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Aikenside

by Mary Jane Holmes · English · Gutenberg #6954 · 445,497 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Aikenside

Author: Mary Jane Holmes


        
Release date: November 1, 2004 [eBook #6954]
                Most recently updated: July 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6954

Credits: Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AIKENSIDE ***




Aikenside

by Mary J. Holmes

Author of “Maggie Miller,” “Dora Drane,” “English Orphans,” “The
Homestead on the Hillside,” “Meadowbrook Farm,” “Lena Rivers,”
“Rosamond,” “Cousin Maude,” “Tempest and Sunshine,” “Rector of St.
Marks,” “Mildred,” “The Leighton Homestead,” “Miss McDonald”


Contents

 CHAPTER I. THE EXAMINING COMMITTEE.
 CHAPTER II. MADELINE CLYDE.
 CHAPTER III. THE EXAMINATION.
 CHAPTER IV. GRANDPA MARKHAM.
 CHAPTER V. THE RESULT.
 CHAPTER VI. CONVALESCENCE.
 CHAPTER VII. THE DRIVE.
 CHAPTER VIII. SHADOWINGS OF WHAT WAS TO BE.
 CHAPTER IX. THE DECISION.
 CHAPTER X. AT AIKENSIDE.
 CHAPTER XI. GUY AT HOME.
 CHAPTER XII. A GENEROUS LETTER.
 CHAPTER XIII. UNCLE JOSEPH.
 CHAPTER XIV. MADDY AND LUCY.
 CHAPTER XV. THE HOLIDAYS.
 CHAPTER XVI. THE DOCTOR AND MADDY.
 CHAPTER XVII. WOMANHOOD.
 CHAPTER XVIII. THE BURDEN.
 CHAPTER XIX. LIFE AT THE COTTAGE.
 CHAPTER XX. THE BURDEN GROWS HEAVIER.
 CHAPTER XXI. THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE MARRIAGE.
 CHAPTER XXII. BEFORE THE BRIDAL.
 CHAPTER XXIII. LUCY.
 CHAPTER XXIV. FINALE.




CHAPTER I.
THE EXAMINING COMMITTEE.


The good people of Devonshire were rather given to quarreling—sometimes
about the minister’s wife, meek, gentle Mrs. Tiverton, whose manner of
housekeeping, and style of dress, did not exactly suit them; sometimes
about the minister himself, good, patient Mr. Tiverton, who vainly
imagined that if he preached three sermons a week, attended the
Wednesday evening prayer-meeting, the Thursday evening sewing society,
officiated at every funeral, visited all the sick, and gave to every
beggar who called at his door, besides superintending the Sunday
school, he was earning his salary of six hundred per year.

Sometimes, and that not rarely, the quarrel crept into the choir, and
then, for one whole Sunday, it was all in vain that Mr. Tiverton read
the psalm and hymn, casting troubled glances toward the vacant seats of
his refractory singers. There was no one to respond, unless it were
good old Mr. Hodges, who pitched so high that few could follow him;
while Mrs. Captain Simpson—whose daughter, the organist, had been
snubbed at the last choir meeting by Mr. Hodges’ daughter, the alto
singer—rolled up her eyes at her next neighbor, or fanned herself
furiously in token of her disgust.

Latterly, however, there had come up a new cause of quarrel, before
which every other cause sank into insignificance. Now, though the
village of Devonshire could boast but one public schoolhouse, said
house being divided into two departments, the upper and lower
divisions, there were in the town several district schools; and for the
last few years a committee of three had been annually appointed to
examine and decide upon the merits of the various candidates for
teaching, giving to each, if the decision were favorable, a little slip
of paper certifying their qualifications to teach a common school.
Strange that over such an office so fierce a feud should have arisen;
but when Mr. Tiverton, Squire Lamb and Lawyer Whittemore, in the full
conviction that they were doing right, refused a certificate of
scholarship to Laura Tisdale, niece of Mrs. Judge Tisdale, and awarded
it to one whose earnings in a factory had procured for her a thorough
English education, the villagers, to use a vulgar phrase, were at once
set by the ears, the aristocracy abusing, and the democracy upholding
the dismayed trio, who, as the breeze blew harder, quietly resigned
their office, and Devonshire was without a school committee.

In this emergency something must be done, and, as the two belligerent
parties could only unite on a stranger, it seemed a matter of special
providence that only two months before, young Dr. Holbrook, a native of
modern Athens, had rented the pleasant little office on the village
common, formerly occupied by old Dr. Carey, now lying in the graveyard
by the side of some whose days he had prolonged, and others whose days
he had surely shortened. Besides being handsome, and skillful, and
quite as familiar with the poor as the rich, the young doctor was
descended from the aristocratic line of Boston Holbrooks, facts which
tended to make him a favorite with both classes; and, greatly to his
surprise, he found himself unanimously elected to the responsible
office of sole Inspector of Common Schools in Devonshire. It was in
vain that he remonstrated, saying he knew nothing whatever of the
qualifications requisite for a teacher; that he could not talk to
girls, young ones especially; that he should make a miserable failure,
and so forth. The people would not listen. Somebody must examine the
teachers and that somebody might as well be Dr. Holbrook as anybody.

“Only be strict with ’em, draw the reins tight, find out to your
satisfaction whether a gal knows her P’s and Q’s before you give her a
stifficut. We’ve had enough of your ignoramuses,” said Colonel Lewis,
the democratic potentate to whom Dr. Holbrook was expressing his fears
that he should not give satisfaction. Then, as a bright idea suggested
itself to the old gentleman, he added: “I tell you what, just cut one
or two at first; that’ll give you a name for being particular, which is
just the thing.”

Accordingly, with no definite idea as to what was expected of him,
except that he was to find out “whether a girl knew her P’s and Q’s,”
and was also to “cut one or two of the first candidates,” Dr. Holbrook
accepted the office, and then awaited rather nervously his initiation.
He was not easy in the society of ladies, unless, indeed, the lady
stood in need of his professional services, when he lost sight of _her_
at once, and thought only of her disease. His patient once well,
however, he became nervously shy and embarrassed, retreating as soon as
possible from her presence to the covert of his friendly office, where,
with his boots upon the table and his head thrown back in a most
comfortable position, he sat one April morning, in happy oblivion of
the bevy of girls who must, of course, ere long-invade his sanctum.

“Something for you, sir. The lady will wait for an answer,” said his
“chore boy,” passing to his master a little three-cornered note, and
nodding toward the street.

Following the direction indicated, the doctor saw, drawn up near his
door, an old-fashioned one-horse wagon, such as is still occasionally
seen in New England. A square boxed, dark green wagon, drawn by a
sorrel horse, sometimes called by the genuine Yankee “yellow,” and
driven by a white-haired man, whose silvery locks, falling around his
wrinkled face, gave to him a pleasing, patriarchal appearance, which
interested the doctor far more than did the flutter of the blue ribbon
beside him, even though the bonnet that ribbon tied shaded the face of
a young girl. The note was from her, and, tearing it open, the doctor
read, in the prettiest of all pretty, girlish handwriting:

“Dr. Holbrook.”

Here it was plainly visible that a “D” had been written as if she would
have said “Dear.” Then, evidently changing her mind, she had with her
finger blotted out the “D,” and made it into an oddly shaped “S,” so
that it read simply:

“Dr. Holbrook—Sir: Will you be at leisure to examine me on Monday
afternoon, at three o’clock?


“MADELINE A. CLYDE.


“P. S.—For particular reasons I hope you can attend to me as early as
Monday. M. A. C.”


Dr. Holbrook knew very little of girls, but he thought this note, with
its P. S., decidedly girlish. Still he made no comment, either verbal
or mental, so flurried was he with knowing that the evil he so much
dreaded had come upon him at last. Had it been left to his choice, he
would far rather have extracted every one of that maiden’s teeth, than
to have set himself up before her like some horrid ogre, asking what
she knew. But the choice was not his, and, turning to the boy, he said,
laconically, “Tell her to come.”

Most men would have sought for a glimpse of the face under the bonnet
tied with blue, but Dr. Holbrook did not care a picayune whether it
were ugly or fair, though it did strike him that the voice was
singularly sweet, which, after the boy had delivered his message, said
to the old man, “Now, grandpa, we’ll go home. I know you must be
tired.”

Slowly Sorrel trotted down the street, the blue ribbons fluttering in
the wind, while one little ungloved hand was seen carefully adjusting
about the old man’s shoulders the ancient camlet cloak which had done
duty for many a year, and was needed on this chill April day. The
doctor saw all this, and the impression left upon his mind was, that
Candidate No. 1 was probably a nice-ish kind of a girl, and very good
to her grandfather. But what should he ask her, and how demean himself
toward her? Monday afternoon was frightfully near, he thought, as this
was only Saturday; and then, feeling that he must be ready, he brought
out from the trunk, where, since his arrival in Devonshire, they had
bean quietly lying, books enough to have frightened an older person
than poor little Madeline Clyde, riding slowly home with grandpa, and
wishing so much that she’d had a glimpse of Dr. Holbrook, so as to know
what he was like, and hoping he would give her a chance to repeat some
of the many pages of geography and “Parley’s History,” which she knew
by heart. How she would have trembled could she have seen the
formidable volumes heaped upon his table and waiting for her. There
were French and Latin grammars, “Hamilton’s Metaphysics,” “Olmstead’s
Philosophy,” “Day’s Algebra,” “Butler’s Analogy,” and many others, into
which poor Madeline had never so much as looked. Arranging them in a
row, and half wishing himself back again to the days when he had
studied them, the doctor went out to visit his patients, of which there
were so many that Madeline Clyde entirely escaped his mind, nor did she
trouble him again until the dreaded Monday came, and the hands of his
watch pointed to two.

“One hour more,” he said to himself, just as the roll of wheels and a
cloud of dust announced the approach of something.

Could it be Sorrel and the square-boxed wagon? Oh, no; far different
from grandfather Clyde’s turnout was the stylish carriage and the
spirited bays dashing down the street, the colored driver reining them
suddenly, not before the office door, but just in front of the white
cottage in the same yard, the house where Dr. Holbrook boarded, and
where, if he ever married in Devonshire, he would most likely bring his
wife.

“Guy Remington, the very chap of all others whom I’d rather see, and,
as I live, there’s Agnes, with Jessie. Who knew she was in these
parts?” was the doctor’s mental exclamation, as, running his fingers
through his hair and making a feint of pulling up the corners of his
rather limp collar, he hurried out to the carriage, from which a
dashing looking lady of thirty, or thereabouts, was alighting.

“Why, Agnes, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Remington, when did you come?” he
asked, offering his hand to the lady, who, coquettishly shaking back
from her pretty, dollish face a profusion of light brown curls, gave
him the tips of her lavender kids, while she told him she had come to
Aikenside the Saturday before; and hearing, from Guy that the lady with
whom he boarded was an old friend of hers, she had driven over to call,
and brought Jessie with her. “Here, Jessie, speak to the doctor. He was
poor dear papa’s friend,” and a very proper sigh escaped Agnes
Remington’s lips as she pushed a little curly-haired girl toward Dr.
Holbrook.

The lady of the house had spied them by this time, and came running
down the walk to meet her rather distinguished visitor, wondering, it
may be, to what she was indebted for this call from one who, since her
marriage with the supposed wealthy Dr. Remington, had rather cut her
former acquaintances. Agnes was delighted to see her, and, as Guy
declined entering the cottage just then, the two friends disappeared
within the door, while the doctor and Guy repaired to the office, the
latter sitting down in the very chair intended for Madeline Clyde. This
reminded the doctor of his perplexity, and also brought the comforting
thought that Guy, who had never failed him yet, could surely offer some
suggestions. But he would not speak of her just now; he had other
matters to talk about, and so, jamming his penknife into a pine table
covered with similar jams, he said: “Agnes, it seems, has come to
Aikenside, notwithstanding she declared she never would, when she found
that the whole of the Remington property belonged to your mother, and
not your father.”

“Oh, yes. She got over her pique as soon as I settled a handsome little
income on Jessie, and, in fact, on her too, until she is foolish enough
to marry again, when it will cease, of course, as I do not feel it my
duty to support any man’s wife, unless it be my own, or my father’s,”
was Guy Remington’s reply; whereupon the penknife went again into the
table, and this time with so much force that the point was broken off;
but the doctor did not mind it, and with the jagged end continued to
make jagged marks, while he continued: “She’ll hardly marry again,
though she may. She’s young—not over twenty-six—-

“Twenty-eight, if the family Bible does not lie; but she’d never
forgive me if she knew I told you that. So let it pass that she’s
twenty-six. She certainly is not more than three years your senior, a
mere nothing, if you wish to make her Mrs. Holbrook;” and Guy’s dark
eyes scanned curiously the doctor’s face, as if seeking there for the
secret of his proud young stepmother’s anxiety to visit plain Mrs.
Conner that afternoon. But the doctor only laughed merrily at the idea
of his being father to Guy, his college chum and long-tried friend.

Agnes Remington—reclining languidly in Mrs. Conner’s easy-chair, and
overwhelming her former friend with descriptions of the gay parties she
had attended in Boston, and the fine sights she saw in Europe, whither
her gray-haired husband had taken her for a wedding tour—would not have
felt particularly flattered, could she have seen that smile, or heard
how easily, from talking of her, Dr. Holbrook turned to another theme,
to Madeline Clyde, expected now almost every moment. There was a merry
laugh on Guy’s part, as he listened to the doctor’s story, and, when it
was finished, he said: “Why, I see nothing so very distasteful in
examining a pretty girl, and puzzling her, to see her blush. I half
wish I were in your place. I should enjoy the novelty of the thing.”
“Oh, take it, then; take my place, Guy,” the doctor exclaimed, eagerly.
“She does not know me from Adam. Here are books, all you will need. You
went to a district school once a week when you were staying in the
country. You surely have some idea, while I have not the slightest.
Will you, Guy?” he persisted more earnestly, as he heard wheels in the
street, and was sure old Sorrel had come again.

Guy Remington liked anything savoring of a frolic, but in his mind
there were certain conscientious scruples touching the justice of the
thing, and so at first he demurred; while the doctor still insisted,
until at last he laughingly consented to commence the examination,
provided the doctor would sit by, and occasionally come to his aid.

“You must write the certificate, of course,” he said, “testifying that
she is qualified to teach.”

“Yes, certainly, Guy, if she is; but maybe she won’t be, and my orders
are, to be strict—very strict.”

“How did she look?” Guy asked, and the doctor replied: “Saw nothing but
her bonnet. Came in a queer old go-giggle of a wagon, such as your
country farmers drive. Guess she won’t be likely to stir up the bile of
either of us, particularly as I am bullet proof, and you have been
engaged for years. By the way, when do you cross the sea again for the
fair Lucy? Rumor says this summer.”

“Rumor is wrong, as usual, then,” was Guy’s reply, a soft light
stealing into his handsome eyes. Then, after a moment, he added: “Miss
Atherstone’s health is far too delicate for her to incur the risks of a
climate like ours. If she were well acclimated, I should be glad, for
it is terribly lonely up at Aikenside.”

“And do you really think a wife would make it pleasanter?” Dr Holbrook
asked, the tone of his voice indicating a little doubt as to a man’s
being happier for having a helpmate to share his joys and sorrows.

But no such doubts dwelt in the mind of Guy Remington. Eminently fitted
for domestic happiness, he looked forward anxiously to the time when
sweet Lucy Atherstone, the fair English girl to whom he had become
engaged when, four years before, he visited Europe, should be strong
enough to bear transplanting to American soil. Twice since his
engagement he had visited her, finding her always lovely, gentle, and
yielding. Too yielding, it sometimes seemed to him, while occasionally
the thought had flashed upon him that she did not possess a very
remarkable depth of intellect. But he said to himself, he did not care;
he hated strong-minded women, and would far rather his wife should be a
little weak than masculine, like his Aunt Margaret, who sometimes wore
bloomers, and advocated women’s rights. Yes, he greatly preferred Lucy
Atherstone, as she was, to a wife like the stately Margaret, or like
Agnes, his pretty stepmother, who only thought how she could best
attract attention; and as it had never occurred to him that there might
be a happy medium, that a woman need not be brainless to be feminine
and gentle, he was satisfied with his choice, as well he might be, for
a fairer, sweeter flower never bloomed than Lucy Atherstone, his
affianced bride. Guy loved to think of Lucy, and as the doctor’s
remarks brought her to his mind, he went off into a reverie concerning
her, becoming so lost in thought that until the doctor’s hand was laid
upon his shoulder by way of rousing him, he did not see that what his
friend had designated as a go-giggle was stopping in front of the
office, and that from it a young girl was alighting.

Naturally very polite to females, Guy’s first impulse was to go to her
assistance, but she did not need it, as was proven by the light spring
with which she reached the ground. The white-haired man was with her
again, but he evidently did not intend to stop, and a close observer
might have detected a shade of sadness and anxiety upon his face as
Madeline called cheerily out to him: “Good-by, grandpa. Don’t fear for
me; I hope you have good luck;” then, as he drove away, she ran a step
after him and said; “Don’t look so sorry, for if Mr. Remington won’t
let you have the money, there’s my pony, Beauty. I am willing to give
him up.”

“Never, Maddy. It’s all the little fortin’ you’ve got. I’ll let the old
place go first;” and, chirruping to Sorrel, the old man drove on, while
Madeline walked, with a beating heart, to the office door, knocking
timidly.

Glancing involuntarily at each other, the young men exchanged meaning
smiles, while the doctor whispered softly: “Verdant—that’s sure. Wonder
if she’ll knock at a church.”

As Guy sat nearest the door, it was he who held it ajar while Madeline
came in, her soft brown eyes glistening with something like a tear, and
her cheeks burning with excitement as she took the chair indicated by
Guy Remington, who unconsciously found himself master of ceremonies.

Poor little Madeline!




CHAPTER II.
MADELINE CLYDE.


Madge her schoolmates called her, because the name suited her, they
said; but Maddy they called her at home, and there was a world of
unutterable tenderness in the voices of the old couple, her
grandparents, when they said that name, while their dim eyes lighted up
with pride and joy when they rested upon the young girl who answered to
the name of Maddy. Their only daughter’s only child, she had lived with
them since her mother’s death, for her father was a sea captain, who
never returned from his last voyage to China, made two months before
she was born. Very lonely and desolate would the home of Grandfather
Markham have been without the presence of Madeline, but with her there,
the old red farmhouse seemed to the aged couple like a paradise.

Forty years they had lived there, tilling the rather barren soil of the
rocky homestead, and, saving the sad night when they heard that Richard
Clyde was lost at sea, and the far sadder morning when their daughter
died, bitter sorrow had not come to them; and, truly thankful for the
blessings so long vouchsafed them, they had retired each night in peace
with God and man, and risen each morning to pray. But a change was
coming over them. In an evil hour Grandpa Markham had signed a note for
a neighbor and friend, who failed to pay, and so it all fell on Mr.
Markham, who, to meet the demand, mortgaged his homestead; the recreant
neighbor still insisting that long before the mortgage should be due,
he certainly would be able himself to meet it. This, however, he had
not done, and, after twice begging off a foreclosure, poor old
Grandfather Markham found himself at the mercy of a grasping,
remorseless man, into whose hands the mortgage had passed. It was vain
to hope that Silas Slocum would wait. The money must either be
forthcoming, or the red farmhouse be sold, with its few acres of land.
Among his neighbors there was not one who had the money to spare, even
if they had been willing to do so. And so he must look among strangers.

“If I could only help,” Madeline had said one evening when they sat
talking over their troubles; “but there’s nothing I can do, unless I
apply for our school this summer. Mr. Green is committeeman; he likes
us, and I don’t believe but what he’ll let me have it. I mean to go and
see;” and, ere the old people had recovered from their astonishment,
Madeline had caught her bonnet and shawl, and was flying down the road.

Madeline was a favorite with all, especially with Mr. Green, and as the
school would be small that summer, the plan struck him favorably. Her
age, however, was an objection, and he must take time to see what
others thought of a child like her becoming a schoolmistress. Others
thought well of it, and so before the close of the next day it was
generally known through Honedale, as the southern part of Devonshire
was called, that pretty little Madge Clyde had been engaged as teacher,
she receiving three dollars a week, with the understanding that she
must board herself. It did not take Madeline long to calculate that
twelve times three were thirty-six, more than a tenth of what her
grandfather must borrow. It seemed like a little fortune, and blithe as
a singing bird she flitted about the house, now stopping a moment to
fondle her pet kitten, while she whispered the good news in its very
appreciative ear, and then stroking her grandfather’s silvery hair, as
she said:

“You can tell them that you are sure of paying thirty-six dollars in
the fall, and if I do well, maybe they’ll hire me longer. I mean to try
my very best. I wonder if ever anybody before me taught a school when
they were only fourteen and a half. Do I look as young as that?” and
for an instant the bright; childish face scanned itself eagerly in the
old-fashioned mirror, with the figure of an eagle on the top.

She did look very young, and yet there was something womanly, too, in
the expression of the face, something which said that life’s realities
were already beginning to be understood by her.

“If my hair were not short I should do better. What a pity I cut it the
last time; it would have been so long and splendid now,” she continued,
giving a kind of contemptuous pull at the thick, beautiful brown hair
on whose glossy surface there was in certain lights a reddish tinge,
which added to its beauty.

“Never mind the hair, Maddy,” the old man said, gazing fondly at her
with a half sigh as he remembered another brown head, pillowed now
beneath the graveyard turf. “Maybe you won’t pass muster, and then the
hair will make no difference. There’s a new committee-man, that Dr.
Holbrook, from Boston, and new ones are apt to be mighty strict.”

