 | CHAPTER III.
THE NEW HOME. Cousin Maude ; and, Rosamond |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
THE NEW HOME.
It was a large, square, wooden building, built in the
olden time, with a wide hall in the centre, a tiny portico
in front and a long piazza in the rear. In all the town,
there was not so delightful a location, for it commanded
a view of the country for many miles around, while, from
the chamber windows, was plainly discernible, the sparkling
Honeoye, whose waters slept so calmly 'mid the hills
which lay to the southward. On the grassy lawn in front,
tall forest trees were growing, almost concealing the
house from view, while their long branches so met together
as to form a beautiful arch over the gravelled walk
which lead to the front door. It was, indeed, a pleasant
spot, and Matty, as she passed through the iron gate,
could not account for the feeling of desolation settling
down upon her.
“Maybe it's because there are no flowers here—no
roses,” she thought, as she looked around in vain for her
favorites, thinking the while how her first work should be
to train a honey-suckle over the door, and plant a rose
bush underneath the window.
Poor Matty. Dr. Kennedy had no love for flowers, and
the only rose bush he ever noticed was the one which
John had planted at his mistress' grave, and even this
would, perchance, have been unseen, if he had not scratched
his hand unmercifully upon it, as he one day shook the
paid the man for putting it there! It was a maxim of
the Dr.'s never to have any thing not strictly for use, consequently
his house, both outside and in, was destitute of
every kind of ornament, and the bride, as she followed
him through the empty hall into the silent parlor, whose
bare walls, faded carpet, and uncurtained windows seemed
so uninviting, felt a chill creeping over her spirits, and
sinking into the first hard chair she came to, she might,
perhaps, have cried, had not John who followed close
behind with her satchel on his arm, whispered encouragingly
in her ear, “Never you mind, missus, your chamber
is a heap sight brighter than this, 'case I tended to that
myself.”
Mrs. Kennedy smiled gratefully upon him, feeling sure
that beneath his black exterior there beat a kind and sympathizing
heart, and that in him she had an ally and a
friend.
“Where is Nellie?” said the Doctor. “Call Nellie,
John, and tell your mother we are here.”
John left the room, and a moment after a little tiny
creature came tripping to the door, where she stopped
suddenly, and throwing back her curls, gazed curiously,
first at Mrs. Kennedy, and then at Maude, whose large
black eyes fastened themselves upon her with a gaze
quite as curious and eager as her own. She was more
than a year older than Maude, but much smaller in size,
and her face seemed to have been fashioned after a beautiful
waxen doll, so brilliant was her complexion, and so
regular her features. She was naturally affectionate and
amiable, too, when suffered to have her own way. Neither
was she at all inclined to be timid, and when her father,
she went unhesitatingly to the lady, and climbing into her
lap, sat there very quietly so long as Mrs. Kennedy permitted
her to play with her rings, pull her collar, and take
out her side-combs, for she had laid aside her bonnet; but
when at last her little sharp eyes ferreted out a watch,
which she insisted upon having “all to herself,” a liberty
which Mrs. Kennedy refused to grant, she began to pout,
and, sliding from her new mother's lap, walked up to
Maude, whose acquaintance she made by asking if she had
a pink silk dress?
“No, but I guess Janet will bring me one,” answered
Maude, whose eyes never for an instant left the face of her
step-sister.
She was an enthusiastic admirer of beauty, and Nellie
had made an impression upon her at once; so, when the
latter said, “What makes you look at me so funny?” she
answered, “Because you are so pretty.”
This made a place for her at once in the heart of the
vain little Nellie, who asked her to go up stairs and see
the pink silk dress which “Aunt Kelsey had given her.”
As they left the room, Mrs. Kennedy said to her husband,
“Your daughter is very beautiful.”
