 | CHAPTER XI.
WHICH TREATS OF A PANORAMA. Hedged in |  |
11. CHAPTER XI.
WHICH TREATS OF A PANORAMA.
CERTAIN marked changes fell, about this
time, upon Eunice Trent. With some of
these Margaret found herself pleased, by others
saddened, by others perplexed; all of them were
natural.
For example, she took a fancy for the wearing
of black; even her still gray school dress slipped
off from her after a while. The children asked
her once if she were in mourning.
“Yes,” she said.
“Is this best?” asked Margaret.
“I am comfortable so,” Eunice replied.
“Eunice, look there!”
A gorgeous October sun chanced at that moment
to be dropping over a certain purple hill
which peeps over Mrs. Purcell's garden grounds
into the western windows of the house. An
old burial-ground — Gower's oldest — dotted the
spoke, the ancient stones had entrapped the
wealth of the late color in broken but brilliant
masses. The headstones looked rather like
jewels than marble. Shrubs and grass and sky
were shining. The clouds rained color. There
was a shower of lights.
“God paints the graves of things,” said Margaret,
earnestly.
“Not murdered things,” said Eunice, very low.
“Do you mind? I will not wear black dresses
if you mind; but I am comfortable so.”
Margaret said nothing, and the subject dropped
there, finally, between them.
The color indeed suited Eunice, or Eunice
suited the color. Perhaps the girl was morbid,
sentimental, in the choice of it; for nothing is in
more danger of sentimentality than penitence.
The maturing woman at least cooled in it like a
mould. Those who best knew and loved Eunice
Trent have, I think, always called her in her
graver years a beautiful woman. This beauty
was of a peculiar kind; forever a prisoned, waiting,
indefinable thing, as sad as the beauty of a
dead child, as appealing too, and as holy. The
sadness grew with the holiness of it.
The sadness grew rapidly at the time of which
I write. Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle was a little fire,
but she had kindled a great matter.
Did Eunice live in fear of her? In fear of detection?
In dread of public shame? In dread
of seeing the stars go out in Christina's eyes?
Was her mute sorrow a terror or a conviction? a
mood or a purpose? Margaret wondered much.
Eunice, as usual, surprised her. As usual, she
disturbed her before she pleased her.
“I have been thinking,” she said one day,
with great abruptness, “whether I ought not —
whether perhaps I should not go and hunt it up.”
“Hunt it up?”
“The child.”
Margaret's rocking-chair stopped sharply.
For years Eunice had not mentioned him.
She hoped — I think she hoped — that Eunice
had forgotten him.
“Of course not!” she said, quickly, — “of
course not! What induced you to think of such
a thing?”
Eunice sadly smiled.
“I have thought very much of it for a very
long time. If I had been — that is, if I had had
tried before this to find the little thing.”
“Eunice,” said Mrs. Purcell, “you are growing
fearfully morbid!” Eunice was silent.
“Or else,” added Margaret slowly, and after
a pause, in which her sharp rocking indicated
the sharpness of her mood, — “or else you are
growing as healthy as the Gospel of John,
and as brave; and it is I who am sick and
a coward. I wonder what Christina would
say!”
Eunice shrank.
“Christina loves me,” she said, in a scarcely
audible whisper. “Christina never knew, never
guessed. Poor Christina!”
“Are you in pain?” asked Mrs. Purcell, suddenly.
Eunice had a pinched, white look about
the mouth that alarmed her.
“No, — O no.”
She took up her sewing, and her needle flew
nervously in and out.
“Christina has never questioned you about
your former life?” asked Mrs. Purcell more
softly.
“Never once.”
“You are quite sure that she has never — suspected?”
“She loves me!” said Eunice. “She could
never have loved me and — suspected. Poor
Christina! Poor Christina!”
“Do you love the child?” asked Mrs. Purcell,
suddenly.
“No,” said Eunice, quietly.
“You have no maternal longings for it?”
“No.”
“You have no desire to see it — fondle it?”
Eunice shrank again all over, in that peculiar
fashion of hers, like the sensitive-plant.
“The child was not to blame —” She remembered,
as she spoke, how sternly these words
had dropped from the stern lips of old Lize in
No. 19. The miserable bed, the murder-stain
upon the miserable wall, the miserable sights
and sounds that had ushered her miserable infant
into life, stood out like a stereoscopic picture
against her lightened life, and turned her
for the moment faint and sick. So perhaps —
who knows? — a soul in paradise may cower at
permitted times over permitted memories of
earth.
“The child was not to blame,” said Eunice.
“That is all. I do not care for him, but I
presume God does. I am his mother. Nothing
can help that. I should not want to die
and be asked, Where is the baby? Should
you?”
