't own quite everything."

They went rumbling into the tunnel, and Hanny started. She was used to the Harlem tunnel; but this came upon her unexpectedly.

"And there are three considerable tunnels," laughed Delia. "Yet there are people who believe the State is one vast sandy plain, and that the agricultural products are solely watermelons and peaches. Some one always stands ready to believe ridiculous things."

"Hereafter, we will take up the cudgels for New Jersey," declared Ben. "I am hungry as a bear! That rye bread was splendid, wasn't it! We must ask mother to make some, Joe."

Mr. Whitney begged them to stop to tea; but Doctor Joe thought they had better get home. They were late, of course; but Mrs. Underhill had a nice supper for them.

When Jim heard about Captain Alden, he half wished he had gone.

"But I had to come in and save the day, or we should have been beaten out of sight, so I was of some use," he announced.

Mrs. Underhill was put on her mettle by hearing about Mrs. Alden's rye bread; and the very next week she made some quite as splendid.

Hanny displayed her sprig of hawthorn,--real hawthorn.

"Are you sure it isn't artificial?" asked Jim, teasingly.

"An artificial branch can't grow," she said indignantly.

The next week at school, the girls' compositions had to be read aloud; and Hanny wrote about her tour, which received the highest commendation.

Delia came up to get the story of the man who had been on board the slave ship. She had a sketch of her own under way, and she wanted to make it very thrilling.

"And I shall have to give you half the money for it," she said laughingly.

It had a rather amusing hitch about its acceptance. The editor of the paper to which it was offered liked it extremely for its vigourous treatment, but begged her to use a masculine name, or simply initials, because it didn't sound like a young girl's story.

She told this over with great gusto, and showed her check for twenty dollars. But Mr. Underhill magnanimously refused to accept the half of it.

"I don't approve of so much mannishness in a girl," Mrs. Underhill said decisively. In her heart she wished Ben did not like her so well. But they really were more like two boys than lovers.

She took every occasion to make sharp little comments. Delia was rather careless in her attire; and while she dressed her heroines in the styles of their period, or in good taste, if they were modern, she had a rather mismatched look herself, except when she wore white, which she nearly always did evenings at home.

And she made home a really delightful place. She was quite ambitious for reception evenings. Mrs. Osgood was holding them for a literary circle. Of course she could not aim at anything as elegant as that; but newspaper men, young and old, were in the habit of dropping in upon Mr. Whitney quite informally. About ten, they might be asked down to the dining-room, where there was a dainty little spread, sometimes a Welsh rarebit that Dele could concoct to perfection. To be sure, they smoked the room blue; and Mr. Whitney often brought out a bottle of wine, as was the custom then; true, he waited until Delia and Nora had gone upstairs, and taken some of the younger men. Delia had made a strong protest against it, in her humourous way.

"I don't so much mind you old fellows, who, if you haven't sense enough not to addle your brains, never will have. But the young men oughtn't have the temptation thrust in their way. They think it looks smart and manly; and they make themselves so silly that I'm like a lump of ice to some of them. I like clear-brained people."

So upstairs they had music and recitations. Every young man of any elocutionary ability felt himself empowered to recite "The Raven," that much admired and sharply discussed poem by the Poet Poe, whose melancholy end still created much interest. Critical spirit ran high. One party could see only a morbid faculty heightened by opium and intoxicants; others found the spirit of true and fine genius in many of his efforts, and believed the circumstances of his life had been against him.

Ben was reading one evening in Doctor Joe's cosy library, enjoying the most capacious arm-chair, and improvising a foot-rest out of one not quite so luxurious. The Doctor had been making out bills, and feeling quite encouraged, perhaps lighter-hearted than he would when he had waited a year for the payment of some of them.

"Joe," began his brother, abruptly, "what do you suppose makes mother so bitter about Delia Whitney?"

"Bitter?" repeated Joe, in the tone of indecision people often use when a proposition or question takes them by surprise.

"Yes. We all used to be so nice and jolly together, and Delia likes us all so much. Hanny has such good times down there, with the old lady who sings such pretty old-fashioned songs, if her voice is rather cracked and tremulous; and Nora is bright and entertaining. But the other day mother wouldn't let her go; and she was dreadfully disappointed; and mother is not as cordial to Delia as she used to be. Dele spoke of it."

Ben looked straight at his brother, out of the frankest of eyes. It was Joe who changed colour.

"I hate things to go crosswise. And when something keeps you just a little ruffled up all the time--"

Ben drew his