Dr. Kennedy liked to have people say that of his child,
for he knew she was much like himself, and he stroked
his brown beard complacently, as he replied: “Yes, Nellie
is rather pretty, and, considering all things, is as well-behaved
a child as one often finds. She seldom gets into
a passion, or does anything rude,” and he glanced at the
long scratch upon his hand; but as his wife knew nothing
of said scratch, the rebuke was wholly lost, and he
continued: “I was anxious that she should be a boy, for
ought to be a son, and so I said, repeatedly, to the late
Mrs. Kennedy, who, though a most excellent woman in
most matters, was, in others, unaccountably set in her
way. I suppose I said some harsh things when I heard
it was a daughter, but it can't be helped now,” and with
a slightly injured air the husband of “the late Mrs. Kennedy”
began to pace up and down the room, while the
present Mrs. Kennedy puzzled her rather weak brain to
know “what in the world he meant.”
Meantime, between John and his mother there was a
hurried conversation, the former inquiring naturally after
the looks of her new mistress.
“Pretty as a pink,” answered John, “and neat as a
fiddle, with the sweetest little baby ways, but I tell you
what 'tis,” and John's voice fell to a whisper, “He'll
maxim her into heaven a heap sight quicker'n he did
t'other one; case you see she hain't so much—what you
call him—so much go off to her as Miss Katy had, and she
can't bar his grinding ways. They'll scrush her to onct
—see if they don't. But I knows one thing, this yer
nigger 'tends to do his duty, and hold up them little
cheese-curd hands of her'n, jest as some of them scripter'
folks held up Moses with the bulrushes.”
“And what of the young one?” asked Hannah, who
had been quite indignant at the thoughts of another child
in the family, “what of the young one?”
“Bright as a dollar!” answered John. “Knows more'n
a dozen of Nellie, and well she might, for she ain't half as
white, and as Master Kennedy says, it's a maxim of mine,
the blacker the hide, the better the sense!”
By this time, Hannah had washed the dough from her
donned a clean check apron, and started to see the stranger
for herself. Although a tolerable good woman, Hannah's
face was not very prepossessing, and Mrs. Kennedy
intuitively felt that 'twould be long before her former
domestic's place was made good by the indolent African.
It is true her obeisance was very low, and her greeting
kindly enough, but there was about her an inquisitive,
and at the same time, rather patronizing air, which Mrs.
Kennedy did not like, and she was glad when she at last
left the parlor, telling them, as she did so, that “dinner
was done ready.”
Notwithstanding that the house itself was so large, the
dining-room was a small, dark, cheerless apartment, and
though she was beginning to feel the want of food, Mrs.
Kennedy could scarcely force down a mouthful, for the
homesick feeling at her heart; a feeling which whispered
to her that the home to which she had come, was not like
that which she had left. Dinner being over, she asked
permission to retire to her chamber, saying she needed
rest, and should feel better after she had slept. Nellie
volunteered to lead the way, and as they left the dining-room,
old Hannah, who was notoriously lazy, muttered
aloud: “A puny, sickly thing. Great help she'll be to
me; but I shan't stay to wait on more'n forty more.”
Dr. Kennedy had his own private reason for wishing to
conciliate Hannah. When he set her free, he made her
believe it was her duty to work for him for nothing, and
though she soon learned better and often threatened to
leave, he had always managed to keep her, for, on the
whole, she liked her place, and did not care to change it
for one where her task would be much harder. But if the
and so she fretted, as we have seen, while the doctor comforted
her with the assurance that Mrs. Kennedy was only
tired—that she was naturally well and strong, and would
undoubtedly be of great assistance when the novelty of
her position had worn away.
While this conversation was taking place, Mrs. Kennedy
was examining her chamber and thinking many pleasant
things of John, whose handiwork was here so plainly
visible. All the smaller and more fanciful pieces of furniture
which the house afforded had been brought to this
room, whose windows looked out upon the lake and the
blue hills beyond. A clean white towel concealed the
marred condition of the washstand, while the bed, which
was made up high and round, especially in the middle,
looked very inviting with its snowy spread. A large
stuffed rocking chair, more comfortable than handsome,
occupied the centre of the room, while better far than all,
the table, the mantel and the windows were filled with
flowers, which John had begged from the neighboring
gardens, and which seemed to smile a welcome upon the
weary woman, who, with a cry of delight, bent down and
kissed them through her tears.
