University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
ADAH AT TERRACE HILL.

The next morning was cold and frosty, as winter mornings
in New England are wont to be, and Adah, shivered
involuntarily as from her uncurtained window she looked
out upon the bare woods and the frozen fields covered
with the snow of yesterday. Oh, how cold and dreary and
desolate everything seemed on that December morning; and
only Adah's trust in Him who she knew would not forsake
her kept her heart from fainting. Even this could not keep
back her tears as she watched the coming of the eastern
train, and wished that she could take it and go back to
Spring Bank. Wistfully she watched the train which
paused for a single moment and then sped on its way, just
as there came a knock at the door, and the baggage man
appeared.

“If you please, ma'am,” he began, “the Terrace Hill
carriage is here — brung over the doctor, who has took
the train for New York. I told the driver how't you
wanted to go there. Shall I give him your trunk?”

Adah answered in the affirmative, and then hastened
to wrap up Willie. She was ready in a moment and
descended to the room where Jim, the driver, stood waiting
for her, eyeing her sharply, as if making up his mind
with regard to her position.

“A lady,” was his mental comment, and with as much
politeness as if she had been Madam Richards herself, he
opened the carriage door and held Willie while she entered,
asking if she were comfortable, and peering a little
curiously in Willie's face, which puzzled him somewhat.
“A near connection, I guess, and mighty pretty, too.

I'm most sorry she's come visiting just now, when old
madam and the others is so cross. Them old maids will
raise hob with the boy — nice little shaver,” thought the
kind hearted Jim, as he hurried up his horses, looking back
occasionally, and smiling at Willie, who had forgotten the
ache of yesterday, and was crowing with delight as the
carriage moved swiftly on.

Once, as Adah caught his good-humored eye, she
ventured to say to him,

“Has Miss Anna procured a waiting-maid yet?”

There was a comical gleam in Jim's eye now, for Adah
was not the first applicant he had taken up to Terrace
Hill, and it was the memory of madam's reception of them
which made him laugh. He never suspected that this was
Adah's business, she was so unlike the others, and he
answered frankly,

“No, that's about played out. They don't come as
thick as they did. Madam turned the last one out
doors.”

“Turned her out doors?” and Adah's face was as white
as the snow rifts they were passing.

The driver felt that he had gossiped too much, and
relasped into silence, while Adah, in a paroxysm of terror
sat with clasped hands and closed eyes, unmindful of
Willie's attempt to make her look at the huge building,
just in sight. In her dread of Mrs. Richards she scarcely
knew what she was doing, and leaning forward, at last she
said, huskily,

“Driver, driver, do you think she'll turn me off too?”

“Turn you off!” and in his surprise at the sudden suspicion
which for the first time darted across his mind, Jim
brought his horses to a full stop, while he held a parley
with the pale, frightened creature, asking so eagerly if
Mrs. Richards would turn her off. “Why should she?
You ain't going there for that, be you?”

“Not to be turned out of doors, no,” Adah answered;

“but I — I — I want that place so much. I read Miss
Anna's advertisement; but please turn back, or let me
get out and walk. I can't go there now. Is Miss Anna
like the rest?”

Jim had recovered himself a little, and though he could
not have been more astonished had Adah proved to be a
washerwoman, than he was to find her a waiting-maid, it
did not abate his respect for her one whit. She had been
a lady sure, and as such he should treat her. She had also
appealed to him for sympathy, and he would not withhold
it.

“Miss Anna's an angel,” he answered. “If you get
her ear, you're all right; the plague is to get it with them
two she cats ready to tear your eyes out. If I'se you, I'd
ask to see her. I wouldn't tell my arrent either, till I did.
She's sick up stairs; but I'll see if Pamely can't manage
it. That's my woman — Pamely; been mine for four
years, and we've had two pair of twins, all dead; so I feel
tender towards the little ones,” and Jim glanced at Willie,
who had succeeded in making Adah notice the house
standing out so prominently against the winter sky, and
looking to the poor girl more like a prison than a home.

Only one part of it seemed inviting — the two crimson-curtained
windows opening upon a verandah, from
which a flight of steps led down into what must be a
flower-garden.

“Miss Anna's room,” the driver said, pointing towards
it; and Adah looked out, vainly hoping for a glimpse of
the sweet face she had in her mind as Anna's.

But Anna was sick in bed with a headache, induced by
the excitement of her brother's visit and the harsh words
which passed between him and his sisters, he telling them,
jokingly at first, that he was tired of getting married, and
half resolved to give it up; while they, in return, abused
him for fickleness, taunted him with their poverty, and
sharply reproached him for his unwillingness to lighten
their burden, by taking a rich wife when he could get one.

All this John had repeated to Anna in the dim twilight
of the morning, as he stood by her bedside to bid her
good-bye; and she, as usual, had soothed him into quiet,
speaking kindly of his bride-elect, and saying she should
like her.

