Phoebe Deane (7 page)

In a sudden panic Phoebe climbed a fence and struck out across the field toward Chestnut Edge, a small hill rising to the left of the village. There she might hope to be alone a little while and think it out, and perhaps creep close to her mother once more through the letter which she pressed against her heart. She hurried over the rough stubble of the field, gathering her buff garments with the other hand to hold them from any detaining briars. She seemed like some bright golden leaf blowing across the pasture to frolic with the other leaves on the nut-crowned hillside.

Breathless at last she reached the hill and found a great log where she sat down to read her letter.

" My dear little grown-up girl," it began, and as Phoebe read the precious words again the tears burst from her smarting eyes, welling up from her aching heart, and she buried her face in the letter and stained it with her tears.

It was some time before she could conquer herself and read farther.

" This is your eighteenth birthday, dear child, and I have thought so much about you and how you will be when you are a young woman, that I want to be with you a little while on your birthday and let you know how much, how very much, I love you. I cannot look forward into your life and see how it will be with you. I do not know whether you will have had sad years or bright ones between the time when I said good-by to you and now when you are reading this. I could not plan positively, dear little girl, to have them bright ones, else you surely know I would. I had to leave you in God's care, and I know you will be taken care of, whatever comes. If there have been trials, somehow, Phoebe, little girl, they must have been good for you. Sometime you will learn why, perhaps, and sometime there will be a way out. Never forget that. God has His brightness ready somewhere for you if you are true to Him and brave. Somehow I am afraid that there will have been trials, perhaps very heavy ones, for you were always such a sensitive little soul, and you are going among people who may not understand.

" In thinking about your life I have been afraid for you that you would be tempted because of unhappiness to take some rash impulsive step before God is ready to show you His plan for your life. I would like to give you a little warning through the years, and tell you to be careful.

" You have entered young womanhood, and will perhaps be asked to give your life into the keeping of some man. If I were going to live I would try to train you through the years for this great crisis of your life. But when it comes, remember that I have thought about you and longed for you that you may find another soul who will love you better than himself, and whom you can love better than you love anything else in the world, and who will be grand and noble in every way. Dear child, hear your mother's voice, and don't take anything less. It will not matter so much if he is poor, if only he loves you better than himself and is worthy of your love. Never marry anyone for a home, or a chance to have your own way, or freedom from good honest work. There will be no happiness in it. Trust your mother, for she knows. Do not marry anyone to whom you cannot look up and give honor next to God. Unless you can marry such a man it is better not to marry at all, believe your mother, child. I say it lovingly, for I have seen much sorrow and would protect you.

" And now, my sweet child, with a face like the dawn of the morning, and eyes so untroubled, if when you read this anything has come into your life to make you unhappy, just try to lay it all down for a little while and feel your mother's love about you. See, I have made this bright sunny dress for you, every stitch set with love, and I want you to wear it on your birthday to remind you of me. It is yellow, because that is the glory color, the color of the sunshine I have always loved so much. I want you to think of me in a bright, sunny, happy way, and as in a glory of happiness, waiting for you; not as dead, and lying in the grave. Think of my love for you as a joy, and not a lost one, either, for I am sure that where I am going I shall love you just the same, and more.

" I am very tired and must not write any more, for there are other letters yet to write and much to do before I can feel ready to go and leave you, but as I am writing this birthday letter for you I am praying God that He will bring some brightness into your life, the beginning of some great joy, on this your eighteenth birthday, that shall be His blessing, and my birthday gift to my child. I put a kiss here where I write my name and give you with it more love than

you can ever understand.

" Your Mother."

The tears rained down upon her hands as she held the letter, and when it was finished she put her head down on her lap and cried as she had not cried since her mother died. It seemed as if her head were once more upon that dear mother's lap and she could feel the smooth, gentle touch of her mother's hand passing over her hair and her hot temples as when she was a little child.