“Did these come from your garden,” she asked of
Nellie, who, child-like, answered, “We hain't any flowers.
Pa won't let John plant any. He told Aunt Kelsey the
land had better be used for potatoes, and Aunt Kelsey
said he was too stingy to live.”
“Who is Aunt Kelsey?” asked Mrs. Kennedy, a painful
suspicion fastening itself upon her, that the lady's
opinion might be correct.
“She is pa's sister Charlotte,” answered Nellie, “and
things; but she don't come here often, it's so heathenish,
she says.”
Here spying John, who was going with the oxen to the
meadow, she ran away, followed by Maude, between
whom and herself there was for the present a most amicable
understanding. Thus left alone, Mrs. Kennedy had
time for thought, which crowded upon her so fast that, at
last throwing herself upon the bed, she wept bitterly,
half wishing she had never come to Laurel Hill, but was
still at home in her own pleasant cottage. Then hope
whispered to her of a brighter day, when things would
not seem to her as they now did. She would fix up the
desolate old house, she thought—the bare windows which
now so stared her in the face, should be shaded with
pretty muslin curtains, and she would loop them back
with ribbons. The carpet, too, on the parlor floor should
be exchanged for a better one, and when her piano and
marble table came, the only articles of furniture she had
not sold, it would not seem so cheerless and so cold.
Comforted with these thoughts, she fell asleep, resting
quietly until, just as the sun had set and it was growing
dark within the room, Maude came rushing in, her dress
all wet, her face flushed, and her eyes red with tears. She
and Nellie had quarreled—nay, actually fought; Nellie
telling Maude she was blacker than a nigger, and pushing
her into the brook, while Maude, in return, had pulled out
a handful of the young lady's hair, for which her step-father
had shaken her soundly, and sent her to her mother,
whom she begged “to go home, and not stay in that old
house where the folks were ugly, and the rooms not a bit
pretty.”
Mrs. Kennedy's heart was already full, and drawing
Maude to her side, the two homesick children mingled
their tears together, until a heavy footstep upon the stairs
announced the approach of Dr. Kennedy. Not a word
did he say of his late adventure with Maude, and his manner
was very kind toward his weary wife, who, with his
hand upon her aching forehead, and his voice in her ear,
telling her how sorry he was that she was sick, forgot that
she had been unhappy.
“Whatever else he may do,” she thought, “he certainly
loves me,” and after a fashion he did perhaps love her.
She was a pretty little creature, and her playful, coquettish
ways had pleased him at first sight. He needed a
wife, and when their mutual friend, who knew nothing of
him save that he was a man of integrity and wealth, suggested
Matty Remington, he too thought favorably of the
matter, and yielding to the fascination of her soft blue
eyes, he had won her for his wife, pitying her, it may be,
as he sat by her in the gathering twilight, and half guessed
that she was homesick. And when he saw how confidingly
she clung to him, he was conscious of a half-formed
resolution to be to her what a husband ought to be. But
Dr. Kennedy's resolves were like the morning dew, and as
the days wore on, his peculiarities, one after another, were
discovered by his wife, who, womanlike, tried to think
that he was right and she was wrong.
In due time most of the villagers called upon her, and
though they were both intelligent and refined, she did not
feel altogether at ease in their presence, for the fancy she
had that they regarded her as one who for some reason
was entitled to their pity. And in this she was correct.
They did pity her, for they remembered another gentle
blue eyes had waxed dim beneath the withering influence
of him she called her husband. She was dead, and when
they saw the young, light-hearted Matty, they did not
understand how she could ever have been induced to take
that woman's place and wed a man of thirty-eight, and
they blamed her somewhat, until they reflected that she
knew nothing of him, and that her fancy was probably
captivated by his dignified bearing, his manly figure, and
handsome face. But these alone they knew could not
make her happy, and ere she had been six weeks a wife,
they were not surprised that her face began to wear a
weary look, as if the burden of life were hard to bear.
