University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
HOPE WAYNE.

When there was a report that Mr. Savory Gray was coming
to Delafield to establish a school for boys, Dr. Peewee,
the minister of the village, called to communicate the news to
Mr. Christopher Burt, his oldest and richest parishioner, at
Pinewood, his country seat. When Mr. Burt heard the news,
he foresaw trouble without end; for his orphan grand-daughter,
Hope Wayne, who lived with him, was nearly eighteen
years old; and it had been his fixed resolution that she should
be protected from the wicked world of youth that is always going
up and down in the earth seeking whom it may marry. If
incessant care, and invention, and management could secure it,
she should arrive safely where Grandpa Burt was determined
she should arrive ultimately, at the head of her husband's dinner-table,
Mrs. Simcoe, ma'am.

Mrs. Simcoe was Mr. Burt's housekeeper. So far as any
body could say, Mrs. Burt died at a period of which the memory
of man runneth not to the contrary. There were traditions
of other housekeepers. But since the death of Hope's
mother Mrs. Simcoe was the only incumbent. She had been
Mrs. Wayne's nurse in her last moments, and had rocked the
little Hope to sleep the night after her mother's burial. She
was always tidy, erect, imperturbable. She pervaded the
house; and her eye was upon a table-cloth, a pane of glass, or
a carpet, almost as soon as the spot which arrested it. Housekeeper
nascitur non fit. She was so silent and shadowy that
the whole house sympathized with her, until it became extremely
uncomfortable to the servants, who constantly went

[ILLUSTRATION]

Mrs. Simcoe, Ma'am.

[Description: 538EAF. Page 013. In-line Illustration. Image of old woman sitting at a table. She wears a cap and fingerless gloves and holds a book in one hand. ] away; and a story that the house was haunted became immensely
popular and credible the moment it was told.

There had been no visiting at Pinewood for a long time, because
of the want of a mistress and of the unsocial habits of
Mr. Burt. But the neighboring ladies were just beginning to
call upon Miss Wayne.
When she returned
the visits Mrs. Simcoe
accompanied her in
the carriage, and sat
there while Miss
Wayne performed
the parlor ceremony.
Then they drove home.
Mr. Burt dined at
two, and Miss Hope
sat opposite her grandfather
at table; Hiram
waited. Mrs. Simcoe
dined alone in her
room.

There, too, she sat
alone in the long summer
afternoons, when
the work of the house
was over for the day.
She held a book by
the open window, or
gazed for a very long
time out upon the
landscape. There were pine-trees near her window; but beyond
she could see green meadows, and blue hills, and a glittering
river, and rounded reaches of woods. She watched the
clouds, or, at least, looked at the sky. She heard the birds
in spring days, and the dry hot locusts on sultry afternoons;
and she looked with the same unchanging eyes upon the

opening buds and blooming flowers, as upon the worms that
swung themselves on filaments and ate the leaves and ruined
the trees, or the autumnal hectic which Death painted upon
the leaves that escaped the worms.

Sometimes on these still, warm afternoons her lips parted,
as if she were singing. But it was a very grave, quiet performance.
There was none of the gush and warmth of song,
although the words she uttered were always those of the
hymns of Charles Wesley—those passionate, religious songs of
the New Jerusalem. For Mrs. Simcoe was a Methodist, and
with Methodist hymns she had sung Hope to sleep in the days
when she was a baby; so that the young woman often listened
to the music in church with a heart full of vague feelings, and
dim, inexplicable memories, not knowing that she was hearing,
though with different words, the strains that her nurse
had whispered over her crib in the hymns of Wesley.

It is to be presumed that at some period Mrs. Simcoe, whom
Mr. Burt always addressed in the same manner as “Mrs. Simcoe,
ma'am,” had received a general system of instruction to
the effect that “My grand-daughter, Miss Wayne—Mrs. Simcoe,
ma'am—will marry a gentleman of wealth and position;
and I expect her to be fitted to preside over his household.
Yes, Mrs. Simcoe, ma'am.”

What on earth is a girl sent into this world for but to make
a proper match, and not disgrace her husband—to keep his
house, either directly or by a deputy—to take care of his children,
to see that his slippers are warm and his Madeira cold,
and his beef not burned to a cinder, Mrs. Simcoe, ma'am?
Christopher Burt believed that a man's wife was a more sacred
piece of private property than his sheep-pasture, and
when he delivered the deed of any such property he meant
that it should be in perfect order.

“Hope may marry a foreign minister, Mrs. Simcoe, ma'am.
Who knows? She may marry a large merchant in town or a
large planter at the South, who will be obliged to entertain a
great deal, and from all parts of the world. I intend that she

shall be fit for the situation, that she shall preside at her husband's
table in a superior manner.”

So Hope, as a child, had played with little girls, who were
invited to Pinewood—select little girls, who came in the prettiest
frocks and behaved in the prettiest way, superintended
by nurses and ladies' maids. They tended their dolls peaceably
in the nursery; they played clean little games upon the
lawn. Not too noisy, Ellen! Mary, gently, gently, dear!
Julia, carefully! you are tumbling your frock. They were not
chattery French nurses who presided over these solemnities;
they were grave, housekeeping, Mrs. Simcoe-kind of people.
Julia and Mary were exhorted to behave themselves like little
ladies, and the frolic ended by their all taking books from the
library shelves and sitting properly in a large chair, or on the
sofa, or even upon the piazza, if it had been nicely dusted and
inspected, until the setting sun sent them away with the calmest
kisses at parting.