The sunlight sifted softly down between the yellowed chestnut leaves, sprinkling gold upon the golden hem of her gown, and glinting on her shining hair. The brown nuts dropped now and then about her, reverently, as if they would not disturb her if they could help it, and the fat gray squirrels silently regarded her, pausing in their work of gathering in the winter's store, then whisked noiselessly away. It was all quite still in the woods except for the occasional falling of a nut, or the stir of a leaf, or the skitter of a squirrel, for Phoebe did not sob aloud. Her grief was deeper than that. Her soul was crying out to one who was far away and yet who seemed so near to her that nothing else mattered for the time.

She was thinking over all her sad little life, telling it to her mother in imagination, trying to draw comfort from the letter, and to reconcile the realities with what her mother had said. Would her mother have been just as sure that it would all come out right if she had known the real facts? Would she have given the same advice? Carefully she thought it over, washing the anger away in her tears. Yes, she felt sure if her mother had known all she could not have written more truly than she had done. She would have had her say " No " to Hiram, just as she had done, and would have exhorted to patience with Emmeline, and to trust that brightness would sometime come.

She thought of her mother's prayer for her, and almost smiled through her tears to think how impossible that could be. Yet—the day was not done—perhaps there might be some little pleasant thing yet, that she might consider as a blessing and her mother's gift. She would look and wait for it and perhaps it would come. It might be Albert would be kind—he was, sometimes—or if it were not too late she might go down to the village and make her call on Mrs. Spafford. That might be a beautiful thing and the beginning of a joy—but no, that was too far away and her eyes were red with weeping. She must just take this quiet hour in the woods as her blessing and be glad over it because her mother and God had sent it to her to help her bear the rest of the days. She lifted her tear-wet face to look around on the golden autumn world, and the sun caught the tears on her lashes and turned them into flashing jewels, till the sweet, sad face looked like a tired flower with the dew upon it.

Then quite suddenly she knew she was not alone.

A young man stood in the shadow of the tallest chestnut- tree, regarding her with troubled gaze. His hat was in his hand and his head slightly bowed in deference, as if in the presence of something holy.

He was tall, well-formed, and his face fine and handsome. His eyes were deep and brown, with lights in them like those on the shadowed depths of a quiet woodland stream. His heavy dark hair was tossed back from a white forehead that had not been exposed to the summer sun of the hay- field, one could see at a glance, and the hand that held the hat was white and smooth also. There was a grace about his attitude that reminded Phoebe of David Spafford, who had seemed to her the ideal of a gentleman. He was dressed in dark brown and his black silk stock set off a finely cut, clean-shaven chin of unusual strength and firmness. If it had not been for the lights in his eyes, and the hint of a smile behind the almost tender strength of the lips, Phoebe would have been afraid of him as she lifted shy, ashamed eyes to the intruder's face.

" I beg your pardon, I did not mean to intrude," he said, apologetically, "but a party of young people are coining up the hill. They will be here in a moment, and I thought perhaps you would not care to meet them. You seem to be in trouble."

" Oh, thank you! " said Phoebe, arising in sudden panic and dropping her mother's letter at her feet. She stooped to pick it up, but the young man had reached it first and their fingers met for one brief instant over the letter of the dead. In her confusion Phoebe did not know what to say but " Thank you," and then felt like a parrot repeating the same phrase.

Voices were distinctly audible now and the girl turned to flee, but ahead and around there seemed nowhere to go for hiding except a dense growth of mountain laurel that still stood green and shining amid the autumn brown. She looked for a way around it, but the young man caught her thought, and reaching forward with a quick motion of his arms he parted the strong branches and made a way for her.

" Here, jump right in there! So nobody will see you. Hurry, they are almost here!" he whispered, kindly.

The girl sprang quickly on the log, paused just an instant to gather her golden draperies about her, and then fluttered into the green hiding-place and settled down like a drift of yellow leaves.

The laurel swung back into place, nodding quite as if it understood the secret. The young man stooped and she saw him deliberately take from his pocket a letter and put it down behind the log that lay across her hiding-place.

