CHAPTER XIII.

AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.

“What are you doing, Joseph?”

The child did not answer at first; the bright red came into his innocent cheeks, and he gave a little laugh of mingled confusion and glee as he trotted out of the corner, and came toward his grandmother.

The old lady had paused for a second in her work; but she could not afford to forget herself into stopping completely, and her wasted fingers began moving as assiduously as ever.

“I thought you were trying to fly,” said she, smiling in her sweet, patient way, the sort of smile that human lips only wear when they have been purified by great and patient suffering. “I didn’t know but you had a pair of wings hid away under your jacket.”

“I wish I had!” exclaimed Joseph, impetuously. “Oh! I wish I could fly, grandma!”

“Why, what would you do, Joey?” she asked, looking almost wonderingly down at his eager face all aglow with enthusiasm.

“I’d fly away to heaven and bring father back,” he whispered, nestling close to her side.

The old woman dropped her work, and folded her arms close about him; while one dry sob, that takes the place of tears with the aged, shook her breast.

“I’m afraid the angels wouldn’t let you come back,” she whispered; “grandma couldn’t lose her boy.”

“No, no! I’d come back,” he said, eagerly; “and I would just tell father how we want him.”

“The good Father of all knows best, Joseph,” she answered, with sweet submission. “You mustn’t wish anybody back that has gone over the black waters.”

“Only we need him so, grandma.”

“Yes, deary; but you don’t forget your little hymn. We ain’t alone, you know.”

“No, grandma! Oh! if I was only a big man!” he cried, with immense energy.

“Were you trying to stretch yourself into one?” she asked, bringing herself back to ordinary reflections; for she had learned, poor soul, in those years of trial, how dangerous it is to give way to yearning thoughts after the dear ones who have gone forward to the eternal rest.

“Yes, grandma,” said the boy, bursting into a laugh at his own performance—such a merry, rippling laugh, that it made the old woman think of the sound the mountain brooks made among the wild country scenes she had so loved in the days when life was still an actual pleasure.

“Well, not quite that, grandma,” he added, in his scrupulously truthful way. “But I was trying to see if I hadn’t got up above the mark sister Anna made for me in the corner.”

“And you couldn’t stretch yourself to satisfy you? It’ll come soon enough, my boy—soon enough.”

“I think it’s very slow work, grandma; and the birthdays are so far apart. What a great while a year is, grandma, aint it? It don’t seem as if it ought to take many of them to make eternity.”

The smile was quite gone from her face now. She had forgotten the work that must be done; her face was uplifted, and the shadowy eyes looked eagerly out, as if the tired soul were trying to pierce the mists that lay between it and its haven of rest.

The boy looked at her wonderingly; then her silence, and her strange, far-off look filled him with a vague trouble. He slid his little hand into hers and pulled her toward him, exclaiming,

“Grandma! grandma!”

“Yes, dear,” she answered, dreamily.

“Oh! don’t look as if you were going away!”

Truly, his innocent words, whose import he himself so dimly comprehended, was the most perfect translation of that look which words could have found.

“What were you thinking about, grandma?”

“Thinking? Ever so many things—so many!”

“Don’t the years seem a great way apart to you, grandma?”

“So short; and such ages and ages to look back on,” she answered; but replying more to her own thoughts than seeking to make her words plain to his childish understanding.

“Why, you don’t have birthdays any oftener than I, do you?” he asked, somewhat jealously; perhaps afraid he was being defrauded of his rightful dues in regard to the number and frequency of those blessings that grow such very doubtful ones as the years get on.

“It’s only that they seem to come closer and closer, Joey,” she answered, brushing his hair back from his handsome face. “When anybody gets old, little boy, the years grow very short in passing, and so long to look back on.”

“I guess I don’t quite understand it yet, grandma,” he said, with a somewhat puzzled look.

“Time enough, little Joseph. Don’t you try to hurry things; you’ll understand soon enough.”

“Will I?” and he gave a sigh of relief—the promise and the anticipation were almost as consoling as any reality—the anticipations of childhood are so golden in the light of the future.

