Gratia's trials

Front matter

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Chapter I. The Snake In The Grass

The bland October sun had just dipped behind the misty blue of the far-off range of the Catskills ; the sound of the river in the valley seemed unwontedly loud and distinct, as it mingled with the chirp of crickets and the weird cry of the katydid, and the scarlet woodbine-trailers on the south end of the old farm-house shone through the twilight, as if their leaves had been dipped in blood. •

It was a curious brown building, that same farm-house, with a high, steep roof, that descended so low as almost to touch the top of the door in front, and formed curious architectural angles in the rear, while an immense stone chimney rose out of its center, and gray plastered squares marked the locality of the kitchen fire-place, and the cavern-like oven at its side. Two huge clusters of box grew on either side of the door-yard path, and the little wooden gate was shaded by a single maple tree.

A tall girl of fifteen stood leaning over the gate, her hair blown away from her face by the chill evening wind, her cheeks glowing with peach-like color, and her brown eyes almost vailed by their white, drooping lids, whose long lashes were just a shade darker than her auburn tresses. Her dress, of some brown material, was coarse in texture and unattractive in color,

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but she wore a late autumn rose at her throat, and a bow of bright ribbon was tied at the left side of her head. She was not pretty, any more than the half-opened bud is pretty, but there was that in her face and figure which gave promise of extraordinary beauty in the future.

This was Gratia Kempfield.

As she stood there, looking dreamily out, where the orange sky was slowly deepening into into wine-red, a little hand pulled gently at her skirt, and a tiny voice piped out :

“Gratia! Sister!”

“Is it you, Raymond?” and the elder sister put her arm caressingly round the five-year-old boy, who had crept out into the twilight as noiselessly as the kitten that frisked by his side. “I thought you were by the kitchen fire.”

“So I was, but she came out, with a basin, to make some gruel, and she kissed me and patted my head. I don’t like her, Gratia ! When is she going away ?”

“I don’t knotv,” said Gratia, speaking with something of an effort.

“ I want my mamma agjjtin !” pleaded little Raymond, with a sob in his throat “ I don’t like Cousin Almira. When will mamma be well again, Gratia?”

The young girl stooped and lifted the child in her arms, while she imprinted a kiss on his sunburnt forehead.

“Dear Raymond, when God pleases. Be a good boy, and don’t tease.”

Gratia put her little brother down on the short, crisp grass once more, and, turning silently, went into the house.

The wide kitchen was all still, save for the noisy chirping of crickets under the hearth-stones ; the fire, of great moss-fringed logs, blazed drowsily on the iron fire-dogs, and the bed of live coals below glowed and deepened like a mass of melted topaz and rubies ; but Gratia saw a man’s figure sitting by the table, in a chair tipped back against the wall — a man whose face would have been pleasant enough, save for a certain weakness

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in the lower jaw, which seemed to recede under its fringe of scanty yellow beard, and an expression of habitual irritability in the light-blue eyes. He sat in his shirt-sleeves, cool as was the evening, and his heavy cowhide boots bore red traces of the soil in which he had been laboring all day long.

“Where have you been, Gratia?” asked Farmer Kempfield, querulously. “The milk isn’t strained yet, and I’ve been calling you until I’m as hoarse as a crow.”

“ I thought you paid Cousin Almira for doing such things,” said Gratia, biting her lip.

“ Almira has all she can do, and more too, said Mr. Kempfield, “in waiting on your mother.”

“Then why doesn’t she let me help her?”

“’Tain’t your place to ask questions, Gratia,” returned Mr. Kempfield, as if he resented the young girl’s words. “Almira’s right. I hain’t brought you children up in the fear of the Fifth Commandment as I’d ought to ; but you know well enough without my tellin’ you, why there don’t nobody but Almira go into the south room. It’s for fear of infection.”

“I am not afraid!” flashed out Gratia. “Oh, father! if they would only let me see mamma — just once !”

“Don’t be unreasonable!” said Ira Kempfield, with the sharpness of a shallow nature. “Go and see to the milk ; it’s your duty to do all you can to help Cousin Almira.”

“Father,” said Gratia, still lingering, “why did she send Bridget Meara away ? I am not strong enough to lift those heavy pails.”

