"A great deal, if she know but all," muttered Charley.
"But I hate school! I should _die_ if I was kept in," said Georgia with a sort of cry.
"Nonsense! You would do no such thing! Do you remember the bird I caught for you and put in a cage? Yes! well, it struggled to get out, and beat its wings against the bars of the cage until you thought it would have beat itself to death, yet now it is a willing captive."
"Yes, it is like a wooden bird, without life; it lies in the bottom of the cage and hardly ever sings or moves; it isn"t worth having now,"
said Georgia, her lip curling with a sort of scorn.
"Well, it will be different with you; you are ambitious, Georgia, and in trying to pa.s.s your schoolmates you will feel a delight and pride you never experienced before. A new world will be opened to you; you will like it. _Do_ go, Georgia; if I were not your friend, if I did not like you very much, I should not ask you."
Charley, with his head bent down whistling "Yankee Doodle," was shaking with inward laughter.
"Oh, Georgia, do come," pleaded Emily.
Georgia, with her lips compressed, her glittering black eyes burning into the ground, stood silent, motionless, turned to iron.
"Well, Georgia?"
No reply.
"_Georgia!_" Richmond cried, anxiously.
She lifted her eyes.
"Well?"
"Georgia, will you go--I want you to--you don"t know how deeply grieved I shall be if you refuse; so deeply grieved that we shall be friends no longer. Georgia, I am going away from here soon--I may never come back--never see you again, and I should be sorry we should part bad friends. Georgia, will you go?"
"Yes."
It was a hard-wrung a.s.sent. The word dropped from her lips as though it burned them.
Charley"s whistle at that moment spoke volumes. Emily looked delighted, and the face of Richmond Wildair lit up with triumph and exultation.
Once that "yes" had been uttered he knew her word would be sacredly kept. How he exulted that moment in his power.
"Thank you, Georgia," he cried, springing to his feet, and holding out his hand, "we are fast friends forever now."
Georgia shook hands, but the fingers she gave him were little rigid bars of steel--no life--no warmth there.
"When will you go?" said Richmond, following up his advantage, on the principle of striking while the iron was hot.
"On Monday."
"Oh, Georgia, I"m so glad! Oh, Georgia that"s so nice!" exclaimed Emily, dancing round delightedly, and clasping her hands.
Georgia"s face was a blank--cold and meaningless.
"That is right! Georgia, you are a good girl!"
"If I had refused to do as you told me I would have been a selfish, ungrateful thing--I understand!" said Georgia, turning away with a curling lip.
Richmond started. There was the look of a woman in her childish face at that moment. It was one of her precocious turns.
"Now, don"t be cross, Georgia; it"s real nice to go to school after you get used to it," said Emily, in her pretty, coaxing way, putting her arms round her waist.
"I must go home--Miss Jerusha will want me," said Georgia, by way of reply, as she resolutely, almost rudely, unclasped Emily"s clinging arms.
"Shall I go with you?" said Richmond, making a step forward.
"_No!_" exclaimed Georgia, with one of her peculiar sharp, bright flashes, as she turned away in the direction of the cottage.
Richmond and Emily sauntered back to Burnfield together, chatting gayly.
As Richmond entered the grounds of his uncle"s stately residence he saw his brother standing in the threshold humming a cla.s.sical ditty.
"Bravo, Richmond, old boy!" cried Charley, giving him a sounding slap on the shoulder; "you deserve a leather medal! Do you think any of the blood of your namesake of evil memory has descended to you?"
"Pshaw, Charley! don"t be a fool!" said Richmond, impatiently.
"I don"t intend to, my dear brother," said Charley, dryly; "but the scales fell from my eyes to-day. What a world we live in!"
"Tush! will you never learn to talk sense, Charles?" said Richmond, biting his lips to maintain his gravity, as he shook off his hand and pa.s.sed into the house.
CHAPTER VIII.
"COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE."
"A look of pride, an eye of flame, A full drawn lip that upward curled, An eye that seemed to scorn the world."
The little town of Burnfield contained but one school, within the old brown walls and moss-grown eaves of which the "fathers of the hamlet"
for many a generation had sat at the feet of some worthy pedagogue, or pedagoguess, as the case might be, to catch the wisdom that fell from their lips. In summer woman held her sway there, but in winter man reigned supreme on the throne of learning, and "boarded round," a custom not yet obsolete.