He had not told her Lily's story, as he meant to do.
There was no necessity for that, for the matter was fixed.
Lina should be his wife, and he need not trouble Anna
further; so he had bidden her adieu, and was gone again,
the carriage which bore him away bringing back Adah and
her boy.

Jim opened the wide door for her, and ushered her into
a little reception-room, where the Misses Richards received
their morning calls. Drawing a deep arm-chair to
the fire, Adah sat down before the cheerful blaze, and
looked around her with that strange feeling one experiences
where everything is new.

Willie seemed perfectly at home, seating himself upon
a little stool, covered with some of Miss Eudora's choicest
worsted embroidery, a piece of work of which she was
very proud, never allowing anything to touch it lest the
roses should be jammed, or the raised leaves defaced.
But Willie cared neither for leaves nor roses, nor yet for
Miss Eudora, and drawing the stool to his mother's side,
he sat kicking his little heels into a worn place of the
carpet, which no child had kicked since the doctor's days
of babyhood. The tender threads were fast giving way
to the vigorous strokes, when two doors opposite each
other opened simultaneously, and both Mrs. Richards and
Eudora appeared.

They had heard from Jim that a stranger was there,
and as all the cross questionings concerning Adah elicited
only the assertion, that “she was a lady,” both had
made a slight change in their toilet ere starting for the
room which they reached together, Mrs. Richards taking
in at once the fit and material of Adah's traveling dress,

deciding that the collar, unbuttoned and shoved back from
the throat, was real mink, as were the wristlets on which
a pair of small white hands were folded together. She
noticed, too, the tiny linen cuffs, with the neat gold buttons
which Alice had made Adah wear. Everything was
in keeping, and their visitor was a lady. This was her
decision, while Eudora noticed only Willie on the bouquet
which had cost her so much labor, and the alarming size
of that worn spot in the carpet where the little high
heeled slipper still was busy. Her first impulse was to
seize him by the arm and transfer him to some other locality,
but the beauty of his face diverted her attention,
and she involuntarily drew a step nearer to the child, fascinated
by him, just as her mother was attracted towards
Adah.

“Are you — ah, yes — you are the lady who Jim said
wished to see me,” the latter began, bowing politely to
Adah, who had not yet dared to look up, and who when
at last she did raise her eyes, withdrew them at once,
more abashed, more frightened, more bewildered than ever,
for the face she saw fully warranted her ideas of a
woman who could turn a waiting-maid from her door just
because she was a waiting-maid.

Something seemed choking Adah and preventing her
utterance, for she did not speak until Mrs. Richards said
again, this time with a little less suavity and a little more
hauteur of manner, “Have I had the honor of meeting
you before?” — then with a low gasp, a mental petition
for help, Adah rose up and lifting to Mrs. Richards' cold,
haughty face, her soft, brown eyes, where tears were almost
visible, answered faintly, “We have not met before.
Excuse me, madam, but my business is with Miss Anna,
can I see her please?”

There was something supplicating in the tone with
which Adah made this request, and it struck Mrs. Richards
unpleasantly, making her answer haughtily, “My

daughter is sick. She does not see visitors, but I will
take your name and your errand.”

Too much confused to remember anything distinctly,
Adah forgot Jim's injunction; forgot that Pamelia was to
arrange it somehow; forgot everything, except that Mrs.
Richards was waiting for her to speak. An ominous
cough from Eudora decided her, and then her reason for
being there came out. She had seen Miss Anna's advertisement,
she wanted a place, and she had come so far to
get it; had left a happy home that she might not be
dependent but earn her bread for herself and her little
boy. Would they take her message to Anna? Would
they let her stay? and Adah's voice took a tone of wild
entreaty as she marked the lowering of madam's brow,
and the perceptible change in her manner when she ascertained
that, according to her creed, not a lady but a
menial stood before her.

“You say you left a happy home,” and the thin, sneering
lips of Eudora were pressed so tightly together that the
words could scarcely find egress. “May I ask, if it was so
happy, why you left it?”

There was a flush on Adah's cheek as she replied, “Because
it was a home granted at first from charity. It was
not mine. The people were poor, and I would not longer
be a burden to them.”

“And your husband — where is he?”

This was the hardest question of all, and Adah's distress
was visible as she replied. “Willie's father left me, and I
don't know where he is.”

An incredulous, provoking smile flitted over Eudora's
face as she returned, “We hardly care to have a deserted
wife in our family — it might be unpleasant.”

“Yes,” and the old lady took up the argument, “Anna
is well enough without a maid. I don't know why she
put that foolish advertisement in the paper, in answer, I

believe, to one equally foolish which she saw about an
unfortunate woman with a child.”'

