 | Pictures of country life |  |
SARAH MORRIS.
Sarah Morris was termed a smart girl by everybody who
knew her, and her acquaintance was only limited by the number
of people in the neighborhood. And with all she was a
favorite, as she deserved to be, for she was blessed with a
large share of plain, common sense; and beneath the fun
and frolic that always sparkled on the surface of her nature
there was a quick intelligence, a singularly happy tact, and a
generous amiability.
She was not pretty, but there was a heartiness in the grasp
of her little black hand, and a cordiality in the brightness that
illuminated her little, dark face, when it approached you, that
made you forget her plainness; for plain she certainly would
have been to critical, or indifferent eyes, if such could have
looked upon her.
There was a rough honesty in her nature that no refined
instinct counteracted the expression of, and that ears polite
would have required to be toned down; but with the uncultivated
people among whom she dwelt, it was, perhaps her most
potent charm. Wherever there was funeral, or church, or
quilting, wedding or sickness, there came a sprightly little
body, black-handed, and black-haired, and black-eyed, laughing
or weeping, as the case might require, active with words
and flirting with parasol and fan—rustling and stirring,
and winning all eyes from their tears or their devotions—and
that was Sarah Morris.
Her horse was the gayest and the best groomed of any one
in the neighborhood, the cushion of her saddle of the deepest
crimson, and its stirrup of the most elaborate silver plate. No
sober filly for her! and many a time her scorn and derision
came in the shape of a cut across the flank of the more gentle
and unsuspecting one her neighbor rode.
But when the offender was discovered nobody was ever
offended, and the quick spring of the animal and the jolt of
the startled rider were sure to be followed by a laugh and a
good-humored exclamation.
She might catch the chair from beneath her grandmother
and send her headlong to the floor, but nothing was thought
of it by anybody, except that it was Sally Morris's way. She
might laugh in meeting so loud as to make half the heads in
the congregation turn towards her, but still it was Sally's way,
and no face was so rigedly solemnized that it would not relax
when it saw the black eyes of Sally twinkling above her fan.
How lightly she used to spring upon the back of her dapple-grey,
spurning the assistance of the many hands reached out to
assist her, and how proudly she galloped away, sending a cloud
of dust in the faces of her admirers, for their worshipful pains!
“Touch us gently, gentle time,” was a song that Sarah had
no inward prompting to sing. She was equal, she felt, to all
changes and to all chances; and, in truth, her little black
hands, with the assistance of her shining black eyes, could
well make their way through opposing combinations.
There was nothing to which she could not turn her talents,
from raking in the hay-field and dropping corn, to the braiding
of a straw bonnet and the fashioning of a silk gown; and a
good deal of broad, brilliant taste had Sarah, as was always
manifested in the gay colors and striking contrasts she wore.
The black hair under her red ribbons, the bright blue petticoat,
and the flaunting rainbow sash gave her quite the air of
some half-civilized queen, as, on her gallant grey, she
leaped fences and divided hedges and underbrush as lightly as
the rye-stalks.
The glee of the children was doubled when they saw her, and
breathlessly they hurried into the house to communicate the
fact of her having ridden past as a piece of most stirring news.
The young men paused from their occupations in the wayside
fields as she rode by, and were ready to throw off their enthusiasm
by shouts and hurrahs for anything, at any moment, for
hours thereafter.
Doubtless they would have sighed many a time, if they had
not felt the utter futility of such an expenditure of breath, as
she disappeared behind the next hill, or as the woods shut her
in.
No love-lorn maiden dare show her pining cheek in Sarah's
presence, for her laugh of scorn and derision was never done
ringing from one to another of her young acquaintances.
“What fools you are,” she would say, “to put your hearts
out of your own keeping, and then cry to have them back;
just as if any bear of a man would take as good care of them
as yourselves!
“I wish some of your charmers would steal my heart,” she
used to say; “I'd show you how long they would keep it in torment.
expect the sky to fall next.
“Just as if all the goodness in the world could be in any
one man, supposing him even to be `all your fancy's painted
him.' Why, bless me, the least atom of common sense will
teach you what dunces you are!
“Let me tell you, a feather bed, and a blanket, and a good
dinner are decidedly more cheerful to think about than that
little dark place you will get into soon enough. Come, pluck
up a little courage, and show the poor, vain coxcomb that
roses can grow in your cheeks independent of his planting.”
This was her softest manifestation of sympathy and comfort,
and if the disease yielded not to this method she was apt to
resort to severer applications.
