CHAPTER X
JACK'S MISCHIEF
One of the first results of the new prosperity which had dawned upon the Hardings, was Jack's removal from the street to the school. While his father was out of employment, his earnings seemed necessary; but now they could be dispensed with.
To Jack, the change was not altogether agreeable. Few boys of the immature age of eleven are devoted to study, and Jack was not one of these few. The freedom which he had enjoyed suited him, and he tried to impress it upon his father that there was no immediate need of his returning to school.
"Do you want to grow up a dunce, Jack?" said his father.
"I can read and write already," said Jack.
"Are you willing to enter upon life with that scanty supply of knowledge?"
"Oh, I guess I can get along as well as the average."
"I don't know about that. Besides, I want you to do better than the average. I am ambitious for you, if you are not ambitious for yourself."
"I don't see what good it does a feller to study so hard," muttered Jack.
"You won't study hard enough to do you any harm," said Aunt Rachel, who might be excused for a little sarcasm at the expense of her mischievous nephew.
"It makes my head ache to study," said Jack.
"Perhaps your head is weak, Jack," suggested his father, slyly.
"More than likely," said Rachel, approvingly.
So it was decided that Jack should go to school.
"I'll get even with Aunt Rachel," thought he. "She's always talking against me, and hectorin' me. See if I don't."
An opportunity for getting even with his aunt did not immediately occur. At length a plan suggested itself to our hero. He shrewdly suspected that his aunt's single blessedness, and her occasional denunciations of the married state, proceeded from disappointment.
"I'll bet she'd get married if she had a chance," he thought. "I mean to try her, anyway."
Accordingly, with considerable effort, aided by a school-fellow, he concocted the following letter, which was duly copied and forwarded to his aunt's address:
"DEAR GIRL: Excuse the liberty I have taken in writing to you; but I have seen you often, though you don't know me; and you are the only girl I want to marry. I am not young—I am about your age, thirty-five—and I have a good trade. I have always wanted to be married, but you are the only one I know of to suit me. If you think you can love me, will you meet me in Washington Park, next Tuesday, at four o'clock? Wear a blue ribbon round your neck, if you want to encourage me. I will have a red rose pinned to my coat.
"Don't say anything to your brother's family about this. They may not like me, and they may try to keep us apart. Now be sure and come.
DANIEL."
This letter reached Miss Rachel just before Jack went to school one morning. She read it through, first in surprise, then with an appearance of pleasure.
"Who's your letter from, Aunt Rachel?" asked Jack, innocently.
"Children shouldn't ask questions about what don't concern 'em," said his aunt.
"I thought maybe it was a love letter," said he.
"Don't make fun of your aunt," said his father, reprovingly.
"Jack's question is only a natural one," said Rachel, to her brother's unbounded astonishment. "I suppose I ain't so old but I might be married if I wanted to."
"I thought you had put all such thoughts out of your head long ago, Rachel."
"If I have, it's because the race of men are so shiftless," said his sister. "They ain't worth marrying."
"Is that meant for me?" asked the cooper, good-naturedly.
"You're all alike," said Rachel, tossing her head.
She put the letter carefully into her pocket, without deigning any explanation.
"I suppose it's from some of her old acquaintances," thought her brother, and he dismissed the subject.
As soon as she could, Rachel took refuge in her room. She carefully locked the door, and read the letter again.
"Who can he be?" thought the agitated spinster. "Do I know anybody of the name of Daniel? It must be some stranger that has fallen in love with me unbeknown. What shall I do?"
She sat in meditation for a short time. Then she read the letter again.
"He will be very unhappy if I frown upon him," she said to herself, complacently. "It's a great responsibility to make a fellow being unhappy. It's a sacrifice, I know, but it's our duty to deny ourselves. I don't know but I ought to go and meet him."
This was Rachel's conclusion.
The time was close at hand. The appointment was for that very afternoon.
"I wouldn't have my brother or Martha know it for the world," murmured Rachel to herself, "nor that troublesome Jack. Martha's got some blue ribbon, but I don't dare to ask her for it, for fear she'll suspect something. No, I must go out and buy some."
"I'm goin' to walk, Martha," she said, as she came downstairs.
"Going to walk in the forenoon! Isn't that something unusual?"
"I've got a little headache. I guess it'll do me good," said Rachel.
