University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

OF all that transpired during many ensuing weeks
Edna knew little. She retained, in after years,
only a vague, confused remembrance of keen
anguish and utter prostration, and an abiding
sense of irreparable loss. In delirious visions she saw her
grandfather now struggling in the grasp of Phlegyas, and
now writhing in the fiery tomb of Uberti, with jets of
flame leaping through his white hair, and his shrunken
hands stretched appealingly toward her, as she had seen
those of the doomed Ghibelline leader, in the hideous Dante
picture. All the appalling images evoked by the sombre
and embittered imagination of the gloomy Tuscan had
seized upon her fancy, even in happy hours, and were now
reproduced by her disordered brain in multitudinous and
aggravated forms. Her wails of agony, her passionate
prayers to God to release the beloved spirit from the tortures
which her delirium painted, were painful beyond expression
to those who watched her ravings; and it was with
a feeling of relief that they finally saw her sink into apathy—
into a quiet mental stupor—from which nothing seemed to
rouse her. She did not remark Mrs. Hunt's absence, or the
presence of the neighbors at her bedside. And one morning,
when she was wrapped up and placed by the fire, Mrs.
Wood told her as gently as possible that her grandmother
had died from a disease which was ravaging the country,
and supposed to be cholera. The intelligence produced no
emotion; she merely looked up an instant, glanced mournfully

around the dreary room, and, shivering slightly, drooped
her head again on her hand. Week after week went slowly
by, and she was removed to Mrs. Wood's house, but no improvement
was discernible, and the belief became general
that the child's mind had sunk into hopeless imbecility.
The kind-hearted miller and his wife endeavored to coax
her out of her chair by the chimney-corner, but she crouched
there, a wan, mute figure of woe, pitiable to contemplate;
asking no questions, causing no trouble, receiving no consolation.
One bright March morning she sat, as usual, with
her face bowed on her thin hand, and her vacant gaze fixed
on the blazing fire, when, through the open window, came
the impatient lowing of a cow. Mrs. Wood saw a change
pass swiftly over the girl's face, and a quiver cross the lips
so long frozen. She lifted her head, rose, and followed the
sound, and soon stood at the side of Brindle, who now furnished
milk for the miller's family. As the gentle cow recognized
and looked at her, with an expression almost human
in the mild, liquid eyes, all the events of that last
serene evening swept back to Edna's deadened memory,
and, leaning her head on Brindle's horns, she shed the first
tears that had flowed for her great loss, while sobs, thick
and suffocating, shook her feeble, emaciated frame.

“Bless the poor little outcast, she will get well now.
That is just exactly what she needs. I tell you, Peter, one
good cry like that is worth a wagon-load of physic. Don't
go near her; let her have her cry out. Poor thing! It
an't often you see a child love her grand-daddy as she
loves Aaron Hunt. Poor lamb!”

Mrs. Wood wiped her own eyes, and went back to her
weaving; and Edna turned away from the mill and walked
to her deserted home, while the tears poured ceaselessly
over her white cheeks. As she approached the old house
she saw that it was shut up and neglected; but when she
opened the gate, Grip, the fierce yellow terror of the
whole neighborhood, sprang from the door-step, where he

kept guard as tirelessly as Maida, and, with a dismal whine
of welcome, leaped up and put his paws on her shoulders.
This had been the blacksmith's pet, fed by his hand, chained
when he went to the shop, and released at his return; and
grim and repulsively ugly though he was, he was the only
playmate Edna had ever known; had gamboled around
her cradle, slept with her on the sheepskin, and frolicked
with her through the woods, in many a long search for
Brindle. He alone remained of all the happy past; and as
precious memories crowded mournfully up, she sat upon the
steps of the dreary homestead, with her arms around his
neck, and wept bitterly. After an hour she left the house,
and, followed by the dog, crossed the woods in the direction
of the neighborhood graveyard. In order to reach it
she was forced to pass by the spring and the green hillock
where Mr. and Mrs. Dent slept side by side, but no nervous
terror seized her now as formerly; the great present horror
swallowed up all others, and, though she trembled from
physical debility, she dragged herself on till the rude, rough
paling of the burying-ground stood before her. O dreary
desolation! thy name is country graveyard! Here no
polished sculptured stela pointed to the Eternal Rest beyond;
no classic marbles told, in gilded characters, the virtues
of the dead; no flowery-fringed gravel-walks wound
from murmuring waterfalls and rippling fountains to crystal
lakes, where trailing willows threw their flickering
shadows over silver-dusted lilies; no spicy perfume of purple
heliotrope and starry jasmine burdened the silent air;
none of the solemn beauties and soothing charms of Greenwood
or Mount Auburn wooed the mourner from her
weight of woe. But decaying head-boards, green with the
lichen-fingered touch of time, leaned over neglected mounds,
where last year's weeds shivered in the sighing breeze, and
autumn winds and winter rains had drifted a brown shroud
of shriveled leaves; while here and there meek-eyed sheep
lay sunning themselves upon the trampled graves, and the
slow-measured sound of a bell dirged now and then as cattle
browsed on the scanty herbage in this most neglected
of God's Acres. Could Charles Lamb have turned from the
pompous epitaphs and high-flown panegyrics of that English
cemetery, to the rudely-lettered boards which here
briefly told the names and ages of the sleepers in these narrow
beds, he had never asked the question which now
stands as a melancholy epigram on family favoritism and
human frailty. Gold gilds even the lineaments and haunts
of Death, making Père la Chaise a favored spot for fêtes
champêtres; while poverty hangs neither vail nor mask
over the grinning ghoul, and flees, superstition-spurred,
from the hideous precincts.

