Mrs. Tree

"I didn't exactly break my promise, Lily!" cried the old lady; her hands trembled on her stick, but her cap was erect, immovable. "I didn't tell him, but I never promised not to tell James Stedman, you know I never did."

The lovely, dark-eyed girl bent over her and kissed the withered cheek again.

"My dear! my naughty, wicked, delightful dear," she murmured, "how shall I ever forgive you – or thank you?"

CHAPTER XIII.

LIFE IN DEATH

"Drive to Miss Dane's!" said Mrs. Tree.

"Drive where?" asked old Anthony, pausing with one foot on the step of the ancient carryall.

"To Miss Dane's!"

"Well, I snum!" said old Anthony.

The Dane Mansion, as it was called, stood on the outskirts of the village; a gaunt, gray house, standing well back from the road, with dark hedges of Norway spruce drawn about it like a funeral scarf. The panelled wooden shutters of the front windows were never opened, and a stranger passing by would have thought the house uninhabited; but all Elmerton knew that behind those darkling hedges and close shutters, somewhere in the depths of the tall many-chimneyed house, lived – "if you can call it living!" Mrs. Tree said – Miss Virginia Dane. Miss Dane was a contemporary of Mrs. Tree's, – indeed, report would have her some years older, – but she had no other point of resemblance to that lively potentate. She never left her house. None of the present generation of Elmertonians had ever seen her face; and to the rising generation, the boys and girls who passed the outer hedge, if dusk were coming on, with hurried step and quick affrighted glances, she was a kind of spectre, a living phantom of the past, probably terrible to look upon, certainly dreadful to think of. These terrors were heightened by the knowledge, diffused one hardly knew how, that Miss Dane was a spiritualist, and that in her belief at least, the silent house was peopled with departed Danes, the brothers and sisters of whom she was the last remaining one.

Things being thus, it was perhaps not strange that old Anthony, usually the most discreet of choremen, was driven by surprise to the extent of "snumming" by the order he received. He allowed himself no further comment, however, but flecked the fat brown horse on the ear with his whip, and said "Gitty up!" with more interest than he usually manifested.

Mrs. Tree was arrayed in her India shawl, and crowned with the bird-of-paradise bonnet, from which swept an ample veil of black lace. She sat bolt upright in the carriage, her stick firmly planted in front of her, her hands crossed on its crutch handle, and her whole air was one of uncompromising energy.

"Shall I knock?" said Anthony, glancing up at the blind house-front with an expression which said plainly enough "It won't be any use."

"No, I'm going to get out. Here, help me! the other side, ninnyhammer! You have helped me out on the wrong side for forty years, Anthony Barker; I must be a saint after all, or I never should have stood it."

The old lady mounted the granite steps briskly, and knocked smartly on the door with the top of her stick. After some delay it was opened by a grim-looking elderly woman with a forbidding squint.

"How do you do, Keziah? I am coming in. You may wait for me, Anthony."

"I don't know as Miss Dane feels up to seein' company, Mis' Tree," said the grim woman, doubtfully, holding the door in her hand.

"Folderol!" said Mrs. Tree, waving her aside with her stick. "She's in her sitting-room, I suppose. To be sure! How are you, Virginia?"

The room Mrs. Tree entered was gaunt and gray like the house itself; high-studded, with blank walls of gray paint, and wintry gleams of marble on chimneypiece and furniture. Gaunt and gray, too, was the figure seated in the rigid high-backed chair, a tall old woman in a black gown and a close muslin cap like that worn by the Shakers, with a black ribbon bound round her forehead. Her high features showed where great beauty, of a masterful kind, had once dwelt; her sunken eyes were cold and dim as a steel mirror that has lain long buried and has forgotten how to give back the light.

These eyes now dwelt upon Mrs. Tree, with recognition, but no warmth or kindliness in their depths.

"How are you, Virginia?" repeated the visitor. "Come, shake hands! you are alive, you know, after a fashion; where's the use of pretending you are not?"

Miss Dane extended a long, cold, transparent hand, and then motioned to a seat.

"I am well, Marcia," she said, coldly. "I have been well for the past fifteen years, since we last met."