She would offer to gather willows, and speak in solemnly low
and affected tones of her friends' grievances, treading on tiptoe
and carefully shutting out the light—singing hymns of awful
dolor, and in all ways possible exaggerating into the ludicrous
the miserable suffering of which she had no conception; healthful,
light-hearted creature that she was.
Sarah's mother was a common-sense, common-place, hard-working,
hard-feeling old woman, out of whose nature the
sweetness of human sympathy seemed to have died. A countless
number of wrinkles in her cheeks and forehead cradled an
everlasting expression of care, and her little stumpy feet, trotted
up and down, and down and up, and in and out, and out
and in, from morning till night, and from year's end to year's
end. She never went from home and never stopped toiling
long enough to contemplate the accumulations of her industry.
There was no holiday for her, and no rest except in the
variations of her work. She seldom spoke, except it were to
Job, her husband, and never to him unless to scold.
She had probably married because four hands could do more
work than two.
But why Job had married her was still more questionable—
he had been crazy at one time of his life, and it may have been
during that malady, or induced by it; for certain it is, no mortal
ever saw any manifestation of love for the other on the part
of either of them; but though it would be curious to inquire
into the origin of their relation, our story leads us forward, not
backward, and our interest in the latter direction must be
sacrificed.
Enough that Sarah's father was a hardy, hen-pecked old
man, who did the drudgery, and was kept, or kept himself,
mostly out of sight.
Whether he was ever quite sane, nobody could determine,
as he was never heard to say enough, and never seen sufficiently
to warrant a conclusive judgment. If he appeared at
all, it was only in dodging from one concealment to another;
and if he spoke at all, it was merely in reply to some order
from Sarah or Sarah's mother.
Sarah herself has been known to say, in her wildest moods,
that he had vacant rooms in the garret.
No one ever thought of saying Mr. Morris; it was all old
Job, and the old man Morris; and the greatest deference he
ever received was to be called Sarah Morris's father, as, by
some of her more favored admirers, he has been know to be.
Even his house was not his own, nor his grounds; both were
considered and designated as Sarah Morris's, and in truth, and
of all.
There remains yet another individual, who, together with her
parents and herself, comprised all the household—this was a
youth named Elijah Burbank. In his boyhood he had been
indentured to Job Morris, and in his young manhood, as he
always had been, was known by the opprobrious epithet of
Sarah's bound boy.
He was slight and delicate, with hands as small as those of
his mistress, and much fairer; a face of extreme refinement,
and a mouth of that peculiarly sensitive expression that is apt
to awaken the tenderest sympathies in the opposite sex—and
the derision of men. His blue eyes and soft flaxen hair completed
the effeminacy of his appearance, and made his manhood
seem farther away by some years than it really was.
It was the evening of the day that Lije was twenty-one years
old that Sarah sat alone on the high south porch, known as the
two-story porch. There was no look-out from it except towards
a near and thick wood, and, moreover, it was pretty closely
curtained by trumpet flower and creeper vines; so the view,
such as it was, was considerably obstructed: and why she
chose this retired position was perhaps hardly known to herself,
for her custom was to recreate of evenings on the steps
of the front portico—a position commanding a mile-length view
of the high road.
Out upon this porch opened the door of Elijah's room, and
presently out of Elijah's room came with a soft step Elijah himself.
He was dressed in his new freedom suit; and as he stood
blushing in the moonlight, with one hand hiding itself in his
bashfulness and tremor that she could in no wise account for.
“What do you want, Lije?” she said directly. She meant by
her tone to demand why he was there, but somehow it yielded
concession and solicited confidence.
“I want you,” Elijah answered timidly, and looking down.
Sarah laughed a little foolishly, but recovered herself quickly,
and answered, playfully extending her hand, “Well, here I
am, take me.”
Elijah took the hand in earnest thus offered him in jest,
and bent his head so low over it that his lips more than touched
it.
“Nonsense!” cried Sarah, withdrawing her hand, “if you
are very hungry, Lije, you will find something in the cupboard
more eatable than my hand.”
Poor Lije! abashed and trembling for what he had done,
dropped on one knee and said, “I only wished, Miss Sarah, to
thank you for all your goodness to me, and if I—if I kissed
your hand, it was because I could not help it.”
