Miss Ainslie was soon seated at the piano which Hesden had kept in tune more for the pleasure of occasional guests than his own. It was three years since she had touched one, but the little organ, which some Northern benefactor had given to the church and school at Red Wing, had served to prevent her fingers from losing all their skill, and in a few minutes their wonted cunning returned.
She had been carefully trained and had by nature rare musical gifts.
The circ.u.mstances of the day had given a wonderful exhilaration to her mind and thought. She seemed to have taken a leaf out of Paradise and bound it among the dingy pages of her dull and monotonous life.
Every thing about her was so quaint and rare, the clothes she wore so rich and fantastic, that she could not control her fancy. Every musical fantasy that had ever crept into her brain seemed to be trooping along its galleries in a mad gallop as her fair fingers flew over the time-stained keys. The little boy stood clinging to her skirt in silent wonder, his fair, sensitive face working, and his eyes distended, with delighted amazement.
The evening came to an end at last, and when the servant went with her in her quaint attire, lighting her up the winding stairway from the broad hall to the great airy room above, with its yawning fireplace cheery with the dying embers of a fire built hours ago to drive out the dampness, and its two high-posted beds standing there in lofty dignity, the little Yankee school marm could hardly realize what madcap freaks she had perpetrated since she bounded over the gate at the foot of the lane leading from the highway down to Mulberry Hill, the ancestral home of the Richards family.
As she sat smiling and blushing over the memory of what she had done and said in those delicious hours, a servant tapped at the door and announced that Master Hildreth, whom she bore in her arms and whose chubby fists were stuck into his eyes, was crying most disconsolately lest he should lose his "new grandma" while he slept.
She had brought him, therefore, to inquire whether he might occupy one of the beds in the young lady"s room. Mollie had not seen for so many years a child that she could fondle and caress, that it was with unbounded delight that she took the little fellow from his nurse"s arms, laid him on the bed and coaxed his eyes to slumber.
CHAPTER x.x.x.
AN UNBIDDEN GUEST.
When the morning dawned the boy awoke with hot cheeks and bloodshot eyes, moaning and restless, and would only be quiet when pillowed in the arms of his new-found friend. A physician who was called p.r.o.nounced his ailment to be scarlet-fever. He soon became delirious, and his fretful moans for his "new grandma" were so piteous that Miss Ainslie could not make up her mind to leave him. She stayed by his bed-side all day, saying nothing of returning to Red Wing, until late in the afternoon a messenger came from there to inquire after her, having traced her by inquiry among several who had seen her during the storm, as well as by the report that had gone out from the servants of her presence at Mulberry Hill.
When Hesden Le Moyne came to inform her of the messenger"s arrival, he found her sitting by his son"s bedside, fanning his fevered brow, as she had done the entire day. He gazed at them both in silence a moment before making known his errand. Then he took the fan from her hand and informed her of the messenger"s arrival. His voice sounded strangely, and as she looked up at him she saw his face working with emotion. She cast down her eyes quickly. She could not tell why. All at once she felt that this quiet, maimed veteran of a lost cause was not to her as other men. Perhaps her heart was made soft by the strange occurrences of the few hours she had pa.s.sed beneath his mother"s roof. However that may be, she was suddenly conscious of a feeling she had never known before. Her cheeks burned as she listened to his low, quiet tones. The tears seemed determined to force themselves beneath her downcast lids, but her heart bounded with a strange undefined joy.
She rose to go and see the messenger. The sick boy moaned and murmured her name. She stole a glance at the father, and saw his eyes filled with a look of mingled tenderness and pain. She walked to the door. As she opened it the restless sufferer called for her again. She went out and closed it quickly after her. At the head of the stairs she paused, and pressed her hand to her heart while she breathed quick and her face burned. She raised her other hand and pushed back a stray lock or two as if to cool her forehead. She stood a moment irresolute; glanced back at the door of the room she had left, with a half frightened look; placed a foot on the first stair, and paused again. Then she turned suddenly back with a scared resolute look in her gray eyes, opened the door and glided swiftly to the bedside. Hesden Le Moyne"s face was buried in the pillow. She stood over him a moment, her bosom heaving with short, quick sighs. She reached out her hand as if she would touch him, but drew it quickly back. Then she spoke, quietly but with great effort, looking only at the little sufferer.
"Mr. Le Moyne?" He raised his head quickly and a flush of joy swept over his face. She did not see it, at least she was not looking at him, but she knew it. "Would you like me to--to stay--until--until this is over?"
He started, and the look of joy deepened in his face. He raised his hand but let it fall again upon the pillow, as he answered humbly and tenderly,
"If you please, Miss Ainslie." She put her hand upon the bed, in order to seem more at ease, as she replied, with a face which she knew was all aflame,
"Very well. I will remain for--the present."
He bent his head and kissed her hand. She drew it quickly away and added in a tone of explanation:
"It would hardly be right to go back among so many children after such exposure." So quick is love to find excuse. She called it duty, nor ever thought of giving it a tenderer name.
He made no answer. So easy is it for the fond heart to be jealous of a new-found treasure.
