University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
AUNT JERRY AND EDNA.

IF Miss Pepper had owned the truth, she was not
sorry to see Edna, and the feeling of loneliness
which all the morning had been tugging at her
heart, began to give way at once; but she was one of those
people who feel bound to “stick to their principles,”
whether right or wrong, and as one of her principles was
that her niece had behaved very shabbily and deserved punishing,
she steeled her heart against her, and putting on
her severest look and manner, said to her:

“Edna Browning, how dare you come here after disgracing
me so?”

This was the speech with which Miss Pepper had intended
to greet her niece if she ever came back unannounced,
and she had repeated it many times to herself, and to Tabby,
and to the teakettle boiling on the stove, and the clock
ticking upon the mantel, and from having said it so often,
she had come to repeat it without any great amount of
genuine indignation; but this Edna did not know, and the
eager, expectant look on her face died out in a moment as
she heard the words of greeting.

“Oh, aunty,” she cried, and her little hands clasped each
other more tightly as she took a step forward, “don't speak
so to me. I am so desolate, and I had not anywhere else to
go. I thought you would be lonely eating dinner alone,
and might be glad to see me.”

“Glad to see you after all you've done! You must think
me a saint, which I don't pretend to be,” was the harsh
reply, as Aunt Jerusha hurried past Edna, without noticing
the hand involuntarily stretched out toward her.

Going into her bed-room to lay her bonnet and cloak
aside, Miss Pepper's lip quivered a little as she said to herself,—

“The child has suffered, and no mistake, but I'm not going
to be talked over at once. She deserves a good lesson.
If she was a youngster, I'd spank her smartly and be done
with it, but as I can't do that I shall carry a stiff upper lip a
spell, till she's fairly cowed.”

With this intention Miss Pepper returned to the attack,
and once having opened her volley of abuse,—reproof she
called it,—she did not know where to stop, and said far more
than she really felt or had at first any intention of saying.
The runaway match with a mere boy; the meanness, aye
the dishonesty of breaking the contract with the principal of
the seminary, and leaving that four hundred dollars for some
one else to pay; the littleness of wearing jewelry which a

stranger must pay for, and the wickedness of decoying a
young man into marriage, and thereby causing him to lose
his life, and making her a murderess, were each in turn
brought up and eloquently handled; while Edna stood with
bowed head and heard it quietly, until her aunt reached the
ring, and asked if she was not ashamed to wear it. Then it
was that the “pale-gray look came over her face and the
steel-gray look in her eye,” as she took the golden band
from her finger, and laid it away in her purse, saying in a
voice Miss Pepper would never have recognized as Edna's,—

“You are right, aunty. I am a murderess, and I ought
not to wear this ring until I have paid for it myself, and I
never will.”

Something in her tone and manner stopped Miss Pepper,
and for a moment she gazed curiously at this young girl who
seemed to expand into a dignified, self-assured woman as
she drew off her wedding ring, and, putting it away from her
sight, walked quietly to the window, where she stood looking
out upon the dull November sky from which a few snowflakes
were beginning to fall. Miss Pepper was puzzled,
and for an instant seriously contemplated taking back a part,
at least, of what she had said, but that would not have been
in accordance with her theory of managing young people,
and so she contented herself with doing instead of saying.
She made the kind of gravy for the turkey which she remembered
Edna liked, and put an extra lump of butter in the
squash, and brought from the cellar a tumbler of cranberry
jelly and a pot of peach preserves, and opened a bottle of
pickled cauliflower, and warmed one of her best mince pies,
and made black tea instead of green, because Edna never
drank the latter, and then, when all was ready, said, in a
half-conciliatory tone, “Come now, the victuals is ready.”

Then Edna came away from the window and took her
seat at the table, and took the heaped-up plate offered to

her, and made some casual remarks about the price of
butter, and asked if Blossom gave as much milk as ever, but
she did not eat. She had been very hungry, but the hunger
was gone now, and so she sipped her tea and toyed with her
fork, and occasionally put it to her lips, but never with anything
on it which Aunt Jerusha could see. In short, the
dinner was a failure; and when it was over Aunt Jerry removed
her turkey nearly as whole as when it went upon the
table, and carried back her cranberries and peaches untouched,
and felt as if she had been badly used that her dinner
was thus slighted. Edna did not offer to help her as
she cleared the dinner away, but sat with folded hands looking
out to where a brown, blighted rose-bush was gently
swayed by the wind.

Once when Aunt Jerry could endure the silence no longer,
she said:

“What under the sun do you see out there? What are
you looking at?”

“My future life,” Edna replied, without so much as turning
her head, and Aunt Jerry gave an extra whisk to her dish
towel as she went on washing her dishes.