“And if I box your ears,” replied Sarah, “it is because I
can't help it;” so saying she affected to slap his face, but it
was done so softly with the tips of her fingers that Lije did not
suffer any physical pain. “Besides,” continued Sarah, “what
do you want to thank me for? I have done nothing to
deserve your thanks that I know of.”
“Why, Miss Sarah, do you forget these nice new clothes,
and then your goodness to me all the while for so many years?”
“No, Lije, I don't forget that as my bound boy I was bound
to give you a freedom suit; and, by the by, I suppose you have
come to remind me that you are free.”
“No Sarah, not that; I am not free—I am your slave, and
always shall be.” He bent over the unresisting hand again
and kissed it again; but Sarah's pride, which as yet was the
strongest feeling of her nature, was aroused by this time, and
rising she said, “I am glad to know I have a slave; but how
do you think you will like Mr. Hilton for a master?”
Poor Lije said he did not know, and went despondently away.
The Mr. Hilton alluded to was an old admirer of Sarah's;
and though it was suspected by Elijah that she had refused
him more than once, he was none the less annoyed by the
intimation she threw out. So, as I said, he went moping away,
and putting his hand in a cutting-box designed to chop oats
for cattle, made as if he would cut it off, almost hoping that by
accident he might do so, and that Sarah would then at least
pity him. He felt as if his brain had undergone some fearful
shattering, and for his life he could not tell whether Mr. Hilton
owned a thousand or fifteen hundred acres of land, nor could he
determine whether he owned two flouring mills and a saw mill,
or two saw mills and a flouring mill; but he was fully conscious
that in whatever shape his riches lay, he was a rich man,
and that the black shadow of his big stone dwelling-house
fell right over him, and would not even suffer him to see the
sunshine. His heart received a most thrilling telegraph presently
in the voice of Sarah calling him in a tone softer than
its wont. She had spread the table with unusual care, and was
herself waiting to serve the tea.
The little that was said during the meal had no reference to
what both were thinking of. Sarah praised the new clothes
at length, and intimated that Elijah would be leaving her for
some better place
Elijah remembered that she had called him her bound boy,
and, drawing his manhood up to its full height, replied that he
should try to find some place to live where he was not despised,
and that the farm of his mistress, big as it was, did not comprise
the whole world.
Sarah replied, with a proud toss of her head, that she hoped
he would not only find a nice place to live, but that he would
get just such a wife as he desired, and she supposed that
would be some one very unlike herself.
“Unlike you in some respects, certainly,” replied Elijah,
rising from the supper of which he had partaken very sparingly.
Sarah began to sing gaily as she tossed the dishes together,
Since nobody cares for me.”
Elijah whistled his way to his own room, but returning
directly, threw a letter into Sarah's lap, saying he had forgotten
to deliver it sooner, and was especially sorry for it, as it was
probably from her lover, Mr. Hilton.
Sarah replied that she hoped so, though nothing was farther
from probabilities, and she knew it. It was addressed to her
mother, and in the writing of her mother's only sister, announcing
her severe and protracted illness, and begging her sister to
come and see her. Sarah did not that night go through the
formality of making the reception of the letter known to her
mother, but having broken the seal and read it, retired to her
own room, whether to think of Elijah or of her far-away relative
was known only to herself.
Sometimes in the course of the following day Mrs. Morris was
fifty dollars were demanded of Job, and in a humor of especial
courtesy, Sarah informed him that she was going to visit aunt
Ruth, and that her return was uncertain.
When it became known to Elijah that she was actually going
from home, and for an indefinite time, the little pride that had
been developed in him wilted away, and he drooped like a plant
that lacks its proper nutriment. “If you are going away,”
he said one day to Sarah, “I will remain here till you come
back, for what would become of Job if both of us were
away?”
“Very well,” said Sarah, “don't let the old man suffer;”
but she was much more particular and earnest in her directions
for the care of her favorite riding horse. She need not to have
given any orders about anything that was hers, and Elijah in a
trembling voice could not help telling her so. Sarah tried to
laugh, but it was sorrowful laughter, and turning her face
away asked him—she had always ordered him till them—if he
would bring from the harvest-field a nice bundle of rye straw.
An hour had not elapsed when it was laid at her feet.
Sarah made no parting calls, and left no messages for her
friends—“if I die,” she said, “what good will it have done
that they smiled over me when I went away; and if I live to
come back, why we shall be just as glad to see each other as if
we had a formal parting.”