“I am that woman. I wrote that advertisement when
my heart was heavier than it is now, and God took care of
it. He pointed it out to Miss Anna. He caused her to
answer it. He sent me here, and you will let me see her.
Think if it were your own daughter, pleading thus with
some one.”

“That is impossible. Neither my daughter, nor my
daughter-in-law, if I had one, could ever come to a servant's
position,” Mrs. Richards replied, not harshly, for
there was something in Adah's manner which rode down
her resentful pride; and she might have yielded, but for
Eudora, whose hands had so ached to shake the little child,
now innocently picking at a bud.

How she did long to box his ears, and while her mother
talked, she had taken a step forward more than once, but
stopped as often, held in check by the little face and soft
blue eyes turned so trustingly upon her, the pretty lips
once actually putting themselves toward her, as if expecting
a kiss. Eudora could not harm that child sitting on her
embroidery as coolly as if he had a right; but she could
prevent her mother from granting the stranger's request;
so when she saw signs of yielding, she said, decidedly,
“She cannot see Anna, mother. You know how foolish
she is, and there's no telling what fancy she might take.”

“Eudora,” said Mrs. Richards in a low tone, “It might
be well for Anna to have a maid, and this one is certainly
different from the others who have applied.”

“But we can't be hothered with a child. It would
drive us crazy.”

“Yes, certainly, I did not think of that. A child would
be very troublesome,” Mrs. Richards rejoined.

“So madam, you see how impossible it is for us to keep
you, but you can of course stay till car-time, when Jim
will carry you back to the depot.”

She said this so decidedly that all hope died out of
Adah's heart and she felt as if she were going to faint with
the crushing disappointment.

Just then the door-bell rang. It was the doctor, come
to visit Anna, and both Mrs. Richards and Eudora left
the room.

“Oh, why did I come here, and where shall I go?”
Adah moaned, as a sense of her lonely condition came
over her.

She knew she would be welcome in Kentucky, but Hugh
could not afford to have her back, and she had so counted
on helping him with her first wages.

“Will my Father in Heaven direct me? will he tell me
what to do?” she murmured brokenly, praying softly to
herself that a way might be opened for her, a path which
she could tread. She could not help herself. All her dependence
now was in her God, and in trusting him she
found rest at last.

She could not tell how it was, but a quiet peace stole
over her, a feeling which had no thought or care for the
future, and it had been many nights since she had slept as
sweetly or soundly as she did for one half hour with her
head upon the table in that little room at Terrace Hill,
Dr. Richard's home and Anna's. She did not see the
good-humored face which looked in at her a moment, nor
hear the whispering in the hall; neither did she know
when Willie was coaxed from the room and carried up
the stairs into the upper hall, where he was purposely left
to himself, while Pamelia went to Anna's room, where
she was to sit for an hour or so, while the ladies had their
lunch. Anna's head was better; the paroxysms of pain
were less frequent than in the morning, and she lay upon
her pillow, so nearly asleep that she did not hear that
unusual sound for Terrace Hill, the patter of little feet in
the hall without. Tired of staying by himself, and spying
the open door, Willie hastened toward it, pausing a

moment on the threshold as if to reconnoiter. Something
in Anna's attitude, as she lay with her long fair hair falling
over the pillow, must have reminded him of Alice, for
with a cry of delight, he ran forward, and patting the
white cheek with his soft baby hand, lisped out the word
“Arn-tee, arn-tee,” making Anna start suddenly and gaze
at him in wondering surprise.

“Who is he?” she said, drawing him to her at once
and pressing a kiss upon his rosy face.

Pamelia told her what she knew of the stranger waiting
in the reception room, adding in conclusion, “I believe
they said you did not want her, and Jim is to take her to
the depot when it's time. She's very young and pretty,
and looks so sorry, Jim told me.”

“Said I did not want her! How did they know?” and
something of the Richards' spirit flashed from Anna's
eyes. “The child is so beautiful, and he called me, Auntie,
too! He must have an auntie somewhere. Little dear!
how she must love him! Lift him up, Pamelia!”

The woman obeyed, and Willie was soon nestled close
to Anna, who kissed him again, smoothed his curls, pinched
his cheek, squeezed his soft hands, and then asked
whom he so much resembled.

Pamelia could not tell. The likeness had puzzled her,
but she never thought of finding it in her young mistress,
face.

“I must see his mother,” Anna said, as she continued
to caress and fondle him. Perhaps I should like her. At
all events I will hear what she has to say. Show her up,
Pamelia; but first smooth my hair a little and arrange
my pillows,” she added, feeling intuitively that the stranger
was not like the others who had come to her on similar
errands.

Pamelia complied with her request, brushing back the
long, loose locks, and making the bed more smooth and
tidy in its appearance; then leaving Willie with Anna,

she repaired to the reception room, and rousing the sleeping
Adah, said to her hurriedly,

“Please, miss, come quick; Miss Anna wants to see
you. The little boy is up there with her.”