Joseph nestled close to her feet on the little stool, and, resting his thoughts on the promise she had made, brought himself back to safer themes, both as regarded his mental capacities and the old lady’s peace.

“This is just the morning for a good long talk, ain’t it, grandma?” he said, in his quaint, old-fashioned way, that was so pretty and original.

“Almost any morning seems just the one for you and me,” she answered, pleasantly, taking up her work again, and proceeding to make amends for lost time with great energy.

“Well, so it does,” said Joseph, after considering the matter for a little. “You and I don’t seem to get talked out very easy, do we, grandma?”

“Not very, dear; you have a tolerably busy tongue of your own.”

“Sister Anna says, sometimes she’s afraid you find it most too long,” said Joe, honestly.

“There isn’t any danger of that, my boy; it’s as sweet to your old grandmother as the birds’ songs used to be.”

“Only not like that parrot in the baker’s shop,” amended Joseph, with a laugh.

“More like the wood-thrushes I used to hear up in Vermont,” she said; for his laughter brought back again the memory of the brooks, and the beautiful summers that lay so far off behind the shadows of all those later years.

“How does a wood-thrush sing?”

Then there had to be an elaborate explanation; at the end of which he must ask, in great haste:

“Did you live in Vermont, grandma?”

“No, dear; but I spent a summer there once—so long, long ago.”

“But you have forgotten about it?”

“Forgotten, child? Oh! I couldn’t forget it!”

“Was it so very pleasant, grandma?”

The feeling that surged up in her heart was like a glow from her perished youth, so warm and powerful was it; the soft wind from that summer of the past blew across her soul and made her voice sweet as a psalm.

“So pleasant, Joey—so pleasant!”

“Was grandpa with you?”

“Yes; he was there part of the time.”

“I think I should like to hear about it,” said Joe; “it sounds like a story.”

So it was—the story every youth knows, varied according to individual experience; but the old story still, that is always so beautiful.

“Won’t you tell me about it, grandma?”

“Indeed, dear, there is nothing to tell! It was like a story to me, because I was so very, very happy, and the birds sang as I don’t think they ever have sung since; and I haven’t heard any thing, either, like the sound of the brooks, only your dear voice; and it was such a beautiful time of rest.”

She was far beyond little Joe’s comprehension now; but the unusual look in her face interested him, and her voice sounded like a blessing, it was so soft and caressing.

“What makes you think the birds haven’t sung so since?” he asked, with that tendency to be direct and practical, which children show in so odd a way when they are perplexed by a conversation that makes new echoes in their untrained souls.

“That was only grandma’s foolish fancy,” she said, trying to come back from the phantom world, where her thoughts had wandered. “Dear boy, the birds never stop singing! Never forget that as you grow older, and troubles begin to weary you. Even if you can’t hear them for a time, they are singing still; and so are God’s blessed angels, too, and sometime we shall hear both clearly again.”

“Up in heaven,” said Joe, gravely and thoughtfully.

“Up in heaven!” repeated the old woman, and her voice was a thanksgiving.

The boy caught her hand and held it fast. There was an expression of such trust and hope, making her face young again, that a vague fear shot into his mind that she was just ready to float away from his sight forever.

“Don’t, grandma!” he exclaimed.

“What, dear?”

“Did you hear ’em sing?” he whispered, in a sort of awe-stricken way.

“What do you mean, little one?”

“You looked as if they were calling you—the angels, you know. You won’t go away!”

“They will call sometime, my boy, and your poor, old, tired grandma will go to her rest. Only we must have patience, Joey—a little patience.”

“I don’t want you to go,” said Joe, stoutly; “and I don’t think I like the angels either!”

“Why, Joseph!” said the old lady, startled into a practical view of things by the expression of a sentiment so dreadfully heterodox. “What do you mean? Not like the angels that live up in heaven? Just think a little.”

“Well, they’re always taking folks away,” he replied, rebelliously; “and I wish they wouldn’t! I’m sure they can’t love you as well as I do, for I’ve known you all my life; and they’re only strangers, after all.”

Joe spoke as solemnly as if his little existence had endured several scores of years; and grandma, in spite of feeling it her duty to impress a proper orthodox lesson on the child’s mind, could not help a smile at the idea of the angels being considered interlopers, and unjustifiably inclined to meddle with human affairs.