Up to the last moment of her remaining at home, poor Elijah
had promised his trembling heart one more interview with her,
and what was his disappointment and humiliation to find, as he
sought to join her on the portico the evening previous to her
departure, that she was already engaged in conversation with
in his head as of mill-wheels, and all that night he
dreamed one dream over and over, which was that Sarah had
lost all her proud spirit and was a pale-cheeked prisoner of Mr.
Hilton's gloomy old stone house.
The miller had been married once, and report said the
gloomy old stone house had chilled the lost wife to death; but
Sarah only laughed when this was told her, and replied that if
she were born to be chilled to death she would not die any other
way; to the miller himself she was capricious as an April day,
now shining upon him in smiles, now frowning like a thundercloud;
but he was an obstinate prosecutor of his purposes, and
in no wise awed by a cloud, never so black though it were. It
was a matter of interesting speculation among Sarah's acquaintance
whether or not she would ever marry the miller; but it
was the opinion of the shrewdest of them that she was merely
dallying with him as the cat does with the mouse, and that
when the mood suited she would toss him aside contemptuously
and forever.
Probably such was her purpose; but she loved power, and as
almost all her young friends would have been proud of his
attentions, she exercised through him a pretty extensive
supremacy.
To Elijah, the big, silent house of Job Morris was desolate
enough when Sarah was gone—it seemed that the noon would
never come, and when it was noon that it would never be night.
Job worked silently on the same, and Sarah's mother scolded
and worked the same, but Sarah's wheel was still and Sarah's
busy feet were not to be seen, and so to Elijah there was
nothing worth listening to in the world.
All the first evening long he sat on the stoop and talked with
Sarah's mother, albeit she scolded incessantly; it was now and
then about Sarah that she scolded, and to hear Sarah's name
pronounced in any way was a sort of miserable happiness to
the poor young man. He could not prevent himself from
speaking of the time when she would come back, as if it
brought it any nearer, and of talking of places greatly more
distant, as though that brought her nearer.
She had bidden him adieu with some careless jest about the
pain of parting, and he could not avoid recalling the tone and
the manner over and over, and of trying to find some latent
meaning that no one else could have found. Who but one who
is famishing for hope, can judge of his surprise and joy, when
on entering his room for the night, he discovered lying on his
bed, where Sarah had laid it, the new rye-straw hat she had
braided for him. It was trimmed with a bright blue ribbon,
and lined daintily with silk of the same color, and with this
slight and perishable foundation to rest all his future upon, we
will leave him till such time as he shall again cross the path of
our story.
The husband of the aunt Ruth, at whose door Sarah found
herself one morning in June, was a man of considerable cultivation
and some wealth. He was a dealer in furs, and
employed, in one way and another, a good many men, in one
of whom only we are particularly interested—this person's
name was Rodney Hampton. He was exceedingly handsome,
and Sarah thought his full auburn beard, penetrating blue eyes,
and polished manners contrasted with every one she had known
so as to throw them altogether in the shade. Aunt Ruth's
home was a comfortable and even pretty one, situated in one
and nicety about it that, to Sarah's uncultivated ideas, appeared
the height of style and elegance. Aunt Ruth was an invalid,
delighted with the sprightly companionship of her niece, and
rendered doubly dependent by the absence of her husband.
Rodney Hampton was this man's most confidential clerk, and
necessarily a good deal at his house—oftener still from choice,
after the arrival of the romping niece. She was speedily
known to half the inhabitants of the town, and a universal
favorite, as she was at home.
Is it any wonder if an impulsive, careless girl, as was Sarah,
should never have stopped to inquire who Rodney was, nor
whence he came, and how, more and more, the interest
awakened by her first introduction to him was settling down
into her heart? or if it be a wonder, why it must remain so?
for certain it is she did not inquire till she awoke one day to
find that only within the circle of his influence was there any
world for her. They rode together into the country, and came
home under the starlight and by the light of their own imaginations;
they walked together in the suburbs of the town, and
found interest in every ragged urchin or thorny shrub in their
path; they sat together in Aunt Ruth's pretty parlor and
smiled unutterable things.
By degrees the ruder portion of Sarah's rusticity became
toned down, and her extravagant taste subdued itself to a more
artistic fashion, so that when she had been with Aunt Ruth six
months she was regarded as quite the belle of the little city of
which she was an inhabitant.
And as the fall came on, not an evening passed that did not
find Rodney conversing with his gay-hearted favorite in tones
in such fond way as certainly contradicted indifference.
And to Sarah's credulous belief indifference was not only contradicted,
but admiration, respect, love—all proclaimed with
more than trumpet-tongued assurance.