Instantly Maddy’s face flushed all over with nervous dread, as she
thought: “What if I should fail?” fancying that to do so would be an
eternal disgrace. But she should not. She was called by everybody the
very best scholar in school, the one whom the teachers always put
forward when desirous of showing off, the one whom Mr. Tiverton, and
Squire Lamb, and Lawyer Whittemore always noticed so much. Of course
she should not fail, though she did dread Dr. Holbrook, wondering much
what he would ask her first, and hoping it would be something in
arithmetic, provided he did not stumble upon decimals, where she was
apt to get bewildered. She had no fears of grammar. She could pick out
the most obscure sentence and dissect a double relative with perfect
ease; then, as to geography, she could repeat whole pages of that,
while in the spelling-book, the foundation of a thorough education, as
she had been taught, she had no superiors, and but a very few equals.
Still she would be very glad when it was over, and she appointed
Monday, both because it was close at hand, and because that was the day
her grandfather had set in which to ride to Aikenside, in an adjoining
town, and ask its young master for the loan of three hundred dollars.

He could hardly tell why he had thought of applying to Guy Remington
for help, unless it were that he once had saved the life of Guy’s
father, who, as long as he lived, had evinced a great regard for his
benefactor, frequently asserting that he meant to do something for him.
But the something was never done, the father was dead, and in his
strait the old man turned to the son, whom he knew to be very rich, and
who he had been told was exceedingly generous.

“How I wish I could go with you clear up to Aikenside! They say it’s so
beautiful,” Madeline had said, as on Saturday evening they sat
discussing the expected events of the following Monday. “Mrs. Noah, the
housekeeper, had Sarah Jones there once, to sew, and she told me all
about it. There are graveled walks, and nice green lawns, and big, tall
trees, and flowers—oh! so many!—and marble fountains, with gold fishes
in the basin; and statues, big as folks, all over the yard, with two
brass lions on the gateposts. But the house is finest of all. There’s a
drawing-room bigger than a ballroom, with carpets that let your feet
sink in so far; pictures and mirrors clear to the floor—think of that,
grandpa! a looking-glass so tall that one can see the very bottom of
their dress and know just how it hangs. Oh, I do so wish I could have a
peep at it! There are two in one room, and the windows are like doors,
with lace curtains; but what is queerest of all, the chairs and sofas
are covered with real silk, just like that funny, gored gown of
grandma’s up in the oak chest. Dear me! I wonder if I’ll ever live in
such a place as Aikenside?”

“No, no, Maddy, no. Be satisfied with the lot where God has put you,
and don’t be longing after something higher, Our Father in heaven knows
just what is best for us; as He didn’t see fit to put you up at
Aikenside, ’tain’t noways likely you’ll ever live in the like of it.”

“Not unless I should happen to marry a rich man. Poor girls like me
have sometimes done that, haven’t they?” was Maddy’s demure reply.

Grandpa Markham shook his head.

“They have, but it’s mostly their ruination; so don’t build castles in
the air about this Guy Remington.”

“Me! Oh, grandpa, I never dreamed of Mr. Guy!” and Madeline blushed
half indignantly. “He’s too rich, too aristocratic, though Sarah said
he didn’t act one bit proud, and was so pleasant, the servants all
worship him, and Mrs. Noah thinks him good enough for the Queen of
England. I shall think so, too, if he lets you have the money. How I
wish it was Monday night, so we could know sure!”

“Perhaps we both shall be terribly disappointed,” suggested grandpa,
but Maddy was more hopeful.

She, at least, would not fail, while what she had heard of Guy
Remington, the heir of Aikenside, made her believe that he would accede
at once to her grandpa’s request.

All that night she was working to pay the debt, giving the money
herself into the hands of Guy Remington, whom she had never seen, but
who came up in her dreams the tall, handsome-looking man she had so
often heard described by Sarah Jones after her return from Aikenside.
Even the next day, when, by her grandparent’s side, Maddy knelt
reverently in the small, time-worn church at Honedale, her thoughts, it
must be confessed, were wandering more to the to-morrow and Aikenside,
than to the sacred words her lips were uttering. She knew it was wrong,
and with a nervous start would try to bring her mind back from decimal
fractions to what the minister was saying; but Maddy was mortal, and
right in the midst of the Collect, Aikenside and its owner would rise
before her, together with the wonder how she and her grandfather would
feel one week from that Sabbath day. Would the desired certificate be
hers? or would she be disgraced forever and ever by a rejection? Would
the mortgage be paid and her grandfather at ease, or would his heart be
breaking with the knowing he must leave what had been his home for so
many years? Not thus was it with the aged disciple beside her—the good
old man, whose white locks swept the large lettered book over which his
wrinkled face was bent, as he joined in the responses, or said the
prayers whose words had over him so soothing an influence, carrying his
thoughts upward to the house not made with hands, which he felt assured
would one day be his. Once or twice, it is true, thoughts of losing the
dear old red cottage flitted across his mind with a keen, sudden pang,
but he put it quickly aside, remembering at the same instant how the
Father he loved doeth all things well to such as are His children.
Grandpa Markham was old in the Christian course, while Maddy could
hardly be said to have commenced as yet, and so to her that April
Sunday was long and wearisome. How she did wish she might just look
over the geography, by way of refreshing her memory, or see exactly how
the rule for extracting the cube root did read, but Maddy forebore,
reading only the Pilgrim’s Progress, the Bible, and the book brought
from the Sunday school.

With the earliest dawn, however, she was up, and her grandmother heard
her repeating to herself much of what she dreaded Dr. Holbrook might
question her upon. Even when bending over the washtub, for there were
no servants at the red cottage, a book was arranged before her so that
she could study with her eyes, while her small, fat hands and dimpled
arms were busy in the suds. Before ten o’clock everything was done, the
clothes, white as the snowdrops in the garden beds, were swinging on
the line, the kitchen floor was scrubbed, the windows washed, the best
room swept, the vegetables cleaned for dinner, and then Maddy’s work
was finished. “Grandma could do all the rest,” she said, and Madeline
was free “to put her eyes out over them big books if she liked.”

Swiftly flew the hours until it was time to be getting ready, when
again the short hair was deplored, as before her looking-glass Madeline
brushed and arranged her shining, beautiful locks. Would Dr. Holbrook
think of her age? Suppose he should ask it. But no, he wouldn’t. If Mr.
Green thought her old enough, surely it was not a matter with which the
doctor need trouble himself; and, somewhat at ease on that point,
Madeline donned her longest frock, and, standing in a chair, tried to
discover how much of her pantalets was visible.

“I could see splendidly in Mr. Remington’s mirrors,” she said to
herself, with a half sigh of regret that her lot had not been cast in
some such place as Aikenside, instead of there beneath the hill in that
wee bit of a cottage, whose rear slanted back until it almost touched
the ground. “After all, I guess I’m happier here,” she thought.
“Everybody likes me, while if I were Mr. Guy’s sister and lived at
Aikenside, I might be proud and wicked, and—”

She did not finish the sentence, but somehow the story of Dives and
Lazarus, read by her grandfather that morning, recurred to her mind,
and feeling how much rather she would rest in Abraham’s bosom than
share the fate of him who once was clothed in purple and fine linen she
pinned on her little neat plaid shawl, and, tying the blue ribbons of
her coarse straw hat, glanced once more at the formidable cube root,
and then hurried down to where her grandfather and old Sorrel were
waiting for her.

“I shall be so happy when I come back, because it will then be over,
just like having a tooth out, you know,” she said to her grandmother,
who bent down for the good-by kiss without which Maddy never left her.
“Now, grandpa, drive on; I was to be there at three,” and chirruping
herself to Sorrel, the impatient Madge went riding from the cottage
door, chatting cheerily until the village of Devonshire was reached;
then, with a farewell to her grandfather, who never dreamed that the
man whom he was seeking was so near, she tripped up the flagging walk,
and, as we have seen, soon stood in the presence of not only Dr.
Holbrook, but also of Guy Remington.

Poor, poor little Madge!




CHAPTER III.
THE EXAMINATION.


It was Guy who received her, Guy who pointed to a chair, Guy who seemed
perfectly at home, and, naturally enough, she took him for Dr.
Holbrook, wondering who the other black-haired man could be, and if he
meant to stay in there all the while. It would be very dreadful if he
did, and in her agitation and excitement the cube root was in danger of
being altogether forgotten. Half guessing the cause of her uneasiness,
and feeling more averse than ever to taking part in the matter, the
doctor, after a hasty survey of her person, withdrew into the
background, and sat where he could not be seen. This brought the short
dress into full view, together with the dainty little foot, nervously
beating the floor.

“She’s very young,” he thought; “too young, by far,” and Maddy’s
chances of success were beginning to decline even before a word had
been spoken.

How terribly still it was for the time, during which telegraphic
communications were silently passing between Guy and the doctor, the
latter shaking his head decidedly, while the former insisted that he
should do his duty. Madeline could almost hear the beatings of her
heart, and only by counting and recounting the poplar trees growing
across the street could she keep back the tears. What was he waiting
for, she wondered, and, at last, summoning all her courage, she lifted
her great brown eyes to Guy, and said, pleadingly:

“Would you be so kind, sir, as to begin?”

“Yes, certainly,” and electrified by that young, bird-like voice, the
sweetest save one he had ever heard, Guy knocked down from the pile of
books the only one at all appropriate to the occasion, the others being
as far beyond what was taught in the district schools as his classical
education was beyond Madeline’s common one.

Remembering that the teacher of whom he had once been for a week a
pupil, in the town of Framingham, had commenced operations by
sharpening a lead pencil, so he now sharpened a similar one,
determining as far as he could to follow that teacher’s example. Maddy
counted every fragment as it fell upon the floor, wishing so much that
he would commence, and fancying that it would not be half so bad to
have him approach her with some one of those terrible dental
instruments lying before her, as it was to sit and wait as she was
waiting. Had Guy Remington reflected a little, he would never have
consented to do the doctor’s work; but, unaccustomed to country usages,
especially those pertaining to schools and teachers, he did not
consider that it mattered which examined that young girl, himself or
Dr. Holbrook. Viewing it somewhat in the light of a joke, he rather
enjoyed it; and as the Framingham teacher had first asked her pupils
their names and ages, so he, when the pencil was sharpened
sufficiently, startled Madeline by asking her name.

“Madeline Amelia Clyde,” was the meek reply, which Guy quickly
recorded.

Now, Guy Remington intended no irreverence; indeed, he could not tell
what he did intend, or what it was which prompted his next query:

“Who gave you this name?”

Perhaps he fancied himself a boy again in the Sunday school, and
standing before the railing of the altar, where, with others of his
age, he had been asked the question propounded to Madeline Clyde, who
did not hear the doctor’s smothered laugh as he retreated into the
adjoining room.

In all her preconceived ideas of this examination, she had never
dreamed of being catechised, and with a feeling of terror as she
thought of that long answer to the question, “What is thy duty to thy
neighbor?” and doubted her ability to repeat it, she said: “My
sponsors, in baptism gave me the first name of Madeline Amelia, sir,”
adding, as she caught and misconstrued the strange gleam in the dark
eyes bent upon her, “I am afraid I have forgotten some of the
catechism; I did not know it was necessary in order to teach school.”

“Certainly, no; I do not think it is. I beg your pardon,” were Guy
Remington’s ejaculatory replies, as he glanced from Madeline to the
open door of the adjoining room, where was visible a slate, on which,
in huge letters, the amused doctor had written “Blockhead.”

There was something in Madeline’s quiet, womanly, earnest manner which
commanded Guy’s respect, or he would have given vent to the laughter
which was choking him, and thrown off his disguise. But he could not
bear now to undeceive her, and, resolutely turning his back upon the
doctor, he sat down by that pile of books and commenced the examination
in earnest, asking first her age.

“Going on fifteen,” sounded older to Madeline than “Fourteen and a
half,” so “Going on fifteen” was the reply, to which Guy responded:
“That is very young, Miss Clyde.”

“Yes, but Mr. Green did not mind. He’s the committeeman. He knew how
young I was,” Madeline said, eagerly, her great brown eyes growing
large with the look of fear which came so suddenly into them.

Guy noticed the eyes then, and thought them very bright and handsome
for brown, but not so bright or handsome as a certain pair of soft blue
orbs he knew, and feeling a thrill of satisfaction that sweet Lucy
Atherstone was not obliged to sit there in that doctor’s office to be
questioned by him or any other man, he said: “Of course, if your
employers are satisfied it is nothing to me, only I had associated
teaching with women much older than yourself. What is logic, Miss
Clyde?”

The abruptness with which he put the question startled Madeline to such
a degree that she could not positively tell whether she had ever heard
that word before, much less could she recall its meaning, and so she
answered frankly, “I don’t know.”

A girl who did not know what logic was did not know much, in Guy’s
estimation, but it would not do to stop here, and so he asked her next
how many cases there were in Latin!

Maddy felt the hot blood tingling to her very fingertips, the
examination had taken a course so widely different from her ideas of
what it would probably be. She had never looked inside a Latin grammar,
and again her truthful “I don’t know, sir,” fell on Guy’s ear, but this
time there was a half despairing tone in the young voice usually so
hopeful.

“Perhaps, then, you can conjugate the verb _Amo,_” Guy said, his manner
indicating the doubt he was beginning to feel as to her qualifications.

Maddy knew well what “conjugate” meant, but that verb _Amo_, what could
it mean? and had she ever heard it before? Mr. Remington was waiting
for her; she must say something, and with a gasp she began: “I amo,
thou amoest, he amoes. Plural: We amo, ye or you amo, they amo.”

Guy looked at her aghast for a single moment, and then a comical smile
broke all over his face, telling poor Maddy plainer than words could
have done, that she had made a most ridiculous mistake.

“Oh, sir,” she cried, her eyes wearing the look of the frightened hare,
“it is not right. I don’t know what it means. Tell me, teach me. What
is it to amo?”

To most men it would not have seemed a very disagreeable task, teaching
young Madeline Clyde “to amo,” as she termed it, and some such idea
flitted across Guy’s mind, as he thought how pretty and bright was the
eager face upturned to his, the pure white forehead, suffused with a
faint flush, the cheeks a crimson hue, and the pale lips parted
slightly as Maddy appealed to him for the definition of “amo.”

“It is a Latin verb, and means ‘to love’” Guy said, with an emphasis on
the last word, which would have made Maddy blush had she been less
anxious and frightened.

Thus far she had answered nothing correctly, and, feeling puzzled to
know how to proceed, Guy stepped into the adjoining room to consult
with the doctor, but he was gone. So returning again to Madeline, Guy
resumed the examination by asking her how “minus into minus could
produce plus.”

Again Maddy was at fault, and her low-spoken “I don’t know” sounded
like a wail of despair. Did she know anything, Guy wondered, and
feeling some curiosity now to ascertain that fact, he plied her with
questions philosophical, questions algebraical, and questions
geometrical, until in an agony of distress Maddy raised her hands
deprecatingly, as if she would ward off any similar questions, and
sobbed out:

“Oh, sir, no more. It makes my head so dizzy. They don’t teach that in
common schools. Ask me something I do know.”

Suddenly it occurred to Guy that he had gone entirely wrong, and
mentally cursing himself for the blockhead the doctor had called him,
he asked, kindly:

“What do they teach? Perhaps you can enlighten me?”

“Geography, arithmetic, grammar, history, and spelling-book,” Madeline
replied, untying and throwing off her bonnet, in the vain hope that it
might bring relief to her poor, giddy head, which throbbed so fearfully
that all her ideas seemed for the time to have left her.

This was a natural consequence of the high excitement under which she
was laboring, and so, when Guy did ask her concerning the books
designated, she answered but little better than before, and Guy was
wondering what he should do next, when the doctor’s welcome step was
heard, and leaving Madeline again, he repaired to the next room to
report his ill success.

“She does not seem to know anything. The veriest child ought to do
better than she has done. Why, she has scarcely answered half a dozen
questions correctly.”

This was what poor Maddy heard, though it was spoken in a low whisper;
but every word was distinctly understood and burned into her heart’s
core, drying her tears and hardening her into a block of marble. She
knew that Guy had not done her justice, and this helped to increase the
torpor stealing over her. Still she did not lose a syllable of what was
saying in the back office, and her lip curled scornfully when she heard
Guy remark: “I pity her; she is so young, and evidently takes it so
hard. Maybe she’s as good as they average. Suppose we give her the
certificate.”

Then Dr. Holbrook spoke, but to poor, dazed Maddy his words were all a
riddle. It was nothing to him—who was he that he should be dictating
thus? There seemed to be a difference of opinion between the young men,
Guy insisting that out of pity she should not be rejected; and the
doctor demurring on the ground that he ought to be more strict. As
usual, Guy overruled, and seating himself at the table, the doctor was
just commencing: “I hereby certify—” while Guy was bending over him,
when the latter was startled by a hand laid firmly on his arm, and
turning quickly he confronted Madeline Clyde, who, with her short hair
pushed from her blue-veined forehead, her face as pale as ashes, save
where a round spot of purplish red burned upon her cheeks, and her eyes
gleaming like coals of fire, stood before him.

“He need not write that,” she said, huskily, pointing to the doctor,
“It would be a lie, and I could not take it. You do not think me
qualified. I heard you say so. I do not want to be pitied. I do not
want a certificate because I am so young, and you think I’ll feel
badly. I do not want—”

Her voice failed her, her bosom heaved, and the choking sobs came thick
and fast, but still she shed no tear, and in her bright, dry eyes there
was a look which made both those young men turn away involuntarily.
Once Guy tried to excuse her failure, saying she no doubt was
frightened. She would probably do better again, and might as well
accept the certificate, but Madeline still said no, so decidedly that
further remonstrance was useless. She would not take what she had no
right to, she said, but if they pleased she would wait there in the
back office until her grandfather came back; it would not be long, and
she should not trouble them.

Guy brought her the easy-chair from the front room and placed it for
her by the window. With a faint smile she thanked him and said: “You
are very kind,” but the smile hurt Guy cruelly, it was so sad, so full
of unintentional reproach, while the eyes she lifted to his looked so
grieved and weary that he insensibly murmured to himself: “Poor child!”
as he left her, and with the doctor repaired to the house, where Agnes
was impatiently waiting for them. Poor, poor little Madge! Let those
smile who may at her distress; it was the first keen disappointment she
had ever had, and it crushed her as completely as many an older person
has been crushed by heavier calamities.

“Disgraced for ever and ever,” she kept repeating to herself, as she
tried to shake off the horrid nightmare stealing over her. “How can I
hold up my head again at home where nobody will understand just how it
was; nobody but grandpa and grandma? Oh, grandpa, I can’t earn that
thirty-six dollars now. I most wish I was dead, and I am—I am dying.
Somebody—come—quick!”

There was a heavy fall, and while in Mrs. Conner’s parlor Guy Remington
and Dr. Holbrook were chatting gayly with Agnes, a childish figure was
lying upon the office floor, white, stiff, and insensible.

Little Jessie Remington, tired of sitting still and listening to what
her mamma and Mrs. Conner were saying, had strayed off into the garden,
and after filling her chubby hands with daffodils and early violets,
wended her way to the office, the door of which was partially ajar.
Peering curiously in, she saw the crumpled bonnet, with its ribbons of
blue, and, attracted by this, advanced into the room, until she came
where Madeline was lying. With a feeling that something was wrong,
Jessie bent over the prostrate girl, asking if she were asleep, and
lifting next the long, fringed lashes drooping on the colorless cheek.
The dull, dead expression of the eyes sent a chill through Jessie’s
frame, and hurrying to the house she cried: “Oh, Brother Guy,
somebody’s dead in the office, and her bonnet is all jammed!”

Scarcely were the words uttered ere Guy and the doctor both were with
Madeline, the former holding her tenderly in his arms, while he
smoothed the short hair, thinking even then how soft and luxuriant it
was, and how fair was the face which never moved a muscle beneath his
scrutiny. The doctor was wholly self-possessed. Maddy had no terrors
for him now. She needed his services, and he rendered them willingly,
applying restoratives which soon brought back signs of life in the
rigid form. With a shiver and a moan Madeline whispered: “Oh, grandma,
I’m so tired,” and nestled closer to the bosom where she had never
dreamed of lying.

By this time both Mrs. Conner and Agnes had come out, asking in much
surprise who the stranger could be, and what was the cause of her
illness. As if there had been a previous understanding between them,
the doctor and Guy were silent with regard to the recent farce enacted
there, simply saying it was possible she was in the habit of fainting;
many people were. Very daintily, Agnes held up and back the skirt of
her rich silk as if fearful that it might come in contact with
Madeline’s plain delaine; then, as it was not very interesting for her
to stand and see the doctor “make so much fuss over a young girl,” as
she mentally expressed it, she returned to the house, bidding Jessie do
the same. But Jessie refused, choosing to stay by Madeline, whom they
placed upon the comfortable lounge, which she preferred to being taken
to the house, as Guy proposed.

“I’m better now, much better,” she said. “Leave me, please. I’d rather
be alone.”

So they left her, all but Jessie, who, fascinated by the sweet young
face, climbed upon the lounge and, laying her curly head caressingly
against Madeline’s arm, said to her: “Poor girl, you’re sick, and I am
so sorry. What makes you sick?”

There was genuine sympathy in that little voice, and it opened the
pent-up flood beating so furiously, and roused Maddy’s heart. With a
cry as of sudden pain she clasped the child in her arms and wept out a
wild, stormy fit of weeping which did her so much good. Forgetting that
Jessie could not understand, and feeling it a relief to tell her grief
to some one, she said, in reply to Jessie’s oft repeated inquiries as
to what was the matter: “I did not get a certificate, and I wanted it
so much, for we are poor, and our house is mortgaged, and I was going
to help grandpa pay it.”