She waited a moment, and then went out and wrote a note to Eliab Hill. Then she went into the room of the invalid mother. How sweet she looked, reclining on the bed in the pretty alcove, doing penance for her unwonted pleasure of the night before! The excited girl longed to throw her arms about her neck and weep. It seemed to her that she had never seen any one so lovely and loveable. She went to the bedside and took the slender hand extended toward her,
"So," said Mrs. Le Moyne, "I hear they have sent for you to go back to Red Wing. I am sorry, for you have given us great pleasure; but I am afraid you will have only sad memories of Mulberry Hill. It is too bad! Poor Hildreth had taken such a liking to you, too. I am sure I don"t blame him, for I am as much in love with you as an invalid can be with any one but herself. Hesden will have a hard time alone in this great house with two sick people on his hands."
"I shall not go back to Red Wing to-day."
"Indeed?"
"No, I do not think it would be right to endanger so many by exposure to the disease." "Oh," carelessly; "but I am afraid yon may take it yourself."
"I hope not. I am very well and strong. Besides, Hildreth calls for me as soon as I leave him for a moment."
"Poor little fellow! It is pitiable to know that I can do nothing for him."
"I will do what I can, Mrs. Le Moyne."
"But you must not expose yourself in caring for a strange child, my dear. It will not do to be too unselfish."
"I cannot leave him, Mrs. Le Moyne."
She left the room quickly and returned to her place at the sufferer"s bedside. Hesden Le Moyne rose as she approached. She took the fan from his hand and sat down in the chair he had occupied. He stood silent a moment, looking down upon her as she fanned the uneasy sleeper, and then quietly left the room.
"What a dear, tender-hearted thing she is!" said Mrs. Le Moyne to herself after she had gone. "So lady-like and refined too. How can such a girl think of a.s.sociating with n.i.g.g.e.rs and teaching a n.i.g.g.e.r school? Such a pity she is not one of our people. She would be just adorable then. Don"t you think so, Hesden?" she said aloud as her son entered. Having been informed of the subject of her cogitations, Mr. Hesden Le Moyne replied, somewhat absently and irrelevantly, as she thought, yet very warmly,
"Miss Ainslie is a very remarkable woman."
He pa.s.sed into the hall, and his mother, looking after him, said,
"Poor fellow! he has a heap of trouble." And then it struck her that her son"s language was not only peculiar but amusing. "A remarkable woman!" She laughed to herself as she thought of it. A little, brown-haired, bright-eyed, fair-skinned chit, pretty and plucky, and accomplished no doubt, but not at all "remarkable."
She had no style nor pride. Yankee women never had. And no family of course, or she would not teach a colored school. "Remarkable!"
It was about the only thing Miss Ainslie was not and could not be. It was very kind of her to stay and nurse Hildreth, though she only did that out of consideration for the colored brats under her charge at Red Wing. Nevertheless she was glad and gratified that she did so. She was a very capable girl, no doubt of that, and she would feel much safer about Hildreth because of her care. It was just in her line. She was like all Yankee women--just a better cla.s.s of housemaids. This one was very accomplished. She had played the piano exquisitely and had acted the lady to perfection in last night"s masquerade. But Hesden must be crazy to call her remarkable.
She chuckled lightly as she determined to rally him upon it, when she saw him next. When that time came, the good lady had quite forgotten her resolve.
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
A LIFE FOR A LIFE.
It was a time of struggle at Mulberry Hill. Love and death fought for the life of little Hildreth Le Moyne. The father and the "new grandma" watched over him most a.s.siduously; the servants were untiring in their exertions; the physician"s skill was not lacking, but yet none could foresee the result. The invalid below sent frequent inquiries. First one and then the other stole away to ask her some question or bring her tidings in regard to the lad in whose life was bound up the hope of two old families.
One morning, while the child was still very sick, when Miss Ainslie awoke after the brief sleep which had been all the rest she had allowed herself from her self-imposed task, her head seemed strangely light. There was a roaring in her ears as if a cataract were playing about them. Her limbs ached, and every movement seemed unusually difficult--almost painful. She walked across the room and looked dully into the mirror on her dressing-case, resting her hands on the top of the high old-fashioned furniture as she did so. She was only able to note that her eyes looked heavy and her face flushed and swollen, when a sharp pain shot through her frame, her sight grew dim, the room spun round and round. She could only crawl back and clamber with difficulty upon the high-posted bed, where the servant found her fevered and unconscious when she came an hour later to awaken her for breakfast. The struggle that had been waged around the bed of the young child was now renewed by that of his self-const.i.tuted nurse. Weeks pa.s.sed away before it was over, and ere that time the music of little feet had ceased about the ancient mansion, and the stroke to pride and love had rendered the invalid grand-mother still more an invalid.
The child had been her hope and pride as its mother had been her favorite. By a strange contrariety the sunny-faced little mother had set herself to accomplish her son"s union with the tall, dark, and haughty cousin, who had expired in giving birth to little Hildreth. There was nothing of spontaneity and no display of conjugal affection on the part of the young husband or his wife; but during the absence of her son, the invalid was well cared for and entertained by the wife, whom she came to love with an intensity second only to that she lavished on her son. In the offspring of these two her heart had been wrapped up from the hour of his birth.