“Fiddlesticks !” said Mr. Kempfield, moving uneasily in his chair. “Almira allows ’twon’t hurt you to work a little like other folks’ gals. Bridget Meara was a wasteful creetur’. Almira says I hain’t no idea how much she saves by doin’ the work herself.”

“By letting me do it, she means!” burst out Gratia. “I wish Almira Bassett would mind her own business.”

“Tut ! tut !” cried Mr. Kempfield. “ I can’t have no such

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ungrateful talk as that ; Almira does more than half a dozen girls.”

“ She gets well paid for it !” retorted Gratia, bitterly.

“ Theres some things money can’t pay for,” said the farmer.

“ She is a sly, disagreeable old maid,” went on Gratia, hotly, “ and mamma never liked to have her here, when ”

She checked herself abruptly, for, chancing to turn her head, she saw a short figure close behind her ; and caught the basilisk gleam of Miss Almira Bassett’s Chinese-lidded eyes, that looked like two gray slits in her face.

Miss Bassett might have been thirty, or she might have been forty. She was one of those well-preserved old maids at whose age no one can make an exact guess. She was soft-stepping and soft-voiced, with thick lips and a flat nose, and a skin deeply pitted with pock-marks, while her thick black hair shone like satin on either side of its parting, and she habitually wore a black velvet band around her somewhat thick throat, and skirts which scarcely rustled as she walked.

“Gratia, dear,” she said, in a persuasive, oleaginous voice, “would you mind getting in a little fresh, cool water from the well ? Your poor dear pa is tired to death, and I can’t leave your ma — she’s more light-headed than usual to-night, poor thing, or I would go myself.”

“Doe she want it?” asked Gratia.

“To be sure she does,” said Miss Bassett. “I should not have mentioned it for myself \ you may rest assured.”

Gratia caught up the cedar pail which usually stood on a wooden bench by the kitchen door, and scudded away to the well, just beyond the garden wall. She came back presently, breathless and panting, from the haste which she had made.

A minute or two afterward, when Almira Bassett’s noiseless footsteps glided across the little hall which formed a sort of quarantine between the sick-room and the rest of the house, Gratia crept after her like a shadow.

Although it was not yet dark out of doors, a dull light was burning in the sick-room, and Gratia could just see a deathwhite face tossing to and fro in a sea of pillows, and catch the low, monotonous sound of a moaning voice.

“ Mamma !” she cried, catching her breathjwith a quick gasp.

“Gratia, my child !”

The gladness of those tones ; the sudden brightening of the face ; the hands groping- wildly about, as if for the warm clasp of her fingers; Gratia Kempfield never forgot those things while she lived. It was but for a second, however, and then Almira Bassett, flinging to the ground the cup of vater she carried, rushed forward and thrust Gratia by main force out of the room.

“Child, are you crazy?” she shrieked, her own face nearly as white as that of the sick woman. “ Ira Kempfield !” she continued, as the astonished farmer came forward in a lumbering sort of way, “ I swear to you that if ever this happens again I will leave your house within half an hour.”

“ It’s my mother !” gasped Gratia, struggling to escape from Miss Bassett’s wonderfully strong grasp. “Who should be by " her bedside, if not I ? I will go to her !”

Almira’s eyes blazed defiance.

“ Ira Kempfield,” she panted, “ decide between us. Am/ to nurse your wife, or is Gratia?”

“ I believe the gal is out of her head,” said Farmer Kempfield, beginning gradually to comprehend the exigencies of the case. “Gratia, go about your business, and don’t let this ’ere be repeated, or I’ll know the reason why. I’m ashamed o’ you, arter all Cousin Almira’s kindness. Ask her forgiveness this instant.”

“I will not,” uttered Gratia, in low, husky tones.

Mr. Kempfield seized his daughter’s arm, as if he would have shaken the demanded words out of her firmly set lips ; but Miss Bassett interfered, smiling and sweet-voiced a^ain as ever.

“ Don’t be hard on the child, Cousin Ira. I really shouldn’t have spoken quite so sharply myself, only you see it was running

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a terrible risk, and I feel myself responsible to you. “You’ll kiss and be friends, Gratia, dear, won’t you ?”

“I do b’lieve you’re the nearest approach to an angel of any woman I ever see, Almira,” said Mr. Kempfield, admiringly.

But Gratia shuddered as the soft, warm, wet lips touched her cheek, and her heart cried out :

“Judas ! Judas !”

