"No," he exclaimed, "you need not go back." Then he rose and took her hand that was cold and trembling. "You will not go back. Let us find Miss Winn----"
"Chilian!" warned Elizabeth.
He led Cynthia from the room, up the stairs. Miss Winn sat there sewing.
She clasped her arms about him, he could fairly feel the throb in them.
"Oh," she cried with a strange sort of sweetness. "I love you. You are so good to me, and I have told you just the truth."
Then she buried her face on Miss Winn"s bosom.
Chilian went downstairs. He laughed, yet he was deeply touched by her audacity and bravery.
"Elizabeth," he announced; "I will see Mrs. Wilby. Let the matter die out, do not refer to it. I did not think it quite the school for her. We will find something else."
"Chilian, I must make one effort for you and her. Going on this way will be her ruin. I should insist upon her going back to school and apologizing to Mrs. Wilby. I wouldn"t let a chit like that order what a household of grown people should do and make them bow down to her. You will be sorry for it in the end. You have had no experience with children, you have seen so few. And a man hasn"t the judgment----"
His usually serene temper was getting ruffled, and with such characters the end is often obstinacy.
"If she is to make a disturbance here, become a bone of contention with us, I will send her away. Cousin Giles is taking a great interest in her. There are good boarding-schools in Boston, or she and Miss Winn could have a home together under his supervision. There is enough to provide for them."
"And you would turn her over to that half-heathen woman!" in a horrified tone. "Then I wash my hands of the matter. Send her to perdition, if you will."
CHAPTER VII
CHANGEFUL LIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD
Elizabeth Leverett busied herself about the supper. She felt as one does in the threatening of a thunderstorm, when the clouds roll up and the rumbling is low and distant and one studies the sky with presentiments.
Then it comes nearer, flirts a little with the elements, breaks open and shows the blue that the scurrying wind soon hides and the real storm bursts. She had believed all along that it must come.
She was not an ungracious or a selfish woman outside of her own home.
She was good to the sick and the needy, she gave of her time and strength. In the home there was a sense of ownership, of the self-appropriation so often termed duty. Everything had gone on smoothly for years. She had settled that Chilian would not marry. Such a bookish man, whose interests lay chiefly with men, did not need a wife when there was some one at hand to make him comfortable. And that he surely was. He understood and enjoyed it. He had only to suggest to have. Her affection for him was like that for a younger brother. Even Eunice could not minister so well for his comfort, though, like Mary of Bible lore, she often added a delicate pleasure in listening to matters or incidents that interested him.
Elizabeth had settled to the idea of a little heathen soul that she was to lead aright. Missionary work in G.o.dless lands had not made much advance and, having no mother, who was there to warn her of the great peril of her soul? Seafaring men were not much given to thought of the other world. Perhaps there was some grace for them in the hours of peril, she had heard they prayed to G.o.d in an extremity; and there was the dying thief. But on land no one had a right to count on this.
The child had changed everything. Even Eunice seemed to have lost the sharp distinction. Miss Winn belonged to the unG.o.dly, that was clear--though she was upright, honest, neat, and in some ways sensible.
But her ideas about the child were foreign and reprehensible--dangerous even. The child was no worse than others, not as bad as some, for she had either by nature or training a delicate respect for the property of others. She never meddled. She asked few questions even when she stood by the kitchen table and watched the mysteries of cake and pie making and the delicacies of cooking. It was the right to herself that annoyed Elizabeth. People had hardly begun to suspect that children had any rights.
"But if she went away? If she was swallowed up in the vortex of the more populous city"--greater, Salem would not have admitted. "If the child"s soul was finally lost, would she be quite clear? Would she have done all that she could for her salvation?"
She thought of it as she prepared the supper. She surveyed the inviting-looking table and then rang the bell. Eunice brought in a handful of flowers. Chilian came--and Miss Winn.
"Cynthia has gone to bed, she does not want any supper," was her quiet announcement.
Elizabeth would have sent her to bed supperless, and approved of a severer punishment.
Miss Winn asked some questions about Boston.
"I have quite a desire to see it," she added.
Yes, she would no doubt plan for a removal. Then the child would be forever lost. And a Leverett, too, come of a strong G.o.d-fearing family!
The child, when she had hidden her face on Rachel"s bosom, gave some dry, hard sobs that shook her small frame. Rachel smoothed her hair, patted the shoulder softly, and said "Dear" in a caressing tone. Then had come a torrent of tears, a wild hysterical weeping. She did not attempt to check it, but took Cynthia in her arms as if she had been a baby.
"I"m not going to that school any more," she said brokenly, after a while.
"What happened, dear?"
Cynthia raised her head. "It was very mean, as if I had done it on purpose! Why, I might have hurt myself;" indignantly.
"How was it?" gently.
And then the story came tumbling out. She saw a certain ludicrous aspect in it now, and laughed a little herself. "I couldn"t help being saucy.
And I thought she was going to strike me. Tommy Marsh began to laugh first. The slate broke----"
"Are you quite sure you were not hurt?"
"Well, my arm hurt a little at first, but it is all well now. But I shan"t go back to school,--no, not even to please Cousin Leverett, and I like him best of any one."
"I"m going down to supper, dear. Shall I bring up yours?"
"I don"t want any. I couldn"t eat anything. And I can"t have Cousin Elizabeth"s sharp eyes looking at me. Oh, I"m glad I am not her little girl! I like you a million times better, Rachel;" hugging her rapturously. "I think I"d like to have a gla.s.s of milk. And may I lie on your little bed?"
"Yes, dear."
She was asleep when Rachel came up and it was past nine when she woke, drank her milk, and went to bed for the night.
How gaily the birds were singing the next morning, and the sunbeams were playing hide-and-seek through the branches that dance in the soft wind.
All the air was sweet and the little girl couldn"t help being light-hearted. She sang, too; not measured hymns of sorrow and repentance, but a gay lilt that followed the bird voices. And she went down to breakfast and said her good-morning cheerfully.
"That child has the a.s.surance of the Evil One," Elizabeth thought.
Cynthia waylaid Cousin Chilian as he was going down the path.
"I meant what I said yesterday. I won"t go to that school any more. If there was some other--only--only I wish you could teach me until I could get up straight in all the things, so the other children wouldn"t laugh when I made blunders. I suppose it does sound funny;" and a smile hovered about the seriousness.
"We will consider another school," he returned kindly, smiling himself at the remembrance of the tempest of yesterday.
She persuaded Rachel to go out to walk and they went over to the bridge.
She had been so interested in the story of it. Before it had faded from the minds of men it was to be splendidly commemorated as a point of interest in the old town.
"I like real stories," she said. "I don"t understand about the war, but it is fine to think the Salem men made the British soldiers go back when all the while the cannon and other arms were hidden away. You don"t mind, Rachel, if the Colonists did beat England, do you? I"m a Colonist, you know."
"That is long ago, and we are all friends now. I think the Colonists were very brave and persevering and they deserved their liberty. I have heard your father talk about the war."