"I hope it will," said her sister-in-law, sympathetically.
Rachel went to the nearest dry-goods store, and bought a yard of blue ribbon.
"Only a yard?" inquired the clerk, in some surprise.
"That will do," said Rachel, nervously, coloring a little, as though the use which she designed for it might be suspected.
She paid for the ribbon, and presently returned.
"Does your head feel any better, Rachel?" asked Mrs. Harding.
"A little," answered Rachel.
"You've been sewing too steady lately, perhaps?" suggested Martha.
"Perhaps I have," assented Rachel.
"You ought to spare yourself. You can't stand work as well as when you were younger," said Martha, innocently.
"A body'd think I was a hundred by the way you talk," said Rachel, sharply.
"I didn't mean to offend you, Rachel. I thought you might feel as I do. I get tired easier than I used to."
"I guess I'll go upstairs," said Rachel, in the same tone. "There isn't anybody there to tell me how old I am gettin'."
"It's hard to make Rachel out," thought Mrs. Harding. "She takes offense at the most innocent remark. She can't look upon herself as young, I am sure."
Upstairs Rachel took out the letter again, and read it through once more. "I wonder what sort of a man Daniel is," she said to herself. "I wonder if I have ever noticed him. How little we know what others think of us! If he's a likely man, maybe it's my duty to marry him. I feel I'm a burden to Timothy. His income is small, and it'll make a difference of one mouth. It may be a sacrifice, but it's my duty."
In this way Rachel tried to deceive herself as to the real reason which led her to regard with favoring eyes the suit of this supposed lover whom she had never seen, and about whom she knew absolutely nothing.
Jack came home from school at half-past two o'clock. He looked roguishly at his aunt as he entered. She sat knitting in her usual corner.
"Will she go?" thought Jack. "If she doesn't there won't be any fun."
But Jack, whose trick I am far from defending, was not to be disappointed.
At three o'clock Rachel rolled up her knitting, and went upstairs. Fifteen minutes later she came down dressed for a walk.
"Where are you going, Aunt Rachel?" asked Jack.
"Out for a walk," she answered, shortly.
"May I go with you?" he asked, mischievously.
"No; I prefer to go alone," she said, curtly.
"Your aunt has taken a fancy to walking," said Mrs. Harding, when her sister-in-law had left the house. "She was out this forenoon. I don't know what has come over her."
"I do," said Jack to himself.
Five minutes later he put on his hat and bent his steps also to Washington Park.
CHAPTER XI
MISS HARDING'S MISTAKE
Miss Rachel Harding kept on her way to Washington Park. It was less than a mile from her brother's house, and though she walked slowly, she got there a quarter of an hour before the time.
She sat down on a seat near the center of the park, and began to look around her. Poor Rachel! her heart beat quicker than it had done for thirty years, as she realized that she was about to meet one who wished to make her his wife.
"I hope he won't be late," she murmured to herself, and she felt of the blue ribbon to make sure that she had not forgotten it.
Meanwhile Jack reached the park, and from a distance surveyed with satisfaction the evident nervousness of his aunt.
"Ain't it rich?" he whispered to himself.
Rachel looked anxiously for the gentleman with the red rose pinned to his coat.
She had to wait ten minutes. At last he came, but as he neared her seat, Rachel felt like sinking into the earth with mortification when she recognized in the wearer a stalwart negro. She hoped that it was a mere chance coincidence, but he approached her, and raising his hat respectfully, said:
"Are you Miss Harding?"
"What if I am?" she demanded, sharply. "What have you to do with me?"
The man looked surprised.
"Didn't you send word to me to meet you here?"
"No!" answered Rachel, "and I consider it very presumptuous in you to write such a letter to me."
"I didn't write you a letter," said the negro, astonished.
"Then what made you come here?" demanded the spinster.
"Because you wrote to me."
"I wrote to you!" exclaimed Rachel, aghast.
"Yes, you wrote to me to come here. You said you'd wear a blue ribbon on your neck, and I was to have a rose pinned to my coat."
Rachel was bewildered.
"How could I write to you when I never saw you before, and don't know your name. Do you think a lady like me would marry a colored man?"
"Who said anything about that?" asked the other, opening his eyes wide in astonishment. "I couldn't marry, nohow, for I've got a wife and four children."
