Medoline Selwyn's Work Part 1

Medoline Selwyn's Work.

by Mrs. J. J. Colter.

CHAPTER I.

MRS. BLAKE.

The cars were not over-crowded, and were moving leisurely along in the soft, midsummer twilight. At first, I had felt a trifle annoyed at my carelessness in missing the Express by which I had been expected; but now I quite enjoyed going in this mixed train, since I could the better observe the country than in the swifter Express. As I drew near the end of my journey, my pulses began to quicken with nervousness, not unmixed with dread.

Captain Green, under whose care I had been placed when I left my home for the last eight years, had concluded, no doubt very wisely, that I could travel the remaining few miles through quiet county places alone. This last one hundred and fifty miles, however, had been the most trying part of the whole journey. My English was a trifle halting; all our teachers spoke German as their mother tongue at the school, and the last two years I was the only English-born pupil. Captain Green was an old East Indian officer, like my own dead father, and very readily undertook the care of a troublesome chit of a girl across the ocean, in memory of the strong friends.h.i.+p subsisting between himself and my father, now long since pa.s.sed to other service than that of Her Gracious Majesty. The Captain was a very silent man, and therefore not calculated to help me to a better acquaintance of any language, while he did not encourage me to make friends with my traveling companions. The journey had been therefore a very quiet one to me, but I had found it delightful. I had, like most of our species, an innate love of the sea; and the long, still hours as I sat alone gazing out over the restless waters, have left one of the pleasantest of all the pictures hanging in memory's halls.

As I did not wish to be taken, even by the chance traveling companions of a few hours, for other than an English or American girl, I resolved to speak fewest possible words to any one on the journey; and when the conductor came for my ticket, I repressed the desire to ask him to tell me when my own station would be reached, and merely shook my head at the news agents who were more troublesome, if possible, than the dust and smoke which poured in at doors and windows. Captain Green had telegraphed my guardian the hour at which I would arrive, but I got so interested watching the busy crowds on the streets from my hotel window that, for a while, I forgot that I too needed a measure of their eager haste, if I were soon to terminate this long journey over land and sea. I was beginning to fear, at last, after the cars had been in motion some hours, that I might have pa.s.sed my station; so I concluded to have my question carefully written down, and the next time the conductor came near me hand it to him. I had not long to wait, and giving him the slip of paper, I murmured "Please."

He read, and then looking at me very intently said:

"Are you a foreigner?"

"Oh, no; English," I said, blus.h.i.+ng furiously.

"Why don't you speak then, when you want anything? That's what we're here for."

I bowed my head quite proudly and said, "Will you please, then, answer my question?"

"We won't be there for an hour or more. Are you not the young lady Mrs.

Flaxman is expecting?"

"I am Mr. Winthrop's ward. I do not know any Mrs. Flaxman."

"Oh, it's all the same. She lives with him; is a cousin, or something connected with him. He is away now; left a month ago for the Pacific coast."

He was sitting now quite comfortably in the next seat.

"You needn't have any more anxiety about the stopping places," he continued, very cordially; "I will look after you, and see that you get safely home, if there's no one there to meet you. Most likely they expected you by the morning's Express." Then he inquired about my luggage, examining my checks and keeping up a running stream of conversation which I seemed compelled to answer. After the rigid exclusion of my school life, where we were taught to regard all sorts of men with a measure of wholesome dread, I scarce knew whether to be proud of my courage in being able to sit there, with such outward calmness, or ashamed of my boldness. If I could only have consulted one of the teachers just for a moment it would have been such a relief; but presently the train stopped, when he left my side, his seat to be immediately occupied by an elderly woman with a huge covered basket.

After considerable difficulty she got herself and basket bestowed to her satisfaction just before the cars got in motion. She moved uneasily on the seat, looking around on all sides a trifle nervously, and then in an awed whisper said to me, "Don't the cars go all to smash sometimes?"

"Not many times," I tried to say rea.s.suringly.

"I wan't never in 'em afore, and wouldn't be now, only my son Dan'el's wife's took oncommon bad, and he thinks I can cure her."

She remained quiet a while, and then somewhat rea.s.sured began to grow curious about her traveling companions.

"Have you c.u.m fur?" she asked.

I explained that I had come a good many miles.

"All alone?"

"Only from New York."

"Going fur?"

"To Cavendish."

"Did you say Cavendish?"

"Yes."

"Be you a furriner?"

"No, I am English;" I felt my color rising as I answered.

"Well, you speak sort o' queer, but my old man was English, too, a Norfolk man, and blest if I could understand quarter he said for ever so long after we got keeping company. I used to say yes to everything I didn't understand when we was alone, for fear he might be popping the question; but laws, I knew well enough when he did ask."

She fell into an apparently pleasant reverie, but soon returned to the actualities of life.

"You're not married, surely."

I answered in the negative with fewest possible words.

"Got a young man, though, I'll warrant; such a likely girl."

"I do not understand what you mean," I answered with considerable dignity, glad to let her know that her own English was not perfect.

"You must have been riz in a queer place not to know what likely is. Why, it's good-looking; and anybody knows you're that. But I suppose you didn't have much eddication, they mostly don't in England; my man didn't know even his letters; but I have pretty good book larnin' and so we got on all right," she continued, with a retrospective look on her not unkindly face.

"Who might your folks be in Cavendish?" she asked, after a few moments of welcome silence.

"I have no relatives there," I answered, I am afraid, rather ungraciously.

"Going as governess or nurse girl to some of the aristocracy there? You don't look as if you ever did much housework, though."

"I am going to Mr. Winthrop's."

"Deu tell! Why, I lived with his mother myself, when I was a widder first."

Then she relapsed into another eloquent pause of silence, while possibly in her dim way she was reflecting how history repeats itself. But coming back to reality again, and scanning me more closely than ever, she asked, "Are you going there to work?"

My patience was getting exhausted, and it is possible there was a trace of petulance in my voice as I said, "No, I am Mr. Winthrop's ward."

"Deu tell! What is that?"

"He is my guardian."

"Why, he is a young man for that. I thought they got elderly men."

"My father held the same relation to him."