She had dreamed out for him a life full of great actualities, and had even reproached Hesden for his apathy in regard to public affairs during the stirring scenes enacting around them, urging him to take part in them for his son"s sake.
She was a woman of great ambition. At first this had centered in her son, and she had even rejoiced when he went into the army, though he was earnestly opposed to the war, in the hope that it might bring him rank and fame. When these did not come, and he returned to her a simple private, with a bitterer hate for war and a st.u.r.dier dislike for the causes which had culminated in the struggle than he had when it began, she had despaired of her dream ever being realized through him, but had fondly believed that the son of the daughter-in-law she had so admired and loved would unite his father"s sterling qualities with his mother"s pride and love of praise, and so fulfill her desire that the family name should be made famous by some one descended from herself. This hope was destroyed by the death of the fair, bright child whom she loved so intensely, and she felt a double grief in consequence. In her sorrow, she had entirely secluded herself, seeing no one but her nurse and, once or twice, her son. The sick girl in the room above was somehow unpleasantly connected with her grief, and received no real sympathy in her illness. There was even something of jealousy in the mind of the confirmed invalid, when she remembered the remarkable manner in which the child had been attracted toward the new-comer, as well as the fact that she had nursed him so faithfully that his last words were a moan for his "new grandma," while his real grandmother lay useless and forgotten in her dim-shadowed room below.
Besides, it was with a feeling of envy that she recognized the fact that, for the first time in his life, her son was more absorbed in another"s welfare than in her own. The chronic ailment of the mother had no doubt become so much a thing of habit in his life that it failed to impress him as it should, while the illness of the young girl, having, as he believed, been incurred by her voluntary attendance upon his son inspired him with a feeling of responsibility that would not otherwise have existed. Something had occurred, too, which had aroused a feeling upon his part which is often very close akin to a tenderer one. As soon as he had learned of her illness, he had endeavored to induce some of his female relatives to come and attend her, but they had all flatly refused. They would come and care for the child, they said; they would even send the "Yankee school-marm" flowers, and make delicacies to tempt her appet.i.te, but they would not demean themselves by waiting upon a sick "n.i.g.g.e.r teacher." They did not fear the contagion; indeed they would have come to take care of little Hildreth but that they did not care to meet his Yankee nurse. They even blamed Hesden for allowing her to come beneath his roof, and intimated that she had brought contagion with her.
He was angry at their injustice and prejudice. He had known of its existence, but it never before seemed so hateful. Somehow he could not rid himself of two thoughts: one was of the fairy creature whose song and laughter and bird-like grace and gaiety, as she masqueraded in the quaint dress of olden time, had made the dull old mansion bright as a dream of Paradise for a single night. It had seemed to him, then, that nothing so bright and pure had ever flitted through the somber apartments of the gray old mansion. He remembered the delight of his boy--that boy whom he loved more than he had ever loved any one, unless it were his invalid mother--and he could not forget the same slight form, with serious shadowed face and earnest eyes moving softly about the sick-room of the child, her eyes full of sorrowful anxiety as if the life she sought to save were part of her own being. He wondered that any one could think of her as a stranger. It was true she had come from the North and was engaged in a despised avocation, but even that she had glorified and exalted by her purity and courage until his fastidious lady mother herself had been compelled to utter words of praise.
So his heart grew sore and his face flushed hot with wrath when his cousins sneered at this lily which had been blighted by the fevered breath of his son.
They tauntingly advised him to send to Red Wing and get some of her "n.i.g.g.e.r" pupils to attend upon her. Much to their surprise he did so, and two quiet, gentle, deft-handed watchers came, who by day and by night sat by her bedside, gladly endeavoring to repay the debt they owed to the faithful teacher. But this did not seem to relieve Mr. Le Moyne of anxiety. He came often and watched the flushed face, heard the labored breathing, and listened with pained heart to the unmeaning murmurs which fell from her lips--the echoes of that desert dreamland through which fever drags its unconscious victims. He heard his own name and that of the fast-failing sufferer in the adjoining room linked in sorrowful phrase by the stammering tongue. Even in the midst of his sorrow it brought him a thrill of joy. And when his fear became fact, and he mourned the young life no love could save, his visits to the sick-room of her who had been his co-watcher by his child"s bedside became more frequent.
He would not be denied the privilege until the crisis came, and reason resumed her sway. Then he came no more, but every day sent some token of remembrance.
Mrs. Le Moyne had noted this solicitude, and with the jealousy of the confirmed invalid grudged the sick girl the slightest of the thoughtful attentions that she alone had been accustomed to receive.
She did not dream that her son, Hesden Le Moyne, cared anything for the little Yankee chit except upon broadly humanitarian grounds, or perhaps from grat.i.tude for her kindly attention to his son; but even this fretted her. As time went on, she came more and more to dislike her and to wish that she had never come beneath their roof.
So the days flew by, grew into weeks, and Mollie Ainslie was still at Mulberry Hill, while important events weve happening at Red Wing.