“It’s dreadful to be poor!” sighed little Jessie, as her waxen fingers
threaded the soft, nut-brown hair resting in her lap, where Maddy had
lain her aching head.

Maddy did not know who this beautiful child was, but her sympathy was
very sweet, and they talked together as children will, until Mrs.
Agnes’ voice was heard calling to her little girl that it was time to
go.

“I love you, Maddy, and I mean to tell brother about it,” Jessie said,
as she wound her arms around Madeline’s neck and kissed her at parting.

It never occurred to Maddy to ask her name, so stupified she felt, and
with a responsive kiss she sent her away. Leaning her head upon the
table, she forgot all but her own wretchedness, and so did not see the
gayly-dressed, haughty-looking lady who swept past the door,
accompanied by Guy and Dr. Holbrook. Neither did she hear, or notice,
if she did, the hum of their voices as they talked together for a
moment, Agnes asking the doctor very prettily to come up to Aikenside
while she was there, and bring his ladylove. Engaged young men like Guy
were so stupid, she said, as with a merry laugh she sprang into the
carriage; and, bowing gracefully to the doctor, was driven rapidly
toward Aikenside.

Rather slowly the doctor returned to the office, and after fidgeting
for a time among the powders and phials, summoned courage to ask
Madeline how she felt, and if any of the fainting symptoms had
returned.

“No, sir,” was all the reply she gave him, never lifting up her head,
or even thinking which of the two young men it was speaking to her.

There was a call just then for Dr. Holbrook, and leaving his office in
charge of Tom, his chore boy, he went away, feeling slightly
uncomfortable whenever he thought of the girl to whom he felt that
justice had not been done.

“I half wish I had examined her myself,” he said. “Of course she was
excited, and could not answer; beside, hanged if I don’t believe it was
all humbug tormenting her with Greek and Latin. Yes; I’ll question her
when I get back, and if she’ll possibly pass, give her the certificate.
Poor child; how white she was, and what a queer look there was in those
great eyes, when she said: ‘I shall not take it.’”

Never in his life before had Dr. Holbrook been as much interested in
any female who was not sick as he was in Madeline, and determining to
make his call on Mrs. Briggs as brief as possible, he alighted at her
gate, and knocked impatiently at her door. He found her pretty sick,
while both her children needed a prescription, and so long a time was
he detained that his heart misgave him on his homeward route, lest
Maddy should be gone, and with her the chance to remedy the wrong he
might have done her.

Maddy was gone, and the wheel ruts of the square-boxed wagon were fresh
before the door when he came back. Grandpa Markham had returned, and
Madeline, who recognized old Sorrel’s step, had gathered her shawl
around her and gone sadly out to meet him. One look at her face was
sufficient.

“You failed, Maddy?” the old man said, fixing about her feet the warm
buffalo robe, for the night wind was blowing cool.

“Yes, grandpa, I failed.”

They were out of the village and more than a mile on their way home
before Madeline found voice to say so much, and they were nearer home
by half a mile ere the old man answered back:

“And, Maddy, I failed too.”




CHAPTER IV.
GRANDPA MARKHAM.


Mrs. Noah, the housekeeper at Aikenside, was slicing vegetable oysters
for the nice little dish intended for her own supper, when the head of
Sorrel came around the corner of the building, followed by the
square-boxed wagon containing Grandpa Markham, who, bewildered by the
beauty and spaciousness of the grounds, and wholly uncertain as to
where he ought to stop, had driven over the smooth-graveled road around
to the front kitchen door, Mrs. Noah’s spacious domain, as sacred as
Betsey Trotwood’s patch of green.

“In the name of wonder, what codger is that? and what is he doing
here?” was Mrs. Noah’s exclamation, as she dropped the bit of salsify
she was scraping, and hurrying to the door, called out: “I say, you,
sir, what made you drive up here, when I’ve said over and over again,
that I wouldn’t have wheels tearing up turf and gravel?”

“I—I beg your pardon. I lost my way, I guess, there was so many
turnin’s, I’m sorry, but a little rain will fetch it right,” grandpa
said, glancing ruefully at the ruts in the gravel and the marks on the
turf.

Mrs. Noah was not at heart an unkind woman, and something in the
benignant expression of grandpa’s face, or in the apologetic tone of
his voice, mollified her somewhat, and without further comment she
stood waiting for his next remark. It was a most unfortunate one, for
though as free from weakness as most of her sex, Mrs. Noah was terribly
sensitive as to her age, and the same census-taker would never venture
twice within her precincts. Glancing at her dress, which was this
leisure afternoon much smarter than usual, grandpa concluded she could
not be a servant; and as she seemed to have a right to say where he
should drive and where he should not, the meek old man concluded she
was a near relation of Guy—mother, perhaps; but no, Guy’s mother was
dead, as grandpa well knew, for all Devonshire had heard of the young
bride Agnes, who had married Guy’s father for money and rank. To have
been mistaken for Guy’s mother would not have offended Mrs. Noah
particularly; but how was she shocked when Grandpa Markham said:

“I come on business with Squire Guy. Are you his gran’marm?” “His
gran’marm!” and Mrs. Noah bit off the last syllable spitefully. “Bless
you, man, Squire Guy, as you call him, is twenty-five years old.”

As Grandpa Markham was rather blind, he failed to see the point, but
knew that in some way he had given offense.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am; I was sure you was some kin—maybe an a’nt.”

No, she was not even that; but willing enough to let the old man
believe her a lady of the Remington order, she did not explain that she
was simply the housekeeper, she simply said:

“If it’s Mr. Guy you want, I can tell you he is not at home, which will
save your getting out.”

“Not at home, and I’ve come so far to see him!” grandpa exclaimed, and
in his voice there was so much genuine disappointment that Mrs. Noah
rejoined, quite kindly:

“He’s gone over to Devonshire with the young lady his stepmother.
Perhaps you might tell your business to me; I know all Mr. Guy’s
affairs.”

“If I might come in, ma’am,” he answered, meekly, as through the open
door he caught glimpses of a cheerful fire. “It’s mighty chilly for
such as me.” He did look cold and blue, Mrs. Noah thought, and she bade
him come in, feeling a very little contempt for the old-fashioned
camlet cloak in which his feet became entangled, and smiling inwardly
at the shrunken, faded pantaloons, betokening poverty.

“As you know all Squire Guy’s affairs,” grandpa said, when he was
seated before the fire, “maybe you could tell whether he would be
likely to lend a stranger three hundred dollars, and that stranger me?”

Mrs. Noah stared at him aghast. Was he crazy, or did he mean to insult
her master? Evidently neither. He seemed as sane as herself, while no
one could associate an insult with him. He did not know anything. That
was the solution of his audacity, and pityingly, as she would have
addressed a half idiot, Mrs. Noah made him understand how impossible it
was for him to think her master would lend to a stranger like him.

“You say he’s gone to Devonshire,” grandpa said, softly, with a quiver
on his lip when she had finished. “I wish I’d knew it; I left my
granddarter there to be examined. Mabby I’ll meet him going back, and
can ask him.”

“I tell you it won’t be no use. Mr. Guy has no three hundred dollars to
throw away,” was Mrs. Noah’s rather sharp rejoinder.

“Wall, wall, we won’t quarrel about it,” the old man replied, in his
most conciliatory manner, as he turned his head away to hide the
starting tear.

Grandfather Markham’s heart was very sore, and Mrs. Noah’s harshness
troubled him. He could not bear to think that she really was cross with
him, besides that he wanted something to carry Maddy besides
disappointment, so by way of testing Mrs. Noah’s amiability and
pleasing Maddy, too, he said, as he arose: “I’m an old man, lady, old
enough to be your father.” Here Mrs. Noah’s face grew brighter, and she
listened attentively while he continued: “You won’t take what I say
amiss, I’m sure. I have a little girl at home, a grandchild, who has
heard big stories of the fine things at Aikenside. She has a hankerin’
after such vanities, and it would please her mightily to have me tell
her what I saw up here, so maybe you wouldn’t mind lettin’ me go into
that big room where the silk fixin’s are. I’ll take off my shoes, if
you say so.”

“Your shoes won’t hurt an atom; come right along,” Mrs. Noah replied,
now in the best of moods, for, except her cup of green tea with
raspberry jam and cream, she enjoyed nothing more than showing their
handsome house.

Conducting him through the wide, marbled hall, she ushered him into the
drawing-room, where for a time he stood perfectly bewildered. It was
his first introduction to rosewood, velvet, and brocatelle, and it
seemed to him as if he had suddenly been transported to fairy-land.

“Maddy would like this—it’s her nature,” he whispered, advancing a step
or two, and setting down his feet as softly as if stepping on eggs.

Happening to lift his eyes before one of the long mirrors, he spied
himself, wondering much what that “queer-looking chap” was doing there
in the midst of so much elegance, and why Mrs. Noah did not turn him
out! Then mentally asking forgiveness for this flash of pride, and
determined to make amends, he bowed low to the figure in the glass,
which bowed as low in return, but did not reply to the very
good-natured remark: “How d’ye do—pretty well, to-day?”

There was a familiar look about the round cape of the camlet cloak, and
Grandpa Markham’s face turned crimson as the truth burst upon him.

“How ’shamed of me Maddy would be,” he thought, glancing sidewise at
Mrs. Noah, who had witnessed the blunder, and was now looking from the
window to hide her laughter.

Grandpa believed she did not see him, and comforted with that
assurance, he began to remark upon the mirror, saying “it made it
appear as if there was two of you,” a remark which Mrs. Noah fully
appreciated. He saw the silk chairs, slyly touching one to see if it
did feel like the gored, peach-blossom dress worn by his wife forty-two
years ago that very spring. Then he tried one of them, examined the
rare ornaments, and came near bowing again to the portrait of the first
Mrs. Remington, so natural and lifelike it looked standing out from the
canvas.

“This will last Maddy a week. I thank you, ma’am. You have added some
considerable to the happiness of a young girl, who wouldn’t disgrace
even such a room as this,” he said, as he passed into the hall.

Mrs. Noah received his thanks graciously, and led him to the yard,
where Sorrel stood waiting for him.

“Odd, but clever as the day is long,” was Mrs. Noah’s comment, as,
after seeing him safe out of her yard, she went back to her vegetable
oysters boiling on the stove.

Driving at a brisk trot through the grounds, Sorrel was soon out upon
the highway; and with spirits exhilarated by thoughts of going home, he
kept up the trot until, turning a sudden corner, his master saw the
carriage from Aikenside approaching at a rapid rate. The driver, Paul,
saw him too, but scorning to give half the road to such as Sorrel and
the square-boxed wagons, he kept steadily on, while Grandpa Markham,
determined to speak with Guy, reined his horse a little nearer, raising
his hand in token that the negro should stop. As a natural consequence,
the wheels of the two vehicles became interlocked, and as the powerful
grays were more than a match for Sorrel, the front wheel of Grandpa
Markham’s wagon was wrenched off, and the old man precipitated to the
ground; which, fortunately for him, was in that locality covered with
sand banks, so that he was only stunned for an instant, and thus failed
to hear the insolent negro’s remark: “Served you right, old cove; might
of turned out for gentlemen;” neither did he see the sudden flashing of
Guy Remington’s eye, as, leaping from his carriage, he seized the
astonished African by the collar, and, hurling him from the box,
demanded what he meant by serving an old man so shameful a trick and
then insulting him.

All apology and regret, the cringing driver tried to make some excuse,
but Guy stopped him short, telling him to see how much the wagon was
damaged, while he ran to the old man, who had recovered from the first
shock and was trying to extricate himself from the folds of his camlet
cloak. Nearby was a blacksmith’s shop, and thither Guy ordered his
driver to take the broken-down wagon with a view to getting it
repaired.

“Tell him I want it done at once.” he said, authoritatively, as if he
well knew his name carried weight with it; then, turning to grandpa, he
asked again if he were hurt.

“No, not specially—jolted my old bones some. You are very kind, sir,”
grandpa replied, brushing the dust from his pantaloons and then
involuntarily grasping Guy’s arm for support, as his weak knees began
to tremble from the effects of excitement and fright.

“That darky shall rue this job,” Guy said, savagely, as he gazed
pityingly upon the shaky old creature beside him. “I’ll discharge him
to-morrow.”

“No, young man. Don’t be rash. He’ll never do’t again; and sprigs like
him think they’ve a right to make fun of old codgers like me,” was
grandpa’s meek expostulation.

“Do, pray, Guy, how long must we wait here?” Agnes asked, impatiently,
leaning back in the carriage and partially drawing her veil over her
face as she glanced at Grandpa Markham, but a look from Guy silenced
her; and turning again to grandpa, he asked:

“What did you say? You have been to Aikenside to see me?”

“Yes, and I was sorry to miss you. I—I—it makes me feel awkward to tell
you, but I wanted to borrow some money, and I didn’t know nobody as
likely to have it as you. That woman up to your house said she knowed
you wouldn’t let me have it, ’cause you hadn’t it to spare. Mebby you
haven’t,” and grandpa waited anxiously for Guy’s reply.

Now, Mrs. Noah had a singular influence over her young master, who was
in the habit of consulting her with regard to his affairs, and nothing
could have been more unpropitious to the success of grandpa’s suit than
the knowing she disapproved. Beside this, Guy had only the previous
week lost a small amount loaned under similar circumstances. Standing
silent for a moment, while he buried and reburied his shining patent
leather boots in the hills of sand, he said at last: “Candidly, sir, I
don’t believe I can accommodate you. I am about to make repairs at
Aikenside, and have partially promised to loan money on good security
to a Mr. Silas Slocum, who, ‘if things work right,’ as he expressed it,
intends building a mill on some property which has come, or is coming,
into his hands.”

“That’s mine—that’s mine, my homestead,” gasped grandpa, turning white
almost as his hair blowing in the April wind. “There’s a stream of
water on it, and he says if he forecloses and gets it he shall build a
mill, and tear our old house down.”

Guy was in a dilemma. He had not asked how much Mr. Markham wanted, and
as the latter had not told him, he naturally concluded it a much larger
sum than it really was, and did not care just then to lend it.

“I tell you what I’ll do,” he said, after a little. “I’ll drop Slocum a
note to-night saying I’ve changed my mind, and shall not let him have
the money. Perhaps, then, he won’t be so anxious to foreclose, and will
give you time to look among your friends.”

Guy laid a little emphasis on that last word, and looking up quickly
grandpa was about to say: “I am not so much a stranger as you think. I
knew your father well;” but he checked himself with the thought: “No,
that will be too much like begging pay for a deed of mercy done years
ago.” So Guy never suspected that the old man before him had once laid
his sire under a debt of gratitude. The more he reflected the less
inclined he was to lend the money, and as grandpa was too timid to urge
his needs, the result was that when at last the wheel was replaced, and
Sorrel again trotting on toward Devonshire, he drew after him a sad,
heavy heart, and not once until the village was reached did he hear the
cheery chuckle with which his kind master was wont to encourage him.

“Poor Maddy! I dread tellin’ her the most, she was so sure,” grandpa
whispered, as he stopped before the office door, where Maddy waited for
him.

But Maddy’s disappointment was keener than his own, and so after the
sorrowful words, “and I failed, too,” he bent himself to comfort the
poor child, who, leaning her throbbing head against his shoulder,
sobbed bitterly, as in the soft spring twilight they drove back to the
low red cottage where grandma waited for them.




CHAPTER V.
THE RESULT.


It was Farmer Green’s new buggy and Farmer Green’s bay colt which,
three days later than this, stopped before Dr. Holbrook’s office. Not
the square-boxed wagon, with old Sorrel attached; the former was
standing quietly in the chip-yard behind the low red house, while the
latter with his nose over the barnyard fence, neighing occasionally, as
if he missed the little hands which had daily fed him the oatmeal he
liked so much, and which now lay hot and parched and helpless upon the
white counterpane Grandma Markham had spun and woven herself. Maddy
might have been just as sick as she was if the examination had never
occurred, but it was natural for those who loved her to impute it all
to the effects of excitement and cruel disappointment, so there was
something like indignation mingling with the sorrow gnawing at the
hearts of the old couple as they watched by their fever-stricken
darling. Farmer Green, too, shared the feeling, and numerous at first
were his mental animadversions against that “prig of a Holbrook.” But
when Maddy grew so bad as not to know him or his wife, he laid aside
his prejudices, and suggested to Grandpa Markham that Dr. Holbrook be
sent for.

“He’s great on fevers,” he said, “and is good on curin’ sick folks,”
so, though he would have preferred some one else should have been
called, confidence in the young doctor’s skill won the day, and grandpa
consented.

This, then, was the errand of Farmer Green, and with his usual
bluntness, he said to the recreant doctor, who chanced to be at home:

“Wall, you nigh about killed our little Madge t’other day, when you
refused the stifficut, and now we want you to cure her.”

The doctor looked up in surprise, but Farmer Green soon explained his
meaning, making out a most aggravated case, and representing Maddy as
wild with delirium.

“Keeps talkin’ about the big books, the Latin and the Hebrew, and even
the Catechism, as if such like was ’lowed in our school. I s’pose you
didn’t know no better; but if Maddy dies, you’ll have it to answer for,
I reckon.”

The doctor did not try to excuse himself, but hastily took down the
medicines he thought he might need, and stowed them carefully away. He
had expected to hear from that examination, but not in this way, and
rather nervously he made some inquiries, as to how long she had been
ill, and so forth.

Maddy’s case lost nothing by Mr. Green’s account, and by the time the
doctor’s horse was ready, and he on his way to the cottage, he had
arrived at the conclusion that of all the villainous men outside the
walls of the State’s prison, he was the most villainous, and Guy
Remington next.

What a cozy little chamber it was where Maddy lay, just such a room as
a girl like her might be supposed to occupy, and the bachelor doctor
felt like treading upon forbidden ground as he entered the room so rife
with girlish habits, from the fairy slippers hung on a peg, to the
fanciful little workbox made of cones and acorns. Maddy was asleep, and
sitting down beside her, he asked that the shawl which had been pinned
across the window might be removed so that he could see her, and thus
judge better of her condition. They took the shawl away, and the
sunlight came streaming in, disclosing to the doctor’s view the face
never before seen distinctly, or thought about, if seen. It was ghastly
pale, save where the hot blood seemed bursting through the cheeks,
while the beautiful brown hair was brushed back from the brow where the
veins were swollen and full. The lips were slightly apart, and the hot
breath came in quick, panting gasps, while occasionally a faint moan
escaped them, and once the doctor heard, or thought he heard, the sound
of his own name. One little dimpled hand lay upon the bedspread, but
the doctor did not touch it. Ordinarily he would have grasped it as
readily as if it had been a piece of marble, but the sight of Maddy,
lying there so sick, and the fearing he had helped to bring her where
she was, awoke to life a curious state of feeling with regard to her,
making him almost as nervous as on the day when she appeared before him
as candidate No. 1.

“Feel her pulse, doctor; they are faster most than you can count,”
Grandma Markham whispered; and thus entreated, the doctor took the soft
hand in his own, its touch sending through his frame a thrill such as
the touch of no other hand had ever sent.

Somehow the act reassured him. All fear of Maddy vanished, leaving
behind only an intense desire to help, if possible, the young girl
whose fingers seemed to cling around his own as he felt for and found
the rapid pulse.

“If she could awaken,” he said, laying the hand softly down and placing
his other upon her forehead, where the great sweat drops lay.

And, after a time, Maddy did awaken, but in the eyes fixed, for a
moment, so intently on him, there was no look of recognition, and the
doctor was half glad that it was so. He did not wish her to associate
him with her late disastrous disappointment; he would rather she should
think of him as some one come to cure her, for cure her he would, he
said to himself, as he gazed into her childish face and thought how sad
it was for such as she to die. When first he entered the cottage he had
been struck with the extreme plainness of the furniture, betokening
that wealth had not there an abiding place, but now he forgot
everything except the sick girl, who grew more and more restless,
talking of him and the Latin verb which meant “to love,” she said, and
which was not in the grammar.

“Guy was a fool and I was a brute,” the doctor muttered, as he folded
up the bits of paper whose contents he hoped might do much toward
saving Maddy’s life.

Then, promising to come again, he rode rapidly away, to visit other
patients, who, that afternoon, were in danger of being sadly neglected,
so constantly was their young physician’s mind dwelling upon the
little, low-walled chamber where Maddy Clyde was lying. As night closed
in she knew them all, and heard that Dr. Holbrook had been there
prescribing for her. Turning her face to the wall, she seemed to be
thinking; then, calling her grandmother to her, she whispered: “Did he
smooth my hair back and say, ‘poor child?’”

Her grandmother hardly thought he did, though she was not in the room
all the time, she said. “He had stayed a long while and was greatly
interested.”

Maddy had a vague remembrance of such an incident, and in her heart
forgave the doctor for his rejection, thinking only how handsome he had
looked, even while tormenting her with such unheard of questions, and
how kind he was to her now. The sight of her grandfather awakened a new
train of ideas, and bidding him to sit beside her, she asked if their
home must be sold. Maddy was not to be put off with an evasion, and so
grandpa told her honestly at last that Slocum would foreclose, but not
while she was sick; he had been seen that day by Mr. Green, and had
promised so much forbearance.

This was the last rational conversation held with Maddy for many a
week, and when next morning the doctor came, there was a look of deep
anxiety upon his face as he watched the alarming symptoms of his
delirious patient, who talked incessantly, not of the examination now,
but of the mortgage and the foreclosure, begging the doctor to see that
the house was not sold, to tell them she was earning thirty-six dollars
by teaching school, that Beauty should be sold to save their dear old
home. All this was strange at first to the doctor, but the rather
voluble Mrs. Green, who had come to Grandma Markham’s relief,
enlightened him, dwelling with a kind of malicious pleasure upon the
fact that Maddy’s earnings, had she been permitted to get a
“stifficut,” were to be appropriated toward paying the debt.

