University of Virginia Library

21. Chapter XXI.
Sabbath Night at Mr. Granby's.

HURRYING away from the scene of riot, Margaret
and Emily paused not till they reached a quiet and
secluded street, lined with plain but substantial mansions,
at the corner of which stood an unpretending house; its
door painted of a bright green, gained by two marble
steps, and displaying upon the centre a lion-headed knocker,
thereby differing from its neighbors, which boasted the
more modern appendage of bell-knobs. Here the seamstress
stopped, and said to her companion—

“I left Harry with the kind old gentleman, Mr. Granby,
who thought it would be too lonesome for the children to
remain in our room. Come in with me, dear! we will
stay but a moment, and then hurry home.”

Then, lightly ascending the steps, Margaret lifted the
knocker, and its alarm was speedily answered by the
appearance of Samson at the opening door. The old
negro smiled pleasantly, and welcomed them in.

“Berry great times, Missy!” cried the honest fellow.
“Dat 'ittle Fanny 'most as good skule-missy as you is
yourself, Missy. Jes' come in, please, Missy.”

Saying this, Samson, closing the door softly, stepped

back in the hall, that was cheerfully lighted by a pendant
lamp, and then marshalled the two girls, in his friendly
way, towards the quiet back room, which served Mr
Granby for his library, and constituted, at the same time,
a cosy sitting-room for his little family. Pausing a moment,
on reaching its threshold, the black placed his
finger upon his lip, as if to invoke silence, and Margaret
recognized, next moment, the low voice of Fanny the
orphan engaged in repeating something which sounded
quite familiar to her ears.

“Knows it all by heart, Missy, I do tink,” said Samson,
with a look of intelligence; and the seamstress,
listening intently, became aware that the child was rehearsing,
almost in the language which she had herself
used, that little story concerning the babe Moses, that
had formed the subject of their morning's lesson in her
own room at the tenant-house. Then opening the library
door, Samson ushered the visitors into a circle, whose
homelike peace was in lovely contrast to the wild and
wicked scene that had so lately passed before their
eyes, in the gloomy precincts through which they had
wandered.

Mr. Granby leaned back in his arm-chair, the open
Bible on the stand before him, and opposite, upon the
lounge, sat Mrs. George. Bob the Weasel, sitting on a
low stool, was holding little Harry closely, with one hand
clasped about his neck, and playing with his brown locks,
and at the old man's knee stood Fanny, her face upraised
with an expression of melancholy sweetness, while, in a
low and distinct tone, she recited the touching narrative,

to which Mrs. George, with parted lips, seemed the most
attentive listener. At a sign from Mr. Granby, Margaret
paused, with her friend, just after crossing the door-sill,
in order to remain noiselessly listening a moment; but
the child had heard the opening of the door, her eye
wandered, and her voice faltered in its tones, and then
ceased.

“Do not be frightened, dear child!” was the impulsive
exclamation that rose at once to Margaret's lips, as she
moved forward to take the offered hand of Mr. Granby,
and at the same time stooped, to imprint a kiss upon the
little orphan's cheek. Fanny, perturbed and bashful,
shrank back to the side of Rob, and then Harry caught
her suddenly, and threw his arms about her neck, while
Mrs. George, rising with much dignity, hastily covered her
eyes with her handkerchief to hide the tell-tale glister
that betrayed her woman's heart. The seamstress modestly
introduced her friend Emily to Mr. Granby, who, in
turn, presented the two young girls to Mrs. George.

“This is my new school-mistress,” said Mr. Granby,
shaking Margaret's hand warmly. “You can judge of
her skill in teaching, by its effect upon this little one
Fanny. Miss Winston,” he continued, “your pupil possesses
a wonderful memory, if, as I suppose, this morning's
lesson was her first. But what is this?—you are not crying,
Fanny? Bless me! what is the matter?”

Fanny had sunk down, with her arms about Rob Morrison's
neck, her eyes gushing with tears, while a succession
of sobs broke from her lips. Harry appeared to catch
the infection of grief, and began to weep likewise, and

Mrs. George, growing quite bewildered, seemed to forget
her dignity, for a moment, in astonishment at this new
phase of domestic experience.

“My child, you must not cry so!” continued Mr.
Granby, puzzled and alarmed at Fanny's passionate sorrow.
He stooped, as he spoke, and laid his hand upon
the child's head; and she seemed to check her sobs, with
a great effort. Emily Marvin, who had remained beside
her friend, likewise bent down at this moment, and said
in a soft tone—

“What is it for, dear? What were you thinking of!”

Was it the instinct of her orphanage, or the prompting
of some strange, superior power, that caused the child to
turn suddenly, as Emily's voice fell upon her ear—to
stretch out her delicate arms, as if in supplication—while
her eyes, blinded by tears, were uplifted, and her choked
voice murmured—“Mother! Oh, my mother!”

Ah! good Mrs. George! do not turn away so quickly,
nor hide your face with your handkerchief! Let those
drops of human sympathy gush forth without restraint!
See! there are tears on Mr. Granby's cheeks, and Samson's
eyes are misty.