“I do not know,” said Mrs. Purcell. She felt
that the outcast was growing beyond her guiding
hand. In moods, she felt like sitting at her feet
to learn of her.
“Let us think this through,” she said. “If it
were not for Christina —”
“If it were not for Christina, I should own
and rear my child,” Eunice, in a suppressed but
decided voice, replied. “If it were not for Christina,
I — think — that I could bear it, that the
rest of the world should know that I am the
mother of a child. I do not think people would
be very cruel to us. Do you think they would?
At least there would be good people, Christian
people, — people who could not be cruel to us —
the child and me — for Christ's sake.”
Mrs. Purcell remained silent. She did not
know how to tell her how cruel Christian people
can be.
Her silence ended the conversation, and the
subject was not renewed for many days.
The way for its renewal was paved at last in
an unexpected manner.
It happened to Eunice, on a certain day in
frosty mid-autumn weather, to be detained at the
grammar school by a headache, — one of her
blind headaches, a frequent ailment of hers at
that time, — overwork only, Dr. Burtis thought,
unless, perhaps, some slight defect in the circulation
about the heart. The trouble, though simple,
was confusing in its effects. Christina had seen
her stagger with pain once or twice in the streets,
and was apt to call at the school-house to help
her home.
On this particular day she was late, and Eunice
sat dizzily waiting alone in the school-room,
stupidly watching for her through the window,
and stupidly following the stupid course of a
panorama company outside in a little blue cart,
about which all the children had gathered, and
were shouting. She was too sick to think much
or clearly. She sat — very lovely and very still
— with her head upon her crossed arms, and
her soft hair loosened against her cheek; perhaps
delicate, fine sight in any event, — fine as the
chasing twilight, and as mute.
She was wondering brokenly if that were
Christina at the bend of the road, and why the
little blue cart should stop so long in front of the
school-house door, and whether the panorama
were anything that the children's mothers would
rather they would not see, thinking to go and
find out, and thinking that she was quite unable
to stir, when the creaking of the door disturbed
her and a heavy step tramped up to the desk, —
“Is this the school-marm?”
Something in the powerful, monotonous tones
startled her with a vague sense of familiarity, and
she weakly turned her head.
“Is this the school-marm? I called to see —
Good Lor' love us! — Nix!”
Miss Trent was in too much pain to start; she
slowly raised her head, and slowly smiled. She
had grown extremely pale — gray; but her smile
was very sweet when she said, —
“Why, Lize!”
Whatever happened, she could not be ashamed
of old Lize; it was not in her. But she thought,
as Lize had found her, extremely pale.
“I 'm beat!” said Lize. “Nix a school-marm!
And I and Tim and the panoraymy comin' agin
ye in this oncommon manner — as true as I be
in my senses — Nix!”
“Tim!” said the “school-marm.”
“Yes, Tim. Come home o' Christmas last, —
Tim did. Did n't know on 't, did ye? All of a
Christmas afternoon in the sun I sits, rockin' Mis'
Jeb Smith's last — two sence you was there — at
Mis' Jeb Smith's window, when I sees the blue
cart and the panoraymy and Tim a rovin' up and
down Thicket in search o' his mother, by which
I do not mean to excuse myself of being the
mother of the panoraymy, but of Tim. And he
see me. And he knows me. All through the
window, in a flash — and I put Jeb's baby on the
floor — and am out in the middle o' the street.
“`Hulloa, Tim!' says I.
“`Hulloa, marm!' says Tim.
“`Glad to see ye, Tim,' says I.
“`Is that a fact now?' says Tim, — for I took
on awful at the time on 't about the shooting
business, and Tim warn't likely to forget it owersoon.
“`It speaks well for ye now, I must say!' says
Tim.
“`That 's none o' your lookout,' says I.
“`See here, old lady,' says Tim, `if you ain't
ashamed of me, nor yet of the panoraymy, s'pose
you hang on?'
“`All right, my boy,' says I.
“So I goes into Jeb's and picks up my duds,
and hangs on to Tim and the panoraymy, —
which is an excellent business for seein' of the
country, and travellin' adwantages in general, —
and I 've yet to see the cause to be ashamed
neither of Tim nor yet of the panoraymy.”
“`I alwers kind o' considered as you 'd be ready
for me, marm, when I got ready and fit for you,'
says Tim. Tim 's no fool!”
“I am as glad as you are,” said Eunice, in
an honest, steady voice, listening through it, —
brokenly, — “I am glad with all my heart. You
were good to me. I never forgot you, Lize.”
“How you did clear out in the dark, poor
gal!” said Lize, loudly, “with that there heavy
young un, and you but two weeks sick! But
how the mischief come you here?”
“People have been kind to me.” Miss Trent
step outside the door? Would Lize never, never
stop? — never go?