If the doctor had hated himself the previous day when he from the red
cottage gate, he hated himself doubly now as he went dashing down the
road, determined to resign his office of school inspector that very
day. And he did.

Summoning around him those who had been most active in electing him, he
refused to officiate again, assuring them that if any more candidates
came he should either turn them from his door or give them a
certificate without asking a question.

“Put anybody you like in my place,” he said; “anybody but Guy
Remington. Don’t for thunder’s sake take him.”

There was no probability of this, as Guy lived in another town, and
could not have officiated had he wished. But the doctor was too much
excited to reason upon anything save Madeline Clyde’s case. That he
perfectly understood; and during the next few weeks his other patients
waited many times in vain for his coming, while he sat by Maddy’s side
watching every change, whether for the worse or better. Even Agnes
Remington was totally neglected; and so one day she sent Guy down to
Devonshire to say that as Jessie seemed more than usually delicate, she
wished the doctor to take her under his charge and visit her at least
once a week. The doctor was not at home, but Tom said he expected him
every moment. So seating himself in the armchair, Guy waited until he
came.

“Well, Hal,” he began, jocosely, but the joking words he would have
uttered next died on his lips as he noticed the strange look of
excitement and anxiety on the doctor’s face. “What is it?” he asked.
“Are all your patients dead?”

“Guy,” and the doctor came closely to him, whispering huskily, “you and
I are murderers in the first degree. Yes; and both deserve to be hung.
Do you remember that Madeline Clyde whom you insulted with your logic
and Latin verbs? She’d set her heart on that certificate. She wanted
the money, not for new gowns and fooleries mind, but to help her old
grandfather pay his debts. His place is mortgaged. I don’t understand
it; but he asked some old hunks to lend him the money, and the miserly
rascal, whoever he was, refused. I wish I had it. I’d give it to him
out and out. But that’s nothing to do with the girl—Maddy they call
her. The disappointment killed her, and she’s dying—is raving crazy—and
keeps talking of that confounded examination. I tell you, Guy, my
inward parts get terribly mixed up when I hear her talk, and my heart
thumps like a trip-hammer. That’s the reason I have not been up to
Aikenside. I wouldn’t leave Maddy so long as there was hope. I did not
tell them this morning. I couldn’t make that poor couple feel worse
than they are feeling; but when I looked at her, tossing from side to
side and picking at the bedclothes, I knew it would soon be over—that
when I saw her again the poor little arms would be still enough and the
bright eyes shut forever. Guy, I couldn’t see her die—I don’t like to
see anybody die, but her, Maddy, of all others—and so I came away. If
you stay long enough, you’ll hear the bell toll, I reckon. There is
none at Honedale Church, which they attend. They are Episcopalians, you
see, and so they’ll come up here, maybe. I hope I shall be deafer than
an adder.”

Here the doctor stopped, wholly out of breath, while Guy for a moment
sat without speaking a single word. Jessie, in his hearing, had told
her mother what the sick girl in the doctor’s office had said about
being poor and wanting the money for grandpa, while Mrs. Noah had given
him a rather exaggerated account of Mr. Markham’s visit; but he had not
associated the two together until now, when he saw the whole, and
almost as much as the doctor himself regretted the part he had had in
Maddy’s illness and her grandfather’s distress.

“Doc,” he said, laying his hand on the doctor’s arm, “I am that old
hunks, the miserly rascal who refused the money. I met the old man
going home that day, and he asked me for help. You say the place must
be sold. It never shall, never. I’ll see to that, and you must save the
girl.”

“I can’t, Guy. I’ve done all I can, and now, if she lives, it will be
wholly owing to the prayers that old saint of a grandfather says for
her. I never thought much of these things until I heard him pray; not
that she should live anyway, but that if it were right Maddy might not
die. Guy, there’s something in such a prayer as that. It’s more
powerful than all my medicine swallowed at one grand gulp.”

Guy didn’t know very much about praying then, and so he did not
respond, but he thought of Lucy Atherstone, whose life was one hymn of
prayer and praise, and he wished she could know of Maddy, and join her
petitions with those of the grandfather. Starting suddenly from his
chair, he exclaimed, “I’m going down there. It will look queerly, too,
to go alone. Ah, I have it! I’ll drive back to Aikenside for Jessie,
who has talked so much of the girl that her lady mother, forgetting
that she was once a teacher, is disgusted. Yes, I’ll take Jessie with
me, but you must order it; you must say it is good for her to ride,
and, Hal, give me some medicine for her, just to quiet Agnes, no matter
what, provided it’s not strychnine.”

Contrary to Guy’s expectations, Agnes did not refuse to let Jessie go
for a ride, particularly as she had no suspicion where he intended
taking her, and the little girl was soon seated by her brother’s side,
chatting merrily of the different things they passed upon the road. But
when Guy told her where they were going, and why they were going there,
the tears came at once into her eyes, and hiding her face in Guy’s lap
she sobbed bitterly.

“I did like her so much that day,” she said, “and she looked so sorry,
too. It’s terrible to die!”

Then she plied Guy with questions concerning Maddy’s probable future.
“Would she go to heaven, sure?” and When Guy answered at random, “Yes,”
she asked, “How did he know? Had he heard that Maddy was that kind of
good which lets folks in heaven? Because, Brother Guy,” and the little
preacher nestled closely to the young man, fingering his coat buttons
as she talked, “because, Brother Guy, folks can be good—that is, not do
naughty things—and still God won’t love them unless they—I don’t know
what, I wish I did.”

Guy drew her nearer to him, but to that childish yearning for knowledge
he could not respond, so he said:

“Who taught you all this, little one?—not your mother, surely.”

“No, not mamma, but Miriam, the waiting-maid we left in Boston. She
told me about it, and taught me to pray different from mamma. Do you
pray, Brother Guy?”

The question startled the young man, who was glad his coachman spoke to
him just then, asking if he should drive through Devonshire village, or
go direct to Honedale by a shorter route.

They would go to the village, Guy said, hoping that thus the doctor
might be persuaded to accompany them. This diverted Jessie’s mind, and
she said no more of praying; but the first tiny grain was sown, the
mustard seed, which should hereafter spring up into a mighty tree, the
indirect result of Maddy’s disappointment and almost fatal illness.
They found the doctor at home and willing to go with them. Indeed, so
impatient had he become listening for the first stroke of the bell
which was to herald the death he deemed so sure, that he was on the
point of mounting his horse and galloping off alone, when Guy’s
invitation came. It was five miles from Devonshire to Honedale, and
when they reached a hill which lay halfway between, they stopped for a
few moments to rest the tired horses. Suddenly, as they sat waiting, a
sharp, ringing sound fell on their ears, and grasping Guy’s knee, the
doctor said, “I told you so; Madeline Clyde is dead.”

It was the village bell, and its twice three strokes betokened that it
tolled for somebody youthful, somebody young, like Maddy Clyde. Jessie
wept silently, but there were no tears in the eyes of the young men, as
with beating hearts they sat listening to the slow, solemn sounds which
came echoing up the hill. There was a pause; the sexton’s dirgelike
task was done, and now it only remained for him to strike the age, and
tell how many years the departed one had numbered.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten;” Jessie
counted it aloud, while every stroke fell like a heavy blow upon the
hearts of the young men, who a few weeks ago, knew not that such as
Maddy Clyde had ever had existence.

How long it seemed before another stroke, and Guy was beginning to hope
they’d heard the last, when again the dull, muffled sound came floating
on the air, and Dr. Holbrook’s black, bearded lip half quivered as he
now counted aloud, “one, two, three, four, five.”

That was all; there it stopped; and vain were all their listenings to
catch another note. Fifteen years, and only fifteen had passed over the
form now forever still.

“She was fifteen,” Guy whispered, remembering distinctly to have heard
that number from Maddy herself.

“I thought they told me fourteen, but of course it’s she,” the doctor
rejoined. “Poor child, I would have given much to have saved her.”

Jessie did not talk; only once, when she asked Guy, if it was very far
to heaven, and if he supposed Maddy had got there by this time.

“We’ll go just the same,” said Guy. “I will do what I can for the old
man;” and so the carriage drove on, down the hill, across the
meadow-land, and past a low-roofed house whose walls inclosed the
stiffened form of him for whom the bell had tolled, the boy, fifteen
years of age, who had been the patient of another than Dr. Holbrook.

Maddy was not dead, but the paroxysm of restlessness had passed, and
she lay now in a heavy sleep so nearly resembling death that they who
watched, waited expectantly to see the going out of her last breath.
Never before had a carriage like that from Aikenside stopped at that
humble cottage, but the neighbors thought it came merely to bring the
doctor, whom they welcomed with a glad smile, making a way for him to
pass to Maddy’s bedside. Guy preferred waiting in the carriage until
such time as Grandpa Markham could speak with him, but Jessie went with
the doctor into the sick room, startling even the grandmother, and
causing her to wonder who the richly-dressed child could be.

“Dying, doctor,” said one of the women, affirmatively, not
interrogatively; but the doctor shook his head, and holding in one hand
his watch he counted the faint pulse beats as with his eye he measured
off the minute.

“There are too many here,” he said. “She needs the air you are
breathing,” and in his singular, authoritative way, he cleared the
crowded room of the mistaken friends who were unwittingly breathing up
Maddy’s very life.

All but the grandparents and Jessie; these he suffered to remain, and
sitting down by Maddy, watched till the long sleep was ended. Silently
and earnestly the aged couple prayed for their darling, asking that if
possible she might be spared, and God heard their prayers, lifting, at
last, the heavy fog from Maddy’s brain, and waking her to life and
partial consciousness. It was Jessie who first caught the expression of
the opening eyes, and darting forward, she exclaimed, “She’s waked up,
Dr. Holbrook. She will live.”

Wonderingly Maddy looked at her, and then as a confused recollection of
where they had met before crossed her mind, she smiled faintly, and
said:

“Where am I now? Have I never come home, and is this Dr. Holbrook’s
office?”

“No, no; it’s home, your home, and you are getting well,” Jessie cried,
bending over the bewildered girl. “Dr. Holbrook has cured you, and Guy
is here, and I, and—”

“Hush, you disturb her,” the doctor said, gently pulling Jessie away,
and himself asking Maddy how she felt.

She did not recognize him. She only had a vague idea that he might be
some doctor, but not Dr. Holbrook, sure; not the one who had so puzzled
and tortured her on a day which seemed now so far behind. From the
white-haired man kneeling by the bedside there was a burst of
thanksgiving for the life restored, and then Grandpa Markham tottered
from the room, out into the open air, which had never fallen so
refreshingly on his tried frame as it fell now, when he first knew that
Maddy would live. He did not care for his homestead; that might go, and
he still be happy with Maddy left. But He who had marked that true
disciple’s every sigh, had another good in store, willing it so that
both should come together, even as the two disappointments had come
hand in hand.

From the soft cushions of his carriage, where he sat reclining, Guy
Remington saw the old man as he came out, and alighting at once, he
accosted him pleasantly, and then walked with him to the garden, where,
on a rustic bench, built for Maddy beneath the cherry trees, Grandpa
Markham sat down to rest. From speaking of Madeline it was easy to go
back to the day when Guy had first met grandpa, whose application for
money he had refused.

“I have thought better of it since,” he said, “and am sorry I did not
accede to your proposal. One object of my coming here to-day was to say
that my purse is at your disposal. You can have as much as you wish,
paying me whenever you like, and the house shall not be sold. Slocum, I
understand, holds the mortgage. I will see him to-morrow and stop the
whole proceeding.”

Guy spoke rapidly, determined to make a clean breast of it, but grandpa
understood him, and bowing his white head upon his bosom, the big tears
dropped like rain upon the turf, while his lips quivered, first with
thanks to the Providence who had truly done all things well, and next
with thanks to his benefactor.

“Blessings on your head, young man, for making me so happy. You are
worthy of your father, and he was the best of men.”

“My father—did you know him?” Guy asked, in some surprise, and then the
story came out, how, years before, when a city hotel was on fire, and
one of its guests in imminent danger from the locality of his room, and
his own nervous fear which made him powerless to act, another guest
braved fearlessly the hissing flame, and scaling the tottering wall,
dragged out to life and liberty one who, until that hour, was to him an
utter stranger.

Pushing back his snowy hair, Grandfather Markham showed upon his temple
a long, white scar, obtained the night when he periled his own life to
save that of another. There was a doubly warm pressure now of the old
man’s hand, as Guy replied, “I’ve heard that story from father himself,
but the name of his preserver had escaped me. Why didn’t you tell me
who you were?”

“I thought ’twould look too much like demanding it as a right—too much
like begging, and I s’pose I felt too proud. Pride is my besetting
sin—the one I pray most against.”

Guy looked keenly now at the man whose besetting sin was pride, and as
he marked the cheapness of his attire, his pantaloons faded and short,
his coat worn threadbare and shabby, his shoes both patched at the
toes, his cotton shirt minus a bosom, and then thought of the humble
cottage, with its few rocky acres, he wondered of what he could be
proud.

Meantime, for Maddy, Dr. Holbrook had prescribed perfect quiet, bidding
them darken again the window from which the shade had been removed, and
ordering all save the grandmother to leave the room and let the patient
sleep, if possible. Even Jessie was not permitted to stay, though Maddy
clung to her as to a dear friend. In a few whispered words Jessie had
told her name, saying she came from Aikenside, and that her Brother Guy
was there, too, outdoors, in the carriage. “He heard how sick you were
at Devonshire, this morning, and drove right home for me to come to see
you. I told him of you that day in the office, and that’s why he
brought me, I guess. You’ll like Guy. I know all the girls do—he’s so
good.”

Sick and weary as she was, and unable as yet to comprehend the entire
meaning of all she heard, Maddy was conscious of a thrill of pride in
knowing that Guy Remington, from Aikenside, was interested in her, and
had brought his sister to see her. Winding her feeble arms around
Jessie’s neck, she kissed the soft, warm cheek, and said, “You’ll come
again, I hope.”

“Yes, every day, if mamma will let me. I don’t mind it a bit, if you
are poor.”

“Tut, tut, little tattler!” and Dr. Holbrook, who, unseen by the
children, had all the while been standing near, took Jessie by the arm.
“What makes you think them poor?”

In the closely-shaded room Maddy could see nothing distinctly, but she
heard Jessie’s reply: “Because the plastering comes down so low, and
Maddy’s pillows are so teenty, not much bigger than my dolly’s. But I
love her; don’t you doctor?”

Through the darkness the doctor caught the sudden flash of Maddy’s
eyes, and something impelled him to lay his cool, broad hand on her
forehead, as he replied, “I love all my patients;” then, taking
Jessie’s arm, he led her out to where Guy was waiting for her.




CHAPTER VI.
CONVALESCENCE.


Had it not been for the presence of Dr. Holbrook, who, accepting Guy’s
invitation to tea, rode back with him to Aikenside, Mrs. Agnes would
have gone off into a passion when told that Jessie had been “exposed to
fever and mercy knows what.”

“There’s no telling what one will catch among the very poor,” she said
to Dr. Holbrook, as she clasped and unclasped the heavy gold bracelets
flashing on her white, round arm.

“I’ll be answerable for any disease Jessie caught at Mr. Markham’s,”
the doctor replied.

“At Mr. Who’s? What did you call him?” Agnes asked, the bright color on
her cheek fading as the doctor replied:

“Markham—an old man who lives in Honedale. You never knew him, of
course.”

Involuntarily Agnes glanced at Guy, in whose eye there was, as she
fancied, a peculiar expression. Could it be he knew the secret she
guarded so carefully? Impossible, she said to herself; but still the
white fingers trembled as she handled the china and silver, and for
once she was glad when the doctor took his leave, and she was alone
with Jessie.

“What was that girl’s name?” she asked, “the one you went to see?”

“Maddy, mother—Madeline Clyde. She’s so pretty. I’m going to see her
again. May I?”

Agnes did not reply directly, but continued to question the child with
regard to the cottage which Jessie thought so funny, slanting away
back, she said, so that the roof on one side almost touched the ground.
The window panes, too, were so very tiny, and the room where Maddy lay
sick was small and low.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Agnes said at last, impatiently, weary of hearing
of the cottage whose humble exterior and interior she knew so much
better than Jessie herself.

But this was not to be divulged; for surely the haughty Agnes
Remington, who, in Boston, aspired to lead in society into which, as
the wife of Dr. Remington, she had been admitted, and who, in
Aikenside, was looked upon with envy, could have nothing in common with
the red cottage or its inmates. So when Jessie asked again if she could
not visit Maddy on the morrow, she answered decidedly: “No, daughter,
no. I do not wish you to associate with such people,” and when Jessie
insisted on knowing why she must not associate with such people as
Maddy Clyde, the answer was: “Because you are a Remington,” and as if
this of itself were of an unanswerable objection, Agnes sent her child
from her, refusing to talk longer on a subject so disagreeable to her
and so suggestive of the past. It was all in vain that Jessie, and even
Guy himself, tried to revoke the decision. Jessie should not be
permitted to come in contact with that kind of people, she said, or
incur the risk of catching that dreadful fever.

So day after day, while life and health were slowly throbbing through
her veins, Maddy waited and longed for the little girl whose one visit
to her sick room seemed so much like a dream. From her grandfather she
had heard the good news of Guy Remington’s generosity, and that, quite
as much as Dr. Holbrook’s medicines, helped to bring the color back to
the pallid cheek and the brightness to her eyes.

She was asleep the first time the doctor came after the occasion of
Jessie’s visit, and as sleep, he said, would do her more good than
anything he might prescribe, he did not awaken her; but for a long
time, as it seemed to Grandma Markham, who stood very little in awe of
the Boston doctor, he watched her as she slept, now clasping the
blue-veined wrist as he felt for the pulse, and now wiping from her
forehead the drops of sweat, or pushing back her soft, damp hair. It
would be three days before he could see her again, for a sick father in
Cambridge needed his attention, and after numerous directions as to the
administering of sundry powders and pills, he left her, feeling that
the next three days would be long ones to him. Dr. Holbrook did not
stop to analyze the nature of his interest in Maddy Clyde—an interest
so different from any he had ever felt before for his patients; and
even if he had sought to solve the riddle, he would have said that the
knowing how he had wronged her was the sole cause of his thinking far
more of her and of her case than of the thirty other patients on his
list. Dr. Holbrook was a handsome man, a thorough scholar, and a most
skillful physician; but ladies who expected from him those little
polite attentions which the sex value so highly generally expected in
vain, for he was no ladies’ man, and his language and manners were
oftentimes abrupt, even when both were prompted by the utmost kindness
of heart. In his organization, too, there was not a quick perception of
what would be exactly appropriate, and so, when, at last, he was about
starting to visit Maddy again, he puzzled his brains until they fairly
ached with wondering what he could do to give her a pleasant surprise
and show that he was not as formidable a personage as her past
experience might lead her to think.

“If I could only take her something,” he said, glancing ruefully around
his office. “Now, if she were Jessie, nuts and raisins might answer—but
she must not eat such trash as that,” and he set himself to think
again, just as Guy Remington rode up, bearing in his hand a most
exquisite bouquet, whose fragrance filled the medicine-odored office at
once, and whose beauty elicited an exclamation of delight even from the
matter-of-fact Dr. Holbrook.

“I thought you might be going down to Honedale, as I knew you returned
last night, so I brought these flowers for your patient with my
compliments, or if you prefer I give them to you, and you can thus
present them as if coming from yourself.”

“As if I would do that,” the doctor answered, taking the bouquet in his
hand the better to examine and admire it. “Did you arrange it, or your
gardener?” he asked, and when Guy replied that the merit of
arrangement, if merit there were, belonged to himself, he began to
deprecate his own awkwardness and want of tact. “Here I have been
cudgeling my head this half hour trying to think what I could take her
as a peace offering, and could think of nothing, while you—Well, you
and I are different entirely. You know just what is proper—just what to
say, and when to say it—while I am a perfect bore, and without doubt
shall make some ludicrous blunder in delivering the flowers. To-day
will be the first time really that we meet, as she was sleeping when I
was there last, while on all other occasions she has paid no attention
whatever to me.”

For a moment Guy regarded his friend attentively, noticing now that
extra care had been bestowed upon his toilet, that the collar was fresh
from the laundry, and the new cravat tied in a most unexceptionable
manner, instead of being twisted into a hard knot, with the ends
looking as if they had been chewed.

“Doc,” he said, when his survey was completed, “how old are
you—twenty-five or twenty-six?”

“Twenty-five—just your age—why?” and the doctor looked with an
expression so wholly innocent of Guy’s real meaning that the latter,
instead of telling why, replied:

“Oh! nothing; only I was wondering if you would do to be my father.
Agnes, I verily believe, is more than half in love with you; but, on
the whole, I would not like to be your son; so I guess you’d better
take some one younger—say Jessie. You are only eighteen years her
senior.”

The doctor stared at him amazed, and when he had finished said with the
utmost candor: “What has that to do with Madeline? I thought we were
talking of her.” “Innocent as the newly-born babe,” was Guy’s mental
comment, as he congratulated himself on his larger and more varied
experience.

And truly Dr. Holbrook was as simple-hearted as a child, never dreaming
of Guy’s meaning, or that any emotion save a perfectly proper one had a
lodgment in his breast as he drove down to Honedale, guarding carefully
Guy’s bouquet, and wishing he knew just what he ought to say when he
presented it.