Chapter II. In The Sick-room

When Miss Bassett returned from the brief verbal skirmish with Gratia Kempfield, in which the latter had been so signally vanquished, she found her charge singularly excited and nervous.

‘SGratia !” faltered the sick woman, turning her hollow eyes from side to side, and stretching out her, wasted hands. “Gratia, don’t leave me now. Take me away. Don’t let her stay here !”

“Stuff and nonsense !” said Miss Bassett, leisurely drawing the bolt across the door, and lowering the window which had stood a few incher ajar. “You may just as well stop that palaver. Gratia isn’t here, nor she won’t be either.”

“For one minute, Almira,” moaned the feeble voice. “Let me see her for just one minute !”

Almira Bassett sat down before the fire as unconcerned as if no word had been spoken.

“Almira!” pleaded the faint, hesitating voice. “Almira!”

“ What T suddenly snarled Miss Bassett, turning round with a start. “Can’t I ever have a minute’s peace, for your clatter ? Ain’t it enough that my sleep is broken, and my appetite spoiled, and my constitution half ruined by your whims, but you must keep fret, fret, worry, worry, the whole time ? I tell you a saint couldn’t stand it. Lie down and keep quiet, Mary

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Kempfield, or, as sure as I sit here, I’ll give you something to fret for ! Do you hear ? Lie down !”

Mrs. Kempfield sank down in the bed with a quick, apprehensive movement.

“But, Almira,” she ventured after a minute or two of silence, “ she is my daughter. ”

“No need to tell me that,” said Almira, shrugging her shoulders derisively. “ You’re as like as two peas. I’d just like to have the training of her — and I will have it, too, after you’re out of the way. Here’s your draught — take it now, and let’s have no fiddle-faddling !”

“It is not time yet — for an hour.”

“Take it, or I’ll pour it down your throat !” snapped Miss Bassett. “It’s my time, anyhow. I’m not going to be waked out of a peaceful nap to give it to you, by and by, when the fit takes you.”

“It is bitter — so bitter !” she said, shuddering. “It doesn’t taste like the other draughts.”

“Suppose it doesn’t,” said the old maid, indifferently, “who do you suppose is going to be responsible for your capriciousness? It is the same, and that’s enough for you to know.”

“Can’t I have a little swallow of water?” asked Mrs. Kemp- * field. “ It tastes like gall in my throat.”

“ No, you can’t,” said Almira, who had just established herself in the comfortable arm-chair by the fire, with her feet on a footstool. “I’ve sat down, and I shan’t move for any one. I guess you’ll keep !”

As she spoke she reached up to the mantel above for a little bottle half full of some dark fluid, labeled “laudanum,” with a quick, guilty glance around the room, and deposited it safely in the depths of her large pocket.

Mrs. Kempfield, feebly wringing her thin, emaciated hands, that told of long illness, lay quite silent now. except for the occasional low sob that shook her attenuated frame.

It must have been fully fifteen minutes afterward that a subdued tap came to the door of the room. Moving like a wellconditioned black cat, Miss Bassett answered the summons, and beheld a tall, elderly man, in spectacles, and a shabby suit of black — a man whose shoulders were bowed, as if with much stooping over sick-beds, and whose kindly, near-sighted eves had watched the off-flitting of many a ransomed soul in their time.

He looked searchingly down at the pale, sharp face, whose yellow-whiteness was so different from the white of the daintily bleached pillow-cases, and lifted the slender wrist to feel the pulse.

“Four higher than it ought to be,” said Dr. Moseley, looking at his big, silver-cased watch. “Anything happened to worry her, eh ?”

“Oh, dear, no, doctor!” exclaimed Miss Bassett, in a tone of injured innocence. “ What should-worry her, with me in the room ?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the doctor, meditatively, feeling his chin ; “but I can’t tell how else to account for this sudden acceleration of the pulse since morning.”

He stooped and inhaled the feeble breath.

“She — she never has been an opium eater?”

“Oh, dear, no, sir.”

“There’s no laudanum or paregoric where she could get to it ?”

Miss Bassett winced slightly, but so slightly that no one would have observed it, as she answered :

“Certainly not, doctor.”