Rachel felt ready to collapse. Was it possible that she had made a mistake, and that this was not her unknown correspondent, Daniel?
"There is some mistake," she said, nervously. "Where is that letter you thought I wrote? Have you got it with you?"
"Here it is, ma'am."
He handed Rachel a letter addressed in a small hand to Daniel Thompson.
She opened it and read:
"Mr. Thompson: I hear you are out of work. I may be able to give you a job. Meet me at Washington Park, Tuesday afternoon, at four o'clock. I shall wear a blue ribbon round my neck, and you may have a red rose pinned to your coat. Otherwise I might not know you.
"RACHEL HARDING."
"Some villain has done this," said Rachel, wrathfully. "I never wrote that letter."
"You didn't!" said Daniel, looking perplexed. "Who went and did it, then?"
"I don't know, but I'd like to have him punished for it," said Rachel, energetically.
"But you've got a blue ribbon," said Mr. Thompson. "I can't see through that. That's just what the letter said."
"I suppose somebody wrote the letter that knew I wear blue. It's all a mistake. You'd better go home."
"Then haven't you got a job for me?" asked Daniel, disappointed.
"No, I haven't," said Rachel, sharply.
She hurriedly untied the ribbon from her neck, and put it in her pocket.
"Don't talk to me any more!" she said, frowning. "You're a perfect stranger. You have no right to speak to me."
"I guess the old woman ain't right in her head!" thought Daniel. "Must be she's crazy!"
Poor Rachel! she felt more disconsolate than ever. There was no Daniel, then. She had been basely imposed upon. There was no call for her to sacrifice herself on the altar of matrimony. She ought to have been glad, but she wasn't.
Half an hour later a drooping, disconsolate figure entered the house of Timothy Harding.
"Why, what's the matter, Rachel?" asked Martha, who noticed her woe-begone expression.
"I ain't long for this world," said Rachel, gloomily. "Death has marked me for his own."
"Don't you feel well this afternoon, Rachel?"
"No; I feel as if life was a burden."
"You have tired yourself with walking, Rachel. You have been out twice to-day."
"This is a vale of tears," said Rachel, hysterically. "There's nothin' but sorrow and misfortune to be expected."
"Have you met with any misfortune? I thought fortune was smiling upon us all."
"It'll never smile on me again," said Rachel, despondently.
Just then Jack, who had followed his aunt home, entered.
"Have you got home so quick, Aunt Rachel?" he asked. "How did you enjoy your walk?"
"I shall never enjoy anything again," said his aunt, gloomily.
"Why not?"
"Because there's nothing to enjoy."
"I don't feel so, aunt. I feel as merry as a cricket."
"You won't be long. Like as not you'll be took down with fever to-morrow, and maybe die."
"I won't trouble myself about it till the time comes," said Jack. "I expect to live to dance at your wedding yet, Aunt Rachel."
This reference was too much. It brought to Rachel's mind the Daniel to whom she had expected to link her destiny, and she burst into a dismal sob, and hurried upstairs to her own chamber.
"Rachel acts queerly to-day," said Mrs. Harding. "I think she can't be feeling well. If she don't feel better to-morrow I shall advise her to send for the doctor."
"I am afraid it was mean to play such a trick on Aunt Rachel," thought Jack, half repentantly. "I didn't think she'd take it so much in earnest. I must keep dark about that letter. She'd never forgive me if she knew."
For some days there was an added gloom on Miss Rachel's countenance, but the wound was not deep; and after a time her disappointment ceased to rankle in her too sensitive heart.
CHAPTER XII
SEVEN YEARS
Seven years slipped by unmarked by any important change. The Hardings were still prosperous in an humble way. The cooper had been able to obtain work most of the time, and this, with the annual remittance for little Ida, had enabled the family not only to live in comfort, but even to save up one hundred and fifty dollars a year. They might even have saved more, living as frugally as they were accustomed to do, but there was one point in which they would none of them consent to be economical. The little Ida must have everything she wanted. Timothy brought home nearly every day some little delicacy for her, which none of the rest thought of sharing. While Mrs. Harding, far enough from vanity, always dressed with extreme plainness, Ida's attire was always of good material and made up tastefully.
Sometimes the little girl asked: "Mother, why don't you buy yourself some of the pretty things you get for me?"
