University of Virginia Library

20. XX.
AUNT JANE TO THE RESCUE.

THE thing that saves us from insanity
during great grief is that there is usually
something to do, and the mind composes
itself to the mechanical task of adjusting the
details. Hope dared not look forward an inch
into the future; that way madness lay. Fortunately,
it was plain what must come first, —
to keep the whole thing within their own walls,
and therefore to make some explanation to
Mrs. Meredith, whose servants had doubtless
been kept up all night awaiting Emilia. Profoundly
perplexed what to say or not to say to
her, Hope longed with her whole soul for an
adviser. Harry and Kate were both away, and
besides, she shrank from darkening their young
lives as hers had been darkened. She resolved
to seek counsel in the one person who most
thoroughly distrusted Emilia, — Aunt Jane.

This lady was in a particularly happy mood
that day. Emilia, who did all kinds of fine
needle-work exquisitely, had just embroidered

for Aunt Jane some pillow-cases. The original
suggestion came from Hope, but it never
cost Emilia anything to keep a secret, and she
had presented the gift very sweetly, as if it
were a thought of her own. Aunt Jane, who
with all her penetration as to facts was often
very guileless as to motives, was thoroughly
touched by the humility and the embroidery.

“All last night,” she said, “I kept waking
up, and thinking about Christian charity and
my pillow-cases.”

It was, therefore, a very favorable day for
Hope's consultation, though it was nearly
noon before her aunt was visible, perhaps because
it took so long to make up her bed with
the new adornments.

Hope said frankly to Aunt Jane that there
were some circumstances about which she
should rather not be questioned, but that
Emilia had come there the previous night
from the ball, had been seized with one of her
peculiar attacks, and had stayed all night.
Aunt Jane kept her eyes steadily fixed on
Hope's sad face, and, when the tale was ended,
drew her down and kissed her lips.

“Now tell me, dear,” she said; “what comes
first?”

“The first thing is,” said Hope, “to have
Emilia's absence explained to Mrs. Meredith
in some such way that she will think no more
of it, and not talk about it.”

“Certainly,” said Aunt Jane. “There is
but one way to do that. I will call on her
myself.”

“You, auntie?” said Hope.

“Yes, I,” said her aunt. “I have owed her
a call for five years. It is the only thing
that will excite her so much as to put all else
out of her head.”

“O auntie!” said Hope, greatly relieved,
“if you only would! But ought you really to
go out? It is almost raining.”

“I shall go,” said Aunt Jane, decisively, “if
it rains little boys!”

“But will not Mrs. Meredith wonder —?”
began Hope.

“That is one advantage,” interrupted her
aunt, “of being an absurd old woman. Nobody
ever wonders at anything I do, or else it
is that they never stop wondering.”

She sent Ruth erelong to order the horses.
Hope collected her various wrappers, and
Ruth, returning, got her mistress into a state
of preparation.

“If I might say one thing more,” Hope
whispered.

“Certainly,” said her aunt. “Ruth, go to
my chamber, and get me a pin.”

“What kind of a pin, ma'am?” asked that
meek handmaiden, from the doorway.

“What a question!” said her indignant
mistress. “Any kind. The common pin of
North America. Now, Hope?” as the door
closed.

“I think it better, auntie,” said Hope, “that
Philip should not stay here longer at present.
You can truly say that the house is full,
and —”

“I have just had a note from him,” said
Aunt Jane, severely. “He has gone to lodge
at the hotel. What next?”

“Aunt Jane,” said Hope, looking her full
in the face, “I have not the slightest idea
what to do next.”

(“The next thing for me,” thought her aunt,
“is to have a little plain speech with that misguided
child upstairs.”)

“I can see no way out,” pursued Hope.

“Darling!” said Aunt Jane, with a voice
full of womanly sweetness, “there is always a
way out, or else the world would have stopped

long ago. Perhaps it would have been better
if it had stopped, but you see it has not. All
we can do is, to live on and try our best.”

She bade Hope leave Emilia to her, and
furthermore stipulated that Hope should go to
her pupils as usual, that afternoon, as it was
their last lesson. The young girl shrank from
the effort, but the elder lady was inflexible.
She had her own purpose in it. Hope once
out of the way, Aunt Jane could deal with
Emilia.

