The Actress' Daughter. May Agnes Fleming
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 Alice Randall Darrell."
"And hain't you got no friends nor nothin', Mrs. Darrell, when you come to this old place, not fit for pigs, let alone human Christians?"
"No; no friends—not one friend in all this wide world," said the dying woman, in a tone so utterly despairing that Miss Jerusha's hand fell soothingly and pityingly on her forehead.
"Sho, now, sho! I want ter know," said Miss Jerusha, quite unconscious that she was making rhyme, a species of literature she had the profoundest contempt for. "That's too bad, 'clare if it ain't! Are they all dead?"
"I do not know—they are all dead to me."
"Why, what on airth hed you done to them?" said Miss Jerusha, in surprise.
"I married against my father's consent."
"Ah! that was bad; but then he needn't hev made a fuss. He didn't ask your consent when he got married, I s'pose. Didn't like the young man you kept company with, eh?"
"No; he hated him. My father was rich, and I ran off with a poor actor."
"A play-acter! Why, you must hev bin crazy!"
"Oh, I was—I was! I was a child, and did not know what I was doing. I thought my life with him would have been all light, and music, and glitter, and dazzle, such as I saw on the stage; but I soon found out the difference."
"'Spect you did. Law, law! what fools there is in this 'ere world!" said Miss Jerusha, in a moralizing tone.
"My father disowned me." ("And sarved you right, too!" put in Miss Jerusha sotto voce.) "My family cast me off. I joined the company to which my husband belonged, and did the tragedy business with him; and so for eight years we wandered about from city to city, from town to town, always poor and needy, for Arthur drank and gambled, and as fast as we earned money it was spent."
"And you're a play-acter, too!" cried Miss Jerusha recoiling in horror.
Miss Jerusha, trained in the land of "steady habits," had, from her earliest infancy, been taught to look upon theaters as only a little less horribly wicked than the place unmentionable to ears polite, and upon all "play-actors" as the immediate children and agents of the father of evil himself. She had never until now had the misfortune to come in contact with one personally, having only heard of them as we hear of goblins, warlocks, demons, and other "children of night." What wonder, then, that at this sudden, awful revelation she started back and almost hurled the frail form from her in loathing and horror. But a fierce clutch was laid on her shoulder—she almost fancied for an instant it was Satan himself come for his child—until, looking up, she saw the fiercely blazing eyes and witch-like face of little Georgia gleaming upon it.
"You ugly, wicked old woman!" she passionately burst out with, "if you dare to hurt my mamma, I'll—I'll kill you!"
And so dark, and fierce, and elfish did she look at that moment, that Miss Jerusha fairly quailed before the small, unearthly looking sprite.
"I'm not a-going to tetch your ma. Get out o' this, and leave me go!" said Miss Jerusha, shaking off with some difficulty the human burr who clung to her with the tenacity of a crab, and glared upon her with her shining black eyes.
"Georgia, love, go and sit down. Oh, you wild, stormy, savage child, what ever will become of you when I am gone? Do, pray, excuse her," said the woman, faintly, lifting her eyes pleadingly to Miss Jerusha's angry face; "she has had no one to control her, or subdue her wild, willful temper, and has grown up a crazy, mad-headed, half-tamed thing. If you have children of your own, you will know how to make allowance for her."
"I have no children of my own, and I thank goodness that I haven't!" said Miss Jerusha, shortly; "a set of plagues, the whole of 'em! Ef that there little gal was mine, I'd spank her while I could stand, and see ef that wouldn't take some of the nonsense out of her."
The last words did not reach the invalid's ear, and the little tempest-in-a-teapot retreated again to her corner, scowling darkly on Miss Jerusha, whom she evidently suspected of some sinister designs on her mother, which it was her duty to frustrate.
"Is she a play-acter, too?" said Miss Jerusha, after a sullen pause.
"Who? Georgia? Oh, yes; she plays juvenile parts, and dances and sings, and was a great favorite with the public. She has a splendid voice, and dances beautifully, and whenever she appeared she used to receive thunders of applause. Georgia will make a star actress if she ever goes on the stage again," said the woman, with more animation than she had yet shown.
"And do you want your darter to grow up a wicked good-for-nothing hussy of a play-acter?" said Miss Jerusha, sternly. "Mrs. Darrell, you ought for to be ashamed of yourself. Ef she was mine, I would sooner see her starve decently first."
The dying woman turned away with a groan.
"She won't starve here, though," said Miss Jerusha, feeling called upon to administer a little consolation; "there's trustees and selectmen, and one thing and another to look arter poor folks and orphans. She'll be took care of. And now, how did it happen you came here?"
"I came with the company to which I belong, and we stopped at a town about fifty miles from here. Georgia, as you can see, has a dreadful temper—poor little fiery, passionate thing—and the manager of the theater, being an insolent, overbearing man, was always finding fault with her, and scolding about something, whereupon Georgia would fly into one of her fits of passion, and a dreadful scene would ensue. I strove to keep them apart as much as I could, but they often met, as a matter of course, and never parted without a furious quarrel. He did not wish to part with her, for I—and it is with little vanity, alas! I say it—was his best actress, and Georgia's name in the bills never failed to draw a crowded house. I used to talk to Georgia, and implore her to restrain her fierce temper, and she would promise; but when next she would meet him, poor child, and listen to his insulting words, all would be forgotten, and Georgia would stamp and scold, and call him all manner of names, and sometimes go so far as to refuse appearing at all, and that last act of disobedience never failed to put him fairly beside himself with rage. I foresaw how it would end, but I could do nothing with her. Poor little thing! Nature cursed her with that fierce, passionate temper, and she could not help it."
"Humph!" muttered Miss Jerusha; "couldn't help it! That's all very fine; but I know one thing, ef I had anything to do with her, I'd take the fierceness out of her, or know for why—a ugly tempered, savage little limb!"
"One night," continued the sick woman, "Georgia had been dancing, and when she left the stage the whole house shook with the thunders of applause. They shouted and shouted for her to reappear, but I was sick that night, and Georgia was in a hurry to get home, and would not go. The manager ordered her