“They love us, Joey,” she said.

“Yes; but not so well as we love each other, I guess.”

“They come to take us home,” she added.

“Then I want ’em to take us all together,” retorted Joe. “They might have a family ticket, as they had at the fair,” he added, briskly, after meditating a little; and he looked quite delighted at his brilliant suggestion.

“Oh, Joe!” said the old lady; but grandma’s devotion was of a very sweet and loveable kind, and, certain that the child had meant no irreverence, she could not quite feel it her duty to give him a serious lecture upon the enormity of giving expression to such proofs of total depravity.

“That wasn’t wicked, was it, grandma?”

“You didn’t mean it to be, dear,” she answered, softly. “But you must remember the angels do love us, and they wont be strangers to us when we see them.”

Joe did not attempt to dispute a point that his grandmother stated so distinctly; but he remained sufficiently doubtful to make him desirous that the unseen visitants should not hasten their coming; and he still held fast to his grandmother’s hand, giving a long breath of satisfaction when he saw the glow of exaltation die slowly out of her face, and the every-day look of patience and resignation settle down over its pallor.

“You are making me very idle,” said the old lady, shaking his little fingers gently off her hand; “and we both forgot you haven’t said any lesson this morning, little boy.”

“I’ll get my book,” said Joe, rising with his usual prompt obedience, rather glad to get his mind back to safer and firmer ground. “I’ll say a good long one, grandma, to make up.”

“That’s my good boy.”

So the lesson was gone through with great earnestness, and with the most entire satisfaction on both sides; for Joe was as quick at his book as with his queer fancies that made him so pleasant a companion to the old lady.

“There’s somebody coming up stairs,” said Joe, as he closed his book after receiving a kiss of approval. “Oh! it’s Anna,” he added, as the door opened, and the girl entered.

“Why, I didn’t expect you home so soon, dear,” said the old lady.

“I brought the work to do it here,” she answered, laying her bundle on the table.

“I am glad of that; it’s always pleasant to have you at home.”

“But grandma wasn’t lonesome,” added Joe, hastily. “We have had one of our good old talks, haven’t we, grandma?”

“Yes, dear.”

“And I said my lesson splendid, Anna,” he continued, too eager to be quite grammatical.

“I am glad of that,” she answered, a little absently, and passed on into the little room she called her own, closing the door behind her.

She was not accustomed to lose much time in dreaming or idling; but then she sat down on the bed, and threw her bonnet wearily away, as if her head ached even under its light weight.

She looked weary and disheartened—the look so painful to see in a young face; so sad to feel that life’s iron hands settle too heavily over all the youthful dreams and hopes that ought to make youth joyous and beautiful.

There she sat quiet, and absorbed in her thoughts till the tired look wore away; and if there had been any to see, they might have told accurately by the expression of her face, and the new light in her eyes, how her thoughts stole, gradually, from the stern, harsh reality into the realm of some beautiful dream-land, whose flower-wreathed gates no care or trouble could pass.

She was so young and so lovely—ah, let her dream on! The stern reality lay just outside; the brightness of elf-land might only make its coldness more bleak when she was forced to return; but I would have hesitated to take from her the ability to wander away among her glorious visions.

There comes a time when we can dream no longer—you and I know it. But would we lose the memory of the reason when such reveries were more real than the details of the untried existence about us?

I think not. I am sure not; and since care and suffering must come, and every human heart learn its appropriate lesson, I would not deprive the young of any share of the glow and brightness which belongs to that feverish season; and you and I both know that its chief sunshine comes from that ability to weave golden visions, and sit in breathless ecstasy under their light. And then Joseph’s voice called outside the door,

“Anna—sister Anna?”

“Yes, dear; I am coming.”

The dream-world vanished; the rose-clustered portals closed, and she came back to the real life—came back, as we all must. But, oh! woe for the day when the fairy gates close with a dreary clang, and we know that never for us can they open again “till these hearts be clay.”

She passed into the outer room, where Joseph was very busily engaged in helping, or hindering his grandmother to array herself in the worn shawl and bonnet, which had so long before done duty enough to have entitled them to pass out of service.