As far as she could, she beautified her home, purchasing
with her own means several little articles which the Doctor
called useless, though he never failed to appropriate
to himself the easy chair which she had bought for the
sitting-room, and which when she was tired rested her so
much. On the subject of curtains, he was particularly
obstinate. “There were blinds,” he said, “and 'twas a
maxim of his never to spend his money for any thing
unnecessary.”
Still, when Matty bought them herself for the parlor,
when her piano was unboxed and occupied a corner which
had long been destitute of furniture, and when her marble
table stood between the windows, with a fresh bouquet of
flowers which John had brought, he exclaimed involuntarily,
“How nice this is!” adding the next moment, lest
his wife should be too much pleased, “but vastly foolish!”
In accordance with her husband's suggestion, Mrs.
Kennedy wrote to Janet, breaking to her as gently as
possible the fact that she was not to come, but saying
happiness as a second wife. Several weeks went by, and
then an answer came.
“If you had of wanted me,” wrote Janet, “I should of
come, but bein' you didn't, I've went to live with Mr.
Blodgett, who peddles milk, and raises butter and cheese,
and who they say is worth a deal of money, and well he
may be, for he's saved this forty years.”
Then followed a detailed account of her household matters,
occupying in all three pages of foolscap, to which
was pinned a bit of paper, containing the following:
“Joel looked over my writing and said I'd left out the
very thing I wanted to tell the most. We are married,
me and Joel, and I only hope you are as happy with that
Doctor as I am with my old man.”
This announcement crushed at once the faint hope which
Mrs. Kennedy had secretly entertained, of eventually having
Janet to supply the place of Hannah, who was notoriously
lazy, and never, under any circumstances, did anything
she possibly could avoid. Dr. Kennedy did not tell
his wife that he expected her to make it easy for Hannah,
so she would not leave them; but he told her how industrious
the late Mrs. Kennedy had been, and hinted that a
true woman was not above kitchen work. The consequence
of this was, that Matty, who really wished to
please him, became, in time, a very drudge, doing things
which she once thought she could not do, and then, without
a murmur, ministering to her exacting husband when
he came home from visiting a patient, and declared himself
“tired to death.” Very still he sat, while her weary
little feet ran for the cool drink—the daily paper—or the
morning mail; and very happy he looked when her snowy
and if, perchance, she sighed amid her labor of love, his
ear was deaf, and he did not hear, neither did he see how
white and thin she grew, as day by day went by.
Her piano was now seldom touched, for the doctor did
not care for music; still he was glad that she could play,
for “Sister Kelsey,” who was to him a kind of terror,
would insist that Nellie should take music lessons, and,
as his wife was wholly competent to give them, he would
be spared a very great expense. “Save, save, save,”
seemed to be his motto, and when at church the plate was
passed to him, he gave his dime a loving pinch ere parting
company with it; and yet none read the service louder,
or defended his favorite liturgy more zealously than himself.
In some things he was a pattern man, and when
once his servant John announced his intention of withdrawing
from the Episcopalians and joining himself to
the Methodists, who held their meetings in the school-house,
he was greatly shocked, and labored long with the
degenerate son of Ethiopia, who would render to him no
reason for his most unaccountable taste, though he did to
Matty, when she questioned him of his choice.
“You see, missus,” said he, “I wasn't allus a herrytic,
but was as good a 'piscopal as St. George ever had. That's
when I lived in Virginny, and was hired out to Marster
Morton, who had a school for boys, and who larnt me
how to read a little. After I'd arn't a heap of money for
Marster Kennedy, he wanted to go to the Legislatur', and
some on 'em wouldn't vote for him while he owned a nigger,
he set me free, and sent for me to come home. 'Twas
hard partin' wid dem boys and Marster Morton, I tell you,
but I kinder wanted to see mother, who had been here a
workin' for nothin'.”
“For nothing!” exclaimed Mrs. Kennedy, a suspicion
of the reason why Janet was refused, crossing her mind.
