The Actress' Daughter: A Novel. May Agnes Fleming
is to be mistaken."
This last apostrophe was addressed to a sudden blast of wind that nearly overset her; but, by grasping the trunk of a tree, she saved herself, and now, with a contemptuous snarl at its foiled power, she plunged and sank, and rose and floundered on through the wild December storm, until she approached the old ruined cottage, from the window of which streamed the light.
The window was still sound, and Miss Jerusha, cautiously approaching it, began prudently to reconnoiter before going any farther.
Desolate indeed was the scene that met her eye. The room was totally without furniture, the plastering had in many places fallen off and lay in drifts all along the floor. A great heap of brush was piled up in the chimney-corner, and close by it crouched a small, dark figure feeding the slender flame that burned on the hearth. Opposite lay extended the thin, emaciated form of a woman, wrapped in a shawl, almost her only covering. As the firelight fell on her face, Miss Jerusha started to see how frightfully ghastly it was, with such hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and projecting bones. So absorbed was she in gazing on that skeleton face, that she did not observe the little figure crouching over the fire start up, gaze on her a moment, and then approach the window, until, suddenly turning round, she beheld a small, dark, elfish face, with wild, glittering eyes, gleaming through masses of uncombed elf locks, pressed close to the window, with its goblin gaze fixed full upon her.
Miss Jerusha was not nervous nor superstitious, but at the sudden vision of that face from elf-land she uttered a shriek that might have awakened the dead, and shrank back in dismay from the window.
While she still stood, horror-struck, the door opened, and a high, shrill voice called:
"Now, then, whoever you are, come in if you want to!"
It was the voice of a mortal child, and Miss Jerusha was re-assured. Thoroughly ashamed of herself, and provoked at having betrayed so much fear, she approached the open door, passed in, and it was closed after her.
"So I scared you, did I? Well, it serves you right, you know, for staring in people's windows," said the shrill little voice; and Miss Jerusha, looking down, saw the same small, thin, dark face, with its great, wild, glittering black eyes, long, tangled masses of coal-black hair, high, broad brow, and a slight lithe figure.
It was a strange, unique face for a child, full of slumbering power, pride, passion, strength, and invincible daring; but Miss Jerusha did not see this, and looking down only beheld an odd-looking, rather ugly child, of twelve or thirteen, or so, with what she regarded as an impudent, precocious gaze, disagreeable and unnatural in one so young.
"Little gal, don't be sassy," said Miss Jerusha, sharply: "you ought to hev more respect for your elders, and not stand there and give them such empidence. Pretty broughten you must hev got, I know – a sassy little limb."
The latter part of this address was delivered in a muttered soliloquy, as she pushed the hood back from her face and shook the snow off her cloak. The "little limb," totally unheeding the reprimand, still stood peering up in her face, scanning its iron lineaments with an amusing mixture of curiosity and impudence.
As Miss Jerusha again turned round and encountered the piercing stare of those great, dark, bright eyes fixed so unwinkingly on her face, she felt, for the first time in her life, perhaps, restless and uneasy under the infliction.
"My conscience! little gal, don't stare so! I 'clare to gracious I never see sich a child! I don't know what she looks like," said Miss Jerusha.
The latter sentence was not intended for the child's ears, but it reached those sharp little organs nevertheless, and, still keeping her needle-like gaze fixed on the wrinkled face of the spinster, she said:
"Well, if you don't, I know what you look like, anyway – I do!"
"And what do I look like?" said Miss Jerusha, in rising anger, having a presentiment something impudent was coming.
"Why just exactly like one of the witches in Macbeth."
Now, our worthy maiden lady had never heard of the "Noble Thane," but she had a pretty strong idea of what witches riding on broomsticks were like, and here this little black goblin girl had the audacity to compare her to one of them. For one awful moment Miss Jerusha glared upon the daring little sinner in impotent rage, while her fingers fairly ached to seize her and pound her within an inch of her life. Her face must have expressed her amiable desire, for the elf sprang back, and throwing herself into a stage attitude, uttered some words in a tragic voice, quite overpowering, coming from so small a body.
The noise awoke the sleeper near the fire. She turned restlessly, opened her eyes, and called:
"Georgia!"
"Here, mamma; here I am," said the elf, springing up and bending over her. "Do you want anything?"
"No, dear. I thought I heard you talking. Hasn't Warren come yet?"
"No, mamma."
"Then who were you talking to a moment ago? Is there any one here?"
"Yes, mamma, the funniest looking old woman – here, you!" said the elf, beckoning to Miss Jerusha.
Mechanically that lady obeyed the peremptory summons, too completely stunned and shocked by this unheard-of effrontery to fully realize for a moment that her ears had not deceived her.
She approached and bent over the sufferer. Two hollow eyes were raised to her face, and feeling herself in the awful presence of death, all Miss Jerusha's indignation faded away, and she said, in a softened voice:
"I am sorry to see you in this wretched place. Can I do anything for you?"
"Who are you?" said the woman, transfixing her with a gaze quite as uncompromising as her little daughter's had been.
"My name is Jerusha Skamp. I saw a light in this here cottage, and came over to see who was here. What can I do for you?"
"Nothing for me – I am dying," said the woman, in a husky, hollow voice. "Nothing for me; nothing for me."
"Oh, mamma! oh, mamma!" screamed the child, passionately. "Oh, not dying! Oh, mamma!"
"Oh, Georgia, hush!" said the woman, turning restlessly. "Don't shriek so, child; I cannot bear it."
But Georgia, who seemed to have no sort of self-control, or any other sort of control, still continued to scream her wild, passionate cry, "Oh, not dying! oh, mamma!" until Miss Jerusha, losing all patience, caught her arm in a vise-like grip, and, giving her a furious shake, said, in a deep, stern whisper:
"You little limb! Do you want to kill your mother? Hold your tongue, afore I shake the life out of you!"
The words had the effect of stilling the little tempest before her, who crouched into the corner and buried her face in her hands.
"Poor Georgia! poor little thing! what will become of her when I am gone?" said the sufferer, while a spasm of intense pain shot across her haggard face.
"The Lord will provide," said Miss Jerusha, rolling up the whites, or, more properly speaking, the yellows of her eyes. "Don't take on about that. Tell me how you came to be here! But first let me give you a drink. You look as if you needed something to keep life in you. Wait a minute."
Miss Jerusha's hawk-like eye went roving round the room until it alighted on a little tin cup. Seizing this, she filled it with the currant wine she had brought, and held it to the sick woman's lips.
Eagerly she drank, and then Miss Jerusha folded the shawl more closely around her, and, sitting down on the floor, drew her head upon her lap, and, with a touch that was almost tender, smoothed back the heavy locks of her dark hair.
"Now, then," she said, "tell me all about it."
"You are very kind," said the sick woman, looking up gratefully. "I feared I should die all alone here. I sent my little boy to the nearest house in search of help, but he has not yet returned."
"Ah! you're a widder, I suppose?" said Miss Jerusha, trying to keep down a pang of remorse and dread, as she thought of the child she had so cruelly turned out into the bitter storm.
"Yes, I have been a widow for the last seven years. My name is