As it began to grow dark, Miss Pepper brought out her
candle, and was about to light it, when Edna started suddenly,
and turning her white, stony face toward her aunt, said:

“Don't light the candle now. I like the dark the best. I
want to talk with you, and can do it better if I do not see
your face.”

There was a ring in the voice which puzzled Aunt Jerry a
little, but she humored her niece, and felt glad that at last
Edna was going to talk. But she was not quite prepared for
what followed when her niece, who had suddenly outgrown
all fear of her aunt, spoke of some things in the past, which,
had they been different, might have borne a different result
and have kept her from doing what she had done.

“I believe you meant well, Aunt Jerry,” she said, “and
perhaps some would say you did well. You gave me a home
when I had none; gave me food and clothes, and taught me
many things; but for the one great thing which children
need the most and miss the most, I did hunger so terribly. I
wanted some love, auntie; some petting, some kind, caressing
act which should tell me I was more to you than the
poor orphan whom you took from charity. But you never
gave it, never laid your hand upon me fondly, never called
me a pet name, never kissed me in your life, and we living
together these dozen years. You chide me for turning so
readily to a stranger whom I had only known for a few
months, and preferring him to my own flesh and blood.
Auntie, in the few months I knew Charlie Churchill, he gave
me more love, more kindness than I had ever known from
you in the twelve years we lived together, and when he asked
me to go with him, as I did, I hesitated, for I knew it was
wrong; but when your letter came threatening to bring me
home, the thought of the long, dreary winter during which
scarcely a kind, pleasant word would be spoken to me, was
more than I could bear, and so I went with Charlie.”

Edna paused a moment with the hope that what she had
said might bring some expression of regret from the woman
sitting so straight, and prim, and silent in the chair near by.
But it did not, and as Edna could not see her face she never
dreamed of the effect her words had produced, and how the
great lumps were swelling in her aunt's throat, as that peculiar
woman forced down the impulse of her better nature
which did prompt her to say she had been to blame. To
confess herself in error was a hard thing for Miss Pepper to
do, and glad that the darkness prevented her niece from seeing
the tear which actually rolled down her cheek, she maintained
a perfect silence while Edna told her more of Charlie,
and of her life in Chicago, and her indebtedness to Roy, and

her resolve to cancel it as well as to pay for her education if
her aunt would wait patiently till she could earn it.

“I am very tired,” she said, when she had finished her
story. “I rode all night, you know, and if you don't mind
being left alone so early, I think I'll go to bed. I shall find
my room the same as ever, I suppose.”

Then Aunt Jerry arose and struck a light, and without
looking at her niece, said to her: “Hadn't you better go up
to the front chamber? It's a nicer bed, you know; nicer
every way. I guess you better try it.”

This was a great concession on Aunt Jerry's part, and
Edna was touched by it, but she preferred her old room, she
said; she should not feel at home elsewhere, and taking the
candle from Aunt Jerry's hand she said good-night, and went
up the steep, narrow stairs she had so often climbed in childhood.
As she reached the landing, Aunt Jerry called after
her:

“You'll find a blanket in the chest if there ain't clothes
enough. You better take it, any way, for it is cold to-night.”

This was another olive branch, and Edna accepted it as
such, and took the blanket more to please her aunt than because
she needed it. Her room was the same as ever, with
the exception of a few rolls of carpet-rags which were lying
in one corner, and at which Edna looked with a kind of nervous
dread, as if they had been cut and sewed by her own
unwilling hands. It was too dark outside to distinguish more
than the faint outline of the tombstones in the graveyard,
but Edna singled out her father's, and putting out her candle
knelt down by the low window and gazed long and earnestly
at the spot where her father slept. She was bidding his
grave farewell, it might be forever, for her resolution was
taken to go away from there, and find a place among entire
strangers.

“It is better so,” she said, as she leaned her hot forehead

against the cool window0pane. “'Tis better so, and father
would bid me go, if he could speak. Oh, father, if you had
not died, all this might have been spared to me.”

Then, as she remembered her other Father, her Heavenly
one, and His promise to the orpha, she clasped her hands
over her face and prayed earnestly for His protection and
blessing upon her wherever she might go. And then she
thought of Aunt Jerry, and asked that God would bless her,
too, and if in what she had said that night there was any
thing harsh and wrong, He would forgive her for it, and help
her to make amends. Her prayers ended, she crept into
her bed, which seemed, with its softness and warmth, to embrace
and hold her as a mother might have done, and so embraced
and held, she soon fell away to sleep, and forgot all
that was past, and ceased to dread what might be in store
for her.