He was a fine singer, and many a romantic song made
sweet promises to her heart, and many a meaning glance
confirmed the promises.
Every pretty cottage in the neighborhood had, at one time
and another, been selected as the future home of our lovers,
when there came one day to Sarah a letter, written in the
trembling and unpracticed hand of the almost forgotten Elijah.
It told her how much her mother wished her to come home;
how much, indeed, she needed her, and enlarged pathetically
on the miserable way the good woman was wearing off her
feet; it told, too, how much everybody wanted to see her, and
said how dreary and desolate the neighborhood was without
her; it even hinted that Mr. Hilton was pining away, and for
sake of pity of him, if for nothing else, she must come.
“The old house here seems lonesome as the barn,” urged
Elijah, but he did not say whether it were thus lonesome to
him, or to whom. “Your beautiful grey,” he concluded, “is
looking handsome, and is impatient to bear you about as he used
to do. Oh, Miss Sarah, for everybody's sake you must come!”
The funds for defraying the expenditure of the homeward
journey were inclosed, and when Sarah had finished reading
she was more sorrowful than she had been for a long while.
The door of an old and less enchanting world was again
open, and she saw that she must leave her soft dreams for
hard realities, for she had been used to hard work and hard
than a child should feel for its parents, why, they had felt less
for her than parents should feel for their child.
In reference to again meeting Elijah, she could not herself
understand the nature of her feelings—there was so much of
pity and tenderness, so much of protection on her part, and of
servitude on his, and, above all, so much love for Rodney, it is
no wonder Sarah could only cry, and wish she had never gone
away from home.
The letter was lying open in her lap, and the tears dropping
silently down her cheeks, red as roses still, when Rodney joined
her, and with a tenderness that seemed real, inquired the
nature of her sorrow.
She would have spoken, but grief choked her voice, and she
could only indicate the letter.
“From some lover?” asked Rodney, half angrily and half
reproachfully. Sarah shook her head, and he proceeded to
read it, saying, “Then of course you have no secrets from me?”
thus implying a right he had never asked for.
As he read he laughed many times in a sneering fashion that
Sarah did not like, and would have resented when her heart was
less softened than now, indicating, as he laughed, the numerous
blunders in the manuscript before him.
“Every one has not had your advantages, remember,”
pleaded Sarah; for Rodney was a ready, correct, and graceful
writer.
“I knew this fellow was your lover,” replied the dissatisfied
young man, and he mockingly placed the letter upon the heart
of the weeping girl.
“And what if he were my lover?” said Sarah, with something
eyes.
“Nothing, nothing,” replied Rodney, dropping the hand he
had been demurely coquetting with, and speaking in the tone
of one vitally injured. “But,” he added, “you must have
known, Sarah, you must have seen, you must have felt [here
he pressed his hand against his heart, as though, if possible, to
prevent its breaking then and there], that you were cherishing
hopes never, never to be realized. O Sarah! may heaven
deal gently with your conscience, and never suffer it to reproach
you, as mine would me under a similar accusation.” He ceased
speaking, and hiding his face in his hands, seemed to be weeping.
Sarah put her arms about his neck, for she loved him, and
love is not ashamed of such demonstrations, and said artfully:
“And if Elijah were not my lover, dear Rodney, why, what
then!”
“Can you wrong me so cruelly as to ask?” spoke Rodney,
still hiding his face from her. “You know that to make you
my wife was a hope dearer than life to me.” And he went on
with a pitiful deceit men are fond of practising upon credulous
women, to speak of a predisposition to early death in his
family, and to say it mattered not; nobody would grieve for
him, and least of all, Sarah.
Sarah affirmed that his death would break her heart, and
especially if she knew that by a single moment she had hastened
it, and she gave him abundant proof of what her grief would
be, in the passionate outburst of tears which even the suggestion
of so melancholy an event produced.
“No tears for me,” said Rodney, “I am not worth them.
You are so good, so pure—I would not have been worthy of
you—try to live on; and you—you will soon forget me with
him.”
He hid his face in his hands again, as if to hide from himself
the terrible truth; for it is astonishing to what sacrifices of
truth men will resort in order to appear true.
Blinded by her love, and bewildered by his pathetic appeals,
Sarah told him in the honesty of her full soul, that Elijah was
not her lover, or if he were, that she did not love him in turn;
that only himself was dear to her, and that if it were true he
loved her as he said, there was nothing between them and
happiness.