“Miss Bassett,” said the doctor, “this is a very critical case. I shall change the treatment. Let her have these powders every half hour,” he continued, folding up sundry little mounds of gray, ash-like dust in papers. “Waking or sleeping, don’t miss the minute. Keep her perfectly quiet ; humor her in whatever she wants, and if, by the time I come in to-morrow morning, she isn’t better, there will be no use in my coming here any more.”

As the doctor crossed the hall, on his way out, he met Ira Kempfield.

“What do you think to-night, doctor?” asked the farmer, wistfully; for he was human, after all, and Mary Kempfield had been the cherished wife of his youth.

“Shall I tell you what I think, or what I hope?” asked Dr. Moseley, sadly.

‘ ‘ What you think, of course. ”

“Well, then, I give you no hope.”

“ Doctor 1”

“I know it’s hard, Kempfield,” said the doctor, with a husky sound in his voice. “You remember the old saying, ‘While there is life, there is hope/ Think of that, and don’t quite despair. ”

“Can’t I go to her?” wailed the strong man, sinking down on a chair, with his hands clasped over his face.

“ It would hardly be advisable. She seems to know no one, and Miss Bassett appears an excellent nurse, though I must say I didn’t quite like her face at first.”

“ She’s the best creatur’ that ever lived 1” burst out Ira. “ I don't know how we’d ever ha’ got along without Almira.”

The doctor went out, softly shutting the door behind him ; but their dialogue had had an auditor of whom neither was aware. Gratia Kempfield, leaning over the stair-way above, had heard it all.

“ No hope !” she repeated to herself, while her lips seemed to grow hard and dry like brass — “no hope! Oh, Father in heaven, has it come to that ?”

Meanwhile, Almira Bassett, rocking to and fro in her arm-chair, was sinking into a comfortable dose, from which she was vl

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roused by the clock striking eight and Mrs. Kempfield's voice, at one and the same time.

“ Almira, I am cold; will you spread another blanket over me ?”

“Cold !” echoed Miss Bassett; “and your head and hands feeling like fire ! However,' there’s blankets enough. I don’t care. ”

And she tossed a heavy chintz comforter on the bed as she spoke.

“There now! Have you anymore fault to find?” asked Miss Bassett, in an injured tone, as she dropped into the fire one of the powders the doctor had left.

As the half-hours went by, Almira Bassett burned the little gray powders pne by one, watching them blaze up with a sleepy gleam in her black eyes like the light emitted from a panther’s eyeballs.

“Better so,” she murmured to herself; “better so.”

It was some time after midnight when she rose and went to the door to get a stick of wood to replenish the dying fire. As she stepped out into the hall, where the wood-box was kept, she started back with a smothered cry, for close to the angle of the door-way stood a slender figure, all in white, like a ghost.

“ Gratia J”

For it was Gratia, waiting and listening, with a deadly chill at her heart.

“What on earth are you doing here, child?” demanded the old maid. “Go to bed right off, or I’ll call your pa.”

Gratia disdained to answer ; she only turned and glided away. But she did not go to bed ; when the gray dawn rose above the mountains she was still sitting on the stairs, waiting and listening.

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Chapter III. The Quilting Party Surprised

The next day dawned clear, soft, and radiant.

Mrs. Deacon Playfair, who lived in the big yellow house across the road, congratulated herself that the weather was so auspicious for her quilting bee.

A quilting bee in the country is synonymous with a “reception ” in the city, only more sensible, in that there actually is ‘ something done besides exchanging hollow compliments, and criticising one another’s toilets among the fair guests.

By two o’clock the preparations were all complete, and the long supper-table, spread with snow-white damask and piles of napkins, was ready for the last touches. Mrs. Playfair and Phoebe Ann, her daughter, had excelled themselves in cake and jelly, dulcet creams, and raised biscuit.

At three o’clock the quilt was finely under weigh, the center of a nucleus of thrifty neighbors, whose needles and tongues wagged in chorus, and the principal topic of discussson was the shadow hanging over the opposite house.

Mrs. Playfair was seated near the door, which stood wide open to admit the yellow flood of the afternoon sunshine, when she chanced to look up. A gray shadow crept over her face, the features suddenly became drawn and rigid, and she started to her feet with a shriek.

“ Hush I” she cried. “ Look there ! What is that?”