It was, indeed, a sight fitted to stir the deep of kindly
sympathy; for another orphan heart had echoed the
exclamations that burst so wildly from Fanny, and
another bereaved one's grief had mingled with the child's
sorrow. Caught abruptly to a strange but tender breast,
clasped upon a heart that throbbed in anguish bitter as
her own for a mother's loss, the little one mingled her
plaint with that of Emily, who sobbed a moment deeply,

and then became fearfully still, just as the seamstress,
extending her arms, received the relaxed form of her
young friend in their sustaining clasp.

“She has fainted, sir,” whispered Margaret to Mr.
Granby, as the young girl's head dropped backward, disclosing
the deathly pallor of her features; and at this
announcement, the ruffled remnant of Mrs. George's dignity
vanished instantly, and the good lady became at once
the active hostess and kindly nurse; so that, under the
operation of hastily-mustered restoratives, Emily Marvin
soon recovered her animation, and was able to listen languidly
to Margaret's simple narrative of the scenes in
which they had both participated during the latter
portion of her sorrowful Sabbath.

The last few days, since her mother's eyes closed upon
the world, had been days of weariness and pain to the
young maiden, thus left in loneliness and mourning. She
had, indeed, preserved comparative calmness during the
period occupied in solemn preparation for her last filial
duties, and had even passed with fortitude through that
sternest trial of an orphaned heart, the awful parting at
the grave; but in the moment when her broken spirit
caught the wail of Fanny, motherless like herself—the
yearning and unrestrainable call of that poor infant upon
the departed parent who might no more answer her desolate
little one's cry—in this moment, the waters of bitterness
broke forth from the Marah of her own pent feelings,
and the realization of her woe found relief only in sudden
insensibility.

Mr. Granby's sympathies were awakened freshly by the

new and interesting object presented to them, and he
heard with great satisfaction of Margaret's intention to
unite her domestic life with that of Emily. Mrs. George,
on her part, was conscious of a new revelation regarding
a class of persons concerning whom she had hitherto
known very little, and, as must truly be said, troubled
herself less. The worthy housekeeper was a member of
that very-much-to-be-pitied circle of society known to themselves,
if not to the world, as reduced gentlewomen. Her
parents, lost to her at an early period of her life, had
been the possessors of little fortune, but a great deal of
pride, and had brought up their only child with no lack
of the latter and a very great respect for possessors of
the former. She had been educated as fashionably as the
straitened finances of her parents could afford, and taught
in infancy that as good blood ran in her veins as in any
English family, dating back to King William of Hastings.
Consequently, when the death of her natural protectors
left the young lady with a pretty face and slim wardrobe,
in the care of a matter-of-fact, match-making relative, her
family pride assisted her to refuse sundry eligible offers of
plain young business men, and to yield gracefully to the
blandishments of a gentleman who had no business at all,
as it turned out, after she had married him, and who,
when they had lived several years together in a precarious
and most unfashionable way, managed to leave her in
middle life, very proud still, but totally unprovided for.
Had she, at this crisis, been in England, the country of
her parents, she might have merged her gentility in the
position of a governess, at twenty pounds a year; but in
America, where governesses are not in demand, she found
a refuge, in her need, in the goodness of an old friend of
her parents, Mr. Martin Granby, and became, at his
request, the care-taker and manager, with due dignity, of
his plain but comfortable family economy. Such was
Mrs. George at the period when her quiet life was so
unexpectedly broken in upon by what she at first termed
the “whimsical” benevolence of her patron; and great
was her own mental wonderment, it must be told, to find
herself, upon this Sabbath evening, so forgetful of station
as to weep at a little beggar girl's stories, and agitate
her nerves most unprecedentedly in ministering to a fainting
sewing-girl.

But Mrs. George, though lacking in genteel deportment
that evening, did not, as it appeared, sink at all in the
estimation of either Mr. Granby or his servant Samson;
for it was noticeable that, during a temporary absence of
the housekeeper from the library, after Emily had been
recovered, a quick interchange of glances passed between
master and man, and the old gentleman whispered in his
sable friend's ears, that “Mrs. George was a kindhearted
woman, after all,” to which Samson responded by the
emphatic word “berry;” and it is furthermore matter
worthy of record, that when, shortly afterwards, Margaret
and Emily, with Harry and Fanny, took their farewell for
the evening, Mrs. George not only shook hands warmly
with both the sewing-girls, but saluted their pale cheeks
with a real matronly kiss, and then actually stooped and
kissed the children, not forgetting Bob the Weasel, who
thus, for the first time in his life, felt the touch of woman's

lips upon his poor face, and thereafter, when he was safe
in bed, cried a whole hour about it, in very joy. Ah,
indeed, Mrs. George! sorrowful as that Sabbath day
seemed to the orphans, it was sanctified unto you, and
unto them, by the divine charity, the holy human sympathy,
that thrilled in a parting kiss and glittered, jewel-like,
in a pitying tear.

When the sewing-girls went home through the misty
streets, to Kolephat College, that night, the light of Mr.
Granby's cheerful library fire shone out before and behind
their footsteps, irradiating the stormy darkness; and
when they knelt in prayer with the little ones, and then,
folded in one another's sisterly arms, sank into the calm
slumber of innocence, be sure the kindly forms of Mr.
Granby and his housekeeper, and the shining friendliness
of Samson's face, stole over their dreams, mingled, haply,
with the glorified shapes of mothers bending down in
heavenly benediction over mortal children. Thus, even
the tenant-house was no more gloomy, and the memory of
death became blessed unto the mourners.