CHAPTER XII.

NEW FRIENDS.

Meantime, how fared it with those whom Persis had left behind?

The incoherent letter which had been mailed on the day of the girl’s departure from home reached its destination about the time she herself arrived at Black Rock.

Mr. Holmes, seeing that the paper sent was the proper one, did not at first perceive the enclosure, and remarked, “Persis has sent the paper all right.”

“Did she say she would go with the Browns?” asked Mrs. Holmes.

“Perhaps there is a note inside the envelope. Look and see, my dear.” And Mr. Holmes, deep in the perusal of a business letter, passed the envelope over to his wife, who shook from it Persis’s poor little note.

She read it over twice before she could take in any part of its meaning. Then she gave a little cry. “Oh, Horace!” she exclaimed; “read this. This is terrible! Oh, the poor, poor child! What shall we do?”

Mr. Holmes dropped his letter and hastily scanned Persis’s note. “I can’t make it out,” he said, looking puzzled.

“Why, don’t you see? Don’t you understand what she has discovered? Oh, Horace! where has she gone? What will become of her? Those papers in the other box!—you have not forgotten what they are?”

Mr. Holmes nodded thoughtfully. He was beginning to take in the situation. “But surely, surely——” he began. “Why, Mary, that was so long ago—why, she cannot mean——Yes, I agree with you; it is terrible. I must go on at once and stop her.”

“Where will you go?”

Mr. Holmes looked bewildered. “Why, my dear, there will be no trouble. Do you think she can have disappeared without a trace? Those things don’t happen, except in books.” He was trying to reassure his wife, but he was heavy at heart.

At this moment Mrs. Estabrook entered with a letter in her hand. “I’ve just heard from Esther,” she informed them. “She says Persis has left her and had decided to join us. She should be here to-day, shouldn’t she?”

“Oh, mother! mother!” cried Mrs. Holmes; “read this. Isn’t it terrible? Who could have dreamed that such a result would come from what was a real kindness?”

“I don’t understand,” replied Mrs. Estabrook, looking up from the note after reading it. “Does she mean—can she really have left her home and have gone away among strangers?”

“Oh, I wonder if she has?” returned Mrs. Holmes.

“Surely not!” Mrs. Estabrook said. “She is probably with Annis and her mother.”

“Where are they?” asked Mrs. Holmes.

“Oh, yes; I believe Esther wrote that they were still with her. The Dixons, then—somewhere with friends.”

“I shall go and find out,” Mr. Holmes said, resolutely.

“But, Horace, your hay-fever. You can send a despatch.”

But he shook his head. “It would only be wasting time if she has gone off alone.”

“Then let me go. I’ll get some one to help me find her,—Mr. Danforth or Dr. Dixon.”

Still Mr. Holmes was determined. “No; we can both go, if you wish. I must see just what the papers are to which she alluded. I have almost forgotten even the name.”

“Anne Maitland,” Mrs. Holmes replied, in a whisper.

He nodded in reply; and the first train to be had bore them towards home.

Old Prue greeted them with, “How Miss Persy?”

“Oh, Prue! that is what we want to know,” answered Mrs. Holmes. “Tell us just what she said and did.”

“I ‘low she in fo’ a spell o’ sickness,” replied Prue. “She look lak a po’ little white ghos’, an’ she gimme good-bye lak she know she ain’t gwine see me no mo’.”

“Oh, Horace! then she has gone—gone, who can tell where? Oh, my poor little girl! How could she! how could she!”

Mr. Holmes had gone directly to the desk and had taken out the larger box. “These are what she has found, Mary,” he said. “Do you wonder that she felt as she did?”

“No, no; but if she had only trusted us; if she had only not been so impetuous!”

“Don’t blame her.” Mr. Holmes spoke unsteadily. “She thought we had not trusted her; that we had deceived her. I can understand how it hurt her proud, young spirit.”

“Yes, I know. Oh, my poor little girl! Oh, Horace, I must see her! We must find her. I want her in my arms again.” Mrs. Holmes was crying hopelessly.

“Don’t, Mary, don’t. We know Persis too well to believe she will do anything radically wrong. She has acted hastily under the pressure of a terrible grief, but she will do nothing to be ashamed of.”

“But if she is ill among strangers,—if she should die,” Mrs. Holmes sobbed.

Mr. Holmes compressed his lips. It was a hard thought that such was a possibility, but he would not yield to it. “I do not believe it,” he said, firmly.

Knowing her fondness for the Bridge, a despatch was sent there, but, as might be supposed, the answer gave no clue to her wherabouts. All search, all inquiry, seemed to end where it began. Persis had left home, presumably to go to New York. Not a trace of her could be found after that.

“She means to stay,” Mrs. Holmes decided, after searching Persis’s rooms and finding what remained of her possessions. “She has provided for the winter.”

Their search was not over when the first message came from Persis:

“MY DEAR PEOPLE,—I am well, and am making my own living honorably. Do not worry about me, and do not try to find me. I do not forget you one moment, but I cannot bear the thought of what a different life I should have to face if I were to come to you. If I can learn not to shrink from it, I will see you, even though it can never, never be the same again.

