University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

Joanna Bailie.

The advertisement for a faithful and efficient
nurse, to take charge of a child three years old,
was speedily answered. It mattered little, indeed,
to Mrs. Wurth, whether a nurse were faithful and
efficient or not—so much did she dislike Catharine,
and so entirely was she engrossed with the little
stranger, as Mrs. Goodell called the baby—so that
the first applicant was almost sure of securing the
place.

It was the morning of the day after Miss Crum's
departure when Mrs. Wurth was informed that a
young woman had called to offer her services.

“Tell her to come up,” she said. “Waiting

women are so insolent! but the poor creatures have
not mind to comprehend the duties of their stations.”

“This is the person I spoke of,” said Margaret,
as Mrs. Goodell was again called, and turning toward
the candidate for her mistress's approval,
who lingered by the door, she added, “This is
Mrs. Wurth,” and then withdrew.

The lady surveyed her for a moment, in silence,
and pointing to a seat in a distant part of the room,
proceeded with her examination.

“Did you know Mrs. Catharine Wurth?”

“No, madam,” replied the girl, in a low and
melancholy tone, surveying meanwhile the elegant
furniture of the chamber with the air of one who
saw such displays for the first time, but who felt
neither admiration nor surprise.

“Are you fond of children?” was the next question,
asked in a sharp and dissatisfied tone which
brought the large sad looking eyes of the abstracted
young woman into contact with her own cold gray
ones.

“Yes—no—I was never much used to children;”
and she tightened her arms about a small wooden
box she held in her lap, which was, perhaps, a foot
in length, and four or five inches thick.

“If you are too fond, you will spoil the child;
that is all.”

“That will not be likely; I do not talk much;”
and she reached out her hand and with an air
of unconsciousness muffled the lace which edged
a little robe hanging near her, sighing as she
did so.

“Are you sick? there is no color in your face;”
and Mrs. Wurth began to look at her more curiously.

“No,” said the girl, “I am not sick; my bodily
health is very good.”

“And of course you have no mind.”

“Not much,” she said, writing on the box with
her finger.

“Good health—don't talk—not fond of children:
I think of nothing more I care to ask;” and the
mistress rang the housekeeper's bell. Margaret
appeared presently, and was directed to show the
young woman into the nursery and explain to her
the duties she would be expected to perform.

“Shall I carry your box?” asked the kind Mrs.
Goodell.

The offer was declined, and, pausing at the door,
she turned and said “You have arranged about the
terms, I suppose?”

“No, I thought nothing about it.”

“Why, Mrs. Wurth!”

But when the lady explained that it was not for
persons in her position to parley about dollars and

cents, the housekeeper bowed, the girl smiled, and
they withdrew together.

Arrived in the nursery, the young woman surveyed
it with the same indifferent curiosity with
which she had noted the chamber of the mistress.
“And this is where I am to sleep?” she remarked,
approaching the bed; and on being answered in
the affirmative, she lifted the pillow, and deposited
her box beneath it.

“What a beautiful child!” she said, for the first
time betraying some interest and animation, and,
stooping, she kissed her cheek, still wet with
tears the little Catharine had shed, having been
sent from her mama's room in punishment for saying
she loved Miss Crum; and, as she lay asleep
in careless gracefulness, the black curls along her
white forehead, her dimpled hands together, and
her face like a rosebud in the dew, she might
well call forth the exclamation of “Beautiful
child!”

“Indeed she is, young woman! and as sweet-tempered
as she is pretty. You are a young woman,
I see,” added Margaret, “and I don't know
what else to call you.”

“I am twenty, nearly,” said the girl, “and you
may call me Hagar.”

“Hagar!” repeated the housekeeper, whose ideas
of courtesy were not very nice, “you do look as if

you might have been in the wilderness and found
no water—so pale and melancholy like.”

“I have,” she replied, removing her simple straw
bonnet, and smoothing back her dark and heavy
tresses, as though to divert some paining thought.