Meantime Aunt Jerry sat in the room below, with her feet
on the stove hearth, her hands locked together around her
knees, and her head bent forward until her forehead almost
touched her dress. Perhaps she maintained this attitude to
accommodate Tabby, who had mounted upon her back and
nestled across her neck, and perhaps she did it the better to
think intently, for she was thinking of all Edna had said to
her with reference to her childhood, and wondering if, after
all, her theory was wrong, and children were like chickens,
which needed brooding from the mother hen.

“But sakes alive, how was I to know that,—I, a dried-up
old maid, who never had a baby of my own, and never held
one either, except that young one of Mrs. Atwood's that I
stood sponsor for, and almost dropped when I presented it?
If things had turned out different, why, I should have been
different.”

And with a little sigh as she thought of the yellow brocade
in the chest upstairs, Miss Pepper put Tabby from her neck,

and bringing out her prayer-book read the Gospel and Epistle
and Collect for the day, and then kneeling by her chair
said the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, and a few words of
her own improvising, to the effect that if she was too hard
the Lord would thaw her out and make her softer, and help
her somehow to make it up to Edna, and then she went to
bed.

Edna was hungry the next morning, and did full justice to
the cold roast turkey and nicely browned potato, and when
her aunt asked if she would like some cranberry jelly, she said
she would, for she felt that her aunt wanted her to have it, and
did not begrudge the journey to the cellar in quest of it.
There was but little talk on either side, until Edna asked if
the stage went out the same hour as usual, and announced
her intention of going away. Then Aunt Jerry spoke her
mind again, and said Edna “was a fool to go sky-larkin' off
alone, when she was welcome there, and could get plenty of
scholars too, if that was what she wanted;” and she even
went so far as to say “they might as well let bygones be bygones,
and begin anew, and see if they couldn't pull together
a little better.”

But Edna was not to be persuaded from her purpose. She
did not know exactly where she was going, she said, but
would let her aunt know when she was located, and if she
did not succeed she might perhaps come back.

“That is, if you will let me. This is all the home I have
at present, you know,” she added, looking wistfully up in
her aunt's face, as if for some token that she was cared for
by that undermonstrative woman, who scolded the driver for
bringing in so much snow and mud when he came for Edna's
trunk, and scolded the boy who came to help him for leaving
the door open, and did it all to hide what she really felt
at parting with her niece.

“Of course I'll let you. I'd be a heathen to turn out my

own flesh and blood,” she said, in reply to Edna's remark,
and then as the driver's shrill “all ready” was heard, she
gave her hand to Edna, who would have kissed her but for
the forbidding look upon her face, and the pin between her
teeth.

Aunt Jerry went with her to the stage, and stood looking
on until she was comfortably seated, and then, as the driver
mounted to his box and gathered up his reins, she said, “Wall,
good-by again,” with a tone in her voice which made Edna
throw back her veil to look at her more closely. But the
horses, obedient to the lash, had started forward, and Aunt
Jerry was left, feeling more alone than she had ever before
felt in her life.

“I wonder if she would have staid if I'd been more outspoken,
and told her how much I really wanted her?” Aunt
Jerry said, as she returned to the house and began to put
it to rights. “But that's the way with me. I can't say
what I feel. I guess I'm ugly, if I do belong to the Church.
I let him go when a word would have kept him, only I was
too proud to speak it; and now I've lost her, just as I was
beginning to know that I did like her some. I wish she
knew how near crying I was when she said so queer-like,
`You never kissed me, auntie, in my life, and we living together
these dozen years.' Don't she know I ain't the kissing
sort? Still, I might have kissed her when a little child,
and not hurt myself.”

She was dusting the clock and the mantel, and when she
came to the little picture in the rustic frame, she stopped,
and continued her soliloquy:

“I wonder if she noticed that. If she did, she must
know I think something of her, if I never did kiss her, and
make a fuss. The likeness ain't much like her, any way,
but still it's her picture, and I've half a mind,—yes, I b'lieve
I will;” and reaching up her hand, the strange woman, who

in twelve years had never shown her orphan niece a single
mark of genuine affection, took down that photograph and
kissed it.

That was a great deal for her to do, and being done, she
began to feel as if she had made atonement for all that had
been wrong in herself heretofore, and that Edna really ought
now to come back. But Edna had gone, and as the days
went by and brought no news of her, Aunt Jerry began to
grow indignant, and finally relieved himself by writing to Mrs.
Churchill the letter we have seen. Roy's reply and the
check threw her into a violent rage, and after letting him
know her mind, she washed her hands, as she said, of the
whole of them, and settled back into her lonely life, sharper,
harsher than before, and more disposed to find fault with her
clergyman and battle with his decided tendency to High
Church and Ritualism.