Mrs. Playfair beheld a sight which turned the blood in her veins to a cold tide of terror — Mary Kempfield, death-pale and ghastly, standing in the door-way, her hands clasping the sidepost, as if for support, and her dark hair streaming wildly down over her white night-dress.

“Merciful father !” cried Mrs. Playfair ; she's dead, and it's her ghost !”

Mary Kempfield turned her wild, hollow eyes to the speaker, and seemed to strive for utterance, as the neighbors, rushing forward, gathered round to help support her reeling form.

“What is it, Mary?” cried Mrs. Waring. “What is it you have to tell us ?”

There was a rattle in the dying woman's throat — a husky whisper on her lips — but that was all.

The next instant Gratia Kempfield was kneeling on the floor beside her mother, crying out :

“Mamma! mamma!”

And Miss Bassett, hot and flushed with the haste she had made, ran into the room, mingled terror and defiance in her face.

“What has she said?” she shrieked. “What has she told you ?”

Chapter IV. After The Funeral

Even as Miss Bassett spoke, the seal seemed to be removed from the dying woman’s lips.

“ Gratia !” she uttered. “My children — Gratia !”

And that was the last word that Mary Kempfield ever spoke.

While they were lifting the stiff form, Almira Bassett looked from one to the other with fierce, hungry eyes.

“Why don't you tell me what it was?” she said, with her hand preesed tight to her fat white throat, as if to repress some upsurging emotion. “Of course she was only raving ; you all know that she is delirious. Tell me — I am not afraid. You know they turn against their best friends when — when the fever fit is on ’em.”

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“Land’s sake!” said Mrs. Howe, “you needn’t to be so scairt, Miss Bassett — you heerd all we did.”

“ Is that all?” said Miss Almira, breathing quick and fast. “I didn’t know but that she’d been talkin’ nonsense. Poor dear ! I had just stepped into the kitchen to see about a little warm water — I couldn’t have been gone two minutes — and when I came back the doors were ^all open, and she was gone. Mercy, what a start it gave me !”

And hurrying forward, she bent over the bed where they had laid the victim of her cruel treachery.

“Gratia, don’t get so close to your ma — she can’t catch her breath,” she said, reproachfully.

“ It don’t matter, whispered Mrs. Waring, drawing her gently back. “Hush! don’t tell the poor child yet; she’ll never breathe again in this world.”

So ended Mrs. Deacon Playfair’s quilting party.

The windows were closed in the Kempfield farm-house ; the green paper blinds were rigidly drawn down, to exclude all the light and sunshine that was practicable ; people came and went on tiptoe, especially as they passed the room where the corpse lay, all robed in white, with a cluster of tuberoses in its cold fingers, and one watcher, sitting tirelessly beside the pillow.

“What makes you cry so hard, Gratia?” asked Raymond, coming in, and stroking her face with his soft palm. “Are you going to die, too? Mrs. Playfair says you will.”

“I wish I could !” moaned Gratia, the hot tears streaming down over her little brother’s hands ; “oh, I only wish I could !”

“And leave me, Gratia?”

She clasped the child close to her heart.

“You are right, darling; I had forgotten ; I have you to live for yet. If she could speak she would tell me so. Come and look at her Raymond.”

She led the little boy to the coffin. He stood on tiptoe to touch the cold temple of his dead mother.

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“Who is it, Gratia ?” he whispered, clinging to her skirts, and looking up with awe-stricken eyes.

“ Mamma,” she answered.

“No, it isn’t. Mamma would love me and kiss me. Mamma was not as white, and still, and cold. Gratia, what have they done with my mamma ?”

And kneeling there beside the bier of her dead mother, Gratia Kempfield tried to explain to her little brother the awful riddle and mystery of death.

Meanwhile Ira Kempfield, sitting at his fireside in a sort of enforced idleness, more embarrassed than otherwise by the visits of condolence of his friends and neighbors, twirled his brown, toil-hardened fingers round and round, and felt dimly that some great calamity had overtaken him. He had no care or trouble to assume — Miss Bassett took all that upon her own shoulders ; he felt her presence was a relief and a blessing.

“I don’t know what I should ever have done if it hadn’t been for her,” he kept saying. “I don’t know what would become of me if she wasn’t here now.”

“Gratia,” said little Raymond, soberly, to his sister, as they were coming home, hand in hand, from the dreary village church-yard, where the nettles, and burdock, and trailing blackberry vines had been cleared away to make a grave for Ira Kempfield’s wife, “will they put you and me in big holes in the church-yard like that when we die ?”