Maddy had gained rapidly the last three days. Good nursing and the
doctor’s medicines were working miracles, and on the morning when the
doctor, with Guy’s bouquet, was riding rapidly toward Honedale, she was
feeling so much better that in view of his coming she asked if she
could not be permitted to receive him sitting in the rocking-chair,
instead of lying there in bed, and when this plan was vetoed as utterly
impossible, she asked, anxiously:

“And must I see him in this nightgown? Can’t I have on my pink gingham
wrapper?”

Hitherto Maddy had been too sick to care at all about her personal
appearance, but it was different now. She did care, and thoughts of
meeting again the handsome, stylish-looking man who had asked her to
conjugate _amo_ and whom she fully believed to be Dr. Holbrook, made
her rather nervous. Dim remembrances she had of some one gliding in and
out, and when the pain and noise in her head was at its highest, a
hand, large, and, oh! so cool had been laid upon her temples, quieting
their throbbings and making the blood course less madly through the
swollen veins. They had told her how kind, how attentive he had been,
and to herself she had said: “He’s sorry about that certificate. He
wishes to show me that he did not mean to be unkind. Yes; I forgive
him: for I really was very stupid that afternoon.”

And so, in a most forgiving frame of mind, Maddy submitted to the snowy
robe which grandma brought in place of the coveted gingham wrapper, and
which became her well, with its daintily-crimped ruffles about the neck
and wrists. Those wrists and hands! How white and small they had grown!
and Maddy sighed, as her grandmother buttoned together the wristbands,
to see how loose it was.

“I have been very sick,” she said. “Are my cheeks as thin as my arms?”

They were not, though they had lost some of their symmetrical
roundness. Still there was much of childish beauty in the young, eager
face, and the hair had lost comparatively none of its glossy
brightness.

“That’s him,” grandma said, as the sound of a horse’s gallop was heard,
and in a moment the doctor reined up before the gate.

From Mrs. Markham, who met him in the door, he learned how much better
she was; also how “she has been reckoning on this visit, making herself
all a-sweat about it.”

Suddenly the doctor felt returning all his old dread of Maddy Clyde.
Why should she wrong herself into a sweat? What was there in that visit
different from any other? Nothing, he said to himself, nothing; and yet
he, too, had been more anxious about it than any he had ever paid.
Depositing his hat and gloves upon the table, he followed Mrs. Markham
up the stairs, vaguely conscious of wishing she would stay down, and
very conscious of feeling glad; when just at Maddy’s door and opposite
a little window, she espied the hens busily engaged in devouring the
yeast cakes, with which she had taken so much pains, and which she had
placed in the hot sun to dry. Finding that they paid no heed to her
loud “Shoo, shoos,” she started herself to drive them away, telling the
doctor to go right on and to help himself.

The perspiration was standing under Maddy’s hair by this time, and when
the doctor stepped across the threshold, and she knew he really was
coming near her, it oozed out upon her forehead in big, round drops,
while her cheeks glowed with a feverish heat. Thinking he should get
along with it better if he treated her just as he would Jessie, the
doctor confronted her at once, and asked:

“How is my little patient to-day?”

A faint scream broke from Maddy’s lips, and she involuntarily raised
her hands to thrust the stranger away. This black-eyed, black-haired,
thick-set man was not Dr. Holbrook, for he was taller, and more slight,
while she had not been deceived in the dark brown eyes which, even
while they seemed to be mocking her, had worn a strange fascination for
the maiden of fourteen and a half. The doctor fancied her delirious
again, and this reassured him at once. Dropping the bouquet upon the
bed, he clasped one of her hands in his, and without the slightest idea
that she comprehended him, said, soothingly:

“Poor child, are you afraid of me—the doctor, Dr. Holbrook?” Maddy did
not try to withdraw her hand, but raising her eyes, swimming in tears,
to his face, she stammered out:

“What does it mean, and where is he—the one who—asked me—those dreadful
questions? I thought that was Dr. Holbrook.”

Here was a dilemma—something for which the doctor was not prepared, and
with a feeling that he would not betray Guy, he said:

“No; that was some one else—a friend of mine—but I was there in the
back office. Don’t you remember me? Please don’t grow excited. Compose
yourself, and I will explain all by and by. This is wrong. ’Twill never
do,” and talking thus rapidly he wiped away the sweat, about which
grandma had told him.

Maddy was disappointed, and it took her some time to rally sufficiently
to convince the doctor that she was not flighty, as he termed it; but
composing herself at last, she answered all his questions, and then, as
he saw her eyes wandering toward the bouquet, he suddenly remembered
that it was not yet presented, and placing it in her hands, he said:

“You like flowers, I know, and these are for you. I——”

“Oh! thank you, thank you, doctor; I am so glad. I love them so much,
and you are so kind. What made you think to bring them? I’ve wanted
flowers so badly; but I could not have them, because I was sick and did
not work in the garden. It was so good in you,” and in her delight
Maddy’s tears dropped upon the fair blossoms.

For a moment the doctor was sorely tempted to keep the credit thus
enthusiastically given; but he was too truthful for that, and so
watching her as her eyes glistened with pleased excitement, he said:

“I am glad you like them, Miss Clyde, and so will Mr. Remington be. He
sent them to you from his conservatory.”

“Not Mr. Remington from Aikenside—not Jessie’s brother?” and Maddy’s
eyes now fairly danced as they sought the doctor’s face.

“Yes Jessie’s brother. He came here with her. He is interested in you,
and brought these down this morning.”

“It was Jessie, I guess, who sent them,” Maddy suggested, but the
doctor persisted that it was Guy.

“He wished me to present them with his compliments. He thought they
might please you.”

“Oh! they do, they do!” Maddy replied. “They almost make me well. Tell
him how much I thank him, and like him too, though I never saw him.”

The doctor opened his lips to tell her she had seen him, but changed
his mind ere the words were uttered. She might not think as well of
Guy, he thought, and there was no harm in keeping it back.

So Maddy had no suspicion that the face she thought of so much belonged
to Guy Remington. She had never seen him, of course; but she hoped she
would some time, so as to thank him for his generosity to her
grandfather and his kindness to herself. Then, as she remembered the
message she had sent him, she began to think that it sounded too
familiar, and said to the doctor:

“If you please, don’t tell Mr. Remington that I said I liked him—only
that I thank him. He would think it queer for a poor girl like me to
send such word to him. He is very rich, and handsome, and splendid,
isn’t he?”

“Yes, Guy’s rich and handsome, and everybody likes him. We were in
college together.”

“You were?” Maddy exclaimed. “Then you know him well, and Jessie, and
you’ve been to Aikenside often? There’s nothing in the world I want so
much as to go to Aikenside. They say it is so beautiful.”

“Maybe I’ll carry you up there some day when you are strong enough to
ride,” the doctor answered, thinking of his light buggy at home, and
wondering he had not used it more, instead of always riding on
horseback.

Dr. Holbrook looked much older than he was, and to Maddy he seemed
quite fatherly, so that the idea of riding with him, aside from the
honor it might be to her, struck her much as riding with Farmer Green
would have done. The doctor, too, imagined that his proposition was
prompted solely from disinterested motives, but he found himself
wondering how long it would be before Maddy would be able to ride a
little distance, just over the hill and back. He was tiring her all out
talking to her; but somehow it was very delightful there in that sick
room, with the summer sunshine stealing through the window and falling
upon the soft reddish-brown head resting on the pillows. Once he fixed
those pillows, arranging them so nicely that grandma, who had come in
from her hens and yeast cakes, declared “he was as handy as a woman,”
and after receiving a few general directions with regard to the future,
“guessed, if he wasn’t in a hurry, she’d leave him with Maddy a spell,
as there were a few chores she must do.”

The doctor knew that at least a dozen individuals were waiting for him
that moment; but still he was in no hurry, he said, and so for half an
hour longer he sat there talking of Guy, and Jessie, and Aikenside, and
wondering he had never before observed how very becoming a white
wrapper was to sick girls like Maddy Clyde. Had he been asked the
question, he could not have told whether his other patients were
habited in buff, or brown, or tan color; but he knew all about Maddy’s
garb, and thought the dainty frill around her slender throat the
prettiest “puckered piece” that he had ever seen. How, then, was Dr.
Holbrook losing his heart to that little girl of fourteen and a half?
He did not think so. Indeed, he did not think anything about his heart,
though thoughts of Maddy Clyde were pretty constantly with him, as
after leaving her he paid his round of visits.

The Aikenside carriage was standing at Mrs. Conner’s gate when he
returned, and Jessie came running out to meet him, followed by Guy,
while Agnes, in the most becoming riding habit, sat by the window
looking as unconcerned at his arrival as if it were not the very event
for which she had been impatiently waiting, Jessie was a great pet with
the doctor, and, lifting her lightly in his arms, he kissed her
forehead where the golden curls were clustering and said to her:

“I have seen Maddy Clyde. She asked for you, and why you do not come to
see her, as you promised.”

“Mother won’t let me,” Jessie answered. “She says they are not fit
associates for a Remington.”

There was a sudden flash of contempt on the doctor’s face, and a gleam
of wrath in Agnes’ eyes as she motioned Jessie to be silent, and then
gracefully received the doctor, who by this time was in the room. As if
determined to monopolize the conversation, and keep it from turning on
the Markhams, Agnes rattled on for nearly fifteen minutes, scarcely
allowing Guy a chance for uttering a word. But Guy bided his time, and
seized the first favorable opportunity to inquire after Madeline.

She was improving rapidly, the doctor said, adding: “You ought to have
seen her delight when I gave her your bouquet.”

“Indeed,” and Agnes bridled haughtily; “I did not know that Guy was in
the habit of sending bouquets to such as this Clyde girl. I really must
report him to Miss Atherstone.”

Guy’s seat was very near to Agnes, and while a cloud overspread his
fine features, he said to her in an aside:

“Please say in your report that the worst thing about this Clyde girl
is that she aspires to be a teacher, and possibly a governess.”

There was an emphasis on the last word which silenced Agnes and set her
to beating her French gaiter on the carpet; while Guy, turning back to
the doctor, replied to his remark:

“She was pleased, then?”

“Yes; she must be vastly fond of flowers, though I sometimes fancied
the fact of being noticed by you afforded almost as much satisfaction
as the bouquet itself. She evidently regards you as a superior being,
and Aikenside as a second Paradise, and asking innumerable questions
about you and Jessie, too.”

“Did she honor me with an inquiry?” Agnes asked, her tone indicative of
sarcasm, though she was greatly interested as well as relieved by the
reply:

“Yes; she said she heard that Jessie’s mother was a beautiful woman,
and asked if you were not born in England.”

“She’s mixed me up with Lucy. Guy, you must go down and enlighten her,”
Agnes said, laughing merrily and appearing more at ease than she had
before since Maddy Clyde had been the subject of conversation.

Guy did not go down to Honedale—but fruit and flowers, and once a
bottle of rare old wine, found their way to the old red cottage, always
brought by Guy’s man, Duncan, and always accompanied with Mr.
Remington’s compliments. Once, hidden among the rosebuds, was a
childish note from Jessie, some of it printed and some in the uneven
hand of a child just commencing to write.

It was as follows:

“DEAR MADDY: I think that is such a pretty name, and so does Guy, and
so does the doctor, too. I want to come see you, but mamma won’t let
me. I think of you ever so much, and so does Guy, I guess, for he sends
you lots of things. Guy is a nice brother, and is most as old as mamma.
Ain’t that funny? You know my first ma is dead. The doctor tells us
about you when he comes to Aikenside. I wish he’d come oftener, for I
love him a bushel—don’t you? Yours respectfully,


“JESSIE AGNES REMINGTON.


“P. S.—I am going to tuck this in just for fun, right among the buds,
where you must look for it.”


This note Maddy read and reread until she knew it by heart,
particularly the part relating to Guy. Hitherto she had not
particularly liked her name, greatly preferring that it should have
been Eliza Ann, or Sarah Jane; but the knowing that Guy Remington
fancied it made a vast difference, and did much toward reconciling her.
She did not even see the clause, “and the doctor, too.” His attentions
and concern she took as a matter of course, so quietly and so
constantly had they been given. The day was very long now which did not
bring him to the cottage; but she missed him much as she would have
missed her brother, if she had had one, though her pulse always
quickened and her cheeks glowed when she heard him at the gate. The
inner power did not lie deeper than a great friendliness for one who
had been instrumental in saving her life. They had talked over the
matter of her examination, the doctor blaming himself more than was
necessary for his ignorance as to what was required of a teacher; but
when she asked who was his proxy, he had again answered, evasively: “A
friend from Boston.”

And this he did to shield Guy, whom he knew was enshrined in the little
maiden’s heart as a paragon of all excellence.




CHAPTER VII.
THE DRIVE.


Latterly the doctor had taken to driving in his buggy, and when Maddy
was strong enough he took her with him one day, himself adjusting the
shawl which grandma wrapped around her, and pulling a little farther on
the white sunbonnet which shaded the sweet, pale face, where the roses
were just beginning to bloom again. The doctor was very happy that
morning, and so, too, was Maddy, talking to him upon the theme of which
she never tired, Guy Remington, Jessie and Aikenside. Was it as
beautiful a place as she had heard it was, and didn’t he think it would
be delightful to live there?

“I suppose Mr. Guy will be bringing a wife there some day when he finds
one,” and leaning back in the buggy Maddy heaved a little sigh, not at
thoughts of Guy Remington’s wife, but because she began to feel tired,
and thus gave vent to her weariness.

The doctor, however, did not so construe it. He heard the sigh, and for
the first time when listening to her as she talked of Guy, a keen throb
of pain shot through his heart, a something as near akin to jealousy as
it was possible for him then to feel. But all unused as he was to the
workings of love he did not at that moment dream of such an emotion in
connection with Madeline Clyde. He only knew that something affected
him unpleasantly, prompting him, for some reason, to tell Maddy Clyde
about Lucy Atherstone, who, in all probability, would one day come to
Aikenside as its mistress.

“Yes, Guy will undoubtedly marry,” he began, just as over the top of
the easy hill they were ascending horses’ heads were visible, and the
Aikenside carriage appeared in view. “There he is now,” he exclaimed,
adding quickly: “No, I am mistaken, there’s only a lady inside. It must
be Agnes.”

It was Agnes driving out alone, for the sole purpose of passing a place
which had a singular attraction for her, the old, red cottage in
Honedale. She recognized the doctor, and guessed whom he had with him,
Putting up her glass, for which she had no more need than Jessie, she
scrutinized the little figure bundled up in shawls, while she smiled
her sweetest smile upon the doctor, showing to good advantage her white
teeth, and shaking back her wealth of curls with the air and manner of
a young coquettish girl.

“Oh, what a handsome lady! Who is she?” Maddy asked, turning to look
after the carriage now swiftly descending the hill.

“That was Jessie’s mother, Mrs. Agnes Remington,” the doctor replied.
“She’ll feel flattered with your compliment.”

“I did not mean to flatter. I said what I thought. She is handsome,
beautiful, and so young, too. Was that a gold bracelet which flashed so
on her arm?”

The doctor presumed it was, though he had not noticed. Gold bracelets
were not new to him as they were to Maddy, who continued:

“I wonder if I’ll ever wear a bracelet like that?”

“Would you like to?” the doctor asked, glancing at the small white
wrist, around which the dark calico sleeve was closely buttoned, and
thinking how much prettier and modest-looking it was than Agnes’
half-bare arms, where the ornaments were flashing.

“Y-e-s,” came hesitatingly from Maddy, who had a strong passion for
jewelry. “I guess I would, though grandpa classes all such things with
the pomps and vanities which I must renounce when I get to be good.”

“And when will that be?” the doctor asked.

Again Maddy sighed, as she replied: “I cannot tell. I thought so much
about it while I was sick, that is, when I could think; but now I’m
better, it goes away from me some. I know it is wrong, but I cannot
help it. I’ve seen only a bit of pomp and vanity, but I must say that I
like what I have seen, and I wish to see more. It’s very wicked, I
know,” she kept on, as she met the queer expression of the doctor’s
face; “and I know you think me so bad. You are good—a Christian, I
suppose?”

There was a strange light in the doctor’s eye as he answered, half
sadly: “No, Maddy, I am not what you call a Christian, I have not
renounced the pomps and vanities yet.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” and Maddy’s eyes expressed all the sorrow she
professed to feel. “You ought to be, now you’ve got so old.”

The doctor colored crimson, and stopping his horse under the dim shadow
of a maple in a little hollow, he said:

“I’m not so very old, Maddy; only twenty-five—only ten years older than
yourself; and Agnes’ husband was more than twenty years her senior.”

The doctor did not know why he dragged that last in, when it had
nothing whatever to do with their conversation; but as the most trivial
thing often leads to great results, so far from the pang caused by
Maddy’s thinking him so old, was born the first real consciousness he
had ever had that the little girl beside him was very dear, and that
the ten years difference between them might prove a most impassable
gulf. With this feeling, it was exceedingly painful for him to hear
Maddy’s sudden exclamation:

“Oh, oh! over twenty years—that’s dreadful. She must be most glad he’s
dead. I would not marry a man more than five years older than I am.”

“Not if you loved him, and he loved you very, very dearly?” the doctor
asked, his voice low and tender in its tone.

Wholly unsuspicious of the wild storm beating in his heart, Maddy
untied her white sunbonnet, and, taking it in her lap, smoothed back
her soft hair, saying, with a long breath: “Oh! I’m so hot,” and then,
as just thinking of his question, replied: “I shouldn’t love him—I
couldn’t. Grandma is five years younger than grandpa, mother was five
years younger than father, Mrs. Green is five years younger than Mr.
Green, and, oh! ever so many. You are warm, too; ain’t you?” and she
turned her innocent eyes full upon the doctor, who was wiping from his
lips the great drops of water, induced not so much by the heat as by
the apparent hopelessness of the love he now knew was growing in his
heart for Maddy Clyde. Recurring again to Agnes, Maddy said: “I wonder
why she married that old man? It is worse than if you were to marry
Jessie.”

“Money and position were the attractions, I imagine,” the doctor said.
“Agnes was poor, and esteemed it a great honor to be made Mrs.
Remington.”

“Poor, was she?” Maddy rejoined. “Then maybe Mr. Guy will some day
marry a poor girl. Do you think he will?”

Again Lucy Atherstone trembled on the doctor’s lips, but he did not
speak of her—it was preposterous that Maddy should have any thoughts of
Guy Remington, who was quite as old as himself, besides being engaged,
and with this comforting assurance the doctor turned his horse in the
direction of the cottage, for Maddy was growing tired and needed to be
at home.

“Perhaps you’ll some time change your mind about people so much older,
and if you do you’ll remember our talk this morning,” he said, as he
drove up at last before the gate.

Oh, yes! Maddy would never forget that morning or the nice ride they’d
had. She had enjoyed it so much, and she thanked him many times for his
kindness, as she stood waiting for him to drive away, feeling no tremor
whatever when at parting he took and held her hand, smoothing it
gently, and telling her it was growing fat and plump again. He was a
very nice doctor, much better than she had imagined, she thought, as
she went slowly to the house and entered the neat kitchen, where her
grandmother sat shelling peas for dinner, and her grandfather in his
leathern chair was whispering over his weekly paper.

“Did you meet a grand lady in a carriage?” grandma asked, as Maddy sat
down beside her.

“Yes; and Dr. Holbrook said it was Mrs. Remington, from Aikenside, Mr.
Guy’s stepmother, and that she was more than twenty years younger than
her husband—isn’t it dreadful? I thought so; but the doctor didn’t seem
to,” and in a perfectly artless manner Maddy repeated much of the
conversation which had passed between the doctor and herself, appealing
to her grandma to know if she had not taken the right side of the
argument.

“Yes, child, you did,” and grandma’s hands lingered among the light
green peas in her pan, as if she were thinking of an entirely foreign
subject. “I knows nothing about this Mrs. Remington, only that she
stared a good deal at the house as she went by, even looking at us
through a glass, and lifting her spotted veil after she got by. She may
have been as happy as a queen with her man, but as a general thing
these unequal matches don’t work, and had better not be thought on.
S’posin’ you should think you was in love with somebody, and in a few
years, when you got older, be sick of him. It might do him a sight of
harm. That’s what spoilt your poor Great-uncle Joseph, who’s been in
the hospital at Worcester goin’ on nine years.”

“It was!” and Maddy’s face was all aglow with the interest she always
evinced whenever mention was made of the one great living sorrow of her
grandmother’s life—the shattered intellect and isolation from the world
of her youngest brother, who, as she said, had for nearly nine long
years been an inmate of a madhouse.

“Tell me about it,” Maddy continued, bringing a pillow, and lying down
upon the faded lounge beneath the window.

“There is no great to tell, only he was many years younger than I. He’s
only forty-one now, and was thirteen years older than the girl he
wanted. Joseph was smart and handsome, and a lawyer, and folks said a
sight too good for the girl, whose folks were just nothing, but she had
a pretty face, and her long curls bewitched him. She couldn’t have been
older than you when he first saw her, and she was only sixteen when
they got engaged. Joseph’s life was bound up in her; he worshiped the
very air she breathed, and when she mittened him, it almost took his
life. He was too old for her, she said, and then right on top of that
we heard after a little that she married some big bug, I never knew
who, plenty old enough to be her father. That settled it with Joseph;
he went into a kind of melancholy, grew worse and worse, till we put
him in the hospital, usin’ his little property to pay the bill until it
was all gone, and now he’s on charity, you know, exceptin’ what we do.
That’s what ’tis about your Uncle Joseph, and I warn all young girls of
thirteen or fourteen not to think too much of nobody. They are bound to
get sick of ’em, and it makes dreadful work.”

