University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
WATCHING AND WAITING.

THE pink and white blossoms of the apple trees by
the pump in Aunt Barbara's back yard were dropping
their snowy petals upon the clean, bright
grass, and the frogs in the meadows were croaking their
sad music, when Richard Markham came again to Chicopee.
He had started for home the morning after his memorable
interview with Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, and to Aunt Barbara
had fallen the task of telling her troubles to the Colonel's
family, asking that the affair be kept as quiet as possible,
inasmuch as Ethie might soon be found, and matters between
her and Richard be made right. Every day, after the
mail came from the West, the Colonel rang at Aunt Barbara's
door and asked solemnly “if there was any news,”—
good news he meant,—and Aunt Barbara always shook her
head, while her face grew thinner, and her round, straight
figure began to get a stoop and a look of greater age than
the family bible would warrant.

Ethelyn had not been heard from, and Richard could find
no trace of her whatever. She had effectually covered her
tracks, so that not even a clue to her whereabouts was
found. No one had seen her, or any person like her, and
the suspense and anxiety were becoming terrible, when
there came to Andy a letter in the dear, familiar handwriting.
A few lines only, and they read:

This was the letter which Andy read with streaming
eyes, while around him, on tiptoe, looking over his and
each other's shoulders, stood the entire family, all anxious
and eager to know what the runaway had written. It was
a very conciliatory letter, and it left a sadly pleasant impression
on those who read it, making even the mother wipe
her eyes with the corner of her apron as she washed her
supper dishes in the sink and whispered to herself, “She
didn't trouble me so very much more than I did her. I
might have done different, too.”

Richard made no comment, but, like Andy, he conned
that letter over and over until he knew it by heart, especially
the part referring to himself. She had cast a shadow
upon his life, but she was very dear to him for all of that, and
he would gladly have taken back the substance, had that
been possible. This letter Richard carried to Aunt Barbara,
whom he found sitting in her pleasant porch, with the May
moonlight falling upon her face, and her eyes wearing the
look of one who is constantly expecting something which
never comes. And Aunt Barbara was expecting Ethie.
It could not be that a young girl like her would stay away
for long. She might return at any time, and every morning
the good woman said to herself, “She will be here to-day;”
every night, “She will come home to-morrow.”
The letter, however, did not warrant such a conclusion.
There was no talk of coming back, but the postmark, “New

York,” told where she was, and that was something gained.
They could surely find her now, Aunt Barbara said, and
she and Richard talked long together about what he was
going to do, for he was on his way then to the great city.

“Bring her at once to me. It is my privilege to have
her first,” Aunt Barbara said, next morning, as she bade
Richard good-by, and then began to watch and wait for
tidings which never came.

Richard could not find Ethelyn, or any trace of her, and
after a protracted search of six weeks, he went back to his
Iowa home, sick, worn out, and discouraged. Then Aunt
Barbara roused herself for action. “Men were good for
nothing to hunt. They could not find a thing if it was
right before their face and eyes. It took a woman; and
she was going to see what she could do,” she said to Mrs.
Van Buren, who was up at the homestead for a few days,
and who looked aghast at her sister's proposition, that she
should accompany her, and help her hunt up Ethie.

“Was Barbara crazy, that she thought of going to New
York in this hot weather, when the small-pox, and the dysentery,
and the plague, and mercy knew what was there?
Besides that, how did Barbara intend to manage? What
was she going to do?”

Barbara hardly knew herself how she should manage, or
what she should do. “Providence would direct,” she said,
though to be sure she had an idea. Ethie had written that
she had found employment, and what was more probable
than to suppose that the employment was giving music
lessons, for which she was so well qualified, or teaching in
some gentleman's family. Taking this as her basis, Aunt
Barbara intended to inquire for every governess and teacher
in the city, besides watching every house where such an appendage

would be likely to be found. Still her great hope was
in the street and the Park. She should surely meet Ethie
there some day,—at least she should try the effect of her
plan; and she went quietly on with her preparations, while
Mrs. Van Buren tried to dissuade her from a scheme
which seemed so foolish and utterly impracticable.

“Suppose Ethie was a governess, the family most likely
would be out of town at that season; and what good would
it do for Barbara to risk her life and health in the crowded
city?”

This view of the matter was rather dampening to Aunt
Barbara's zeal; but trusting that Providence would interfere
in her behalf, she still insisted that she should go, and again
expressed a wish that Sophie would go with her. “It would
not be so lonesome, and would look better, too,” she said,
“while you know more of city ways than I do, and would
not get imposed upon.”

Mrs. Van Buren could go far beyond her sister in abusing
Richard, but when it came to a sacrifice of her own comfort
and pleasure, she held back. Nothing could induce her to
go to New York. She preferred the cool sea-side, where
she was to join a party of Boston élite. Her dresses were
made, her room engaged, and she must go, she said, urging
that Nettie's health required the change,—Nettie, who had
given to her husband a sickly, puny child, which lived just
long enough to warrant a grand funeral, and then was laid
to rest under the shadow of the Van Buren Monument,
out in pleasant Mount Auburn.