Mrs. Harding would answer, smiling: "Oh, I'm an old woman, Ida. Plain things are best for me."
"No, I'm sure you're not old, mother. You don't wear a cap. Aunt Rachel is a good deal older than you."
"Hush, Ida. Don't let Aunt Rachel hear that. She wouldn't like it."
"But she is ever so much older than you, mother," persisted the child.
Once Rachel heard a remark of this kind, and perhaps it was that that prejudiced her against Ida. At any rate, she was not one of those who indulged her. Frequently she rebuked her for matters of no importance; but it was so well understood in the cooper's household that this was Aunt Rachel's way, that Ida did not allow it to trouble her, as the lightest reproach from Mrs. Harding would have done.
Had Ida been an ordinary child, all this petting would have had an injurious effect upon her mind. But, fortunately, she had the rare simplicity, young as she was, which lifted her above the dangers which might have spoiled her otherwise. Instead of being made vain and conceited, she only felt grateful for the constant kindness shown her by her father and mother, and brother Jack, as she was wont to call them. Indeed it had not been thought best to let her know that such were not the actual relations in which they stood to her.
There was one point, much more important than dress, in which Ida profited by the indulgence of her friends.
"Martha," the cooper was wont to say, "Ida is a sacred charge in our hands. If we allow her to grow up ignorant, or only allow her ordinary advantages, we shall not fulfill our duty. We have the means, through Providence, of giving her some of those advantages which she would enjoy if she had remained in that sphere to which her parents doubtless belong. Let no unwise parsimony on our part withhold them from her."
"You are right, Timothy," said his wife; "right, as you always are. Follow the dictates of your own heart, and fear not that I shall disapprove."
"Humph!" said Aunt Rachel; "you ain't actin' right, accordin' to my way of thinkin'. Readin', writin' and cypherin' was enough for girls to learn in my day. What's the use of stuffin' the girl's head full of nonsense that'll never do her no good? I've got along without it, and I ain't quite a fool."
But the cooper and his wife had no idea of restricting Ida's education to the rather limited standard indicated by Rachel. So, from the first, they sent her to a carefully selected private school, where she had the advantage of good associates, and where her progress was astonishingly rapid.
Ida early displayed a remarkable taste for drawing. As soon as this was discovered, her adopted parents took care that she should have abundant opportunity for cultivating it. A private master was secured, who gave her lessons twice a week, and boasted everywhere of the progress made by his charming young pupil.
"What's the good of it?" asked Rachel. "She'd a good deal better be learnin' to sew and knit."
"All in good time," said Timothy. "She can attend to both."
"I never wasted my time that way," said Rachel. "I'd be ashamed to."
Nothing could exceed Timothy's gratification, when, on his birthday, Ida presented him with a beautifully drawn sketch of his wife's placid and benevolent face.
"When did you do it, Ida?" he asked, after earnest expressions of admiration.
"I did it in odd minutes," she answered, "when I had nothing else to do."
"But how could you do it, without any of us knowing what you were about?"
"I had a picture before me, and you thought I was copying it, but, whenever I could do it without being noticed, I looked up at mother as she sat at her sewing, and so, after a while, I finished the picture."
"And a fine one it is," said the cooper, admiringly.
Mrs. Harding insisted that Ida had flattered her, but this Ida would not admit.
"I couldn't make it look as good as you, mother," she said. "I tried, but somehow I didn't succeed as I wanted to."
"You wouldn't have that difficulty with Aunt Rachel," said Jack, roguishly.
Ida could not help smiling, but Rachel did not smile.
"I see," she said, with severe resignation, "that you've taken to ridiculing your poor aunt again. But it's only what I expect. I don't never expect any consideration in this house. I was born to be a martyr, and I expect I shall fulfill my destiny. If my own relations laugh at me, of course I can't expect anything better from other folks. But I shan't be long in the way. I've had a cough for some time past, and I expect I'm in consumption."
"You make too much of a little joke, Rachel," said the cooper, soothingly. "I'm sure Jack didn't mean anything."
"What I said was complimentary," said Jack.
Rachel shook her head incredulously.
"Yes, it was. Ask Ida. Why won't you draw Aunt Rachel, Ida? I think she'd make a very striking picture."
"So I will," said Ida, hesitatingly, "if she will let me."