In one corner of the inclosure, where Edna's parents
slept, she found the new mounds that covered the remains
of those who had nurtured and guarded her young life;
and on an unpainted board was written in large letters:

“To the memory of Aaron Hunt: an honest blacksmith,
and true Christian; aged sixty-eight years and six months.”

Here, with her head on her grandfather's grave, and the
faithful dog crouched at her feet, lay the orphan, wrestling
with grief and loneliness, striving to face a future that
loomed before her spectre-thronged; and here Mr. Wood
found her when anxiety at her long absence induced his
wife to institute a search for the missing invalid. The
storm of sobs and tears had spent itself, fortitude took the
measure of the burden imposed, shouldered the galling
weight, and henceforth, with undimmed vision, walked
steadily to the appointed goal. The miller was surprised
to find her so calm, and as they went homeward she asked
the particulars of all that had occurred, and thanked him
gravely but cordially for all the kind care bestowed upon
her, and for the last friendly offices performed for her
grandfather.

Conscious of her complete helplessness and physical prostration,
she ventured no allusion to the future, but waited

patiently until renewed strength permitted the execution
of designs now fully mapped out. Notwithstanding her
feebleness, she rendered herself invaluable to Mrs. Wood,
who praised her dexterity and neatness as a seamstress,
and predicted that she would make a model housekeeper.

Late one Sunday evening in May, as the miller and his
wife sat upon the steps of their humble and comfortless-looking
home, they saw Edna slowly approaching, and surmised
where she had spent the afternoon. Instead of going
into the house she seated herself beside them, and, removing
her bonnet, traces of tears were visible on her sad but patient
face.

“You ought not to go over yonder so often, child. It is
not good for you,” said the miller, knocking the ashes from
his pipe.

She shaded her countenance with her hand, and after a
moment said, in a low but steady tone:

“I shall never go there again. I have said good-by to
every thing, and have nothing now to keep me here. You
and Mrs. Wood have been very kind to me, and I thank
you heartily; but you have a family of children, and have
your hands full to support them without taking care of me.
I know that our house must go to you to pay that old debt,
and even the horse and cow; and there will be nothing left
when you are paid. You are very good, indeed, to offer me
a home here, and I never can forget your kindness; but I
should not be willing to live on any body's charity; and
besides, all the world is alike to me now, and I want to get
out of sight of—of—what shows my sorrow to me every
day. I don't love this place now; it won't let me forget,
even for a minute, and—and—”

Here the voice faltered and she paused.

“But where could you go, and how could you make
your bread, you poor little ailing thing?”

“I hear that in the town of Columbus, Georgia, even
little children get wages to work in the factory, and I know

I can earn enough to pay my board among the factory
people.”

“But you are too young to be straying about in a strange
place. If you will stay here, and help my wife about the
house and the weaving, I will take good care of you, and
clothe you till you are grown and married.”

“I would rather go away, because I want to be educated,
and I can't be if I stay here.”

“Fiddlestick! you will know as much as the balance of
us, and that's all you will ever have any use for. I notice
you have a hankering after books, but the quicker you get
that foolishness out of your head the better; for books
won't put bread in your mouth and clothes on your back;
and folks that want to be better than their neighbors generally
turn out worse. The less book-learning you women
have the better.”