So Mrs. Van Buren went back to Boston, while Aunt
Barbara gave all needful directions to Betty with regard to
the management of the house, and the garden, and plants,
and cellar-door, which must be shut nights, and the spot on

the roof which sometimes leaked when it rained, and the burdocks
and dandelions which must be dug up, and the grass
which Uncle Billy Thompson must cut once in two weeks,
and the old cat, Tabby, and the young cat, Jim, who had
come to the door in a storm, and was now the pet of the
house, and the canary bird, and the yeast. She was also to
look in the vinegar barrel to see that all was right, and be sure
and scald the milk-pans, and turn them up in the sun for an
hour, and keep the doors locked, and the silver up in the
scuttle-hole; and if she heard the rat which had baffled
and tormented them so long, get some poison and kill it,
but not on any account let it get in the cistern; and keep
the door-steps clean, and the stoop, and once in a while
sweep the low roof at the back of the house, and not sit up
late nights, or sleep very long in the morning; and inasmuch
as there would be so little to do, she might as well finish up
all her own sewing, and then make the pile of sheets and
pillow-cases which had been cut out since March. These
were Aunt Barbara's directions, which Betty, nothing appalled,
promised to heed, telling her mistress not to worry
an atom, as things should be attended to, even better than
if she were at home to see to them herself.

Aunt Barbara knew she could trust old Betty, and so,
after getting herself vaccinated in both arms, as a precaution
against the small-pox, and procuring various disinfecting
agents, and having under-pockets put in all her
dresses, by way of eluding pickpockets, the good woman
started one hot July morning on her mission in search of
Ethie. But, alas! finding Ethie, or any one, in New York,
was like “hunting for a needle in a hay-mow,” as Aunt
Barbara began to think after she had been for four weeks
or more an inmate of an up-town boarding-house, recommended

as first-class, but terrible to Aunt Barbara, from
the contrast it presented to her own clean, roomy home
beneath the maple trees, which came up to her so vividly,
with all its delicious coolness and fragrance, and blossoming
shrubs, and newly cut grass, with the dew sparkling
like diamonds upon it.

Aunt Barbara was homesick from the first, but she would
not give up; and so day after day she traversed one street
after another, looking wistfully in every face she met for
the one she sought, questioning children playing in the
parks and squares as to whether they knew any teacher by
the name of Markham or Grant, ringing the door-bells
of every pretentious-looking house, and putting the same
question to the servants, until the bombazine dress and
black Stella shawl, and brown Neapolitan hat, and old-fashioned
lace veil, and large sun-umbrella became pretty
well known in various parts of New York, while the owner
thereof grew to be a suspicious character, whom servants
watched from the basement and ladies from the parlor windows,
and children shunned on the side-walk, while even
the police were cautioned with regard to the strange woman
who went up and down day after day, sometimes in stages,
sometimes in cars, but oftener on foot, staring at every one
she met, especially if they chanced to be young or pretty,
and had any children near them. Once, down near Washington
Square, as she was hurrying toward a group of children,
in the centre of which stood a figure much like Ethie's,
a tall man in the blue uniform accosted her, inquiring into
her reasons for wandering about so constantly.

Aunt Barbara's honest face, which she turned full toward
the officer, was a sufficient voucher for her without the
simple, straightforward explanation which she made to the

effect that her niece had left home some time ago,—run
away, in fact,—and she was hunting for her here in New
York, where her letter was dated. “But it's wearisome
work for an old woman like me, walking all over New
York, as I have,” Aunt Barbara said, and her lip began to
quiver as she sat down upon one of the seats in the square,
and looked helplessly up at the policeman. She was not
afraid of him, nor of the five others of the craft who knew
her by sight, and stopped to hear what she had to say.
She never dreamed that they could suspect her of wrong,
and they did not when they heard her story, and saw the
truthful, motherly face. Perhaps they could help her, they
said, and they asked the name of the runaway.

At first Aunt Barbara refused to give it, wishing to spare
Ethie this notoriety; but she finally yielded so far as to
say, “She might call herself either Markham or Grant,”
and that was all they could get from her; but after that
day the bombazine dress, and black Stella shawl, and large
sun umbrella were safe from the surveillance of the police,
save as each had a kindly care for the owner, and an interest
in the object of her search.

The light-fingered gentry, however, were not as chary of
her. The sweet, motherly face, and wistful, pleading,
timid eyes, did not deter them in the least. On the contrary,
they saw in the bombazine and Stella shawl a fine
field for their operations; and twice, on returning to her
boarding-house, she was horrified to find her purse was missing,
notwithstanding that she had kept her hand upon her
pocket every instant, except once, when the man who
looked like a minister had kindly opened the car window
for her, and she had gathered up her dress to make more
room for him at her side, and once when she got entangled

in a crowd, and had to hold on to her shawl to keep it on
her shoulders. Ten dollars was the entire sum purloined,
so the villains did not make much out of her, Aunt Barbara
reflected, with a good deal of complacency; but when they
stole her gold-bowed glasses from her pocket, and adroitly
snatched from her hand the parcel containing the dress she
had bought for Betty at Stewart's, she began to look upon
herself as specially marked by a gang of thieves for one on
whom to commit their depredations; and when at last a
fire broke out in the very block where she was boarding,
and she, with others, was driven from her bed at midnight,
with her bombazine only half on, and her hoops left behind,
she made up her mind that the fates were against her,
and started for home the very next day.