Grandma had an object in telling this to Maddy, for she was not blind
to the nature of the doctor’s interest in her child, and though it
gratified her pride, she felt that it must not be, both for his sake
and Maddy’s, so she told the sad story of Uncle Joseph as a warning to
Maddy, who could scarcely be said to need it. Still it made an
impression on her, and all that afternoon she was thinking of the
unfortunate man, whom she had seen but once, and that in his prison
home, where she had been with her grandfather the only time she had
ever ridden in the cars. He had taken her in his arms then, she
remembered, and called her his little Sarah. That must have been the
name of his treacherous betrothed. She would ask if it were not so, and
she did.

“Yes, Sarah Morris, that was her name, and her face was handsome as a
doll,” grandma replied, and wondering if she were as beautiful as
Jessie, or Jessie’s mother, Maddy went back to her reveries of the poor
maniac, whom Sarah Morris had wronged so cruelly.




CHAPTER VIII.
SHADOWINGS OF WHAT WAS TO BE.


It was very pleasant at Aikenside that afternoon, and the cool breeze
blowing from the miniature fish pond in one corner of the grounds, came
stealing into the handsome parlors, where Agnes Remington, in tasteful
toilet, reclined languidly upon the crimson-hued sofa, bending her
graceful head to suit the height of Jessie, who was twining some
flowers among her curls, and occasionally appealing to Guy to know “if
it was not pretty.”

In his favorite seat in the pleasant bay window, opening into the
garden, Guy was sitting, apparently reading a book, though his eyes did
not move very rapidly down the page, for his thoughts were on some
other object. When his pretty stepmother first came to Aikenside, three
months before, he had been half sorry, for he knew just how his quiet
would be disturbed, but as the weeks went by, and he became accustomed
to Jessie’s childish prattle and frolicsome ways, while even Agnes
herself was not a bad picture for his handsome home, he began to feel
how he should miss them when they were gone, Jessie particularly, who
made so much sunshine wherever she went, and who was very dear to the
heart of the half-brother. Full well he knew Agnes would rather stay
there, that her income did not warrant as luxurious a home as he could
give her, and that by remaining at Aikenside during the warmer season
she could afford to board through the winter in Boston, where her
personal attractions secured her quite as much attention as was good
for her. Had she been more agreeable to him he would not have hesitated
to offer her a home as long as she chose to remain, but, as it was, he
felt that Lucy Atherstone would be much happier alone with him. Lucy,
however, was not coming yet, and until she did come Agnes perhaps might
stay. It certainly would be better for Jessie, who could have a teacher
in the house, and it was upon these matters that he was reflecting.

As if divining his thoughts Agnes said to him rather abruptly:

“Guy, Ellen Laurie writes me that they are all going to Saratoga for a
time, and then to Newport, and she wished I would join them. Do you
think I can afford it?”

“Oh, yes, that’s splendid, for I’ll stay here while you are gone, and I
like Aikenside so much better than Boston. Mamma can afford it, can’t
she, Guy?” Jessie exclaimed, dropping her flowers and springing upon
her brother’s knee.

Smoothing her bright hair and pinching her soft cheek, Guy replied:

“That means, I suppose, that I can afford it, don’t it? but, puss, I
was thinking just now about your staying here where you really do
improve.”

Then turning to Agnes he made some inquiries as to the plans proposed
by the Laurie’s, ascertaining that Agnes’ plan was as follows: He
should invite her to go with him to Saratoga, or Newport, or both, and
that Jessie meantime should remain at Aikenside, just as she wished to
do.

Guy could not find much pleasure in escorting Agnes to a fashionable
watering place, particularly as he was, of course, expected to pay the
bills, but he sometimes did unselfish things; and as he had not been
very gracious to her on the occasion of her last visit to Aikenside, he
decided to martyr himself and go to Saratoga. But who would care for
Jessie? She must not be left wholly with the servants. A governess of
some kind must be provided, and he was about speaking of this to Agnes,
when the doctor was announced, and the conversation turned into another
channel. Agnes Remington would not have confessed how much she was
interested in Dr. Holbrook. Indeed, only that morning in reply to a
joking remark made to her by Guy, she had petulantly exclaimed:

“The idea of my caring for him, except as a friend and physician. Why,
he must be younger than I am, or at most about my age. A mere boy, as
it were.”

And yet, in making her toilet that afternoon, she had arranged every
part of her dress with direct reference to the “mere boy,” her heart
beating faster every time she remembered the white sunbonnet and the
Scotch plaid shawl she had seen beside him in the drive that morning.
Little Maddy Clyde would hardly have credited the story had she been
told that the beautiful lady from Aikenside was positively jealous of
Dr. Holbrook’s attentions to herself; yet so it was, and the jealousy
was all the more bitter when she remembered who Madeline was, and how
startled that aged couple of the red cottage would be, could they know
who she was. But they did not; she was quite sure of that; and so she
had ventured to pass their door, her heart throbbing with a strange
sensation as the old waymarks came in view, waymarks which she
remembered so well, and around which so many sad memories were
clustering. Agnes was not all bad. Indeed, she was scarcely worse than
most vain, selfish fashionable women; and all that day, since her
return from riding, haunting, remorseful thoughts of the long ago had
been clinging to her, making her more anxious to leave that
neighborhood for a time at least, and in scenes of gayety forget, if
possible, that such things as broken vows or broken hearts existed.

The arrival of the doctor dissipated her sadness in a measure, and
after greeting him with her usual expressions of welcome, she said,
half playfully, half spitefully:

“By the way, doctor, who was that old lady, all bent up double in
shawls and things, whom you were taking out for an airing?”

Guy looked up quickly, wondering where Agnes could have seen the
doctor, who, conscious of a sudden pang, answered, naturally:

“That old lady, bent double and bundled in shawls, was young Maddy
Clyde, to whom I thought a short ride might do good.”

“Oh, yes; that patient about whom Jessie has gone mad. I am glad to
have seen her.”

There was unmistakable irony in her voice now, and turning from her to
Guy, the doctor continued:

“The old man was telling me to-day of your kindness in saving his house
from being sold. It was like you, Guy; and I wish I, too, had the means
to be generous, for they are so very poor.”

“I’ll tell you,” said Jessie, who had stolen to the doctor’s side, and
lain her fat, bare arm upon his shoulder, as if he had been Guy. “You
might give Maddy the doctor’s bill. I remember how mamma cried, and
said she never could pay papa’s bill when it was sent in.”

“Jessie!” said Agnes and Guy, simultaneously, while the doctor
laughingly pulled one of her long, bright curls.

“Yes, I could do that. I’d thought of it, but they might not accept it,
as they are proud as well as poor.”

“Mr. Markham has no one to care for but his wife and this Madeline, has
he?” Agnes asked, and the doctor replied:

“I did not suppose so until a few days since, when I learned from a Mr.
Green that Mrs. Markham’s youngest and now only brother has been an
inmate of a lunatic asylum for years; and that though they cannot pay
his entire expenses, of course they do all they can toward providing
him with comforts.”

“What is a lunatic asylum, mother? What does he mean?” Jessie asked,
but it was the doctor, not Agnes, who explained to the child what a
lunatic asylum was.

“Is insanity hereditary in this family?” Guy asked.

Agnes’ cheek was very white, though her face was fumed away as the
doctor answered: “I do not know; I did not ask the cause. I only heard
the fact that such a man as Joseph Mortimer exists.”

For a moment there was silence in the room, and then Guy told the
doctor of what himself and Agnes were speaking when he arrived.

“I suppose it’s of no use asking you to join us for a week or so.”

“There was not,” the doctor said. “His patients needed him and he must
stay at home.”

“Doctor, how would this Maddy Clyde do to stay here with Jessie while
we are gone, partly as companion and partly as her teacher?” was Guy’s
next question, which brought Mrs. Agnes at once from her reverie.

“Guy,” she exclaimed, “are you crazy? That child Jessie’s governess!
No, indeed! I shall have a teacher from Boston—one whose manners and
style are unexceptionable.”

Guy had a will of his own, and few could provoke it into action as
effectually as Agnes, who, in thus opposing him, was working directly
against herself. Paying her no attention, except to bow in token that
he heard, Guy asked Jessie her opinion.

“Oh, it will be splendid! Can she come to-morrow? I shan’t care how
long you are gone if I can have Maddy here, and doctor will come up
every day, will you, doctor?” and the soft eyes looked up pleadingly
into the doctor’s face.

“It is not settled yet that Maddy comes,” the doctor replied, adding as
an answer to Guy’s question: “If Agnes could be willing, I do not think
you could do better than to secure Miss Clyde’s services. Two children
will thus be made happy, for Maddy, as I have told you, thinks
Aikenside must be a little lower only than Paradise. I shall be happy
to open negotiations, if you say so.”

“I’ll ride down and let you know to-morrow,” Guy said. “These domestic
matters, where there is a difference of thinking, had better be
discussed alone,” and he turned good-humoredly toward Agnes, who knew
it was useless to oppose him then.

But oppose him she did that night, after the doctor had gone, taking at
first the high stand that sooner than have a country girl like Maddy
Clyde associated daily with her daughter, whether as teacher or
companion, she would give up Saratoga and stay at home. Guy could not
explain why it was that opposition from Agnes always aroused all his
powers of antagonism. Yet so it was, and now he was as fully determined
that Maddy Clyde should come to Aikenside as Agnes was that she should
not. He knew, too, how to attain this end without further altercation.

“Very well,” was his quiet reply, “you can remain at home if you
choose, of course. I had intended taking you myself, wherever you
wished to go; and not only that, but I was about to ask how much was
needed for the necessary additions to your wardrobe, but if you prefer
remaining here to giving up a most unfounded prejudice against a girl
who never harmed you, and whom Jessie already loves, you can do so,”
and Guy walked from the room, leaving Agnes first to cry, then to pout,
then to think it all over, and finally to decide that going to Saratoga
and Newport under the protection of Guy, was better than carrying out a
whim, which, after all, was nothing but a whim.

Accordingly next morning as Guy was in his library reading his papers,
she went tripping up to him, and folding her white hands upon his
shoulder, said, very prettily:

“I was real cross last night, and let my foolish pride get the
ascendency, but I have considered the matter, and am willing for this
Miss Clyde to come, provided you still think it best.”

Guy’s mustache hid the mischievous smile lurking about his mouth, and
he received the concession as graciously as if he did not know
perfectly the motive which impelled it. As she had commenced being
amiable she seemed determined to continue it, and offered herself to
write a note soliciting Maddy’s services,

“As I am Jessie’s mother, it will be perfectly proper for me to hire
and manage her,” she said, and as Guy acquiesced in this suggestion,
she sat down at the writing desk, and commenced a very pleasantly
worded note, in which Miss Clyde was informed that she had been
recommended as a suitable person with whom to leave Jessie during the
summer and a part of the autumn, and that she, Jessie’s mother, wrote
to ask if for the sum of one dollar per week she were at liberty to
come to Aikenside as governess, or waiting-maid.

“Or what?” Guy asked, as she read to him what she had written. “Maddy
Clyde will not be waiting-maid in this house, neither will she come for
one dollar per week as you propose. I hire her myself. I have taken a
fancy to the girl. Commence again; substitute companion for
waiting-maid, and offering her three dollars per week instead of one.”

As long as Guy paid the bill Agnes could not demur to the price,
although remembering a time when she had taught a district school for
one dollar per week and boarded around besides. She thought three
dollars far too much. But Guy had commanded, and him she generally
obeyed, so she wrote another note, which he approved, and sealing it up
sent it by a servant down to the red cottage.




CHAPTER IX.
THE DECISION.


The reception of Agnes’ note produced quite a commotion at the red
cottage, where various opinions were expressed as to the prime mover of
the plan, grandpa thinking that as Mrs. Agnes wrote the note, and was
most interested in it, she, of course, had suggested it, grandma
insisting that it was Jessie’s doings, while Maddy, when she said
anything, agreed with her grandmother, though away down in her heart
was a tiny spot warm with the half belief that Mr. Guy himself had
first thought of having her at Aikenside, where she would rather go
than to any other spot in the wide world; to Aikenside, with its shaven
lawn, almost large enough to be called a park, with its shaded paths
and winding walks, its costly flowers and running vines, its fountains
and statuary, its fish pond and grove, its airy rooms, its marbled
hall, its winding stairs, with banisters of rosewood, its cupola at the
top, from which so many miles of hill and meadow land could be
discerned, its bay windows and long piazzas, its sweet-faced,
golden-haired Jessie, and its manly, noble Guy. Only the image of
Agnes, flashing in silk and diamonds was a flaw on the picture’s fair
surface. From thoughts of her Maddy had insensibly shrank, until she
met her in the carriage, and then received the note asking her
services. These events wrought in her a change, and dread of Mrs. Agnes
passed away. She should like her, and she should be so happy at
Aikenside, for, of course, she was going, and she began to wish the
doctor would come so as to tell her how long before she would be strong
enough to perform the duties of teacher to little Jessie.

At first Grandpa Markham hesitated. It might do Maddy a deal of hurt to
go to Aikenside, he said, her humble home would look mean to her after
all that finery, while the temptations to vanity and ambition would be
greater there than at home; but Maddy put all his objections aside, and
long before the doctor came she had written to Mrs. Agnes that she
would go. The doctor could not understand why it was that in Maddy’s
home he did not think as well of her going to Aikenside as he had done
the evening previous. She looked so bright, so pure, so artless,
sitting by her grandfather’s knee, that it seemed a pity to transplant
her to another soil, while, hidden in his heart where even he did not
know it was hidden, was a fear of what might be the effect of daily
intercourse with Guy. Still he said it was the best thing for her to
do, and laughingly remarked that it was far better than teaching the
district school, and then he asked if she would ride again that day;
but to this Mrs. Markham objected. It was too soon, she said, Maddy had
hardly recovered from yesterday’s fatigue, suggesting that as the
doctor was desirous of doing good to his convalescent patients, he
carry out poor old deaf Mary Barnes, who complained that he stayed so
long with the child at “granther Markham’s” as to have but a moment to
spare for her.

Instantly the eyes of Mrs. Markham and the doctor met, the latter
feeling very uncomfortable, while the former was confirmed in the
suspicion raised by what Maddy told her the day before.

It was the doctor who carried Maddy’s answer to Agnes, the doctor who
made all the succeeding arrangements, deciding that Maddy would not be
wholly strong until the very day fixed upon by Agnes for her departure
for Saratoga. For this Guy was sorry. It would have been an easy matter
for him to have ridden down to the cottage, and seen the girl in whom
he was beginning to feel so much interest that in his last letter to
Lucy he had mentioned her as about to become his sister’s governess;
but he did not care to see her there. It seemed to him that the
surroundings of that slanting-roofed house did not belong to her, and
he would rather meet her in his own more luxurious home. But the
doctor’s word was law, and so, on the first day of August he followed
Agnes and her three huge traveling trunks to the carriage, and was
driven from the house to which Maddy was coming that afternoon.




CHAPTER X.
AT AIKENSIDE.


It was a long, tiresome ride, for grandpa, from Honedale to Aikenside,
and as he was not in his wife’s secret, he accepted thankfully the
doctor’s offer to take Maddy there himself. With this arrangement Maddy
was well pleased, as it would thus afford her the opportunity she had
so much desired, of talking with the doctor about his bill, and asking
him to wait until she had earned enough to pay it.

To the aged couple, parting for the first time with their darling, the
day was very sad, but they would not intrude their grief upon the young
girl looking so eagerly forward to the new life opening before her;
only grandpa’s voice faltered a little when, in the morning prayer, he
commended his child to God, asking that she might be kept from
temptation, and that the new sights and scenes to which she was going
might not beget in her a love of the world’s vanities, or a disgust for
her old home; but that she might come back to it the same loving, happy
child as she was then, and never be ashamed of the parents to whom she
was so dear. There was an answering sob from the chair where Maddy
knelt, and after the devotions were ended she wound her arm around her
grandfather’s neck, and parting his silvery locks, said to him,
earnestly;

“Grandpa, do you think I could ever be ashamed of you and grandma?”

“I hope not, darling; it would break our hearts; but finery and things
is mighty apt to set folks up, and after you’ve walked a spell on them
velvet carpets, you’ll no doubt think your feet make a big noise on our
bare kitchen floor.”

“That may be, but I shan’t be ashamed of you. No, not if I were Mrs.
Guy Remington herself.” And Maddy emphasized her words with a kiss, as
she thought how nice it would be provided she were a widow, to be Mrs.
Guy Remington, and have her grandparents live at Aikenside with her.

“But, pshaw! I’ll never be Mrs. anybody; and if I am, I’ll have to have
a husband, which would be such a bother!” was her next mental comment,
as, leaving her grandfather, she went to help her grandmother with the
breakfast dishes, wondering when she would wipe those blue cups again,
and how she should probably feel when she did.

Quickly the morning passed, and just as the clock struck two the
doctor’s buggy appeared over the hill. Up to this moment Maddy had only
been happy in anticipation; but when, with her shawl and bonnet on, she
stood waiting while the doctor fastened her little trunk, and when she
saw a tear on the wrinkled faces of both her grandparents, her
fortitude gave way; and ’mid a storm of sobs, she said her good-bys and
received her grandfather’s blessing.

It was very pleasant that afternoon, for the summer breeze was blowing
cool across the fields, where the laborers were busy; and with the
elasticity of youth, Maddy’s tears stopped their flowing, but not until
the dear old home had disappeared, and they were some distance on the
road to Aikenside.

“I wonder how I shall like Mrs. Remington and Mr. Guy?” was the first
remark she made.

“You’ll not see them immediately. They left this morning for Saratoga,”
the doctor replied.

“Left! Mr. Guy gone!” Maddy repeated in a disappointed tone.

“Are you very sorry?” the doctor asked, and Maddy replied:

“I did want to see him once; you know I never have.”

It would be such a surprise to find that Guy was no other than the
terrible inspector, that he would not undeceive her, the doctor
thought; and so he relapsed into a thoughtful mood, from which Maddy
aroused him by breaking the subject of the unpaid bill, asking if he’d
please not trouble grandpa, but wait until she could pay it.

“Perhaps it’s wrong asking it when you were so good, but if you only
will take me for payment,” and Maddy’s soft brown eyes were lifted to
his face.

“Yes, Maddy, I’ll take you for payment,” the doctor said, smiling, half
seriously, as his eyes rested fondly upon her.

Even then stupid Maddy did not understand him, but began to calculate
out loud how long it would take to earn the money. She’d heard people
say that the doctor charged a dollar a visit to Honedale, and he’d been
so many, many times, that it would take a great many weeks to pay him;
besides, there was the debt to Mr. Guy. She wanted to help pay that,
but did not see how she could, unless he waited, too. Did the doctor
think he would? It seemed terrible to the doctor that one so young as
Maddy should be harassed with the payment of debts, and he felt a most
intense desire for the right to shield her from all such care, but he
must not speak of it then; he’d rather she should remain a little
longer an artless child, confiding all her troubles to him as if he had
been her brother.

“There’s Aikenside,” he said, at last, and it was not long before they
passed through the gate, guarded by the great bronze lions, and struck
into the graveled road leading to the house.

“It’s grander, finer, than I ever dreamed. Oh! if I could some time
have just such a home! and doctor, look! What does make that water go
up in the air so? Is it what they call a fountain?”

In her excitement Maddy had risen, and with one hand resting on the
doctor’s shoulder, was looking around her eagerly. Guy Remington would
have laughed, and been gratified, too, could he have heard the
enthusiastic praises heaped upon his home by the little schoolgirl as
she drove up to his door. But Guy was away in the dusty cars, and only
Jessie stood on the piazza to receive her teacher. There were warm
words of welcome, kisses and hugs; and then Jessie led her friend to
the chamber she was to occupy.

“Mother wanted you to sleep the other side of the house, but Brother
Guy said no, you should have a pleasant room; and when Guy says a
thing, it’s so. It’s nice in here, and close to me. See, I’m right
here,” and Jessie opened a door leading directly to her own sleeping
room.

“Here’s one trunk,” she continued, as a servant brought up and set
down, a little contemptuously, the small hair-cloth box containing
Maddy’s wardrobe. “Here’s one; where’s the rest?” and she was flying
after Tom, when Maddy stopped her, saying:

“I have but one—that’s all.”

“Only that little, teenty thing? How funny. Why, mamma carried three
most as big as my bed to Saratoga. You can’t have many dresses. What
are you going to wear to dinner?”

“I’ve been to dinner.” And Maddy looked up in some surprise.

“You have! We never have it till five, when Guy is at home; but now
they are gone, Mrs. Noah says we will have it at one, as folks ought to
do. To-day I coaxed her to wait till you come, and the table is all set
out so nicely for two. Can you carve, and do you like green turtle
soup?”

Maddy was bewildered, but managed to reply that she could not carve,
that she never saw any green turtle soup, and that she supposed she
should wear to dinner the delaine she had on. “Why, we always change,
even Mrs. Noah,” Jessie exclaimed, bending over the open trunk and
examining its contents.

Two calicoes, a blue muslin, a gingham and another delaine, beside the
one she had on. That was the sum total of Maddy’s wardrobe, and Jessie
glanced at it a little ruefully as Maddy carefully shook out the nicely
folded dresses and laid them upon the bed. Here Mrs. Noah was heard
calling Jessie, who ran away leaving Maddy alone for a moment.

Maddy had seen the look Jessie gave her dresses, and for the first time
there dawned upon her mind the possibility that her plain apparel, and
ignorance of the ways of Aikenside might be to her the cause of much
mortification.

“And grandma said they were so nice, too—doing them up so carefully,”
she said, her lip beginning to quiver, and her eyes filling with tears,
as thoughts of home came rushing over her.