The letter settled softly into place and looked at her knowingly as if it, too, were in the secret and were there to help her. For even a letter has an expression if one has but eyes to see and understand.

Up the hill-side came a troop of young people. Phoebe could not see them, for the growth of laurel was very dense, but she could hear their voices.

" Oh, Janet Bristol, how fast you go! I'm all out of breath. Why do you hurry so? The nuts will keep till we get there, and we have all the afternoon before us."

" Go slow as you like, Caroline," said a sweet, imperious voice; " when I start anywhere I like to get there. I wonder where Nathaniel can be. It is fully five minutes since he went out of sight, and he promised to hail us at once and tell us the best way to go."

'* Oh, Nathaniel isn't lost," said another girl's voice crossly; "he'll take care of himself likely. Don't hurry so, Janet. Maria is all out of breath."

" Hullo! Nathaniel! Nathaniel Graham, where are you!" called a chorus of male voices.

Then from a few paces in front of the laurel hiding- place came the voice that Phoebe had heard but a moment before:

" Aye, aye, sir! That way! " it called. " There are plenty of nuts up there!" He stood with his back toward her hiding-place, and pointed farther up the hill. Then, laughing, scrambling over slippery leaves and protruding logs the gay company frolicked past, and Phoebe was left, undiscovered, alone with the letter that smiled back at her in a friendly way.

She stooped a little to look at it and read the address, " Nathaniel Graham, Esq.," written in a fine commanding hand, a chirography that gave the impression of honoring the name it wrote.

The girl studied the beautiful name, till every turn of the pen was graven on her mind, the fine, even clearness of the small letters, the bold downward stroke in the capitals. It was unusual writing of an unusual name and the girl felt that it belonged to an unusual man.

Then all of a sudden, while she waited and listened to the happy jingle of voices, like bells of different tones, exclaiming over rich finds in nuts, the barren loneliness of her own life came over her and brought a rush of tears. Why was she here in hiding from those girls and boys that should have been her companions ? Why did she shrink from meeting Janet Bristol, the sweetly haughty beauty of the village? Why was she never invited to their pleasant tea-drinkings, and their berry and nut gatherings? She saw them in church, and that was all. They never seemed to see her. True, she had not been brought up from childhood among them, but she had lived there long enough to have known them intimately if her life had not always been so full of care. Janet Bristol had gone away to school for several years, and was only at home in summer when Phoebe's life was full of farm work—cooking for the hands, and for the harvesters. But Maria Finch and Caroline Penfield had gone to school with Phoebe. She felt a bitterness that they were in these good times and she was not. They were not to blame, perhaps, for she had always avoided them, keeping much to herself and her studies in school, and hurrying home at Emmeline's strict command. They had never attracted her as had the tall, fair Janet, in the few summer glimpses she had had of her. Yet she would never likely know Janet Bristol or come any nearer to her than she was now, hidden behind God's screen of laurel on the hill-side, while the gay company gathered nuts a few rods away. The young man with the beautiful face and the kind ways would forget her and leave her to scramble out of her hiding place as best she could while he helped Janet Bristol over the stile and carried her basket of nuts home for her. He would not cross her path again. Nevertheless she was glad he had met her this once, and she could know there was in the world one so kind and noble; it was a beautiful thing to have come into her life. She would stay here till they were all out of hearing, and then creep out and steal away as she had come. Her sad life and its annoyances, forgotten for the moment, settled down upon her, but with this change. They now seemed possible to bear. She could go back to Albert's house, to Emmeline where she was unwelcome, and work her way twice over. She could doff the golden garments, and take up her daily toil, even patiently perhaps, and bear Emmeline's hateful insinuations, Alma's impudence, the disagreeable attentions of Hank and the hateful presence of Hiram Green, but never again would she be troubled with the horrible thought that perhaps after all she was wrong and ought to accept the home that Hiram Green was offering her. Never, for now she had seen a man, who had looked at her as she felt sure God meant a man to look at a woman, with honor, and respect, and gentle helpfulness, and deference.