Rodney kissed her cheek, and said he was blessed; but the
voice seemed devoid of meaning, and the kiss more like the
farewell to a dead friend then the betrothing to a living love.
When they parted it was under a positive engagement of
marriage—even the day was arranged that he was to come to
her father's house and “bear her away, his bride.”
Many times he sought to drag poor Elijah forward, and to
make him an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the fulfillment
of his dearest hope, as he called his engagement; but
Sarah saw in this the jealousy, and not the weariness of love;
and would not suffer the happiness of her life, and of her dear
Rodney's life, to be thus idly thwarted. So they parted betrothed
lovers. Aunt Ruth was better, and with the prospect
of so soon again seeing her niece, smiled her benediction, and
Sarah went away; the bloom in her cheek softened to the
tenderest glow, and the flashing of her dark eyes subdued to
the gentlest radiation.
Rumor runs faster than the wind, and the report that
curiosity was on tiptoe to know who the intended husband was.
She made no denial of her engagement when her young
friends came round her with playful banter and laughing congratulations.
The general impression prevailed, that the rich
miller was the happy man; and that the engagement was of
old standing—an impression that Sarah did not discourage.
There was one who did not come to offer congratulations, to
entreat pity, or to breathe reproach—and this was Elijah
Burbank. With the intelligence that Sarah was coming home
only to get married, he had gone, no one knew why or
whither. Sarah's mother could divine no motive for his sudden
resolution. All at once, she said he had seemed to droop like a
motherless kitten, and scold hard as she would, she could get
no spunk into him. It seemed, she said, as though he had no
interest in any thing but Sarah's horse and Sarah's garden,
and that by the hour he would talk with the dumb critter, and
the flowers, as if they had been sensible beings—that his last
visit was to the garden, and that he had gone away with a
rose from Sarah's favorite tree in his hand.
Tears came to the eyes of the young girl when she heard
this; but they were speedily dried in the sunny happiness that
awaited her, for when we are very happy it is hard to believe
there is any great misery in the world.
And the wedding-day came near, and the wedding-people
were all invited; but who the bridegroom was, was still a
secret. The miller was observed to be repairing his old house
about this time, and the fact gave credence to the rumor that
he was to carry off the prize.
How proud and happy Sarah was as she half admitted the
undeceiving that awaited! What a triumph it would be to
have her friends look up expecting to see the miller, and
behold Rodney—the handsome, accomplished, and elegant
Rodney!
And the wedding-dress was made; and the wedding-veil was
ready; and the wedding-heart was beating with joyous expectations,
when there lacked three days of the marriage-day. It
was an evening of the late November that Sarah sat among
her myrtle pots on the portico watching the gloomy gathering
of the clouds, and the last yellow leaves as they fluttered on the
almost bare branches, and dropped now and then on her head
or at her feet. It would not rain—she was quite sure it would
not rain. She thought the clouds were breaking and drifting
away, though any one else would have seen them closing more
darkly and darkly, and any one but she would have heard in
the sound of the wind the prophecy of the long November storm.
She wore a dress of red and black stripes, and a little gay
shawl coquettishly twisted about her neck, some bright scarlet
flowers among her black hair, for Rodney had oftentimes admired
the contrast of scarlet blossoms in her dark hair, and it
was for him she was watching, as her quick vision swept the
long distance again and again.
At length, as the last daylight lost itself in shadow, her
heart beat so quick and so loud as almost to choke her. She
had heard hoof-strokes in the distance, and who should be coming
but Rodney!
Nearer they came and nearer. She could see the horseman
more and more plainly—fear completed what hope began, and
she sank down almost fainting.
The miller—for it was he—attributed her emotion to the
delight she felt in seeing him; and his spirits rose, and his tender
attentions and soft insinuations were doubled.
Every moment Sarah hoped Rodney would come and rid her
of his disagreeable presence; but he came not.
Across the field, half a mile away, lights were seen and
voices heard. They were near the road-side, and as Sarah's
imagination linked everything with Rodney, she proposed
going to see what was doing, for she feared that some accident
might have happened to him—he might be dying perhaps
within sight of her.
Silently she went along, leaving the breathless miller tugging
after as he could, till she reached a little knoll that overlooked
what was going forward. A glance convinced her that Rodney
was not there; and in the reaction of mind she experienced,
she laughed joyously, and running back to meet the miller,
told him in a lively tone what she had seen.