She could not force them back, and laying her head upon the top of the
despised hair trunk, she sobbed aloud. Guy Remington’s private room was
in that hall, and as the doctor knew a book was to have been left there
for him, he took the liberty of getting it; passing Maddy’s door he
heard the low sound of weeping, and looking in, saw her where she sat
or rather knelt upon the floor.

“Homesick so soon!” he said, advancing to her side, and then amid a
torrent of tears, the whole came out.

Maddy never could do as they did there, and everybody would laugh at
her so for an awkward thing; she never knew that folks ate dinner at
five instead of twelve—she should surely starve to death—she couldn’t
carve—she could not eat mud-turtle soup, and she did not know which
dress to wear for dinner—would the doctor tell her? There they were,
and she pointed to the bed, only five, and she knew Jessie thought it
so mean.

Such was the substance of Maddy’s passionate outpouring of her griefs
to the highly perplexed doctor, who, after quieting her somewhat,
ascertained that the greatest present trouble was the deciding what
dress was suitable to the occasion. The doctor had never made dress his
study, but as it happened he liked blue, and so suggested it, as the
one most likely to be becoming.

“That!” and Maddy looked confounded. “Why, grandma never let me wear
that, except on Sunday; that’s my very best dress.”

“Poor child; I’m not sure it was right for you to come here where the
life is so different from the quiet, unpretentious one you have led,”
the doctor thought, but he merely said: “It’s my impression they wear
their best dresses here, all the time.”

“But what will I do when that’s worn out! Oh, dear, dear, I wish I had
not come!” and another impetuous fit of weeping ensued, in the midst of
which Jessie came back, greatly disturbed on Maddy’s account, and
asking eagerly what was the matter.

Very adroitly the doctor managed to draw Jessie aside, while as well as
he was able he gave her a few hints with regard to her intercourse with
Maddy, and Jessie, who seemed intuitively to understand him, went back
to the weeping girl, soothing her much as a little mother would have
soothed her child. They would have such nice times, when Maddy got used
to their ways, which would not take long, and nobody would laugh at
her, she said, when Maddy expressed her fears on that point. “You are
too pretty even if you do make mistakes!” and then she went into
ecstasies over the blue muslin, which was becoming to Maddy, and
greatly enhanced her girlish beauty. The tear stains were all washed
away, Jessie using very freely her mother’s _eau-de-cologne_, and
making Maddy’s cheeks very red with rubbing, the nut-brown hair was
brushed until it shone like satin, a little narrow band of black velvet
ribbon was pinned about Maddy’s snowy neck, and then she was ready for
that terrible ordeal, her first dinner at Aikenside. The doctor was
going to stay, and this helped to relieve her somewhat.

“You must come to the housekeeper’s room and see her first,” Jessie
said, and with a beating heart and brain bewildered by the elegancies
which met her at every turn, Maddy followed to where the dreaded Mrs.
Noah, in rustling back silk and a thread lace collar, sat sewing and
greatly enjoying the leisure she had in her master’s absence.

Mrs. Noah knew who Maddy was, remembering the old man said that she
would not disgrace a drawing-room as fine as that at Aikenside. She had
discovered, too, that Mrs. Agnes was opposed to her coming, that only
Guy’s determined will had brought her there; and this, if nothing else,
had disposed her to feel kindly toward the little governess. She had
expected to see her rather pretty, but was not prepared to find her
what she was. Maddy’s was a singular type of beauty—a beauty
untarnished by any selfish, uncharitable, or suspicious feeling. Clear
and truthful as a mirror, her brown eyes looked into Mrs. Noah’s, while
her low courtesy—so full of deference, found its way straight to that
motherly heart.

“I am glad to see you, Miss Clyde,” she said, “very glad.”

Maddy’s lip quivered a little and her voice shook as she replied:

“Please call me Maddy. They do at home, and I shan’t be quite so—so—”

She could not say “homesick,” lest she should break out again into a
fit of crying, but Mrs. Noah understood her, and remembering her own
experience when first she went from home, she involuntarily stooped to
kiss the pure, white forehead of the girl, who henceforth was sure of
one friend at least at Aikenside.

The dinner was a success, so far as Maddy was concerned. Not a single
mistake did she perpetrate, though her cheeks burned painfully as she
felt the eyes of the polite waiters fixed so often upon her, and
fancied they might be laughing at her. But they were not, and thanks to
the kind-hearted Guy, they thought of her only with respect, as one who
was their superior and must be treated accordingly. Knowing how
different everything was at Aikenside from that to which she had been
accustomed, Guy, with the thoughtfulness natural to him, had taken the
precaution of speaking to each of the servants concerning Miss Clyde,
Jessie’s teacher. As he could not be there himself when she first came
it would devolve upon them, more or less, to make it pleasant for her
by kind, civil attentions, he said, hinting at the dire displeasure
sure to fall on any one who should be guilty of a misdemeanor in that
direction. To Paul, the coachman, he had been particular in his
charges, telling him who Maddy was, and arguing that from the insolence
once given to the grandfather the offender was bound to be more polite
to the grandchild. The carriage was to be at hers and Jessie’s command,
Paul never refusing a reasonable request to drive the young ladies when
and where they wished to go, while a pretty little black pony, recently
broken to the saddle for Agnes, was to be at Miss Clyde’s service, if
she chose to have it. As Guy’s slightest wish was always obeyed,
Maddy’s chances for happiness were not small, notwithstanding that she
felt so desolate and lonely when the doctor left her, and standing by
Jessie she watched him with a swelling heart until he was lost to view
in the deepening twilight.

Feeling that she must be homesick, Mrs. Noah suggested that she try the
fine piano in the little music-room.

“Maybe you can’t play, but you can drum ‘Days of Absence,’ as most
girls do,” and opening the lid she bade Maddy “thump as long as she
liked.”

Music was a delight to Maddy, who coveted nothing so much as a
knowledge of it, and sitting down upon the stool, she touched the
soft-toned instrument, ascertaining by her far several sweet chords,
and greatly astonishing Jessie, who wondered at her skill. Twice each
week a teacher came up from Devonshire to give lessons to Jessie, but
as yet she could only play one scale and a few simple bars. These she
attempted to teach to Maddy, who caught at them so quickly and executed
them so well that Jessie was delighted. Maddy ought to take lessons,
she said, and some time during the next day she took to Mrs. Noah a
letter which she had written to Guy. After going into ecstasies over
Maddy, saying she was the nicest kind of a girl, that she prayed in the
morning as well as at night, and looked so sweet in blue, she asked if
she couldn’t take music lessons, too, advancing many reasons why she
should, one of which was that she could play now a great deal better
than herself.

It was several days before an answer came to this letter, and when it
did it brought Guy’s consent for Maddy to take lessons, together with a
note for Mr. Simons, requesting him to consider Miss Clyde his pupil,
on the same terms with Jessie.

Though greatly pleased with Aikenside, and greatly attached to Jessie,
Maddy had had many hours of loneliness when her heart was back in the
humble cottage where she knew they were missing her so much, but now a
new world, a world of music, was suddenly opened before her, and the
homesickness all disappeared. It had been arranged with Mrs. Noah, by
Agnes, that Jessie should only study for two hours each day,
consequently Maddy had nearly all the time to herself, and well did she
improve it, making so rapid progress that Simons looked on amazed
declaring her case to be without a parallel, while Jessie was left far
behind. Indeed, after a short time Maddy might have been her teacher,
and was of much service to her in practicing her lessons.

Meanwhile the doctor came often to Aikenside, praising Maddy’s progress
in music, and though he did not know a single note, compelling himself
to listen while with childlike satisfaction she played him her last
lesson. She was very happy now at Aikenside, where all were so kind to
her, and half wished that the family would always remain as it was
then, that Agnes and Guy would not come home, for with their coming she
felt there would be a change. It was nearly time now to expect them.
Indeed, Guy had written on one Saturday that they should probably be
home the next, and during the ensuing week Aikenside presented that
most uncomfortable phase of a house being cleaned. Everything must be
in order for Mr. Guy, Mrs. Noah said, taking more pains with his rooms
than with the remaining portion of the building. Guy was her idol;
nothing was too good for him, few things quite good enough, and she
said so much in his praise that Maddy began to shrink from meeting him.
What would he think of her? Perhaps he might not notice her in the
least, and that would be terrible. But, no, a man as kind as he had
shown himself to her, would at least pay her some attention, and so at
last she began to anticipate his coming home, wondering what their
first meeting would be, what she should say to him, and what he would
think of her.




CHAPTER XI.
GUY AT HOME.


Saturday came at last, a balmy September day, when all nature seemed
conspiring to welcome the travelers for whom so extensive preparations
were making at Aikenside. They were expected at about six in the
afternoon, and just before that hour the doctor rode up to be in
readiness to meet them. In the dining-room the table was set as Maddy
had never seen it set before, making, with its silver, its china, and
cut-glass, a glittering display. There was Guy’s seat as carver, with
Agnes at the urn, while Maddy felt sure that the two plates between
Agnes and Guy were intended for Jessie and herself, the doctor
occupying the other side. Jessie would sit next her mother, which would
leave her near to Guy, where he could see every movement she made.
Would he think her awkward, or would he, as she hoped, be so much
absorbed with the doctor as not to notice her? Suppose she should drop
her fork, or upset one of those queer-looking goblets, more like bowls
than anything else? It would be terrible, and Maddy’s cheeks tingled at
the very thought of such a catastrophe. Were they goblets really, those
funny colored things, and if they were not, what were they? Summoning
all her courage, she asked the doctor, her prime counselor, and learned
that they were the finger-glasses, of which she had read, but which she
had never seen before.

“Oh, must I use them?” she asked, in so evident distress that the
doctor could not forbear a laugh as he told her it was not of the
slightest consequence whether she used them or not, advising her to
watch Mrs. Agnes, who was _au fait_ in all such matters.

Six o’clock came, but no travelers. Then an hour went by, and there
came a telegram that the cars had broken down and would not probably
arrive until late in the night, if indeed they did till morning.
Greatly disappointed, the doctor, after dinner, took his leave, telling
the girls they had better not sit up. Consequently, at a late hour they
both retired, sleeping so soundly as not to near the noise outside the
house; the banging of doors, the setting down of trunks, the tramp of
feet, Mrs. Noah’s words of welcome, one pleasant voice which responded,
and another more impatient one which sounded as if its owner were tired
and cross.

Agnes and Guy had come. As a whole, Agnes’ season at Saratoga had been
rather disagreeable. Guy, it is true had been exceedingly kind. She had
been flattered by brainless fops. She had heard herself called “that
beautiful Mrs. Remington,” and “that charming young widow,” but no
serious attentions had been paid, no millionaire had asked to be her
second husband. If there had, she would have said yes, for Agnes was
not averse to changing her state of widowhood. She liked the doctor,
but if he did not propose, and some other body did, she should accept
that other body, of course. This was her intention when she left
Aikenside, and when she came back, it was with the determination to
raise the siege at once, and compel the doctor to surrender. She knew
he was not wealthy as she could wish, but his family were the
Holbrooks, and as she positively liked him, she was prepared to waive
the matter of money. In this state of mind it is not surprising that
the morning of the return home she should listen with a troubled mind
to Jessie’s rather exaggerated account of the number of times the
doctor had been there, and the nice things he had said to her and
Maddy.

“He had visited them ever so much, staying ever so long. I know Maddy
likes him; I do, anyway,” Jessie said, never dreaming of the passion
she was exciting, jealousy of Maddy, hatred of Maddy, and a desire to
be revenged on a girl whom Dr. Holbrook visited “ever so much.”

What was she that he should care for her? A mere nothing—a child, whom
Guy had taken up. Pity there was a Lucy Atherstone in the way of his
making her mistress of Aikenside. It would be a pretty romance, Guy
Remington and Grandpa Markham’s grandchild. Agnes was nervous and
tired, and this helped to increase her anger toward the innocent girl.
She would take immediate measures, she thought, to put the upstart
down, and the sight of Flora laying the cloth for breakfast suggested
to her the first step in teaching Maddy her place.

“Flora,” she said, “I notice you are arranging the table for four. Have
we company?”

“Why, no, ma’am; there’s Mr. Guy, yourself, Miss Jessie, and Miss
Clyde,” was Flora’s reply, while Agnes continued haughtily: “Remove
Miss Clyde’s plate. No one allows their governess to eat with them.”

“But, ma’am,” and Flora hesitated, “she’s very pretty, and ladylike,
and young; she has always eaten with Miss Jessie and Dr. Holbrook when
he was here. He treats her as if she was good as anybody.”

In her eagerness to serve Maddy and save her from insult, Flora was
growing bold, but she only hurt the cause by mentioning the doctor.
Agnes was determined now, and she replied:

“It was quite right when we were gone, but it is different now, and Mr.
Remington, I am sure, will not suffer it.”

“Might I ask him?” Flora persisted, her hand still on the plate.

“No,” Agnes would attend to that, and also see Miss Clyde. All Flora
had to do was to remove the plate, which she finally did, muttering to
herself: “Such airs! but I know Mr. Guy won’t stand it.”

Meantime Maddy had put on her prettiest delaine, tied her little dainty
black silk apron, Mrs. Noah’s gift, and with the feeling that she was
looking unusually well, started for the parlor to meet her employer,
Mrs. Agnes. Jessie had gone in quest of her brother, and thus Agnes was
alone when Maddy Clyde first presented herself before her. She had not
expected to find Maddy so pretty, and for a moment the hot blood
crimsoned her cheek, while her heart throbbed wildly beneath the rich
morning dress. Dr. Holbrook had cause for being attracted by that
fresh, bright face, she thought, and so she steeled herself against the
better impulses of her nature, impulses which pleaded that for the sake
of the past she should be kind to Maddy Clyde.

“Ah, good-morning. You are Jessie’s governess, I presume,” she said,
bowing distantly, and pretending not to notice the hand which Maddy
involuntarily extended toward her. “Jessie speaks well of you, and I am
very glad you suit her. You have had a pleasant time, I trust?”

Her voice was so cold and her manner so distant that Maddy’s eyes for
an instant filled with tears, but she answered civilly that she had
been very happy, and everybody was very kind. It was harder work to put
down Maddy Clyde than Agnes had expected, and after a little further
conversation there ensued a silence, which neither was inclined to
break. At last, summoning all her courage, Agnes began:

“Excuse me, Miss Clyde, but your own good sense, of which I am sure you
have an abundance, must tell you that now Mr. Remington and myself are
at home, your intercourse with our family must be rather limited—that
is—ahem—that is, neither Mr. Remington nor myself are accustomed to
having our governess very much with us. I suppose you have had the
range of the parlors, sitting there when you liked, and all this was
perfectly proper. Mind, I am finding no fault with you. It is all quite
right,” she continued, as she saw the strange look of terror and
surprise visible on Maddy’s face. “The past is right, but in future it
will be a little different, I am willing to accord to a governess all
the privileges possible. They are human as well as myself, but society
makes a difference. Don’t you know it does?”

“Yes—no—I don’t know. Oh, pray tell me what I am to do!” Maddy gasped,
her face as white as ashes, and her eyes wearing as yet only a scared,
uncertain look.

With little, graceful tosses of the head, which set in motion every one
of the brown curls, Mrs. Agnes replied:

“You are not, of course, to go to Mr. Remington. It is my matter, and
does not concern him. What I wish is this: You are to come to the
parlor only when invited, and are not to intrude upon us at any time,
particularly when company is here, such as—well, such as Dr. Holbrook,
if you please. As you cannot be with Jessie all the while, you will,
when your labors as governess are over, sit in your own room, or the
schoolroom, or walk in the back yard, just as the higher servants
do—such as Mrs. Noah and the sewing girl, Sarah. Occasionally we shall
have you in to dine with us, but usually you will take your meals with
Mrs. Noah and Sarah. By following these directions you will, I think,
give entire satisfaction.”

When Mrs. Agnes had finished this, Maddy began to understand her
position, and into her white face the hot blood poured indignantly.
Wholly inexperienced, she had never dreamed that a governess was not
worthy to sit at the same table with her employer, that she must never
enter the parlors unbidden, or intrude herself in any way. No wonder
that her cheeks burned at the degradation, or that, for an instant, she
felt like defying the proud woman to her face. But the angry words
trembling on her tongue were repressed as she remembered her
grandfather’s teachings; and with a bow as haughty as any Mrs. Agnes
could have made, and a look on her face which could not easily be
forgotten, she left the room, and in a kind of stunned bewilderment
sought the garden, where she could, unseen, give way to her feelings.

Once alone, the torrent burst forth, and burying her face in the soft
grass, she wept bitterly, never hearing the step coming near, and not
at first heeding the voice which asked what was the matter. Guy
Remington, too, had come out into the garden, accidentally wandering
that way, and so stumbling upon the little figure crying in the grass.
He knew it was Maddy, and greatly surprised to find her thus, asked
what was the matter. Then, as she did not hear him, he laid his hand
gently upon her shoulder, compelling her to look up. In all her
imaginings of Guy, she had never associated him with the man who had so
puzzled and confused her, and now she did not for a time suspect the
truth. She only thought him a guest at Aikenside; some one come with
Guy, and her degradation seemed greater than before. She was not
surprised when he called her by name; of course he remembered her, just
as she did him; but she did wonder a little what Mrs. Agnes would say,
could she know how kindly he spoke to her, lifting her from the grass
and leading her to a rustic seat at no great distance from them.

“Now, tell me why you are crying so?” he said, brushing from her silk
apron the spot of dirt which had settled upon it. “Are you homesick?”
he continued, and then Maddy burst out again.

She forgot that he was a stranger, forgot everything except that he
sympathized with her.

“Oh, sir,” she sobbed, “I was so happy here till they came home, Mrs.
Remington and Mr. Guy. I never thought it was a disgrace to be a
governess; never heard it was so considered, or that I was not good
enough to eat with them till she told me this. Oh, dear, dear!” and
choked with tears Maddy stopped a moment to take breath.

She did not look up at the young man beside her, and it was well she
did not, for the dark expression of his face would have frightened her.
Half guessing the truth, and impatient to hear more, he said to her:

“Go on,” so sternly, that she started, and replied:

“I know you are angry with me and I ought not to have told you.”

“I am not angry—not at you at least—go on,” was Guy’s reply, and Maddy
continued:

“She told me that now they had come home it would be different, that
only when invited must I come to the parlor, or anywhere, but must stay
in the servants’ part, and eat with Mrs. Noah and Sarah. I’d just as
soon do that. I am no better than they, only, only—the way she told me
made me feel so mean, as if I was not anybody, when I am,” and here
Maddy’s pride began to rise. “I’m just as good as she, if grandpa is
poor, and I won’t stay here to be treated like a nigger by her and Mr.
Guy. I liked him so much too, because he was kind to grandpa and to me
when I was sick. Yes, I did like him so much.”

“And how is it now?” Guy asked, wondering who in the world she thought
he was. “How is it now?”

“I s’pose it’s wicked to feel such things on Sunday, but, somehow, what
she said keeps making me so bad that I know I hate her, and I guess I
hate Mr. Guy!”

This was Maddy’s answer, spoken deliberately, while she looked up at
the young man, who, with a comical expression about his mouth, answered
back:

“I am Mr. Guy.” “You, you! Oh, I can’t bear it! I will die!” and Maddy
sprang up as quickly as if feeling an electric shock.

But Guy’s arm was interposed to stop her, and Guy’s arm held her back,
while he asked where she was going.

“Anywhere, out of sight where you can never see me again,” Maddy sobbed
vehemently. “It is bad enough to have you think me a fool, as you must;
but now, oh what do you think of me?”

“Nothing bad, I assure you,” Guy said, still holding her wrist to keep
her there. “I supposed you knew who I was, but as you did not, I
forgive you for hating me so cordially. If you thought I sanctioned
what Mrs. Remington has said to you, you had cause to dislike me, but
Miss Clyde, I do not, and this is the first intimation I have had that
you were to be treated other than as a lady. I am master of Aikenside,
not Mrs. Agnes, who shall be made to understand it.”

“Oh, please don’t quarrel about me. Let me go home, and then all will
be well,” Maddy cried, feeling, at that moment, more averse to leaving
Aikenside than she could have thought it possible.

“We shall not quarrel, but I shall have my way; meanwhile go to your
room and stay there until told that I have sent for you.”

They went to the house together, but separated in the hall; Maddy
repairing to her room, while Guy sought Mrs. Agnes. The moment she saw
his face she knew a storm was coming, but was not prepared for the
biting sarcasm and bitter reproaches heaped upon her by one who, when
roused, was a perfect hurricane.

Maybe she had forgotten what she was when his father married her, he
said, but he had not, and he remembered well the wonder expressed by
many that his father should stoop to marry a poor school teacher. “Yes,
that’s what you were, madam, much as you despise Maddy Clyde for being
a governess; you were one once yourself, and before that time mercy
knows what you were—a hired girl, perhaps—your present airs would seem
to warrant as much!”

Guy was in a sad passion by this time, and failed to note the effect
his last words had on Agnes, who turned livid with rage and terror; but
smothering down her wrath, she said beseechingly:

“Pray, Guy, do not be so angry; I know I am foolish about some things,
and proud people who ‘come up’ as you say always are, I guess; I know
that marrying your father made me what I am, but everybody does not
know it, and it is not necessary they should. I don’t remember exactly
what I did say to this Clyde girl, but I thought it would be pleasanter
for you, pleasanter for us all, not to have her always around; it seems
she has presided at the table when Dr. Holbrook was here to tea, and
even you can’t think that quite right.”

“I don’t know why,” and at mention of Dr. Holbrook Guy’s temper burst
out again. “Agnes, you can’t deceive me; I know the secret of your
abominable treatment of Maddy Clyde is jealousy.”