“From one who was your daughter, “PERSIS.”

This the girl had managed to give to some one on the train which she took one Saturday for the purpose of making a little tour of investigation to one or two of the nearest towns. She was restless, and had always greatly liked to visit new places. It suddenly occurred to her that here would be an opportunity of sending a message without disclosing her identity to the village people at Black Rock, and she wrote the little note, placed a stamp upon it, and slipped it in her pocket.

“Are you going through to Washington?” she asked a lady in the seat ahead of her. A reply in the affirmative decided the questioner, who took out her letter. “Would you be kind enough to mail this for me at the station when you arrive? I should like it to go from Washington. I would be so very much obliged if you send it.”

Thinking that she meant to insure a speedier delivery of the letter, the lady very readily promised. And thus it reached her home, and brought a subdued pleasure.

“She is safe, as you said,” Mrs. Holmes told her husband. “We shall have to let time work out the result, I am afraid.”

“Considering her point of view, she is doing what might be expected of one of her temperament,” returned Mr. Holmes. “All we can do is to wait events, my dear.”

Mellicent wept bitterly on hearing what had happened, and became suddenly aware that she had not appreciated Persis. Her grandmother had divulged Persis’s secret, thinking the time had come for it, and Mellicent knew that to Persis was due her trip to Narragansett Pier.

Lisa, too, was crushed when she heard of the trouble. “Dear, loving Persis,” she said to her husband. “No one did appreciate her when she was at home. Now that she is gone, we are all discovering what a generous, unselfish girl she was. Oh, if we could only see her again, she should know how much we love her.”

But the mountains around about Persis kept their secret well, and in time the family at home came to accept her absence as a fact which, however it might be deplored, must nevertheless be borne with resignation. There was no less desire to discover her whereabouts, but the effort to do so became less active.

It was hard to explain matters, and only to intimate friends was an attempt made to do so. To mere acquaintances it was easy to say, “Persis is trying her wings. She wants to know how it feels to be absolutely independent.”

“I should think you would want her at home,” one friend said to Mrs. Holmes. “Now that your eldest daughter is married, and Persis has finished her college course, how could you let her leave you?”

“I do want her,” Mrs. Holmes replied, quietly, “but I also want what is best for Persis.” And there was no more said on the subject.

Annis could not disabuse her mind of a feeling of guiltiness towards her cousin, although the little hasty note which reached her assured her that no one was accountable for her going away. “I do not know whether, after all, I am your cousin or not,” Persis had written. “Grandma can tell you, but oh, Annis dear, try to love me anyhow.”

“As if I should not,” Annis said to Basil. “As if there were ever any one so well worth loving.”

Basil was silent. He felt so, too. Of all her friends, he seemed best able to grasp the situation. “She wants to be let alone,” he said after a while. “She will come back when she is ready. I am not afraid but that she will.” It was he who first suggested that she might have gone to the Bridge, and when all search seemed fruitless, he maintained his opinion that they would soon hear from her, or that she might return any day.

Mr. Danforth, too, felt the loss of his friend deeply, but Persis’s answer to his letter had made him understand that only as a friend did she consider him. Moreover, her independence in deciding so summarily to leave home rather disappointed him. He was one of the men who prefer the part of the oak, and would have all women accept the character of the vine, and he thought Persis might have asked for advice before acting so hastily. Persis would have been surprised if she had known that it was he, and not Basil, who spent the winter in Washington, for, having had an offer which promised well for his journalistic career, his work took him to the capital, and fortunately he was removed from associations which would have proved very unhappy ones for him.

But there were many who mourned her in the little circle of her long-known and intimate friends.

Persis was far from knowing what a very lovable person she was, and how much she was missed.

“It is strange,” Mellicent said, plaintively, “that every one is so devoted to Persis. I believe the boys have all been more or less in love with her.”

“Why, Mellicent, what makes you say so?” said her mother.

“Well, I am sure of it. When I speak of her to Mr. Dan, he immediately looks as if I had told him he were going to be hung, and Basil scowls and bites his lips, as if he would like to say something but didn’t dare, while Porter mourns openly, and Walter Dixon says she is the finest girl in the land, and if he had a sister he should want her to be just like Persis.”

Mrs. Holmes sighed, and Mellicent began to look very “teary ’round the lashes.” She had many weeps over Persis’s absence. She, too, felt with Annis that she had somehow pushed her off. It looked as if this absent member of the family might expect a very great spoiling if ever she did return.

But as yet she had no such intention. It was a very alien sort of life for her, yet not one from which she shrank. A city girl, bred in a home of comfort and even of luxury, to be suddenly transported to this wild neighborhood, one would suppose would fret greatly against conditions which robbed her of her ordinary comforts, but she took the walk to school ’mid cold and wet. She gave out her best to the eager little pupils, and returned home to her room up under the eaves to pass the evening in study, or, taking her work, would spend it with the family in the sitting-room.

There were three younger children besides Mattie, and at first it was hard for the new inmate of the household to become used to their noise and chatter, but she had the blessed quality of adaptability, and managed to fit in comfortably.