The lights were the fires of a camp made for a night's rest
by some people who were moving from one part of the country
to another. As they descended the slope together, they could
see two women preparing supper, by a fire of sticks and logs,
while one man was busy chopping wood, and another with
some children lay on the slope in the light of the blazing fire.
Beneath a low oak tree, yet full of dry rustling leaves, a rude
tent was spread, within which voices of women in low and
earnest conference were heard.
“Seeing your lights,” said the miller, addressing the man at
the fire, “we crossed the field from our home, which is just
over the hill, in the hope that we might be able to serve you;
kindly heart that drew us this way.”
Sarah smiled her acquiescence in what the miller said, and
the delight he felt in being for half an hour believed to be her
husband, even by a few strangers whom he might never meet
again, manifested itself in a thousand exuberant antics. He
quite made himself master of their little camp, and pressed
their own hospitalities upon them with a generous kindness
that was amusing to witness.
Meantime the women and children hastened to do reverence to
Sarah by offering her a mat to sit upon, and insisting that she
should remain and partake of their fare. They seemed to be
poor people, scantily enough provided with necessaries, to say
nothing of comforts. The children were barefoot, and most
untidily dressed and combed, but they seemed healthful, and
were noisily frolicsome. The women who were preparing supper
looked pale, and seemed discouraged, but patiently enduring.
What they were going to they knew not; but they had
come from poverty and suffering, and they were willing to go
forward even faintly hoping for something better. Recognizing
instinctively, perhaps, the presence of strangers, a gossiping
old crone emerged from the tent, and pulling Sarah by the
sleeve, began to address her in whispers. She appeared to be
the mother of part of the campers, and affected or had maternal
feelings for all.
“You see,” she said, “we would get along well enough, my
sons and daughters and me, though I am ninety, but for one
we have in there—she don't belong to us, though—she is sick,
and I'm afraid she will neyer live to get to him, though if resolution
could keep a body up, it will keep her up, for I never
Her baby was born after we were on the road, and that delayed
us a week a'most; but it was her, and not ourselves, that
we cared most about: poor young woman, maybe it will
brighten her up like to see your face—it looks cheery and
good: suppose you just step inside and see the baby, and encourage
her a little;” and as she spoke she took Sarah by the
hand and led her into the tent, while the wistful eyes of the
miller followed her.
It was a pitiful picture that presented itself: on a rude bed
of straw that was spread on the ground, and with the light of
a tallow candle falling upon her face, lay a young and beautiful
woman. One hand lay on the quilt of patch-work that
covered her; and Sarah could not but remark the extreme
delicacy and smallness of it, while the other rested on the head
of her baby. Her voice was low and sweet; but when she
spoke of the baby's father, whom she said she was soon to join,
it grew stron and full of enthusiasm and courage. By extreme
necessity, she said, and no fault of his, she had become separated
from him; and when the old woman alluded to the suffering
she had endured, she said, with an entreating earnestness
again and again, that it was not the fault of the baby's father.
She seemed so well-bred, and so continually ignored any
endurance on her part, that poor Sarah, whose sympathies were
all interested, was at a loss how to behave, or in what way to
offer such charities as she felt to be required.
She was not without a woman's tact, however, and by praising
the baby won her way to the heart of the mother—for
the child she would accept some milk—nothing for herself.
She was comfortably, nay more than comfortably provided.
She held up the child for Sarah to kiss as she was about
going away, and as she did so her own enthusiasm was awakened
anew—the eyes, the hands, the hair, were all so like the
father of the dear baby—“If you could only see him,” she
exclaimed, “I am sure you would not wonder that I love
him!”
“Show the young lady his picture won't you?” interposed
the old woman.
“Oh, she would not care to see it,” replied the loving wife;
and she added, pressing the hand of Sarah, “pray, pardon me
for talking of him so much; but then he has never seen the
baby, nor me for so long—dear Rodney, how much it must
have grieved him!”
Sarah's eyes fixed themselves with a new and terrible interest
on the baby, as it lay asleep in its smiling innocence and
beauty—the blood settled back to her heart—a faintness came
over her and she sunk to the ground.
The old woman dashed a cup of water in her face, and she
recovered enough to say it was nothing; she was used to fainting
fits, and would presently be quite well.
“Show the picture, it will revive her like,” insisted the old
nurse.
“Yes, yes,” gasped Sarah, “I must see the picture!”