“I don't see that it is any of your business, Peter Wood,
how much learning we women choose to get, provided your
bread is baked and your socks darned when you want 'em.
A woman has as good a right as a man to get book-learning,
if she wants it; and as for sense, I'll thank you, mine is
as good as yours any day; and folks have said it was a
blessed thing for the neighborhood when the rheumatiz laid
Peter Wood up, and his wife, Dorothy Elmira Wood, run
the mill. Now, it's of no earthly use to cut at us women
over that child's shoulders; if she wants an education she
has as much right to it as any body, if she can pay for it.
My doctrine is, every body has a right to whatever they
can pay for, whether it is schooling or a satin frock!”

Mrs. Wood seized her snuff-bottle and plunged a stick
vigorously into the contents, and, as the miller showed no
disposition to skirmish, she continued:

“I take an interest in you, Edna Earl, because I loved
your mother, who was the only sweet-tempered beauty
that ever I knew. I think I never set my eyes on a prettier
face, with big brown eyes as meek as a partridge's; and

then her hands and feet were as small as a queen's. Now,
as long as you are satisfied to stay here I shall be glad to
have you, and I will do as well for you as for my own
Tabitha; but, if you are bent on factory work and schooling,
I have got no more to say; for I have no right to say
where you shall go or where you shall stay. But one thing
I do want to tell you: it is a serious thing for a poor, motherless
girl to be all alone among strangers.”

There was a brief silence, and Edna answered slowly:

“Yes, Mrs. Wood, I know it is; but God can protect me
there as well as here, and I have none now but Him. I
have made up my mind to go, because I think it is the best
for me, and I hope Mr. Wood will carry me to the Chattanooga
depot to-morrow morning, as the train leaves early.
I have a little money—seven dollars—that—that grandpa
gave me at different times, and both Brindle's calves belong
to me—he gave them to me—and I thought may be you
would pay me a few dollars for them.”

“But you are not ready to start to-morrow.”

“Yes, sir, I washed and ironed my clothes yesterday, and
what few I have are all packed in my box. Every thing is
ready now, and, as I have to go, I might as well start to-morrow.”

“Don't you think you will get dreadfully home-sick in
about a month, and write to me to come and fetch you
back?”

“I have no home and nobody to love me, how then can I
ever be home-sick? Grandpa's grave is all the home I
have, and—and—God would not take me there when I was
so sick, and—and—” The quiver of her face showed that
she was losing her self-control, and turning away, she took
the cedar piggin, and went out to milk Brindle for the last
time.

Feeling that they had no right to dictate her future
course, neither the miller nor his wife offered any further
opposition, and very early the next morning, after Mrs.

Wood had given the girl what she called “some good
motherly advice,” and provided her with a basket containing
food for the journey, she kissed her heartily several
times and saw her stowed away in the miller's covered cart,
which was to convey her to the depot. The road ran by
the old blacksmith's shop, and Mr. Wood's eyes filled as he
noticed the wistful, lingering, loving gaze which the girl
fixed upon it, until a grove of trees shut out the view;
then the head bowed itself and a stifled moan reached his
ears.

The engine whistled as they approached the depot, and
Edna was hurried aboard the train, while her companion
busied himself in transferring her box of clothing to the
baggage-car. She had insisted on taking her grandfather's
dog with her, and, notwithstanding the horrified looks of
the passengers and the scowl of the conductor, he followed
her into the car and threw himself under the seat, glaring
at all who passed and looking as hideously savage as the
Norse Managarmar.

“You can't have a whole seat to yourself, and nobody
wants to sit near that ugly brute,” said the surly conductor.

Edna glanced down the aisle, and saw two young gentlemen
stretched at full length on separate seats, eyeing her
curiously.

Observing that the small seat next to the door was partially
filled with the baggage of the parties who sat in front of it,
she rose and called the dog, saying to the conductor as she
did so;

“I will take that half of a seat yonder, where I will be in
nobody's way.”

Here Mr. Wood came forward, thrust her ticket into her
fingers, and shook her hand warmly, saying hurriedly:

“Hold on to your ticket, and don't put your head out of
the window. I told the conductor he must look after you
and your box when you left the cars; said he would

Good-by, Edna; take care of yourself, and may God bless
you, child.”

The locomotive whistled, the train moved slowly on, and
the miller hastened back to his cart.