“Yes, marm, for nothin',” answered John, “but I ain't
green enough for that, and 'fused outright. Then Marster,
who got beat 'lection day, threatened to send me back,
but I knew he couldn't do it, and so he agreed to pay
eight dollars a month. I could get more some whar else,
but I'd rather stay with mother, and so I staid.”
“But that has nothing to do with the church,” suggested
Mrs. Kennedy, and John replied:
“I'm comin' to the p'int now. I lived with Marster
Kennedy, and went with him to church, and when I see
how he carried on week days, and how peart like he read up
Sabba' days, sayin' the Lord's prar and 'Postle's Creed, I
began to think thar's somethin' rotten in Denmark, as the
boys use to say in Virginny, so when mother, who allus
was a roarin' Methodis' asked me to go wid her to meetin',
I went, and was never so mortified in my life, for arter
the elder had 'xorted a spell at the top of his voice, he sot
down and said there was room for others. I couldn't see
how that was, bein' he took up the whole chair, and while
I was wonderin' what he meant, as I'm a livin' nigger, up
got marm and spoke a piece right in meetin'! I never
was so shamed, and I kep pullin' at her gownd to make
her set down, but the harder I pulled, the louder she
hollored, till at last she blowed her breath all away, and
down she sot.”
“And did any of the rest speak pieces?” asked Mrs.
Kennedy, convulsed with laughter, at John's vivid description.
“Bless your heart,” he answered with a knowing look,
“'twan't a piece she was speaking—she was tellin' her
'sperience, but it sounded so like the boys at school that I
was deceived, for I'd never seen such work before. But
I've got so I like it now, and I believe thar's more 'sistency
down in that school house, than thar is in—I won't say
the 'Piscapal church, 'case thar's heaps of shinin' lights
thar, but if you won't be mad, I'll say more than thar is in
Marster Kennedy, who has hisself to thank for my bein' a
Methodis'.”
Whatever Mrs. Kennedy might have thought, she
could not help laughing heartily at John, who was now a
decided Methodist, and adorned his profession far more
than his selfish, hard-hearted master. His promise of holding
up his mistress' hands had been most faithfully kept,
and, without any disparagement to Janet, Mrs. Kennedy felt
that the loss of her former servant was in a great measure
made up to her in the kind negro, who, as the months went
by and her face grew thinner each day, purchased with
his own money many a little delicacy, which he hoped
would tempt her capricious appetite. Maude, too, was a
favorite with John, both on account of her color, which he
greatly admired, and because, poor, ignorant creature
though he was, he saw in her the germ of the noble girl,
who, in the coming years, was to bear uncomplainingly
a burden of care from which the selfish Nellie would unhesitatingly
turn away.
Toward Maude the doctor had ever manifested a feeling
of aversion, both because of her name, and because she
had compelled him to yield when his mind was fully made
up to do otherwise. She had resolutely refused to be
called Matilda, and as it was necessary for him sometimes
and finally arrived at “Maude,” speaking it always spitefully,
as if provoked that he had once in his life been conquered.
With the management of her he seldom interfered,
for that scratch had given him a timely lesson, and as he
did not like to be unnecessarily troubled, he left both
Maude and Nellie to his wife, who suffered the latter to
do nearly as she pleased, and thus escaped many of the
annoyances to which step-mothers are usually subject.
Although exceedingly selfish, Nellie was affectionate in
her disposition, and when Maude did not cross her path
the two were on the best of terms. Disturbances there
were, however—quarrels and fights, in the latter of which,
Maude, being the stronger of the two, always came off
victor; but these did not last long, and had her husband
been to her what he ought, Mrs. Kennedy's life would not
have been as dreary as it was. He meant well enough,
perhaps, but he did not understand a woman, much less
know how to treat her, and as the winter months went by,
Matty's heart would have fainted within her, but for a
hope which whispered to her, “He will love me better
when next summer comes.”
| CHAPTER III.
THE NEW HOME. Cousin Maude ; and, Rosamond | |