GEM.
A maiden meek, with solemn, steadfast eyes, Full of eternal constancy and faith, And smiling lips, through whose soft portal sighs Truth"s holy voice, with every balmy breath.--MRS. KEMBLE.
Three pair of eyes were turned towards Gem. She was well worth looking at, as she stood there beside the pausing wheel, with the thread of yarn suspended in her hand between the delicate forefinger and thumb, and with her large, luminous dark eyes, fixed upon the face of the speaker.
Yes, look at Gem--a slight, elegant creature, whose form was perfect symmetry, whose every motion was perfect grace, whose small stately head was covered with shining jet-black ringlets that hung down each side and half shaded a bright young face of exceeding beauty--an oval face, with regular features, large, soft, dark-blue eyes, vailed with thick, long lashes, and arched over by slender, jet-black brows, and with roseate cheeks and crimson lips. This will do for a pen and ink sketch; but how can I picture the light, the life, the gleam and glow of that brilliant and beautiful countenance?
She wore a plain brown linsey dress, that perfectly fitted her symmetrical form; and this rustic suit was relieved by a little linen collar that clasped her throat, and a pair of little white linen cuffs that bound her wrists.
The setting was plain enough, but the gem was a very rich and rare jewel, whoever might be destined to wear it.
Only for an instant she stood thus, like a bright and beautiful image, and then she suddenly darted across the room, sunk down beside the old lady"s chair, and looking up into her face, said:
"Grandma! I know more of that awful tragedy than you think I do. Of course, in all these years, I have chanced to hear much from the talk of women and children seen in church or in school. And to-night I have heard too much from you, not now to be told more! What is all this mystery and horror connected with this anniversary of Hallow Eve?
And--who am I?"
"You are my own darling child, Gem!" answered the old lady, in a trembling voice.
"I know that I am your foster-child, but that is all I, or any one else except you, seems to know about me! But you know who I am, grandma! Now tell me--who am I?" she pleaded, taking the withered old hands within her own, and gazing imploringly up into the kind old eyes that looked compa.s.sionately down on hers.
"You are my pet, and my darling, and my blessing, Gem! That is enough for you to know!" answered the old lady, still in a tremulous tone.
"Am I that prison-born child? Am I the daughter of that poor lady who was crucified and cast out among human creatures? Am I? Am I?" persisted the young girl beseechingly, while Miss Tabby wept and Miss Libby moaned.
"Gem," said the aged woman gravely, and sorrowfully pressing the maiden"s hands, "Gem, have I been a good grandma to you?"
"Oh, you have! you have!" answered the young girl, earnestly.
"And can you still trust me to be good to you, and true to your best interests?"
"Oh, yes, yes, yes! dear grandma!"
"Then, my own little one, trust me, by obeying me, when I tell you to ask me no questions about yourself; because I cannot answer them yet a while. Will you do so, my little Gem?"
"Yes, yes, I will! I will! But, dear granny, I know! I know! although you are too tender to tell me, I know!"
"Know--what, Gem?" questioned Mrs. Winterose, in alarm.
"I know that some mystery and horror hung over my birth--hangs over my life! I have known this a long time. They call me "Ingemisca;" that means, "Bewail! Bewail!" Some one bewailed my birth, and bade _me_ bewail it! Some one sung the refrain of a requiem at my baptism, as they do at the burial of others! And oh, grandma! to-night! to-night! in what has reached my ears, I have found a clue to the solving of my mystery!"
"Gem! Gem! if ever I have been kind to you, mind me now! Never think, never speak of these things again. Look on yourself as my child, and nothing more," urged the old lady with so much earnestness, and even pain, that her pet hastened to caress her, and to say:
"I will mind you as much as I can, best, dearest granny! I will never speak of this again until you give me leave."
"That is my darling girl! And now put away your wheel and come and sit down here, and let us have a pleasant talk after all this solemn nonsense. And when Joe comes in--Where the mischief is that fellow, and why don"t he come with the cones, I wonder? Anyhow, when he does come I will send him down in the cellar for some nuts and apples, and we will have a little feast."
Gem sat back her wheel, and came and took her seat on a stool at the old lady"s feet.
"Gem," said Mrs. Winterose, pa.s.sing her hand through the girl"s dark curls, "my two daughters have been horrifying us by telling of some awful events that happened on certain long past Hallow Eves. But they have said nothing of the pleasant things that have happened on later Hallow Eves! They haven"t said a word of that Hallow Eve when me and my Libby was a sitting in our cabin without provisions, and a wondering where the money to buy them was to come from, and how long the agent would let us live there, seeing as we had no right, after my old man, who was the overseer, died, when in walks the agent himself, and offers of us a home rent free here, with the use of the garden, the orchard, and the wood, with a small salary besides, if so be we would come here and live with Tabby, and help keep rats and thieves and rust and mould out of the old house. You may depend, Gem, as we jumped at the offer, and came here the very next day."