Once every year came the great anniversary of the school, the last day of April, when the "master"s" term expired, and he left the town to the dominion of the new school-marm. Then took place the great public examination, in which lanky youths, weighed down with the consciousness of their responsibility and first tail-coats, and cherry-cheeked girls, bursting out of their hooks and eyes, showed off before the admiring Burnfieldians, and received their rewards of merit, more highly prized by them than the Cross of the Legion of Honor would be by some old French veteran. A new innovation had lately been introduced by one of the teachers--that of speaking dialogues at these distributions, and wonderful was the delight young Burnfield took in these displays. The more strait-laced of the parents at first objected to this, as smacking too much of "play acting," but young Burnfield had a decided will of its own, and looked contemptuously on the "slow" ideas of old Burnfield, and finally, in triumph, carried the day.
The great day arrived, and the anxious parents who had young ideas at school, were crowding rapidly toward the large old-fashioned school-house under the hill. Among them, in grim, unbending majesty, stalked Miss Jerusha Skamp, resplendent in what she was pleased to term her new "kaliker gound," a garment which partook of the nature of its forerunners in being exceedingly short and exceedingly skimpy, and the gorgeous patterns of which can be likened to nothing save a highly exaggerated rainbow. But Miss Jerusha, happy in the belief that nothing like it had appeared in modern times, walked majestically in, upsetting some loose benches, half a dozen small boys, and other trifles that lay in her way, and took her seat on one of the front benches. The boys, gorgeous in blue and gray homespun coats, with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons of alarming size and brightness, were ranged on one side, and the girls, arrayed in all the hues of a flower-garden, on the other. Miss Jerusha"s eyes wandered to the side where the girls sat, and rested with a look of evident pride and self-complaisance on one--a look that said as plainly as words, "There! look at that! there"s _my_ handiwork for you."
And certainly, amid the many handsome, blooming girls there, not one was more worth looking at than she on whom Miss Jerusha"s eyes rested. The tall, slight, but well-portioned form had none of the awkwardness common to girls in their transition stages. The queenly little head was poised superbly on the sloping neck; the clear olive skin, with its glowing crimson lips and cheeks, was the very ideal of dark, rich, southern beauty; the jet-black shining hair, swept off the broad forehead in smooth silken braids, became well the scarlet ribbons that bound it, as did also the close-fitting crimson dress she wore.
Georgia (for of course every reader above the unsuspecting age of three years knows who it is), without being at all aware of it, always fell into the style of dress that best suited her and harmonized with her warm, tropical complexion--dark, rich colors, such as black, purple, crimson, or, in summer, white. The two years that have pa.s.sed since we saw her last have changed her wonderfully; but the full, proud, pa.s.sionate, flashing eyes are the same in their dark splendor; the short, curling upper lip and curved nostril tell a tale of pride, and pa.s.sion, and daring, and scornful power--tell that time may have softened, but has not eradicated, the temper of our stormy little essence of wild-fire.
Yes, she sits there, leaning listlessly back in her seat, her little restless brown hands folded quietly enough in her lap, her long black lashes vailing her darkly glancing eyes, cast down by a sort of proud indolence; but it is the calm that precedes the tempest, the dangerous spirit of the drowsy and beautiful leopard, the deep, treacherous stillness that heralds the bursting sheets of fire from the volcano"s bosom, the white ashes that overlie consuming flames hidden beneath them, but ready at any moment to burst forth. And there she sat, known only to those present as the "smart little girl," the star scholar of the school, good-looking, bright, generous, and warm-hearted, too, but "ugly tempered."
The dark, bright, handsome eyes of the girl of fifteen had already carried unexampled desolation into more than one susceptible breast, and some of the unhappy youths were so badly stricken as to be guilty of the atrocity of perpetrating soul-harrowing "pote"-ry to those same dangerous optics. But these were only the worst cases, and even they never tried it but in the first delirium of the attack, and, like all delirious fevers, it soon pa.s.sed away, died out like a hot little fire under (to use a homely simile) the wet blanket of her cool, utter indifference, and they returned to their buckwheat cakes, and pork, and mola.s.ses with just as good an appet.i.te as ever.
One by one the people came in until the school-house was filled, and then the exercises commenced. The premiums were arranged on a table, and on a desk beside it stood the master, who rose and called out: