The Old Homestead Part 43

"Oh! yes, sir, I have seen the clouds melt away into rainbows so often."

"Well, it is the suns.h.i.+ne that makes a thing of beauty, where was only a dull black cloud. In the human face, my child, goodness acts like suns.h.i.+ne on the clouds. Be very good, little one, and the best portion of mankind will always think you handsome."

Mary listened very earnestly, but with an irresolute and unconvinced expression. This doctrine of immaterial loveliness she could not readily adopt; and, strange enough, did not quite relish. Her admiration of Isabel's beauty was so intense, that words like these seemed to outrage it.

"Come, come," said the Judge, who had never had an opportunity of conversing much with the child, "you must not cry so bitterly at being parted."

"Sir," said the child, turning her large spiritual eyes upon the Judge, "her father and mother were very, very kind to me, when I had no home, no food--nothing--nothing on earth but the cold streets to live in; remember that!"

"It is important that I should be well informed about you, Mary. Who was your father?"

"My father," cried the child, starting upright, and her eyes flashed out brightly, scattering back their tears, "my father was as good a man as ever breathed; good, good, sir, as you are. He did everything for me, worked for me, taught me himself, nursed me in his own arms, my father--oh, my poor, poor father, he is a bright angel in heaven."

"But your mother--did she act kindly by you?"

"My mother, oh, sir, she is with him--she is surely with my father."

Enoch Sharp turned away his head.

"That is a good girl, Mary," he said at last. "But here we are at your new home. Wipe up your tears and look cheerful."

Mary obeyed, and her effort to smile was a pleasant tribute to her n.o.ble friend, as he lifted her tenderly from the carriage.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

'Twas a picturesque old homestead, With a low moss-covered roof; And trumpet vines flung over it Their green and crimson woof.

The house at which Judge Sharp stopped was long, low, and terribly weather-beaten. Once a coating of red paint had ornamented it, but time had beaten this off in some places, and washed it together in others, till the color was now a dull brown, with patches of red here and there, visible beneath the eaves and around the windows. The highway separated this dwelling from the river, which took a bold, graceful curve just below the house; leaving a broad expanse of meadow-land and some fine clumps of trees in full view on the opposite sh.o.r.e.

Directly in front, ran a picket-fence, old, uneven and dilapidated, but in picturesque keeping with the building. The gate hung loosely on its hinges, just opposite an old-fas.h.i.+oned porch, that shot over the front door, much after the fas.h.i.+on of that hideous thing called a poke, with which English women disfigure their pretty travelling bonnets and protect themselves from the sun.

An immense trumpet-flower overran this porch, whose antique ma.s.siveness harmonized with the building, for the straggling branches shot out in all directions, and its coa.r.s.e blossoms, then in season, seemed to have drank up all the red paint as it vanished from the clapboards. Long, uncut gra.s.s, set thick with dandelions, filled the narrow strip between the front fence and the house, except just under the eaves, where it was worn away into a little, pebble-lined gutter, by the water-drops that poured from the roof every rainy day.

A few of those old-fas.h.i.+oned roses, broad and red, but almost single, so common about old houses beyond the reach of nursery gardens, struggled up through the gra.s.s, along the lower portions of the fences, and on each side the porch. A garden, at one end of the house, was red with love-lies-bleeding and c.o.xcombs, their deep hues contrasting with great clumps of marigolds and bachelor's-b.u.t.tons, all claiming a preemption right over innumerable weeds and any amount of ribbon gra.s.s, that struggled hard to drive them out.

With all its dilapidation, there was something picturesque and attractive about the old homestead--a mingling of rude taste and neglect, unthrifty, but suggestive of innate character. Mary Fuller looked around her, with that keen relish of gay colors and rude outline, that a rich uncultivated taste appreciates best. The glow of those warmly-tinted, bold garden flowers seemed like a welcome; and the soft rush of the river, which she had so feared to love, seemed like the voice of an old friend following her among strangers.

She had some little time for observation, for the gate opened with difficulty, groaning on its hinges, sc.r.a.ping its way in the segment of a circle upon the ground, and tearing up gra.s.s by the roots in its progress. Evidently the front door was not in very frequent use, and the stubborn old gate seemed determined that it never should be again.

A wren shot away from the porch, as the Judge and his protege entered it, and went fluttering in and out through the green branches waving over it quite distractedly, as if she had never seen a human being there in her whole birdhood before.

"Poor little coward," said the Judge, "it's afraid we shall drive its young ones from their old home."

Mary had followed the fugitive with sparkling eyes, and she now began peering among the leaves, expecting to find a nest full of darling little birdlings chirping for food. For aught she knew, poor alley-bred child, the birds built nests and filled them with eggs all the year round.

Judge Sharp rapped upon the door with his knuckles, for the old iron knocker groaned worse than the gate when he attempted to raise it.

After a little, the door opened with a jerk; for, like the gate, it swung low, grating upon the threshold.

In the entry stood a woman, tall beyond what is common in her s.e.x, square built and slightly stooping, not from feebleness, however, but habit. The woman might have been handsome in her youth, for there still existed a remnant of beauty in that cold, grave face, threaded with wrinkles, and shaded by hair of a dull iron grey. Her eyes were keen, and intensely black; they must have had fire in them once; if so, it had burned itself out years before; for now they seemed clear and cold as ice.

"How do you do, aunt Hannah?" said the Judge, reaching forth his hands. "I have brought the little girl, you see."

"What little girl?" inquired the woman, casting her cold eyes on Mary Fuller. "I know nothing about any little girl."

"Then uncle Nathan didn't get my letter," said the Judge, a little anxiously.

"He hasn't had a letter these three years," was the concise reply.

"Well, I must see him then. Where is he, aunt Hannah?"

"In his old place."

"Where, on the back porch?"

"Yes."

"Well, aunt Hannah, just see to my little girl, while I go and speak with uncle Nathan," and the Judge disappeared from the entry, through a side door.

"Come into the out room," said aunt Hannah to Mary, leading the way through an opposite door.

Mary followed in silence, chilled through and through by this iron coldness.

The room was chilly and meagre of comforts like its mistress. A home-made carpet, striped in red and green, but greatly faded by time, covered the floor. A tall, mahogany bureau, with a back-piece and top-drawers, stood on one side, and a long, narrow dining-table of black wood, with slender legs and claw-feet, grasping each a small globe, stood between the two front windows. Over these windows were paper curtains of pale blue, rolled up with strings and ta.s.sels of twisted cotton, just far enough to leave the lower panes visible. Half a dozen chairs of dark brown wood touched with green, stood around the room; and over the dining-table hung an antique looking-gla.s.s, in a mahogany frame, rendered black by time.

Mary sat down by an end window that overlooked the garden, and peered through the little panes to avoid the steady gaze that the woman fixed upon her. A sweet-briar bush grew against the window; and she caught bright glimpses of marigolds and asparagus laden with red berries, through the fragrant leaves.

All at once she started and turned suddenly in her chair. The woman had spoken.

"Who are you?" was the curt question that aroused her.

"I--I--ma'am?"

"Yes, I mean you. What's your name?"

"Mary Fuller, ma'am."

"What brought you in these parts?"

"I came with Isabel and Judge Sharp."

"What for?"