"That was all the kindness of my child! It didn"t need n.o.body but me to do all that. But, my sweet angel, she wanted to provide for you and Libby, and to make us all comfortable and happy together," said Miss Tabby.
"Yes, I know. Heaven bless her, wherever she is! And that was a happy Hallow Eve. But the next one was even happier, Gem."
"Yes, dear grandma, I know," smiled the girl.
"Yes, for just one year from that time, when Hallow Eve came around again, I got up early in the morning, as I used to do _then_ as well as now, and I came down into this very room, and went through to that back door and into the back room, and opened the back porch door to let in the morning air, and there on the porch with the sun shining bright on the scarlet seed-pods of the rose vines all over the shed, there, like a cradle, stood a large wicker basket, with a two year old baby comfortably tucked up into it, and fast asleep."
"That was I," said the maiden.
"Yes, Gem, it was you. But just think of my astonishment when I found you there! I stared at you, and was as "fraid to touch you at fust as if you"d been a bombsh.e.l.l to blow me up! I rubbed my eyes to see if I was awake. I crept up to you and shrank back from you ever so many times, before I could venture to touch you. Then I saw a card tied to the handle of the basket. I took it off, put on my specks, and read this:
""A GEM FOR MRS. WINTEROSE."
"Then, my dear, I saw that somebody who wanted to get shet of a baby, had put it off on to me. And, Lord forgive me, I struck mad as hop, and said I wouldn"t have the brat, and would send it to the alms-house. But, lor! there is a power in helplessness compared to which the power of a monarch is all moonshine! And however angry I might a felt at that minute with the unnatural monsters who I thought had dropped the baby there, why, I could no more a sent it to the alms-house than I could a smothered it in its basket," said the soft-hearted old dame, wiping away the tears that rose to her eyes at the very idea of such a piece of cruelty.
"So you took the little creature in?" smiled Gem.
"What else could I do? I was shivering with cold myself. Could I leave it out there? No. I took hold of the handle of the basket--which it was a large open clothes basket with a handle at each end, and very useful I have found it ever since to put the siled clothes in--and I began to drag it through the door and through the back room into this very room.
But the motion waked the baby up, and it opened the darkest blue eyes I ever had seen in my life, and looked at me as calm and quiet as if it had known me all my life, and then it opened its little rosy lips, and said:
""GAMMA!"
"Yes, my dear Gem, that was what you called me from the first, "Gamma."
It went straight to my heart, Gem! And why? Because I was sixty years old then, and my hair was as white as it is now, and I never had a baby in the world to call me grandma: all because Tabby and Libby didn"t marry as they ought to have done twenty years before that."
"You"re always. .h.i.tting of us in the teeth about that, mother, as if it was our fault. As for me I would have married fast enough if William Simpson hadn"t a proved false," snivelled Miss Tabby.
"Bosh! there"s as good fish in the sea as ever was got out of it,"
snapped the old lady.
"It was our fate," said the superst.i.tious Miss Libby.
"You made your own fate," answered the inexorable old lady.
"So you adopted the poor little forsaken child," put in Gem, to stop the altercation between the mother and daughters.
"Yes, Gem, of course. But oh! the day you were given to us was a day of jubilee! While I was lifting you out of that basket, lame leg Joe came in to make the fire. When he saw me with a babe in my arms he let his wood fall, and lifted up his arms and opened his eyes in dumb amazement.
And when I told him where I found it, he recovered his speech, and advised me to send it to the alms-house.
""Joe," I said, "_if ever_ you mention alms-houses and babies in the same breath to me again, you and I will have to part."
"Yet poor old Joe spoke in your interests, grandma," said Gem.
"I know he did, dear, or he thought he did; but my real interest was to keep my Gem, for she has been the brightness of my life, and not only of mine, but of Tabby"s and Libby"s, poor childish old maids, and of Mopsy"s and lame leg Joe"s."
"It is because we all love each other so much, and it is such a happiness to love," said Gem.
"We all loved you, my darling, from the very first. We could not help it. Ah! you should have seen what a sunbeam you were in our dull house that day and all days after that. When I took you out of the basket and set you upon your feet, you tottered all about the room, eagerly examining all that was new to you; the chip-bottom chairs, the turkey-wing fans, the peac.o.c.k"s feathers, even poor Joe"s crooked leg.