As the engine got fully under way, and dashed around a
curve, the small, straggling village disappeared, trees and
hills seemed to the orphan to fly past the window; and
when she leaned out and looked back, only the mist-mantled
rocks of Lookout, and the dim purplish outline of the Sequatchie
heights were familiar.

In the shadow of that solitary sentinel peak her life had
been passed; she had gathered chestnuts and chincapins
among its wooded clefts, and clambered over its gray
boulders as fearlessly as the young llamas of the Parimé;
and now, as it rapidly receded and finally vanished, she
felt as if the last link that bound her to the past had suddenly
snapped; the last friendly face which had daily looked
down on her for twelve years was shut out forever, and she
and Grip were indeed alone, in a great struggling world of
selfishness and sin. The sun shone dazzlingly over wide
fields of grain, whose green billows swelled and surged
under the freshening breeze; golden butterflies fluttered
over the pink and blue morning-glories that festooned the
rail-fences; a brakeman whistled merrily on the platform,
and children inside the car prattled and played, while at
one end a slender little girlish figure, in homespun dress
and pink calico bonnet, crouched in a corner of the seat,
staring back in the direction of hooded Lookout, feeling that
each instant bore her farther from the dear graves of her
dead; and oppressed with an intolerable sense of desolation
and utter isolation in the midst of hundreds of her own race,
who were too entirely absorbed in their individual speculations,
fears, and aims, to spare even a glance at that solitary
young mariner, who saw the last headland fade from view,
and found herself, with no pilot but ambition, drifting rapidly
out on the great, unknown, treacherous Sea of Life, strewn

with mournful human wrecks, whom the charts and buoys
of six thousand years of navigation could not guide to a
haven of usefulness and peace. Interminable seemed the
dreary day, which finally drew to a close, and Edna, who
was weary of her cramped position, laid her aching head on
the window-sill, and watched the red light of day die in the
west, where a young moon hung her silvery crescent among
the dusky tree-tops, and the stars flashed out thick and fast.
Far away among strangers, uncared for and unnoticed, come
what might, she felt that God's changeless stars smiled down
as lovingly upon her face as on her grandfather's grave;
and that the cosmopolitan language of nature knew neither
the modifications of time and space, the distinctions of social
caste, nor the limitations of national dialects.

As the night wore on, she opened the cherished copy of
Dante and tried to read, but the print was too fine for the
dim lamp which hung at some distance from her corner.
Her head ached violently, and, as sleep was impossible, she
put the book back in her pocket, and watched the flitting
trees and fences, rocky banks, and occasional houses, which
seemed weird in the darkness. As silence deepened in the
car, her sense of loneliness became more and more painful,
and finally she turned and pressed her cheek against the
fair chubby hand of a baby, who slept with its curly head
on its mother's shoulder, and its little dimpled arm and hand
hanging over the back of the seat. There was comfort and
a soothing sensation of human companionship in the touch
of that baby's hand; it seemed a link in the electric chain
of sympathy, and, after a time, the orphan's eyes closed—
fatigue conquered memory and sorrow, and she fell asleep,
with her lips pressed to those mesmeric baby fingers, and
Grip's head resting against her knee.

Diamond-powdered “lilies of the field” folded their perfumed
petals under the Syrian dew, wherewith God nightly
baptized them in token of His ceaseless guardianship, and
the sinless world of birds, the “fowls of the air,” those

secure and blithe, yet improvident, little glaners in God's
granary, nestled serenely under the shadow of the Almighty
wing; but was the all-seeing, all-directing Eye likewise
upon that desolate and destitute young mourner who sank
to rest with “Our Father which art in heaven” upon her
trembling lips? Was it a decree in the will and wisdom
of our God, or a fiat from the blind fumbling of Atheistic
Chance, or was it in accordance with the rigid edict of
Pantheistic Necessity, that at that instant the cherubim of
death swooped down on the sleeping passengers, and
silver cords and golden bowls were rudely snapped and
crushed, amid the crash of timbers, the screams of women
and children, and the groans of tortured men, that made
night hideous? Over the holy hills of Judea, out of
crumbling Jerusalem, the message of Messiah has floated
on the wings of eighteen centuries: “What I do thou
knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.”

Edna was awakened by a succession of shrill sounds,
which indicated that the engineer was either frightened or
frantic; the conductor rushed bare-headed through the
car; people sprang to their feet; there was a scramble on
the platform; then a shock and crash as if the day of doom
had dawned—and all was chaos!