"I made the last visit, I remember," said Mrs. Tree, composedly, hooking a gray horsehair footstool toward her with her stick, and settling her feet on it. "You gave me to understand then that I need not come again till I had something special to say, so I have stayed away."

"I have no desire for visitors," said Miss Dane. She spoke in a hollow, inward monotone, which somehow gave the impression that she was in the habit of talking to herself, or to something that made no response. "My soul is fit company for me."

"I should think it might be!" said Mrs. Tree.

"Besides, I am surrounded by the Blessed," Miss Dane went on. "This room probably appears bare and gloomy to your eyes, Marcia, but I see it peopled by the Blessed, in troops, crowding about me, robed and crowned."

"I hope they enjoy themselves," said Mrs. Tree. "I will not interrupt you or them more than a few minutes, Virginia. I want to ask if you have made your will. A singular question, but I have my reasons for asking."

"Certainly I have; years ago."

"Have you left anything to Mary Jaquith – Mary Ashton?"

"No!" A spark crept into the dim gray eyes.

"So I supposed. Did you know that she was poor, and blind?"

There was a pause.

"I did not know that she was blind," Miss Dane said, presently. "For her poverty, she has herself to thank."

"Yes! she married the man she loved. It was a crime, I suppose. You would have had her live on here with you all her days, and turn to stone slowly."

"I brought Mary Ashton up as my own child," Miss Dane went on; and there was an echo of some past emotion in her deathly voice. "She chose to follow her own way, in defiance of my wishes, of my judgment. She sowed the wind, and she has reaped the whirlwind. We are as far apart as the dead and the living."

"Just about!" said Mrs. Tree. "Now, Virginia Dane, listen to me! I have come here to make a proposal, and when I have made it I shall go away, and that is the last you will see of me in this world, or most likely in the next. Mary Ashton married a scamp, as other women have done and will do to the end of the chapter. She paid for her mistake, poor child, and no one has ever heard a word of complaint or repining from her. She got along – somehow; and now her boy, Will, has come home, and means to be a good son, and will be one, too, and see her comfortable the rest of her days. But – Will wants to marry. He is engaged to Andrew Bent's daughter, a sweet, pretty girl, born and grown up while you have been sitting here in your coffin, Virginia Dane. Now – they won't take any more help from me, and I like 'em for it; and yet I want them to have more to do with. Will is clerk in the post-office, and his salary would give the three of them skim milk and red herrings, but not much more. I want you to leave them some money, Virginia."

There was a pause, during which the two pairs of eyes, the dim gray and the fiery black, looked into each other.

"This is a singular request, Marcia," said Miss Dane, at last. "I believe I have never offered you advice as to the bestowal of your property; nor, if I remember aright, is Mary Ashton related to you in any way."

"Cat's foot!" said Mrs. Tree, shortly. "Don't mount your high horse with me, Jinny, because it won't do any good. I don't know or care anything about your property; you may leave it to the cat for aught I care. What I want is to give you some of mine to leave to William Jaquith, in case you die first."

She then made a definite proposal, to which Miss Dane listened with severe attention.

"And suppose you die first," said the latter. "What then?"

"Oh, my will is all right, I have left him money enough. But there's no more prospect of my dying than there was twenty years ago. I shall live to be a hundred."

"I also come of a long-lived family," said Miss Dane.

"I thought the Blessed might get tired of waiting, and come and fetch you," said Mrs. Tree, dryly; "besides, you haven't so far to go as I have. Seriously, one of us must in common decency go before long, Virginia; it is hardly respectable for both of us to linger in this way. Now, if you will only listen to reason, when the time does come for either of us, Willy Jaquith is sure of comfort for the rest of his days. What do you say?"

Miss Dane was silent for some time. Finally:

"I will consider the matter," she said, coldly. "I cannot answer you at this moment, Marcia. You have broken in upon the current of my thoughts, and disturbed the peace of my soul. I will communicate with you by writing, when my decision is reached; no second interview will be necessary."

"I'm glad you think so," said Mrs. Tree, rising. "I wasn't intending to come again. You knew that Phœbe Blyth was dead?"

"I knew that Phœbe had passed out of this sphere," replied Miss Dane. "Keziah learned it from the purveyor."

She paused a moment, and then added, "Phœbe was with me last night."