“Grandma and I are going for a little walk, Anna,” he said, in his quaint way. “I think it’ll do her good.”

“Dear boy,” said the old lady, with her sweet smile; “there never was such a thoughtful creature.”

“I am sure it _will_ do you good, grandmother,” Anna said; “but you must put my shawl on under yours; the wind blows cold.”

Joseph ran off to get it, and the pair wrapped the old lady up with a fondness and attention which many a rich woman would give all her India shawls, and diamonds to boot, to receive from her children.

Then Joseph led her carefully down the stairs, and Anna brought her pile of work to the fire, and sat down in her grandmother’s chair. She could not afford to waste the precious moments with so much dependent upon her exertions; but fast as her fingers flew, still faster travelled her young, unwearied thoughts; and that they were pleasant ones one could have told by the smile that stole every now and then, like a ray of sunlight, across her mouth, brightening her beauty into something positively dazzling.

There was a quick knock at the door, but supposing it to be some of the neighbor’s children on an errand, Anna did not pause in her work, calling out dreamily,

“Come in.”

The door opened hesitatingly, and Anna added, “Is it you, little Alice Romaine?”

“It is not little Alice; but may I come in?”

Anna sprang to her feet in astonishment and turned toward the door, and stood confronting Georgiana Halstead.

“Excuse me,” Georgiana said, hastily, in her graceful, childlike way. “I thought Rowena might come to see Rebecca. You are not vexed, are you?”

In spite of her retired life, Anna was too truly a lady to feel either confusion or embarrassment; not even shame at the exposure of their dreary poverty, but one of those flashes of thoughts, which travel like lightning through the mind, struck her painfully as she looked at Georgiana Halstead standing there in her beautiful dress, like the goddess of luxury come to look poverty in the face, and find out what it was like.

“I have been wanting to come so much,” continued the girl, going up to Anna and holding out her hand.

“You are very kind,” she answered, pleasantly enough; and the momentary bitterness died in cordial admiration of her visitor’s loveliness.

They made a beautiful picture as they stood, and the contrast only added to the charms of either. Had a painter desired models for the patrician descendant of Saxon kings, and the dark, passionate-eyed Jewess, he could not have found more perfect representatives, at least of his ideal.

“Will you sit down?” Anna said. “It was very kind of you to come.”

Her composure was quite restored, brought back more completely, perhaps, by a pretty little hesitation in Georgiana’s manner, such as a petted child might betray when venturing upon some step for which it feared reproval.

“Thank you; ah! it’s nice of you not to be offended,” said Georgiana, sitting down by the fire. “Mrs. Savage gave me your address; and ever since the tableau I have been so wanting to come.”

“In what way can I serve you?” Anna asked, with a proud humility.

“Oh, now! if you are going to be stately, you will frighten me off altogether,” cried Georgiana; “so please don’t, for I’m not at all stately myself.”

Anna smiled as a queen might have smiled at a spoiled child. Ah! the spell of wealth and station may be ever so strong, there is a power in nature’s patents of nobility which is stronger still.

“I don’t think I know much about being stately,” she said, with one of her rare laughs, which were so musical. “Certainly it would be a poor way of showing my thanks for your kindness in even remembering me.”

“As if anybody could forget you! Why, the whole city has been raving about you ever since that night!” exclaimed Georgiana; “and the men have done nothing but beg Mrs. Savage for another sight of the queen of beauty.”

Such words would have been very pleasant to a young girl whose life was golden as youth ought to be; but to Anna, oppressed with care and daily anxieties, they brought only a bitter pain.

Dear Mrs. Browning has told us in her passionate way—

“How dreary ’tis for women to sit still, On Winter nights, by solitary fires, And hear the nations praising them far off.”

And more than one woman’s heart has ached to feel its truth; but truly, for a woman to hear that her beauty is the theme of idle tongues, while she sees those dear as her own life almost hungering for bread, is a bitter comment still on the vanity of human life.

“So I thought I would come,” continued Georgiana; “and I want you to do me a favor.”

“If I can,” Anna said; “but don’t ask me to take part in any more such exhibitions. I can’t, indeed I can’t.”