“And how much wages do you expect—you
don't look able to do much;” said Margaret, who
was one of those persons constitutionally economical,
and as ready to exert her ability in another's
behalf as in her own.

“I am able to do all that will be required, but I
shall be satisfied with whatever they choose to give
me.”

“Why, dear me!” exclaimed Margaret, alarmed,
in turn for the interest of the girl, and anxious for
justice on both sides: “that will never do, my
child; you must make up your mind to ask what
is right, and Frederick Wurth is not the man to be
mean.”

“I do not care,” Hagar said; “anything you
think is right will satisfy me, if it be enough to
pay for the few things I shall need. Arrange it
for me, if you please.”

This Margaret readily promised to do, and she
then proceeded to an explanation of the various
and not very difficult duties of the nurse, who was
also to be in some sense a governess for the little
girl; and these instructions finished, she led her

into the “spare room,” where the memorable trunks
were opened, and directions were given for airing
the dress, brightening the silver, &c., as often at
least as once a month.

Hagar was an attentive though she seemed a
scarcely conscious listener, and she readily acquiesced
in every suggestion, and promised to fulfil as
nearly as possible every obligation thus imposed
on her.

And days and weeks followed, and with a quiet
step, a pale unsmiling face, and a voice monotonous
and low, but always gentle, she moved about, executing
with scrupulous exactness every task assigned
her. She rarely spoke, unless there was some
necessity that she should do so, nor did she manifest
an interest in anything she heard or saw. At
times, indeed, when the door of her room was
suddenly opened, she was observed to sit with the
little wooden box in her lap, or hastily to put it
away, and once or twice with signs of an emotion
she could not quite conceal; but there was no other
spell that could disturb the apparent slumber of
her heart, or change the placid and patient expression
of her countenance.

The little Catharine seemed to win more and
more her affection, but she rarely displayed in
words or actions any fondness for the child, who
was, however, quick to understand, as all children

are, the thousand nameless attentions through which
love finds its way from the heart, and more than
returned all that was given her by the silent nurse.

And Mrs. Eunice was quite content with the
change thus effected in her establishment; she was
seldom annoyed with the presence of the little girl,
or that of the successor of Miss Crum. She cared
little what became of her step-daughter, if she were
but kept from her sight. Hagar, she said, was a
dull mope, with very little mind, and that of a
quality to be moulded to her own will, should she
ever condescend to take any trouble about it; and
she was very fit and quite good enough for the
child.

But Hagar did not regard the supercilious and
even contemptuous haughtiness of her mistress;
she lived in her own world, in her own heart; and
there had histories, and ruins, and shining mountains
away in the past, more beautifully bright for
the wastes about the present; and cloud and darkness
in the future, scarcely pierced by any smouldering
fire of hope, faintly glowing amid the ashes
of nearly forgotten dreams.

The little girl grew strangely shy. Sometimes
she would timidly open the door of Mrs. Wurth's
room, but no kind word nor smile of encouragement
greeted her, and after a little wistful lingering
she would generally go away, wondering why

her mama never kissed her, as she did her little
sister.

“To be sure, the child is selfish and ill-tempered,”
said the lady to her friends, “but I always do by
her just as if she were my own.”

The philosophical lady was never conscious of
any sins of omission. If, with however much
reluctance and difficulty, she forced herself to the
performance of any common duty—if, in view of
possible consequences, she abstained from an ebullition
of angry feeling—she gave herself infinite
credit for heroical virtue; and she had never a
doubt that the easy processes with which she convinced
herself of the possession of much superfluous
goodness—of what some of the holy fathers might
have called a comfortable store of works of supererogation—would
be accepted in that unknown
world, where there undoubtedly existed an intense
longing for the presence of that daughter of Eve
who had made up a piece and a half of unbleached
muslin into shirts for Winnebagoes and Camanches.
She had an especial mental satisfaction in regarding
the manner with which she discharged the
office of a step-mother to little Kate. If she withheld
a blow from the fragile and beautiful creature,
she counted it as of the merit of a kiss bestowed;
and in fair truth this was not among the most
erroneous of her judgments: for, as the litanies

have it, from such kisses as she was apt to bestow
on the poor step-child, we might say, Father of
mercies, grant us deliverance!