“Miss Anne and Dr. Rivers are great friends, I tell you,” Mr. Temple would remark, jocularly. “If he were a widower, I’d think he had an eye on her.”

“Now, Jim, you know the doctor is old enough to be Miss Anne’s father,” Mrs. Temple would reply, and her husband would laugh at her earnest tone.

It was, nevertheless, a fact that the doctor had taken a great fancy to the new teacher, and no one dared to say a word in her disfavor before him. Mrs. Rivers, too, shared her husband’s opinion, and it became a weekly habit for Persis to spend Sunday with this kind couple. Mrs. Rivers, it must be admitted, was the more curious of the two regarding the girl’s history, and often said, “I wish, doctor, that Miss Anne would tell us more about herself.”

“She’ll tell when she gets ready,” would be the reply. “Don’t go badgering her, mother; it is a sore subject with her, and it isn’t kind to be curious about it.”

Yet Persis was on the point of revealing her story more than once, and often caught herself, in a burst of confidence, referring to scenes and persons at home. Therefore the doctor, who had travelled more than his neighbors, came to a pretty shrewd conclusion as to where she belonged; but he was too honorable to make any use of his conjecture, and never hinted at knowing more than Persis actually told him.

There was one person who from the first had given the stranger a dog-like devotion, and this was the colored boy, Columbus, a great, lanky, overgrown fellow, with the simplicity of a little child and the tastes of a girl. He loved nothing so well as a doll which he could dress up, and could pretend to be a person of importance. Were there a marriage in the village, the doll wore bridal array, and for the nonce became the interesting bride; were there a funeral, the doll appeared in deep mourning. Did a stranger attend the church, Columbus went home with the cut of her gown distinctly pictured on his mind, and at the next opportunity she was reproduced in miniature. To give him a few scraps of silk or velvet was to win his heart, and Persis was his ideal of all that was stylish and lovely.

“I always said Columbus ought to have been a girl,” Mrs. Temple would say. “We took him to the county fair once, and all he did was to sit and look at the people’s clothes. He would sneak off any time I would let him for the sake of getting at his box of pieces.”

Yet Columbus was a well-trained servant, for Mrs. Temple was a notable house-keeper, and the boy was a model waiter, and was handy in many directions. His privilege of privileges was to be allowed to bring his doll and his box of pieces in the evening and sit with the family in one corner of the room. He had a really wonderful gift of imitation, and the costumes he evolved from his little store of goods were actually astonishing.

The first time Persis saw herself reproduced she was quite taken aback. The cut of her gown, the blazer jacket, shirt-waist, and even the smart collar and tie, were exact, while the doll’s hat was a marvel of art. That such a taste should be developed in a poor little ignorant colored boy seemed a strange freak, but one which amused Persis, and she fostered it by many a gift of dress-stuff, and won an almost adoring worship from Columbus by promising to send away for a fine new doll for him.

The boy could whistle like a bird, and on the long, dark evenings which November brought never failed to go up the road to meet Persis and follow her home from school, his sweet, piercing whistle always announcing his approach. No matter what he was doing, whether forbidden or not, nothing stood in the way of his seeing that she reached home in safety.

“But, Columbus, you mustn’t leave your work,” Persis expostulated.

“I ain’t gwine let nothin’ tech you alls, Miss Anne,” he would say. “I jes’ ’bleedged an’ compelled to come. I couldn’t he’p it, nohow.”

If anything detained her in the school-house, he would wait outside till she should be ready, and then trot along a couple of yards behind her, carrying her lunch basket. It must be confessed that his presence did rob the long, lonely walk of its terrors, and his came to be an accepted office at last.

Persis’s little kitten was another source of pleasure and amusement. She named it Comfort; and on long winter evenings, when the wind howled through the pines and swept across the mountain fastnesses, the little creature did indeed bring her mistress solace as she sat by her fire which crackled away in the wood-stove. What pictures arose before the tired girl at such times those about her little knew; and sometimes the hot tears would fall on Comfort’s sleek coat, till she, roused from her doze, would climb up on her mistress’s shoulder, and with her small red tongue would strive to give furtive little licks to the girl’s cheek, as if she would show her the affection she craved. And then Persis would bury her face in the soft fur, and tell the unconscious little animal the secrets she dared not divulge to any other. And so November went by, and the time neared Christmas. How Persis dreaded that day to come! She had managed to send off a little package from the nearest town, to which she rode with Mr. and Mrs. Temple to make a few Christmas purchases. There was no express office in the village.

“I wonder why I am so persistent in not letting them know where I am?” on her return she asked herself. “It is that dreadful feeling that comes up whenever I think of seeing any of them. Mine and not mine. No, no; I must stand exile till I can feel more reconciled to the change.” And she gave a deep sigh. “‘An exile from home, pleasures dazzle in vain,’” she quoted. “Christmas-eve, and here I am.” Then her lip trembled, and she sank down on her knees, sobbing, “Oh, mother, father, I want you so! I want you so!”

[Illustration: '[Fleuron]’]