Bessie's Fortune. Mary Jane Holmes
day, and had her lunch in the privacy of Mrs. Geraldine's room. Once or twice a year, as was convenient, Burton had been to the farm-house to see his father, whom he always found the same silent, brooding man, with hair as white as snow, and shoulders so bent that it was difficult to believe he had ever been upright. And so, gradually, Burton had ceased to wonder at his father's peculiarities and had forgotten his suspicions; but now they returned to him again, and he shivered as there swept suddenly over him one of those undefinable presentiments which sometimes come to us, and for which we cannot account.
"What time is Hannah coming?" he asked.
"I hardly know," Lucy replied; "the boy who stays here to do the outdoor work is to bring her as soon as she can leave her father, who will have no one with him in his room during her absence. He is very anxious to see Grey, but I doubt if he will even let him into the bedroom."
During this conversation Grey had listened intently, and now he exclaimed;
"I have it. My dinner will taste better if I see grandpa first, and show him my Alpenstock, with all those names burned on it. I mean to drive over after Aunt Hannah myself. It will be such fun to surprise them both."
"Grey, are you crazy to think of going out in this storm?" Mrs. Jerrold exclaimed.
But Grey persisted, and, pointing to the window, said:
"It is not snowing half as fast as it did; and look, there's a bit of blue sky. I can go, can't I, Aunt Lucy?"
"Ye-es, if Tom is willing," Lucy said, a little doubtfully; for she stood somewhat in awe of Tom, who did not like to harness oftener than was necessary.
"Pho! I'll risk Tom," Grey said. "Tom knows me;" and in less than ten minutes one of the bays was harnessed to the cutter, and Grey was driving along in the direction of the farm-house, which, for the first time in his life, struck him as something weird-like and dreary, standing there alone among the rocks, with the snow piled upon the roof and clinging in masses to the small window-panes. "I don't wonder mother thinks it seems like some old haunted house we read about. It is just the spot for a lively ghost. I wish I could see one," he thought, as he drove into the side-yard, and, giving his horse to the care of the chore-boy, Sam, who was in the barn, he went stamping into the kitchen.
CHAPTER V.
THE OLD MAN AND THE BOY.
Old Mr. Jerrold had failed rapidly within a few weeks, but as long as possible he dressed himself every day and sat in his arm-chair in the kitchen, for the front room was rarely used in winter. At one time, when Hannah saw how weak her father was growing, and knew that he must soon take to his bed, she suggested that he should occupy the south room, it was so much more sunny and cheerful than his sleeping apartment, which was always dark, and gloomy, and cheerless. But her father said no very decidedly.
"It has been a part of my punishment to keep watch in that room all these dreadful years, and I shall stay there till I die. And, Hannah, when I cannot get up any more, but must lie there all day and all night long, don't let any one in, not even Miss Grey, for it seems to me there are mirrors everywhere, and that the walls and floor have tongues, and I am getting such a coward, Hannah—such a coward, I am too old to confess it now. God has forgiven me; I am sure of that, and the world need not know what we have kept so long, you and I. How long is it, Hannah? My memory fails me, and sometimes it seems a thousand years, I have suffered so much, and then again it is but yesterday—last night. How long did you say, Hannah!
"Thirty-one years next Thanksgiving, was Hannah's reply, spoken, oh, so mournfully low.
"Thirty-one years, and you were a girl of fifteen, and your hair was so brown and glossy, just like your mother's Hannah—just like hers, and now it is so grey Poor child! I am so sorry for you, but God knows all you have borne for me, and some day you will shine as a star in His crown, while I, if I am permitted to enter the gates, must have the lowest seat."
It was the last of October when this conversation took place, and the next day but one the old man did not get up as usual, but staid in bed all that day, and the next, and the next, until it came to be understood between himself and Hannah that he would never get up again.
"Shall I send for Burton?" Hannah asked, and he replied:
"No, he does not care to come, and why trouble him sooner than necessary? He is not like you. He is grand and high, and ashamed of his old father, but he is my son, and I must see him once more. He will be up on Thanksgiving Day, and I shall live till then. Don't send for him. I cannot have him in this room—can't have anybody—don't let them in! Can no one see under the bed?"
"No, father, no one can see: no one shall come in," Hannah answered.
Then for weeks she kept her lonely watch over the half-crazed old man, who started at every sound and whispered piteously:
"Don't let them come here, Hannah. I am too old; and there is Grey—the boy—for his sake, Hannah, we will not let them come for me now!"
"No, father, they shall not come. Grey need not know," Hannah always replied, though she had secretly cherished a hope that some time in the future, when the poor old father was dead, she would tell Grey and ask his help to do what she fully meant to do when her hands, bound for thirty years, should be loosened from the chain.
She could trust Grey, could tell him everything, and feel sure that his earnest, truthful blue eyes would took just as lovingly at her as ever, and that he would comfort and help her as no one else could do.
Such was the state of affairs at the farm-house on the morning of Thanksgiving Day, when Hannah was making her preparations to go to Grey's Park for two hours or more, just to sit through the dinner and see Grey, whom she had not seen since his return from Europe.
Her father was not as well that morning. Thanksgiving was always a terrible anniversary for him, for as on that day the several members of a family meet again around the old hearth-stone, so the ghosts of the past all came back to torture him and fill him with remorse.
"How it blows," he said, as the wind shook the windows of his room, and went screaming around the corner of the house. "How it blows, and I seem to hear voices in the storm—your voice, Hannah, as it sounded thirty years ago, when you cried out so loudly, and I struck you for it, and beat old Rover, too. Do you remember it?"
"Yes, yes, father, but don't talk of it to-day; try to forget; try to think only that Grey is here, and that you will see him to-morrow."
"Grey, the boy with the big blue eyes which look so straight at you that I used sometimes to wonder if he did not see into my heart and know what I was hiding?" the old man replied. "Grey, the little boy who would sit on that bench in the woodshed, and kick the floor until I sweat at every pore with fear, and whom I would not touch till he captured my hands, and held them in his soft, warm ones, and kissed them, too, my wicked old hands, kissed by Grey's baby lips. Would he touch them now if he knew? I used to think if I lived till he was a man I would tell him; and maybe you will do it after I am dead. He is coming here to-morrow, you say, and Burton; but Burton isn't like Grey. He is proud and worldly, and a little hard, I am afraid; but the boy, tell him how I love him; try to make him understand, and when he comes to-morrow maybe he will kiss me again. It will be for the last time. I shall never see him more. But hark, what's that? Don't you hear bells? And there is the stamping of feet at the door. Go, child, quickly, and not let them in here."
Hannah, too, heard the sound and the opening of the kitchen door, and hurrying from her father's bedside, she called out, sharply:
"Who is it? Who's there?"
"My name is Norval, on the Grampian hills," was replied, in the well-remembered voice of Grey, who continued,