It was sooner than Betty expected her, but the clean,
cool house, peeping out from the dense shadows of the
maples, looked like a paradise to the tired, dusty woman,
who rode down the street in the village hack, and surprised
Betty sitting in the back door cutting off corn to dry and
talking to Uncle Billy, whose scythe lay on the grass while
he drank from the gourd swimming on top of the water-pail.

Betty was glad to see her mistress, and lamented that she
did not know of her coming, so as to have had a nice hot
cup of tea ready, with a delicate morsel of something. Aunt
Barbara was satisfied to be home on any terms, though her
nose did go up a little, and something which sounded like
“P-shew!” dropped from her lips as she entered the dark
sitting-room, where the odor was not the best in the world.

“It's the rat, ma'am, I think,” Betty said, opening both
blinds and windows. “I put the pizen for him as you
said, and all I could do he would die in the wall. It ain't

as bad as it has been, and I've got some stuff here to kill it,
though I think it smells worse than the rat himself,” and
Betty held her own nose as she pointed out to her mistress
the saucer of chloride of lime which, at Mrs. Col. Markham's
suggestion, she had put in the sitting-room.

Aside from the rat in the wall, things were mostly as
Aunt Barbara could wish them to be. The vinegar had
made beautifully. There was fresh yeast, brewed the day
before, in the jug. The milk-pans were bright and sweet;
the cellar-door was fastened; the garden was looking its
best; the silver was all up the scuttle-hole, Betty having
climbed up every morning to see if it were safe; the stoop
and steps were scrubbed, the roof was swept, and both the
cats, Tabby and Jim, were so fat that they could scarcely
walk as they came up to greet their mistress. Only two
mishaps Betty had to relate. Jim had eaten up the canary
bird, and she had broken the kitchen tongs. She had also
failed to accomplish as much sewing as she had hoped to
do, and the pile of work was not greatly diminished.

“There is so many steps to take when a body is alone,
and with you gone I was more particular,” she said, by way
of apology, as she confessed to the rat, and the canary bird,
and the kitchen tongs, and the small amount of sewing she
had done.

These were all the points wherein she had been remiss, and
Aunt Barbara was content, and even happy, as she laid aside
her Stella shawl and brown Neapolitan, and out in her pleasant
dining-room sat down to the hasty meal which Betty improvised,
of bread and butter, Dutch cheese, baked apples, and
huckleberry pie, with a cup of delicious tea, such as Aunt
Barbara did not believe the people of New York had ever
tasted. Most certainly those who were fortunate enough to

board at first-class boarding-houses had not; and as she
sipped her favorite beverage, with Tabby on her dress, and
the cannibal Jim in her lap, his head occasionally peering
above the table, she felt comforted and rested, and thankful
for her cozy home, albeit it lay like a heavy weight upon
her that her trouble had been for nothing, and no tidings
of Ethie had been obtained.

She wrote to Richard the next day, of her unsuccessful
search, and asked what they should do next.

“We can do nothing but wait and hope,” Richard wrote
in reply, but Aunt Barbara added to it, “we can pray;”
and so all through the autumn, when the soft, hazy days
which Ethie had loved so well kept the lost one forever in
mind, Aunt Barbara waited and hoped, and prayed and
watched for Ethie's coming home, feeling always a sensation
of expectancy when the Western whistle sounded and the
Western train went thundering through the town; and
when the hack came up from the depot and did not stop at
her door, she said to herself, “She would walk up, maybe,”
and then waiting again she would watch from her window
and look far up the quiet street, where the leaves of crimson
and gold were lying upon the walk. No Ethie was to
be seen. Then as the days grew shorter and the night fell
earlier upon the Chicopee hills, and the bleak winds blew
across the meadow, and the waters of the river looked blue
and dark and cold in the November light, she said, “She
will be here sure by Christmas. She always liked that
day best,” and her fingers were busy with the lamb's-wool
stockings she was knitting her darling.

“It won't be much,” she said to Betty, “but it will show
she is not forgotten;” and so the stocking grew, and was
shaped from a half-worn pair which Ethie used to wear, and

on which Aunt Barbara's tears dropped as she thought of
the dear little feet, now wandered so far away, which the
stockings used to cover.

Christmas came, and Susie Granger sang of Bethlehem
in the old stone church, and other fingers than Ethie's swept
the organ-keys, and the Christmas-tree was set up, and the
presents were hung upon the boughs, and the names were
called, and Aunt Barbara was there, but the lamb's-wool
stockings were at home in the bureau-drawer; there was no
one to wear them, no one to take them from the tree, if
they had been put there; Ethie had not come.