"Now, Aunt Rachel, there's a chance for you," said Jack. "Take my advice, and improve it. When it's finished it can be hung up in the Art Rooms, and who knows but you may secure a husband by it."
"I wouldn't marry," said Rachel, firmly compressing her lips; "not if anybody'd go down on their knees to me."
"Now, I'm sure, Aunt Rachel, that's cruel of you," said Jack, demurely.
"There ain't any man I'd trust my happiness to," pursued the spinster.
"She hasn't any to trust," observed Jack, sotto voce.
"Men are all deceivers," continued Rachel, "the best of 'em. You can't believe what one of 'em says. It would be a great deal better if people never married at all."
"Then where would the world be a hundred years hence?" suggested her nephew.
"Come to an end, most likely," answered Aunt Rachel; "and I'm not sure but that would be the best thing. It's growing more and more wicked every day."
It will be seen that no great change has come over Miss Rachel Harding, during the years that have intervened. She takes the same disheartening view of human nature and the world's prospects as ever. Nevertheless, her own hold upon the world seems as strong as ever. Her appetite continues remarkably good, and, although she frequently expresses herself to the effect that there is little use in living, she would be as unwilling to leave the world as anyone. It is not impossible that she derives as much enjoyment from her melancholy as other people from their cheerfulness. Unfortunately her peculiar mode of enjoying herself is calculated to have rather a depressing influence upon the spirits of those with whom she comes in contact—always excepting Jack, who has a lively sense of the ludicrous, and never enjoys himself better than in bantering his aunt.
"I don't expect to live more'n a week," said Rachel, one day. "My sands of life are 'most run out."
"Are you sure of that, Aunt Rachel?" asked Jack.
"Yes, I've got a presentiment that it's so."
"Then, if you're sure of it," said her nephew, gravely, "it may be as well to order the coffin in time. What style would you prefer?"
Rachel retreated to her room in tears, exclaiming that he needn't be in such a hurry to get her out of the world; but she came down to supper, and ate with her usual appetite.
Ida is no less a favorite with Jack than with the rest of the household. Indeed, he has constituted himself her especial guardian. Rough as he is in the playground, he is always gentle with her. When she was just learning to walk, and in her helplessness needed the constant care of others, he used, from choice, to relieve his mother of much of the task of amusing the child. He had never had a little sister, and the care of a child as young as Ida was a novelty to him. It was perhaps this very office of guardian to the child, assumed when she was young, that made him feel ever after as if she were placed under his special protection.
Ida was equally attached to Jack. She learned to look to him for assistance in any plan she had formed, and he never disappointed her. Whenever he could, he would accompany her to school, holding her by the hand, and, fond as he was of rough play, nothing would induce him to leave her.
"How long have you been a nursemaid?" asked a boy older than himself, one day.
Jack's fingers itched to get hold of his derisive questioner, but he had a duty to perform, and he contented himself with saying: "Just wait a few minutes, and I'll let you know."
"I dare say you will," was the reply. "I rather think I shall have to wait till both of us are gray before that time."
"You will not have to wait long before you are black and blue," retorted Jack.
"Don't mind what he says, Jack," whispered Ida, fearing that he would leave her.
"Don't be afraid, Ida; I won't leave you. I'll attend to his business another time. I guess he won't trouble us to-morrow."
Meanwhile the boy, emboldened by Jack's passiveness, followed, with more abuse of the same sort. If he had been wiser, he would have seen a storm gathering in the flash of Jack's eye; but he mistook the cause of his forbearance.
The next day, as they were going to school, Ida saw the same boy dodging round the corner with his head bound up.
"What's the matter with him, Jack?" she asked.
"I licked him like blazes, that's all," said Jack, quietly. "I guess he'll let us alone after this."
Even after Jack left school, and got a position in a store at two dollars a week, he gave a large part of his spare time to Ida.
"Really," said Mrs. Harding, "Jack is as careful of Ida as if he was her guardian."
"A pretty sort of a guardian he is!" said Aunt Rachel. "Take my word for it, he's only fit to lead her into mischief."
"You do him injustice, Rachel. Jack is not a model boy, but he takes the best care of Ida."
Rachel shrugged her shoulders, and sniffed significantly. It was quite evident that she did not have a very favorable opinion of her nephew.