A Princess in Calico

‘Ain’t had nuthin’. Martha Spriggs don’t hev any. She only knows “the cow that jumped over the moon,” an’ that’s no good: ‘tain’t true, nuther, fer our cows don’t do it.’

No time the next morning for the long hours of delightful study. It was churning day, and there was baking to be done, and the mending was behindhand, and the children needed clothes; besides the numerous ‘odd jobs’ which Mrs Harding had deferred, but which she was prompt to require done as soon as she had some one besides Martha to call on. Then her meals must be given to her, and nothing tasted right, and the children were so noisy, and the older boys so uncouth.

Wearily Pauline toiled up the narrow stairs with Polly as the clock struck nine. She laid the sleeping child on her bed softly, so as not to wake Lemuel, and knelt down by the window. Not a sound broke the stillness. Her thoughts flew to the blue-draped chamber, and the soft lighted library, where she could almost see Uncle Robert and Aunt Rutha, and Belle and Richard, and Russell and Gwen. But they might not be there yet; they had set apart this night, she remembered, to run over for a look through the big telescope. Last week that was, before she had decided to come to Sleepy Hollow, and broken up all their happy plans. Only last week! Then she thought of Tryphosa, lying with closed eyes in her darkened room, waiting patiently for the sleep which so often refused to come, while the angel of pain brooded over her pillow. Then her eyes sought the stars.

‘You dear things!’ she whispered. ‘God put you in your places and told you to shine, and for all these hundreds of years you’ve just kept on shining. Oh! my lady, ask God to help me to make this dark place bright.’

She knelt on in the clear, cold moonlight until at last the hush of God’s peace crept into her heart, and there was a great calm.

The winter crept on steadily. Jack Frost threw photographs of fairyland upon the windows, and hung the roofs with fringes of crystal pendants, while the snowflakes piled themselves over the fences and made a shroud for the trees, and every day Pauline, with this strange peace in her heart, did her housework to the glory of God.

There were bright spots here and there, for the Boston letters came freely, and the magazines which she had liked best, and now and then a book, as Belle said, ‘to keep Mr Hallam company.’ They would not let her drop out of their life, these kind friends, and she took it all thankfully, though she could only glance at the magazines, and never opened the books. There would be time by-and-by, she said to herself cheerfully. There was so much waiting for her in the beautiful by-and-by.

‘It beats me,’ said Mrs Harding fretfully, as Pauline hushed Polly to sleep, ‘what you do to that child. I used to sing to her till my throat cracked, but you just smooth her hair awhile with those fingers of yours, and off she goes. I wish you’d come and smooth me off to sleep. I’m that tired lying here, I don’t know what to do. That new doctor’s no more good than his powders are. I don’t see what old Dr Ross had to die for, just before I was goin’ ter need him.’ And the sick woman groaned.

Pauline laid Polly in her cot with a smile. This grudging praise was very sweet to her. To make darkness light, that was Christ’s mission, and hers. She was putting her whole soul in the effort.

‘What makes P’liney so different?’ queried Leander of Stephen and John, as they rested from their daily task of cutting wood. ‘She used ter be as mad as hops if yer mussed up yer clothes, an’ now she only laughs an’ sez, “Never mind, if it’s a stain that soap will conquer.”’

‘An’ she’s always singin’ too,’ said John thoughtfully; ‘if mother didn’t scold so it would be real pleasant.’

‘I’d like to know why it is, though,’ repeated Leander thoughtfully.

‘Because she belongs to the King,’ said the clear, sweet voice of his step-sister from the doorway, ‘and she wants you all to belong to Him too.’

When she went back into the house, she found Lemuel brandishing a broomstick over the frightened Polly.

‘Why, Lemuel, what are you doing?’

‘I’ve casted the devils out of her,’ exclaimed that youth triumphantly, ‘an’ they’ve gone inter the pig pen, whole leguns of ‘em, an’ they’re kickin’ orful!’

Chapter IX

A Lost Letter

Seven years had gone by, and every day of each successive month had been full to overflowing of hard work for Pauline.

‘Dear Tryphosa,’ she whispered to herself with a smile, ‘you little thought, when you gave me that new beatitude, what constant friends the grey angel of Drudgery and I were to be.’

She climbed slowly up the narrow stairs to her room, and shaded the lamp that it might not disturb Polly’s troubled sleep, – poor Polly, who would be an invalid for life. Then she sat down with a sigh of relief to read Belle’s last letter. It had been a hard day, her step-mother had been more than usually restless, and the farm-work had been very heavy, for Martha Spriggs was home on a visit; every nerve in her body seemed to quiver with the strain.