As Hope grew older she had teachers at home—recluse old
scholars, decayed clergymen in shiny black coats, who taught
her Latin, and looked at her through round spectacles, and, as
they looked, remembered that they were once young. She
had teachers of history, of grammar, of arithmetic—of all English
studies. Some of these Mentors were weak-eyed fathers
of ten children, who spoke so softly that their wives must
have had loud voices. Others were young college graduates,
with low collars and long hair, who read with Miss Wayne in
English literature, while Mrs. Simcoe sat knitting in the next
chair. Then there had been the Italian music-masters, and
the French teachers, very devoted, never missing a lesson, but
also never missing Mrs. Simcoe, who presided over all instruction
which was imparted by any Mentor under sixty.

But when Hope grew older still and found Byron upon the
shelves of the Library, his romantic sadness responded to the
vague longing of her heart. Instinctively she avoided all that
repels a woman in his verses, as she would have avoided the
unsound parts of a fruit. But the solitary, secluded girl lived

unconsciously and inevitably in a dream world, for she had no
knowledge of any other, nor contact with it. Proud and shy,
her heart was restless, her imagination morbid, and she believed
in heroes.

When Dr. Peewee had told Mr. Burt all that he knew about
the project of the school, Mr. Burt rang the bell violently.

“Send Miss Hope to me.”

The servant disappeared, and in a few moments Hope
Wayne entered the room. To Dr. Peewee's eyes she seemed
wrapped only in a cloud of delicate muslin, and the wind had
evidently been playing with her golden hair, for she had been
lying upon the lawn reading Byron.

“Did you want me, grandfather?”

“Yes, my dear. Mr. Gray, a respectable person, is coming
here to set up a school. There will be a great many young
men and boys. I shall never ask them to the house. I hate
boys. I expect you to hate them too.”

“Yes—yes, my dear,” said Dr. Peewee; “hate the boys?
Yes; we must hate the boys.”

Hope Wayne looked at the two old gentlemen, and answered,

“I don't think you need have warned me, grandfather; I'm
not so apt to fall in love with boys.”

“No, no, Hope; I know. Ever since you have lived with
me—how long is it, my dear, since your mother died?”

“I don't know, grandfather; I never saw her,” replied
Hope, gravely.

“Yes, yes; well, ever since then you have been a good,
quiet little girl with grandpapa. Here, Cossy, come and give
grandpa a kiss. And mind the boys! No speaking, no looking—we
are never to know them. You understand? Now
go, dear.”

As she closed the door, Dr. Peewee also rose to take leave.

“Doctor,” said Mr. Burt, as the other pushed back his chair,
“it is a very warm day. Let me advise you to guard against
any sudden debility or effect of the heat by a little cordial.”

As he spoke he led the way into the dining-room, and fumbled
slowly over a bunch of keys which he drew from his pocket.
Finding the proper key, he put it into the door of the side-board.
“In this side-board, Dr. Peewee, I keep a bottle of old
Jamaica, which was sent me by a former correspondent in the
West Indies.” As Dr. Peewee had heard the same remark at
least fifty times before, the kindly glistening of his nose must
be attributed to some other cause than excitement at this intelligence.

“I like to preserve my friendly relations with my old commercial
friends,” continued Mr. Burt, speaking very pompously,
and slowly pouring from a half-empty decanter into a tumbler.
“I rarely drink any thing myself—”

“H'm, ha!” grunted the Doctor.

“—except a glass of port at dinner. Yet, not to be impolite,
Doctor, not to be impolite, I could not refuse to drink to
your very good health and safe return to the bosom of your
family.”

And Mr. Burt drained the glass, quite unobservant of the
fact that the Rev. Dr. Peewee was standing beside him without
glass or old Jamaica. In truth Mr. Burt had previously
been alarmed about the effect of the bottle of port—which
he metaphorically called a glass—that he had drunk at dinner,
and to guard against evil results he had already, that
very afternoon, as he was accustomed to say with an excellent
humor, been to the West Indies for his health.

“Bless my soul, Doctor, you haven't filled your glass! Permit
me.”

And the old gentleman poured into the one glass and then
into the other.

“And now, Sir,” he added, “now, Sir, let us drink to the
health of Mr. Gray, but not of the boys—ha! ha!”

“No, no, not of the boys? No, not of the boys. Thank
you, Sir—thank you. That is a pleasant liquor, Mr. Burt.
H'm, ha! a very pleasant liquor. Good-afternoon, Mr. Burt;
a very good day, Sir. H'm, ha!”

As Hope left her grandfather, Mrs. Simcoe was sitting at
her window, which looked over the lawn in front of the house
upon which Hope presently appeared. It was already toward
sunset, and the tender golden light streamed upon the landscape
like a visible benediction. A few rosy clouds lay in
long, tranquil lines across the west, and the great trees bathed
in the sweet air with conscious pleasure.

As Hope stood with folded hands looking toward the sunset,
she began unconsciously to repeat some of the lines that
always lay in her mind like invisible writing, waiting only for
the warmth of a strong emotion to bring them legibly out:

At the same moment Mrs. Simcoe was closing her window
high over Hope's head. Her face was turned toward the sunset
with the usual calm impassive look, and as she gazed at
the darkening landscape she was singing, in her murmuring
way,