Part 19 (1/2)
So she decided to send Periwinkle down. Rob Riley could take her, and Cousin John's wife had always liked her and she'd be glad to see her.
She hadn't any children of her own, and might be real glad to have the merry little thing about; and as for sending her back, there was always somebody coming up from the city. Of course Grandma Newton didn't think how large the village of New York had grown to be, and how unlikely it was that Henrietta should find any one going to Weston.
The greatest difficulty was to persuade Rob Riley to take her. His pride was wounded, and he didn't want to have anything to do with Henrietta and her fine folks. But the old lady persisted, and, above all, little Periwinkle informed Rob that she was going down to see about Henrietta. This touched Rob; he remembered when she had s.n.a.t.c.hed Henrietta out of the jaws of Miss Tucker. He consented to take her to Mr. Willard's house and ring the door-bell.
Henrietta had recovered from her attack of penitence, and was again floating on the eddying current of excitement. One evening she went with Lowder to see La Dame aux Camelias. She had never before seen ”an emotional play” of the French school, and it affected her deeply. Harry took advantage of her softened feelings to envelop her in a cloud of flattery, and to make love to her. Something of the better sense of the girl had heretofore held her back from any committal of her trust to him; but when they reached Mrs. Willard's parlor, Harry laid direct siege to Henrietta's affection, telling her what moral miracles her influence had wrought in him, and how nothing but her love was needed to keep him steadfast in the future; and, in truth, he more than half believed what he said. The whole scene was quite in the key of the play, and her overwrought feelings drifted toward the man pleading thus earnestly for affection. Harry saw the advantage of the situation, and urged on her an immediate decision. Henrietta, still shaken by pa.s.sionate excitement, and without rest in herself, was on the point of promising eternal affection, in the manner of the heroine of the play, when there came a loud ringing of the door-bell. So highly strained were the girl's nerves, that she uttered a sharp cry at this unexpected midnight alarm. The servants had gone to bed when Henrietta came in.
There was nothing for it but to open the door herself. With Harry Lowder behind her for a reserve, she timidly opened the front door, to find a child, m.u.f.fled in an old-fas.h.i.+oned cloak and hood, standing upon the stoop, while a man was descending the steps. Looking around just enough to see who came to the door, he said, ”Your mother said you wanted her, and she would have me bring her to you.”
Then, without a word of good-night, Rob Riley walked away, Henrietta recognizing the voice with a pang.
”I come down to see about you,” spoke the solemn and quizzical figure on the stoop.
”Where on earth did that droll creature come from?” broke out Lowder.
”What is the matter, Miss Newton?”
For the suddenness of the apparition, the rude air with which Rob Riley had turned his back upon her, had started a new set of emotions in the mind of Henrietta. A wind from the old farm had blown suddenly over her and swept away the fog. She felt now, with that intuitive quickness that belongs to the artistic temperament, that she had recoiled but just in time from a brink. For a moment she seemed likely to faint, though she was not the kind of woman to faint when startled.
She reached out her hand to Periwinkle, and then, with a reaction of feeling, folded her in her arms and wept. Harry was puzzled. She suddenly became stiff and almost repellent toward him. She seemed impatient for him to be gone. It was a curious effect of surprise upon her nerves, he thought. He mentally confounded his luck, and said good night.
Henrietta bore Periwinkle off to her own room and removed her cloak, crying a little all the time. She was quite too full of emotion to take into account as yet all the perplexities in which she would be involved by the presence of Periwinkle in the house of Cousin John Willard.
”What brought you down here?” she said at last, when the st.u.r.dy little girl, divested of her shawl and cloak and mittens and hood, sat upon a chair in front of Henrietta, who sat upon the floor looking at her.
”I come down to see about you. Gran'ma said some things, and gran'pa said some things, and Wob Wiley he looked bad, and I thought maybe I'd just come down and see about you; and gran'ma said you wanted to make a picture of me. You don't want to make a picture to-night, do you?
'cause I'm awful sleepy. You see, Wob had to come on the seven o'clock twain, and that gits in at 'leven; and it took us till midnight to git here, and Wob he's got to go ever so fur yet. What made 'em build such a big town?” Here Periwinkle yawned and seemed about to fall off the chair. In a few minutes she was lying fast asleep on Henrietta's pillow.
But Henrietta slept not. It was a night of stormy trial. By turns one mood and then another dominated. At times she resolved to be a lady, admired and courted in the luxury of the city. As for possible consequences, she had never been in the habit of counting the cost of her actions carefully. There is a delicious excitement to a nature like hers in defying consequences.
But then a sight of Periwinkle's sleeping innocence sent back the tide with a rush. How much better were the simple old home ways and the love of this little heart, and the faithful devotion of that most kindly Rob Riley! She remembered her walks with him, her teasing him, his interference against Miss Tucker, and the deliverance wrought by the little creature lying there. She would go back to her old self, how painful soever it might be.
But she couldn't stay in the city and turn away Harrison Lowder; and to go home was to confess that she had failed in her art. And how could she humble herself to seem to wish to regain Rob Riley's love? And then, what kind of an outlook did the life of a granite-cutter's wife afford her? Here she looked at herself in the gla.s.s. All her pride rebelled against going home. But all her pride sank down when she stooped to kiss the cheek of the sleeping child.
In this alternation of feeling she pa.s.sed the night. When breakfast time came she took Periwinkle down, making such explanations as she could with much embarra.s.sment.
”You're sick, Henrietta,” said Cousin John. ”You don't eat anything.
You've been working too steadily.”
After breakfast the family doctor called, and said that Henrietta was suffering from too close application to her art, and from steam heat in the alcoves. She must have rest.
The poor, tired, perplexed girl, badgered with conflicting emotions, but resolved at last to escape from temptations that she could not resist effectually, received this verdict eagerly. She would go home; and the doctor agreed that change of scene was what she wanted. Her life in town was too dull.
Harry Lowder called that evening, but Henrietta had taken the precaution to be sick abed. At eight o'clock the next morning she was on the Harlem train.
”You see, I brought her home,” said Periwinkle to her grandmother, in confidence. ”I didn't like Cousin John's folks. They wasn't glad to see me; and I didn't like to leave Henrietta there.”
But Henrietta, who had blossomed out into something quite different from the Henrietta of other times, made no explanation except that she was sick. For a week she took little interest in anything, ate but little, and went about in a dazed way, resuming her old cares as though she had never given them up. Somehow she seemed a fine lady in the dignity of manner and the self-possession that she had taken on with characteristic quickness of apprehension and imitation, and Mrs. Newton felt as if the housework were unsuited to her. Even her father looked at her with a sort of respect, and forbore to chide her as had been his wont.
But when a week had pa.s.sed she suddenly got out her material and began to draw. Periwinkle was set up first for a model, then her father and her mother, and then the dog, as he lay sleeping before the fire, had his portrait taken, to Periwinkle's delight. So persistent was her ambitious industry that every living thing on the place came in for a sketch. But Periwinkle was the favorite.
Rob Riley came home for July and August, the work in the yard being dull. He kept aloof from Henrietta, and she nodded to him with a severe and almost disdainful air that made him wretched. After three or four weeks of this coolness, during which Henrietta got a reputation for pride in the whole country, Rob grew desperate. What did he care for the ”stuck-up” girl? He would have it out, anyhow, the next time he had a chance.