Lize, on the contrary, moved nearer to the
desk, — the grammar teacher spoke so very low,
— and leaned heavily upon it, towering brown
and gaunt and rough as a lifetime of Thicket
Street could make her close to Eunice's little
pinched, fine face, uplifted and listening —
“People have been very kind to me. I have
led a changed and happy life —”
“Where is the baby?” Lize interrupted, in her
loud, echoing whisper; it could have been heard
throughout the room.
“I deserted it. It was carried to the Burley
Street Nursery.”
These words had dropped with desperate distinctness
from her lips, when Eunice turned;
turned — listened — hushed — and raised her
eyes.
As she had expected, Christina stood just
within the doorway, leaning against one of the
desks. As she had expected, Christina stood
like a statue.
I think she was hardly prepared for the frozen
struck to her heart like death, — which had settled
about Christina's lips and eyes.
Her own face twitched spasmodically, and her
hands, where they lay upon the desk, wrung each
other purple.
Lize, chattering about the panoraymy, noticed
them, stopped, and took them to chafe them in
her great brown palms.
Christina, when she saw the old woman touch
Eunice, shivered all over. Lize, at the sound
of her start, turned, saw the young lady, looked
keenly from one girl to another, and took the
whole sight in.
“I 've made a bad business here.” She looked
back at the young teacher, and her old face fell,
much pained.
“I 'd rather ha' chopped my hand off than to
ha' blundered so, Nix! I 'd best clear out o' yer
way afore I 'm up to further mischief. I might
ha' known it would do ye no good to be seen
chaffering with the likes of me, — more fool
for 't!”
“You have done no harm,” said Eunice, steadily,
— “no harm at all. It was better so. I am
over what you said. It was quite as well. You
were good to me, and you shall not sorrow for
fear you did me harm. It was no harm. By
and by, when my head does not ache quite so
hard, I shall not be sorry — not sorry, Lize.”
“So you 'll not come out to see the panoraymy?”
said Lize, a little regretfully, turning
as she tramped down the school-room aisle.
“Tim would take it as an honor if ye would
recommend the panoraymy to the children, of
which the admission is half-price, and the seats
preserved.”
Eunice gently refused.
“Another time, Lize. Perhaps the next time
you come through town, if —” she flushed suddenly,
burning red (Christina stood so still!)
—“if I am here the next time you come through
town.”
The door closed behind old Lize with a crash;
Eunice listened to her thumping tread upon the
steps; heard her shouting to Tim that “the
school-marm was sick and could n't be bothered”;
heard Tim shout back something very
uncomplimentary to the school-marm; heard the
children faint away.
When all the noise was over, she raised her
head.
Christina stood so very still!
To her dying day, Eunice Trent remembered
just how the school-room looked that afternoon;
how Sarah Jones's slate and sponge lay upon the
third desk, second row; that Beb White's little
dinner-pail was upon the floor; that the “big
boy” had tied a string across the left-hand aisle,
and chalked a profile of Mr. Hobbs upon the
right-hand blackboard; that her own bonnet
and shawl had tumbled from their nail; how
black the corners of the room were; how fast
the dusk crept in; what a little pale streak of
light there was left away beyond her sunset window;
and how Christina, in her white sack,
shone out — so still! — where she stood leaning
against the desk beside the door.
The two — Eunice at the desk, Christina at
the door — remained for some moments as old
Lize had left them. Eunice was the first to
break the silence. She said, —
“I can get home alone. You had better go.”
All that she had been to Christina, all that
Christina had been to her, the sacredness of one
of the simplest, sweetest loves of woman to
woman that I ever knew, seemed to Eunice to
step down in the dusky school-room between
herself and the shining figure by the door, —
like a palpable, beautiful presence; and it seemed
to her that she said to it, —
“You had better go.”
Christina automatically shook her head.
“I say you had better go,” repeated Eunice.
“There,” as the door opened timidly, “here is
somebody waiting for me. Beb? Yes, little Beb
White for her dinner-pail. This way, Beb. Beb
will wait a few minutes and walk home with me,
won't you, Beb? Miss Purcell has another errand
to-night. Go, Christina!”
She spoke with much decision, and much self-command.
Christina went.
Eunice, through the dark, watched the beautiful
palpable thing that went after her and went
with her. The door shut them both out.
“Poor Christina!” said Eunice; “poor Christina!”
She said nothing more, but her face dropped
the dusk, with her face in her hands, for some
time. The room grew perfectly dark. Little
Beb, with her little dinner-pail in her lap, sat on
the platform.
“Are you sick?” asked little Beb, growing
restless at last. Her teacher started, begged her
pardon, and took her home. Little Beb kissed
her when they parted, and stroked her face.
This was a great comfort.
| CHAPTER XI.
WHICH TREATS OF A PANORAMA. Hedged in | |