“I suppose so, Raymond,” his sister answered, scarcely heeding his words.

“ Then I don’t want ever to die !”

“Listen, dear, ” said Gratia ; “it is dark and dismal there now, but we will make it a beautiful flower garden. We will come there every day, and work. We will make her grave fair and bright with the autumn blossoms.”

Thus she spoke, thinking inwardly, “At all events, the child shall not learn to have a fear and horror of his mother’s grave. ”

Mrs. Deacon Playfair thought it was very odd that Mr. Kempfield walked to and from his wife’s grave with Miss Almira Bassett, a moving mass of crape and bombazine, upon his arm.

“ He’d ought to have gone with his daughter,” she said, shaking her head. “ It looked too forlorn for anything to see them two poor children stragglin’ along behind, like lost lambs. ”

But Mrs. Playfair had not observed the maneuver by which Miss Almira rustled up to the widower’s side and slipped her hand through his arm, in the momentary confusion of leaving first the house, and then the grave.

Ira Kempfield himself had been a little startled by the boldness of the coup d'etat, but he took it for granted that it was all right and proper, or Almira would not have done it.

Gratia was standing by the window, when the maple leaves were slowly drifting down, when Raymond came soberly up to her that afternoon.

“ What are you eating, Ray?” she asked, scarcely thinking what she said. “ Have you found some ripe chestnuts ?”

‘‘No,” said Raymond, with his little round cherry of a mouth full of something. “Cousin Almira gave me some candies. I picked up a basket of chips for her to kindle the fire, and she gave me all these. See !”

“Give them to me,” said Gratia, contracting her brows, and holding out her hands. “You know, Ray, the doctor said candies weren’t good for you. ”

The child jerked himself backward with a quick, impatient movement.

“No !” he ejaculated, stamping one tiny foot.

“Give them to me this instant!” said Gratia, trying to take the obnoxious bonbons from the little fellow by main force. He set up a piteous outcry, and Miss Almira came in from the kitchen,

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“What is it, darling? Who is hurting my little motherless lamb '?”

“No one is hurting him,” said Gratia, doing her best to preserve her temper. “ He is eating these colored candies, and his stomach is so delicate.”

“La! is that all?” said Miss Almira. “What nonsense! All children eat candy. ”

“Raymond is not like all children,” said Gratia. “He is subject to fits, and the doctor says we must never let him have anything of the kind.”

“They won’t hurt him,” said Miss Bassett. “Do let the poor little fellow have them. There, there, Raymond, dear, don’t cry — you shall have your candy.”

“ She is taking his love away from me, too,” Gratia thought. “Oh, what shall I do? What have I worth living for? Oh, mamma, mamma 1”

The tears that streamed down her cheeks relieved her in some measure ; the cool air against her fevered cheek seemed almost like the touch of a tender hand, and suddenly a little voice sounded on her ear :

“Gratia ! sister ! lift up your head ! I don’t care much for the candies. I won’t eat any more if you don’t want me to.”

And Gratia hugged the little nestling form up in her arms, feeling that they two were left all alone in the world together.

“ You mustn’t stay out here in the cold, dear,” she said, after a minute or two.

“Won’t you just go up to the top of the hill with me, Gratia?” pleaded the little boy, “to see if there any sweet wild grapes on the stone fence by the lane ?”

“Come, then,” said Gratia, holding out her hand, with a smile.

When they stopped, breathless and ruddy-cheeked, at the top of the hill, Raymond looked wistfully up into his sister’s face.

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“Gratia,” said he, “what does it mean to have a new mother ?”

“A new mother 1”

“Yes. How can we have a new mother? Our mother is dead. ”

“ Of course she is, Raymond. What do you mean ?”

“I heard Mrs. Playfair whisper it to Miss Pemberton at the funeral.”

“Whisper what, Raymond?”

“Why, she said I should have a new mother pretty soon. How can I, Gratia?”

Gratia felt a cold chill run through her veins that was not the frosty sweep of the evening wind rustling the vine-leaves at her side.

Miss Almira was at the door when the two children returned, and through the open portal they could see the cheerful gleam of the firelight as it played on the glass and china of the readyspread tea-table.