No human being, when met face to face
with Aunt Jane, had ever failed to yield up to
her the whole truth she sought. Emilia was
on that day no exception. She was prostrate,
languid, humble, denied nothing, was ready to
concede every point but one. Never, while
she lived, would she dwell beneath John Lambert's
roof again. She had left it impulsively,
she admitted, scarce knowing what she did.
But she would never return there to live. She
would go once more and see that all was in
order for Mr. Lambert, both in the house
and on board the yacht, where they were to
have taken up their abode for a time. There
were new servants in the house, a new captain
on the yacht; she would trust Mr. Lambert's

comfort to none of them; she would do her
full duty. Duty! the more utterly she felt
herself to be gliding away from him forever,
the more pains she was ready to lavish in doing
these nothings well. About every insignificant
article he owned she seemed to feel
the most scrupulous and wife-like responsibility;
while she yet knew that all she had was to
him nothing, compared with the possession of
herself; and it was the thought of this last
ownership that drove her to despair.

Sweet and plaintive as the child's face was,
it had a glimmer of wildness and a hunted
look, that baffled Aunt Jane a little, and compelled
her to temporize. She consented that
Emilia should go to her own house, on condition
that she would not see Philip, — which
was readily and even eagerly promised, —
and that Hope should spend that night with
Emilia, which proposal was ardently accepted.

It occurred to Aunt Jane that nothing better
could happen than for John Lambert, on
returning, to find his wife at home; and to
secure this result, if possible, she telegraphed
to him to come at once.

Meantime Hope gave her inevitable music-lesson,
so absorbed in her own thoughts that it

was all as mechanical as the métronome. As
she came out upon the Avenue for the walk
home, she saw a group of people from a gardener's
house, who had collected beside a
muddy crossing, where a team of cart-horses
had refused to stir. Presently they sprang
forward with a great jerk, and a little Irish
child was thrown beneath the wheel. Hope
sprang forward to grasp the child, and the
wheel struck her also; but she escaped with
a dress torn and smeared, while the cart
passed over the little girl's arm, breaking it
in two places. She screamed and then grew
faint, as Hope lifted her. The mother received
the burden with a wail of anguish;
the other Irishwomen pressed around her
with the dense and suffocating sympathy of
their nation. Hope bade one and another
run for a physician, but nobody stirred.
There was no surgical aid within a mile or
more. Hope looked round in despair, then
glanced at her own disordered garments.

“As sure as you live!” shouted a well-known
voice from a carriage which had
stopped behind them. “If that is n't Hope
what's-her-name, wish I may never! Here's
a lark! Let me come there!” And the
speaker pushed through the crowd.

“Miss Ingleside,” said Hope, decisively,
“this child's arm is broken. There is nobody
to go for a physician. Except for the condition
I am in, I would ask you to take me there at
once in your carriage; but as it is —”

“As it is, I must ask you, hey?” said
Blanche, finishing the sentence. “Of course.
No mistake. Sans dire. Jones, junior, this
lady will join us. Don't look so scared, man.
Are you anxious about your cushions or your
reputation?”

The youth simpered and disclaimed.

“Jump in, then, Miss Maxwell. Never
mind the expense. It's only the family carriage;
— surname and arms of Jones. Lucky
there are no parents to the fore. Put my
shawl over you, so.”

“O Blanche!” said Hope, “what injustice
—”

“I've done myself?” said the volatile damsel.
“Not a doubt of it. That's my style,
you know. But I have some sense; I know
who's who. Now, Jones, junior, make your
man handle the ribbons. I've always had a
grudge against that ordinance about fast driving,
and now's our chance.”

And the sacred “ordinance,” with all other

proprieties, was left in ruins that day. They
tore along the Avenue with unexplained and
most inexplicable speed, Hope being concealed
by riding backward, and by a large shawl, and
Blanche and her admirer receiving the full indignation
of every chaste and venerable eye.
Those who had tolerated all this girl's previous
improprieties were obliged to admit that the
line must be drawn somewhere. She at once
lost several good invitations and a matrimonial
offer, since Jones, junior, was swept away
by his parents to be wedded without delay to
a consumptive heiress who had long pined for
his whiskers; and Count Posen, in his Souvenirs,
was severer on Blanche's one good
deed than on the worst of her follies.

A few years after, when Blanche, then the
fearless wife of a regular-army officer, was
helping Hope in the hospitals at Norfolk, she
would stop to shout with delight over the reminiscence
of that stately Jones equipage in mad
career, amid the barking of dogs and the
groaning of dowagers. “After all, Hope,”
she would say, “the fastest thing I ever did
was under your orders.”