“No, no!” returned Georgiana, hastily; “I wont. You shall not be bothered. But I’ll tell you what I wish you would do. Now do you promise?”

“I think I may,” Anna replied, with her lovely smile. “You don’t look as if you could ask any thing very terrible.”

“Indeed I wont!” cried she, in her enthusiastic way. “I like you so much; don’t be vexed. I don’t want to be patronizing or snobbish. I hate it so; but——”

“I am sure you don’t. Please go on.”

“Well, I’m such a sad, idle creature, and I thought if you would come to me, sometimes, and help me get through a perfect pyramid of embroidery, and work that has been accumulating since the year one, I should be so delighted.”

“I shall be very glad of the work, Miss Halstead, and I thank you heartily for remembering me.”

“Oh! don’t speak that way. It’s I that ought to thank you! Why, it will be a perfect treat just to sit and look at anybody as beautiful as you are.”

“And I shall have that satisfaction over and above the satisfaction of getting the work, of which I am so very, very glad.”

There was an earnestness in her voice which sobered the volatile creature who listened. Her life had been such a fairy dream that it was difficult for her to realize there were such evils as care and poverty in the world. It seemed so inexplicable to her that this beautiful girl could come, day after day, in actual contact with them.

“I will try and make it pleasant for you,” she said, more gravely than she often spoke. “I am a spoiled, selfish girl, but I mean to be good.”

“I think you would find it difficult to be any thing else,” Anna said, heartily.

“Oh! you don’t know. Aunt Eliza reads me the most frightful lectures; by the way, she is a sad, catty old maid; but don’t you mind her.”

Then she began talking with her accustomed volubility; and it was as bewitching to poor, lonely Anna as the Arabian Nights are to children. It seemed so strange to have these glimpses at a young life so widely separated from the clouds that hung over her own youth.

Georgiana Halstead never did things by halves; and in her usual headlong way, she had plunged into a violent interest for this lovely stranger, and sat there talking to her as freely as if she had known her half a life.

“I must be going!” she exclaimed, at last. “Oh, dear me! I have been out ages; and Aunt Eliza is waiting for the carriage; how she will scold me! Then you’ll come, miss? Mayn’t I call you Anna?”

“Indeed you may.”

“Thanks! I like you so much. You are like a picture, or a poem. Now, please like me.”

“Just as a prisoner might the sunlight!” exclaimed Anna, with unconscious earnestness.

Georgiana gave her a hearty kiss, and a cordial pressure of the hand.

“Come to-morrow,” she said. “Now wont you?”

Before Anna could answer, there was a knock at the door, which startled them both—they had been so completely absorbed.

“Who is that?” Georgiana asked.

“Only some of the neighbors, probably,” Anna answered. “Come in, please.”

The door opened. The girls turned simultaneously toward it, and there stood Horace Savage.

He advanced without any hesitation, saying,

“Excuse my intrusion, Miss Burns. Ah, Miss Georgiana, this is an unexpected pleasure.”

The girl’s brow contracted slightly; her quick glance went from one to the other.

“And to me, also,” she said.

There had been one vivid burst of crimson across Anna Burns’ cheek; then it faded, leaving her paler than before; but she stood there perfectly quiet and self-possessed.

“Will you sit down, Mr. Savage? If Miss Halstead will wait a moment she wont have to go down our dark staircase alone.”

“Miss Halstead never waits,” returned Georgiana, laughingly; but the childlike glee had forsaken both voice and face.

“My errand is a very brief one,” said Horace. “I only wanted to inquire after my little pets, the boys. I hope Miss Burns will not consider me impertinent.”

“I thank you,” Anna said; “they are, both of them, out now.”

“Dear me, it is very late,” said Georgiana. “Good-by, Miss Burns. You wont forget?”

But the voice was colder, and Anna noticed it.

“I shall be at Miss Halstead’s command,” she said, gravely.

“And I shall do myself the honor of seeing her safely down the stairs,” said Horace.

She did not seem to hear him, but ran away through the passage. He stood a second irresolute. Anna’s grave face did not change; and after a few confused words he followed Georgiana Halstead down the stairs.