The young mother took it from her bosom, with some apology
for its not looking so well as the original, and presented it,
to complete, with its fair familiar smile, the undoing of a too
trustful heart. Her eyes in one long stony stare fixed themselves
upon it, as though she would fain look away the horrid
lie, that in some fearful way had obscured the truth of her betrothed.
Catching at the shadow of a hope, she whispered to
“Can there be another in the world,” cried the sick lady,
“who resembles Rodney Hampton? Where did you meet the
person you speak of? not surely in —?” She named the
place where Sarah had met Rodney—where she had loved him,
and where she had promised to be his wife.
“No, not there—not there,” replied Sarah; “the person I
know, you have never seen;” and pressing a kiss on the white
hand of the startled invalid, she went away with an unsteady
and hurried step.
Heavily she leaned on the arm of the miller as she slowly returned
homeward. “I suppose those people took you for my
wife,” he said, laughing foolishly.
“And what if they did?” replied Sarah.
“Nothing,” answered the miller, “only I wish it were true.”
Sarah walked on in silence; but more and more firmly till
she reached the homestead-door, and then she said with a
calmness that was fearful to hear, “There is a rumor abroad
that I am to be married the day after to-morrow—it was a
silly jest of mine—if you please you may make it truth.”
When she had received the miller's affirmative response, she
coldly silenced his tender demonstrations, and forbidding him
to see her again till the hour appointed to unite their fates,
she retired to her chamber, and gave herself up to the awfullest
of all tortures—the rack of unrequited love.
And the wedding day came, and the guests stood silent and
wondering when they saw the bride, for her eyes had lost their
lustre, and her cheek was hueless as death; but in due form
she was made the wife of Mr. Hilton, and in due time she accompanied
she was never seen abroad, and her gay laughter was never
heard to ring out anywhere; her bright saddle was hung up
in the dusty garret, and her bright cheeks faded and grew thin.
The gallant grey was tied to the mill-wheel, and trod his sober
round; and Sarah trod her sober round, doing her duty, but
scolding the miller as loudly and sharply as her mother had
scolded Job. In the main, however, she was a good wife, and
if she scolded the miller, so the neighbors said, it was no more
than he deserved, for he was a hard, selfish, and tyrannical
master.
Many years they plodded on together; but at length the
miller was gathered to his fathers; and other years Sarah lived
on alone, wearing a mourning dress, and caring little to conceal
the silver streaks that were beginning to show above her temples.
One winter night as she sat by the blazing fire, the
flinty snow rattling against the pane, there was a loud knocking
at the door, and the next moment a strange gentleman was
borne in, who had been thrown from his carriage at her gate,
and considerably hurt. He was carried immediately to bed,
and the village doctor called, who pronounced his patient
badly bruised, but in no wise seriously injured. He was partially
unconscious at first, but after his face for a few minutes
had been bathed, he recovered sufficiently to thank his hostess,
and to inquire whether his luggage were safe—one box he was
particularly solicitous about, and could not rest till Sarah had
brought it to his bedside. On seeing it he smiled, and shortly
afterwards fell asleep. That smile seemed to join itself to some
old memory, but Sarah could not tell what; it might be with
Rodney perhaps, but if it were, it stirred no troubled thought.
belongings was evidently of no mean position in the world—a
man of leisure and money, Sarah thought, travelling probably
for his health, and while she mused and turned her eyes from
the refined and expressive face to the little white hand that
seemed reaching towards her, wondering who her guest was and
when she should find out all about him, the clock struck
twelve, more loudly than it had ever struck till then, it seemed
to Sarah, and the sleeping gentleman unclosed his eyes, and
fixed them earnestly and tenderly upon the watcher by his
side, and as he gazed his pale cheek blushed, and his mouth
lost the firm expression of manhood, and took the sweet sensitive
look of the loving boy.
“Can I do anything for you?” asked Sarah, not well knowing
what else to say.
“Yes,” replied the stranger, “I fear a long cherished treasure
is lost from this box. Will you please remove the lid that
I may see?”
Sarah slipped the covering aside, and for a moment stood
paralyzed, and then, as her eyes fell inquiringly upon the
stranger, the blush of twenty years again colored her cheek.
The box contained a coarsely-braided rye-straw hat, trimmed
with a faded blue ribbon!
Elijah! Sarah! was all they could say in the first joyous
shock of surprise. What more they said ultimately, let us not
care to inquire—enough that the day broke for them at midnight,
and there was never any more darkness in all their
lives.
| Pictures of country life | |