‘My dearest Paul,’ Belle wrote, ‘I can hardly see for crying, but I promised her that you should know at once.

‘Tryphosa went away from us to “the other shore” last night. We were all there – her “inner circle” as she used to call us – all except you, and she seemed to miss you so. I never knew her to grow fond of any one in so short a time, but she took you right into her heart from the first. If I had not loved you so much I should have been jealous, but who could be jealous of you, you precious, brave saint?

‘I have heard of the gate of heaven, but last night we were there.

‘Dick was supporting her in his arms, poor Dick, he was so fond of her, and it was so hard for her to breathe – and we were all gathered round her, our hearts breaking to think it was the last time. She has suffered terribly lately, but at the last the pain left her, and she lay with the very rapture of heaven on her dear face, talking so brightly of how we should do after she had gone. It was just as if she were going on a pleasure trip, and we were to follow later. She turned to me with her lovely eyes all aglow with joy, and said: —

‘“Give my Bible to the dear child in the valley” (that was what she always called you), “and tell her ‘the miles to heaven are but short and few.’”

‘She had a message for us all, and then, suddenly, just as the dawn broke, a great light swept over her face and she turned her head and whispered, “Jesus!” just as if He were close beside her, and then – she was gone.

‘I shall never forget it. I have always thought of Death as the King of Terrors, but last night it was the coming of the Bridegroom for His own.’

With a low cry Pauline’s head dropped. There could never be anyone just like ‘my lady,’ and she had gone away.

The hours passed silently, as she sat benumbed in the grasp of her great sorrow.

Suddenly she sprang up. Her father was calling her from the foot of the stairs.

‘Mother’s had a bad turn. Send Stephen for the doctor, and come, quick!’

She hurried down, and mechanically heated water, and did what she could to help the stricken woman, but before the doctor could reach the house, the Angel of Death had swept over the threshold, and Pauline and her father were left alone.

‘Here’s a letter for yer, Pawliney. Don’t yer wish yer may git it?’ and Lemuel, the irrepressible, waved it at her tantalisingly from the top of the tall hickory, where he had perched himself, like the monkey that he was.

She saw the Boston post-mark, and stretched out her hands for it longingly.

‘Bring it down, there’s a dear boy.’

‘Not much! I bet Leander that I could make you mad, an’ he bet his new jack-knife that I couldn’t. I’m goin’ to chew it up. It’s orful thin, ’taint no good anyhow. You won’t miss it, P’liney,’ and crushing the letter into a small wad he put it into his capacious mouth.

It was, as Lemuel said, ‘awful thin,’ not much like the volumes which Belle usually wrote. She had not been able to distinguish the writing, but, of course, it must be from Belle. The two cousins had grown very near to each other as the years rolled by, and a summer never passed without some of her uncle’s family spending a week or two in Sleepy Hollow. Those were Pauline’s red-letter days – the bright, scintillating points where she was brought into touch again with the world of thought and light and beauty.

‘Throw it down to me, Lemuel, dear.’

‘Can’t,’ said the boy coolly, ‘I’m goin’ ter tie it to Poll’s balloon, an’ let go of the string, an’ then it’ll go straight to heaven,’ and, with the letter reposing in his cheek, he began to sing vociferously: —

‘“I want ter be an angel,
An’ with the angels stand;
A crown upon my forehead,
A harp within my hand.”

‘Git mad now, P’liney, quick, fer I want that knife orful.’

A cry from Polly made Pauline hurry into the house to find that Martha Spriggs had slipped while passing the child’s couch, and upset a bowl of scalding milk, which she was carrying, right over the little invalid’s foot. In the confusion which followed, Pauline forgot Lemuel and her longed-for letter. When she went out to look for him he was gone.

‘Give it to me now, Lemuel,’ she said, as he came into supper; ‘you’ve had enough fun for to-day.’

‘Can’t P’liney. I used it fer a gun wad to shoot a squirrel with, an’ the cat ate the squirrel, letter an’ all. Yer don’t want me ter kill the cat, do yer, P’liney?’

‘Oh! Lemuel,’ she cried softly, ‘how could you? How could you do it?’

She sighed sorrowfully. She had tried so hard to make Lemuel a good boy, but nothing seemed to touch him, and, young as he was, the neighbours had begun to lay the blame of every misdeed upon his shoulders, and Deacon Croaker predicted with a mournful shake of his head, ‘No good will ever come of Lemuel Harding. He’s a bad lot, a bad lot.’

‘Sing to me!’ cried Polly, ‘the pain’s awful!’ and taking the weary little form in her arms, Pauline sang herself back into her usual happy trust.