“Guy—jealous, I jealous of that child;” and Agnes’ voice was expressive
of the utmost consternation.

“Yes, jealous of that child; you think that because the doctor has been
kind to her, perhaps he wants her some time for his wife. I hope he
does; I mean to help it on; I’ll tell him to have her, and if he don’t
I’ll almost marry her myself!” and Guy paced up and down the parlor,
chafing and foaming like a young lion.

Agnes was conquered, and quite as much bewildered as Maddy had been;
she heard only in part how Maddy Clyde was henceforth to be treated.

“Yes, yes,” she gasped at last, as Guy talked on, “stop now, for
mercy’s sake, and I’ll do anything, only not this morning, my head
aches so I cannot go to the breakfast table; I must be excused,” and
holding her temples, which were throbbing with pain, induced by strong
excitement, Agnes hurried to her own room and threw herself upon the
bed, angry, mortified and subdued.

The breakfast bell had rung twice while Guy was holding that interview
with Agnes, and at last Mrs. Noah came up herself to learn the cause of
the delay; standing in the hall she heard a part of what was
transpiring in the parlor. Mrs. Noah was proud and jealous of her
master’s dignity, and once or twice the thought had crossed her mind
that perhaps when he came home Maddy would be treated more as some
governesses were treated by their employers, but to have Agnes take the
matter up was quite a different thing, and Mrs. Noah smiled with grim
satisfaction, as she heard Guy issuing orders as to how Miss Clyde
should be treated. Standing back to let Agnes pass, she waited a
moment, and then, as if she had just come up, presented herself before
Guy, asking if he were ready for breakfast.

“Yes, call Miss Clyde; tell her I sent for her,” was Guy’s answer, and
forthwith Mrs. Noah repaired to Maddy’s room, finding her still sobbing
bitterly.

“I cannot go down,” she said; “my face is all stains, and it’s so
dreadful, happening on Sunday, too. What would grandpa say?”

“You can wash off the stains. Come,” Mrs. Noah said, pouring water into
the bowl, and bidding Maddy hurry, “as Mr. Guy was waiting breakfast
for her.”

“But I am not to eat with them,” Maddy began, when Mrs. Noah stopped
her by explaining how Guy ruled that house, and Agnes had been
completely routed.

This did not quiet Maddy particularly, and her heart beat painfully as
she descended to the parlor, where Guy was still walking up and down.

“Come, Miss Clyde, Jessie is nearly famished,” he said pleasantly, as
Maddy appeared, and without the slightest reference to what had passed
he drew Maddy’s arm within his own, and giving a hand to Jessie, who
had just come in, he went to the breakfast room, where Maddy was told
to preside.

Guy watched her closely without seeming to do so, mentally deciding
that she was neither vulgar nor awkward. On the contrary, he thought
her very pretty, and very graceful for one so unaccustomed to society.
Nothing was said of Agnes, who kept her room the entire day, and did
not join the family until evening, when Guy sat upon the piazza with
Jessie in his lap, while Maddy was not very far away. At first there
was much constraint between Agnes and Maddy, but with Guy to manage, it
soon wore away, and Agnes felt herself exceedingly amiable when she
reflected how gracious she had been to her rival.

But Maddy could not so soon forget. All through the day the conviction
had been settling upon her that she could not stay at Aikenside, and so
on the following morning, just after breakfast was over, she summoned
courage to ask Mr. Guy if she might talk with film. Leading the way to
his library, he bade her sit down, while he took the chair opposite,
and then waited for her to commence.

Maddy was afraid of Guy. He did not seem quite like Dr. Holbrook. He
was haughtier in his appearance, while his rather elaborate style of
dress and polished manners gave him, in her estimation, a kind of
superiority over all the men she had ever met. Besides that, she
remembered how his dark eyes had flashed when she told him what she did
the previous day, and also that she had said to his face that she hated
him. She could not bear to leave a bad impression on his mind, so the
first words she said to him were:

“Mr. Remington, I can’t stay here after all that has happened. It would
not be pleasant for me or Mrs. Agnes, so I am going home, but I want
you to forget what I said about hating you yesterday. I did not then
know who you were. I don’t hate you. I like you, and I want you to like
me.”

She did not look at him, for her eyelids were cast down, and her lashes
were wet with the tears she could scarcely keep from shedding. Guy had
never known much about girls of Maddy’s age, and there was something
extremely fascinating in the artless simplicity of this half child,
half woman, sitting there before him, and asking him so demurely to
like her. She was very pretty, he thought, and with proper culture
would make a beautiful woman. Then, as he remembered his avowed
intention of urging the doctor to make her his wife some day, the idea
flashed upon him that it would be very generous, very magnanimous in
him to educate that young girl expressly for the doctor, and though he
hardly seemed to wait at all ere replying to Maddy, he had in the brief
interval formed a skeleton plan, and saw it in all its bearings and
triumphal result.

“I am much obliged for your liking me,” he said, a very little
mischievously. “You surely have not much reason so to do when you
recall the incidents of our first interview. Maddy—Miss Clyde—I have
come to the conclusion that I knew less than you did, and I beg your
pardon for annoying you so terribly.”

Then briefly Guy explained to her how it all had happened, blaming
himself far more than he did the doctor, who, he said, had repented
bitterly. “Had you died, Miss Clyde, when you were so sick, I half
believe he would have felt it his duty to die also. He likes you very
much; more indeed than any patient I ever knew him to have,” and Guy’s
eyes glanced curiously at Maddy to witness the effect his words might
have upon her. But Maddy merely answered:

“Yes, I think he does like me, and I know I like him.”

Mentally chastising himself for trying to find in Maddy’s head an idea
which evidently never was there, he began to speak of her proposition
of leave, saying he should not suffer it, Jessie needed her and she
must stay. She was not to mind the disagreeable things Mrs. Remington
had said. She was tired and nervous, and so gave way to some very
preposterous notions, which she had picked up somewhere. She would
treat Maddy better hereafter, and she must stay. It was pleasanter for
Jessie to have a companion so near her own age. Then, as he saw signs
of yielding in Maddy’s face, he continued:

“How would you like to turn scholar for a short time each day, I being
your teacher? Time often hangs heavily upon my hands, and I fancy the
novelty of the thing would suit me. I have books. I will appoint your
lessons and the hour for recitation.”

Guy’s face was scarlet by the time he finished speaking, for suddenly
he remembered to have heard or read of a similar instance which
resulted in the marriage of the teacher and pupil; besides that it
would subject him to so much remark, when it was known that he, the
fashionable and fastidious Guy, was teaching a pretty, attractive girl
like Maddy Clyde, and he sincerely hoped she would decline. But Maddy
had no such intention. Always in earnest herself, she supposed every
one else meant what they said, and without ever suspecting the peculiar
position in which such a proceeding would place both herself and Guy,
her heart leaped up at the idea of knowing what was in the books she
had never dared hope she might study. With her beautiful eyes full of
tears, which shone like diamonds, as she lifted them to Guy’s face, she
said:

“Oh, I thank you so much. You could not make me happier, and I’ll try
so hard to learn. They don’t teach such things at the district school;
and when there was a high school in Honedale I could not go, for it was
three dollars a quarter, and grandpa had no three dollars for me. Uncle
Joseph needed help, and so I stayed at home. It’s dreadful to be poor,
but, perhaps, I shall some time be competent to teach in a seminary,
and won’t that be grand? When may I begin?”

Guy had never met with so much frankness and simplicity in any one,
unless it were in Lucy Atherstone, of whom Maddy reminded him somewhat,
except that the latter was more practical, more—he hardly knew
what—only there was a difference, and a thought crossed his mind that
if Maddy had had all Lucy’s advantages, and was as old, she would be
what the world calls smarter. There was no disparagement to Lucy in his
thoughts, only a compliment to Maddy, who was waiting for him to answer
her question. There was no retracting now; he had offered his services;
she had accepted; and with a mental comment: “I dread Doc’s fun the
most, so I’ll explain to him how I am educating her for the future Mrs.
Dr. Holbrook,” he replied:

“As soon as I am rested from my journey, or sooner, if you like; and
now tell me, please, who is this Uncle Joseph of whom you speak?”

He remembered what the doctor had said of a crazy uncle, but wishing to
hear Maddy’s version of it, put to her the question he did.

“Uncle Joseph is grandma’s youngest brother,” Maddy answered, “and he
has been in the lunatic asylum for years. As long as his little
property lasted, his bills were paid, but now they keep him from
charity, only grandpa helps all he can, and buys some little nice
things which he wants so badly, and sometimes cries for, they say. I
picked berries all last summer, and sold to buy him a thin coat and
pants. We should have more to spend than we do, if it were not for
Uncle Joseph,” and Maddy’s face wore a thoughtful expression as she
recalled all the shifts and turns she’d seen made at home that the poor
maniac might be more comfortable.

“What made him crazy?” Guy asked, and after a moment’s hesitancy Maddy
replied: “I don’t believe grandma would mind my telling you, though she
don’t talk about it much. I only knew it a little while ago. He was
disappointed once. He loved a girl very much, and she made him think
that she loved him. She was many years younger than Uncle Joseph—about
my age at first, and when she grew up she said she was sick of him,
because he was so much older. He wouldn’t have felt so badly, if she
had not gone straight off and married a rich man who was a great deal
older even than Uncle Joseph; that was the hardest part, and he grew
crazy at once. It has been so long that he never can be helped, and
sometimes grandma talks of bringing him home, as he is perfectly
harmless. I suppose it’s wicked, but I most hope she won’t, for it
would be terrible to live with a crazy man,” and a chill crept over
Maddy, as if there had fallen upon her a foreshadowing of what might
yet be. “Mr. Remington,” she continued suddenly, “if you teach me, I
can’t, of course, expect three dollars a week. It would not be right.”

“Perfectly right,” he answered. “Your services to Jessie will be worth
just as much as ever, so give yourself no trouble on that score.”

He was the best man that ever lived, Maddy thought, and so she told the
doctor that afternoon when, as he rode up to Aikenside, she met him out
on the lawn before he reached the house.

It did strike the doctor a little comically that one of Guy’s habits
should offer to turn school teacher, but Maddy was so glad, that he was
glad too, and doubly glad that across the sea there was a Lucy
Atherstone. How he wished that she was there now as Mrs. Guy, and he
must tell Guy so that very day. Seated in Guy’s library, the
opportunity soon occurred, Guy approaching the subject himself by
saying:

“Guess, Hal, what crazy project I have just embarked in.”

“I know without guessing; Maddy told me,” and the doctor’s eyebrows
were elevated just a little as he crossed his feet upon the window sill
and moved his chair so as to have a better view of Maddy and Jessie
romping in the grass.

“And so you don’t approve?” was Guy’s next remark, to which the doctor
replied:

“Why, yes; it’s a grand thing for her, providing you know enough to
teach her; but, Guy, this is a confounded gossiping neighborhood, and
folks will talk, I’m afraid.”

“Talk about what!” and Guy bridled up as his independent spirit began
to rise, “What harm is there in my doing a generous act to a poor girl
like Maddy Clyde? Isn’t she graceful as a kitten, though?” and Guy
nodded toward the spot where she was playing.

It annoyed the doctor to have Guy praise Maddy, but he would not show
it, and answered calmly:

“It’s all right in you, but just because the poor girl is Maddy Clyde,
folks will talk. She is too handsome, Guy, for Madam Grundy to let
alone. If Lucy were only here, it would be different. Why, in the name
of wonder, are you two not married, if you are ever going to be?”

“Jealous, as I live!” and Guy’s hand came down playfully on the
doctor’s shoulder. “I did not suppose you had got as far as that. You
are afraid of the effect it may have on me teaching a sweet-faced
little girl how to conjugate amo; and to cover up your own interest,
you bring Lucy forward as an argument. Eh, Hal, have I not probed the
secret?”

The doctor was in no mood for joking, and only smiled gloomily, while
Guy continued:

“Honestly, doctor, I am doing it for you. I imagine you fancy her, as
well you may. She’ll make a splend’d woman, but she needs educating, of
course, and I am going to do it. You ought to thank me, instead of
looking so like a thundercloud,” and Guy laughed merrily.

The doctor was ashamed of his mood, and could not tell what spirit
prompted him to answer:

“I am obliged to you, Guy; but as far as I am concerned, you may spare
yourself the trouble. If my wife needs educating, I can do it myself.”

Guy was puzzled. Could it be that, after all, he was deceived, and the
doctor did not care for Maddy? It might be, and he hastened to change
the conversation to another topic than Maddy Clyde. The doctor stayed
to dinner, and as Guy watched him closely, he made up his mind that he
did care for Maddy Clyde, and this confirmed him in his plan of
educating her for him.

Magnanimous Guy! He felt himself very good, very generous, very
condescending, and very forgiving, the early portion of the afternoon;
but later in the day he began to view Guy Remington in the light of a
martyr, said martyrdom consisting in the scornful toss of the head with
which Agnes had listened to his plan, and the open opposition of Mrs.
Noah.

“Was he beside himself, or what?” this worthy asked. “She liked Maddy
Clyde, to be sure, but it wasn’t for him to demean himself by turning
her school master. Folks would talk awfully, and she couldn’t blame
’em; besides, what would Lucy say to his bein’ alone in a room with a
girl as pretty as Maddy? It was a duty he owed her at any rate to tell
her all about it, and if she said ’twas right, why, go it.”

This was the drift of Mrs. Noah’s remarks, and as Guy depended much on
her judgment, he decided to write to Lucy to see if she had the
slightest objections to his teaching Maddy Clyde. Accordingly he wrote
that very night, telling her frankly all he knew concerning Maddy
Clyde, and narrating the circumstances under which he first had met
her, being careful also to repeat what he knew would have weight with
an English girl like Lucy, to wit, that though poor, Maddy’s father and
grandfather Clyde had been gentlemen, the one a clergyman, the other a
sea captain. Then he told of her desire for learning, and his plan to
teach her himself, of what the doctor and Mrs. Noah said about it, and
his final determination to consult her. Then he described Maddy
herself, feeling a strange thrill as he told how pure, how innocent,
how artless and beautiful she was, and asked if Lucy feared aught from
his association with her.

“If you do,” he wrote, “you have but to say so, and though I am
committed, I will extricate myself in some way rather than wound you in
the slightest degree.”

It would be some time ere an answer to this letter could be received,
and until such time Guy could not honorably hear Maddy’s lessons as he
had agreed to do. But Maddy was not suspicious, and accepting his
trivial excuse, waited patiently, while he, too, waited for the letter,
wondering what it would contain.




CHAPTER XII.
A GENEROUS LETTER.


At last the answer came, and it was Maddy who brought it to Guy. She
had been home that day, and on her return had ridden by the office as
Guy had requested her to do. She saw the letter bore a foreign
postmark, also that it was in the delicate handwriting of some female,
but the sight did not affect her in the least. Maddy’s heart was far
too heavy that day to care for a trifle, and so placing the letter
carefully in her basket she kept on to Aikenside.

The letter was decidedly Lucy-ish in all that pertained to her “dearest
darling,” her “precious Guy,” but when she came to Maddy Clyde, her
true, womanly nature spoke; and Guy, while reading it, felt how good
she was. Of course he might teach Maddy Clyde all he wished to teach
her, and it made Lucy love him better to know that he was willing to do
such things. She wished she was there to help him; they would open a
school for all the poor, but she did not know when mamma would let her
come. That pain in her side was not any better, and her cough had come
earlier this season than last. The physician had advised a winter in
Naples, and they were going before very long. It would be pleasant
there, no doubt, only she should be farther away from her boy Guy, but
she would think of him, oh, so often, teaching that dear little Maddy
Clyde, and she would pray for him, too, just as she always did. Then
followed a few more lines sacred to the lover’s eye, lines which told
how pure was the love which sweet Lucy Atherstone bore for Guy
Remington, who, as he read, felt his heart beat with a throb of pain,
for Lucy spoke to him now for the first time of what might possibly be.

“I’ve dreamed about it nights,” she said. “I’ve thought about it days,
and tried so hard to be reconciled; to feel that if God will have it
so, I am willing to die before you have ever called me your little
wife, or I have ever called you husband. Heaven is better than earth, I
know, and I am sure of going there, I think, but oh, dear Guy, a life
with you looks so very sweet, that sometimes your little Lucy shrinks
from the dark grave, which would hide her forever from you. Guy, you
once said you never prayed, and it made me feel so badly, but you will,
when you get this, won’t you? You will ask God to make me well, and may
be He will hear you. Do, Guy, please do pray for your Lucy, far away
over the sea.”

Guy could not resist that touching appeal, “to pray for his little
Lucy,” and though his lips were all unused to prayer, bowing his head
upon his hands he did ask that she might live, beseeching the Father to
send upon him any calamity save this one—Lucy must be spared. Guy felt
better for having prayed, it was something to tell Lucy, something that
would please her well, and though his heart yet was very sad, a part of
the load was lifted, and he could think of Lucy now without the bitter
pain her letter first had cost him. Was there nothing that would save
her, nobody who could cure her? Her disease was not hereditary; surely
it might be made to yield; had English physicians no skill, would not
an American do better? It was possible, and if that mother of Lucy’s
would let her come where doctors knew something, she might get well;
but she wouldn’t; she was determined that no husband should be burdened
with an ailing wife, and so if the mountain would not come to Mahomet,
why, Mahomet must go to the mountain, and Guy fairly leaped from his
chair as he exclaimed: “I have it—Doc!—he’s the most skillful man I
ever knew; I’ll send him to England; send him to the Atherstones; he
shall go to Naples with them as their family physician; he can cure
Lucy; I’ll speak to him the very next time he comes here;” and with
another burden lifted from his mind, Guy began to wonder where Maddy
was, and why that day had been so long.

He knew she had returned, for Flora had said she brought the letter,
and he was about going out, in hopes of finding her and Jessie, when he
heard her in the hall, as she answered some question of Mrs. Noah’s;
stepping to the door, he asked her to come in, saying he would, if she
chose, appoint the lessons talked about so long. Ordinarily, Maddy’s
eyes would have flashed with delight, for she had anticipated so much
from these lessons; now, however, there was a sad look upon her face
and she could scarcely keep from crying as she came at Guy’s bidding,
and sat upon the sofa, near to his armchair. Somehow it rested Guy to
look at Maddy Clyde, who, having recovered from her illness, seemed the
very embodiment of perfect health, a health which glowed and sparkled
all over her bright face; showing itself as well in the luxuriance of
her glossy hair as in the brilliancy of her complexion, and the flash
of her lustrous eyes. How Guy wished that Lucy could share in what
seemed almost superfluity of health; and why shouldn’t she? Dr.
Holbrook had cured Maddy; Dr. Holbrook could cure Lucy; and so for the
present dismissing that from his mind, he turned to Maddy, and said the
time had come when he could give those promised lessons, asking if she
would commence to-morrow, after she was through with Jessie, and what
she would prefer to take up first?

“Oh, Mr. Remington,” and Maddy began to cry: “I am afraid I cannot stay
they need me at home, or maybe Grandpa said so and I don’t want to go,
though I know it’s wicked not to; oh, dear, dear!”

Here Maddy broke down entirely, sobbing so convulsively that Guy became
alarmed, and wondered what he ought to do to quiet her. As she sat the
bowed head was just within his reach, and so he very naturally laid his
hand upon it, and as if it had been Jessie’s smoothed the silken hair,
while he asked why she must go home. Had anything occurred to make her
presence more necessary than it was at Aikenside? and into the young
man’s heart there crept a feeling that Aikenside would be very lonely
without Maddy Clyde.

Controlling her voice as well as she was able, Maddy told him how the
physicians at the asylum had written that as Uncle Joseph would in all
human probability never be perfectly sane, and as a change of scene
would do him good, Mr. Markham had better try taking him a while; that
having been spoken with upon the subject, he seemed as anxious as a
little child, even crying when the night came around and he was not at
home, as he expressed it. “They have kept him so long,” Maddy said,
“that grandpa thought it his duty to relieve them, though he can’t well
afford it, and so he’s coming next week, and grandma will need some one
to help, and I must go. I know it’s wrong, but I do not want to go, try
as I will.”

It was a gloomy prospect to exchange Aikenside for the humble home
where poverty had its abode, and it was not very strange that Maddy
should shrink from it at first. She did not stop to ask what was her
duty, or think how much happiness her presence might give her
grandparents, or how much she might cheer and amuse the weak imbecile,
her uncle. She was but human, and so when Guy began to devise ways of
preventing her going, she listened, while the pain at her heart grew
less as her faith in Guy grew stronger. He would drive down with her
to-morrow, he said, and see what could be done. Meanwhile she must dry
her eyes and go to Jessie, who was calling her.

As Guy had half expected, the doctor came around that evening, and
inviting him into his private room, Guy proceeded at once to unfold his
scheme, asking him first:

“How much he probably received a year for his services as physician.”

The doctor could not tell at once, but after a little thought made an
estimate, and then inquired why Guy had asked the question.

“Because, Doc, I have a project on foot. Lucy Atherstone is dying with
what they call consumption. I don’t believe those old fogies understand
her disease, and if you will go over to England and undertake her cure,
I’ll give you just double what you’ll get by remaining here. They are
going to Naples for the winter, and, undoubtedly, will spend some time
in Paris. It will be just the thing for you. Lucy and her mother will
be glad of your services when they know I sent you, Lucy likes you now.
Will you go? You can trust Maddy to me. I’ll take good care that she is
worthy of you when you come back.”

At the mention of Maddy’s name, the doctor’s brow darkened. He was sure
that Guy meant kindly, but it grated on his feelings to be thus joked
about what he knew was a stern reality. Guy’s project appeared to him
at first a most in

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