When she said good-night to him, her father
turned his cheek to be kissed, because it had been
his own custom when young, and not that it gave
him any pleasure, or any thought. And at such
times Mrs. Eunice, too, touched her cold, unimpassioned
lips on her forehead, but without a
word, and with the manner of one performing a
necessary but unpleasant task.

If the fire was aglow on the hearth, and the
circle narrow around it, she made no widening for
the child, if she chanced to come in; nor would
she answer the timid look which asked if she were
welcome. Of course, she was not expected to
remain; there was no place for her; the verdict
was understood as well as if it were spoken, and
the step-daughter felt it as keenly, and was obedient
to it—lingering a moment, and withdrawing
silently as she came.

“You make everything pretty for little sister,”
she sometimes said, “and nothing for me. Won't
you make something for me?”

But Hagar, she was told, would do as well. So,
as she grew, she became lonely, and more and
more reserved—her heart heavy with its own love,
—for all the tenderness of her nature was repulsed,

and, like a stream forced into its fountain, struggled
for escape somewhere.

One evening Hagar found her sitting on the
floor, and playing with old letters. The child ran
toward her as she entered, and putting the papers
in her lap, asked her to read. She obeyed, mechanically,
and the first dingy bit of paper unfolded was
a receipt for the coffin of the dead mother; and the
next a brief note from a clergyman, in answer
to a request referring to her funeral sermon, and
signed “N. Warburton.” Tears, the first she
had shed in a long time, came to her eyes, and,
taking the child on her knees, she rocked her
to sleep, to the slow and heavy beating of her
heart.

Then she laid her softly in bed, kissed her,
wrapped the covering about her, and, standing
a little way off, seemed to contemplate her beauty
and untroubled slumber with a still and unutterable
sorrow.

While she was thus engaged, the housekeeper,
who often came up to see the nurse, opened the
door, and, approaching the bed, inquired if Catharine
were sick.

“No—she is quite well, I believe.”

“Why, then, do you look so sad, and watch as
if she were dying?”

“I cannot tell: but her beauty, and innocence,

and this sweet calmness of her rest, made me melancholy.”

“What a strange young woman you are! a
pretty, healthy little girl like that, lying fast asleep,
make you look as though you had no friend!—
really, I fear you have not your right reason.”

“True, she is very lovely, and gently asleep, and
I am faded, and worn, and weary: I cannot sleep as
she does. And if I look as if I had no friend, I
only look as I am.”

“Why, Hagar! it is only to-day that little Catharine
told me she loved you better than anybody
in the world, and then she climbed to the table,
where I was molding cakes, and said she loved me
too. And it made me happy that she did so, and
I made a little cake for her, and she was happy too.”

The good woman smiled as she spoke, and her
plain sunburnt features were transformed almost
into beauty, with the kind and amiable feeling
that was in her heart.

“But if she does love me,” said Hagar, “she
will grow away from me as she becomes older and
contrasts me with the gay and fortunate people
who will be about her.”

“It will be natural, when she is grown, if she
loves another better than you, indeed, and I am
sure I hope she will,” the housekeeper gaily answered,
as a pleasant fancy flashed across her brain.

“How did you learn to be so happy? I should
like to study your secret.”

“I never learned at all. I have no time to search
after happiness, and, therefore, I suppose it comes
to me. But I am a little tired, to-night—enough
to make me ready to sleep, and so, good night;
and I wish you may wake in the morning blithe
as a lark. We have much to be grateful for.”

“The cottager,” Hagar said, “who stays contented
on the side of the mountain, hears the birds
sing all day; and the glory of the sunset and the
sunrise makes him glad; but he who comes down
into the valleys where there are palaces, is walled
in at morning and evening, or closed about with
clouds; or, ascending to their summits, he treads
their shining snows alone.”

“What do you say?” asked Margaret.

“Nothing,” answered Hagar; and the two women
parted for the night.