



Produced by Clare Graham & Joyce McDonald at
http://www.girlebooks.com - Marc D'Hooghe at
http://www.freeliterature.org





RUTLEDGE

By

MIRIAM COLES HARRIS


NEW YORK:

DERBY & JACKSON, 498 BROADWAY.

1860.




CHAPTER I.


  "Heavily hangs the broad sunflower,
    Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
  Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
    Heavily hangs the tiger lily."

TENNYSON.


It was the gloomy twilight of a gloomy November day; dark and leaden
clouds were fast shutting out every lingering ray of daylight; and the
wind, which moaned dismally around the house, was tossing into mad
antics the leaves which strewed the playground. The lamps were not
lighted yet; of visible fires the _pensionnat_ of St. Catharine's was
innocent; a dull black stove, more or less gigantic, according to the
size of the apartment, gloomed in every one, and affected favorably the
thermometer, if not the imagination. We paced untiringly up and down the
dim corridor--Nelly, Agnes and I--three children, who, by virtue of our
youth, ought to have been let off, one would have thought, for some
years yet, from the deep depression that was fast settling on our
spirits. In truth we were all three very miserable, we thought--Nelly
and Agnes, I am afraid, more so than I, who in common justice ought to
have participated deeply in, as I was the chief occasion of, their
grief.

My trunk was packed and strapped, and stood outside the door of my
dormitory, ready for the porter's attention. In it lay my school-books,
closed forever, as I hoped; and souvenirs innumerable of school
friendships and the undying love of the extremely young persons by whom
I was surrounded.

From them I was to be severed to-morrow, as was expected, and

  "It might be for years, and it might be for ever,"

as Nelly had just said, choking up on the last sentence. I _did_ feel
unhappy, and very much like "choking up" too, when I passed the great
windows, that looked into the playground, and remembered all the mad
hours of frolic I had passed there; when I took down my shawl from the
peg where it had hung nightly for five years, and remembered, with a
thrill, it was "the last time;" when the lid of my empty desk fell down
with an echo that sounded drearily through the long school-room; when I
thought "where I might be this time to-morrow," and when Agnes' and
Nelly's arms twined about me, reminded me of the rapidly approaching
hour of separation from those who had represented the world to me for
five years--whom I had loved and hated, and by whom I had been loved and
hated, with all the fervor of sixteen. The hatreds now were softened
down by the nearness of the parting; all my ancient foes, (and they had
not been few), had "made up" and promised forgiveness and forgetfulness
entire; and all ancient feuds were dead. All my friends now loved me
with tenfold the ardor they had ever felt before; all the staff of
teachers, who had, I am afraid, a great deal to forgive, of impatient
self-will, mad spirits and thoughtless inattention, were good enough to
forget all, and remember only what they were pleased to call the truth
and honesty and courage, that in the years we had been together, they
had never known to fail.

They little knew how their unlooked for praise humbled me; and how far
more deeply than any reproach, it made me realize the waste of time and
talents that I had to look back upon.

So, most unexpectedly to myself, I found that I was going off with
flying colors; that all were joining to deplore my departure and laud my
good qualities; and that, from being rather a "limb" in the eyes of the
school, and a hopeless sinner in my own, I was promoted, temporarily, to
the dignity of heroine at St. Catharine's.

It was with a very full heart that I remembered all this; and deeper
feelings than I had known since my childhood were stirred by the
kindness I was certain was as undeserved as it was unexpected. But such
a future dawned before me, that tender regret struggled hard with giddy
hope for the mastery. In almost every girl's life, leaving school is a
marked and important event; and imagination has always a wide, and
generally well-cultivated field for its powers, even when home and
future are as certain as things mundane can be. But in my case there was
so much room for dreaming, so much raw material for fancy to work up,
that a tamer and less imaginative child than I was, would have been
tempted into castle-building. The sad event that five years before had
placed me, a stunned, bewildered, motherless child, in the midst of
strangers, had largely developed the turn for dreaming that such
children always possess. The sympathy and love that God provides for
every child that is born into the world, withdrawn, they turn "not
sullen, nor in scorn," but from an instinct He has himself implanted,
inward, for their sympathy and counsel. So it happened, that though
Nelly and Agnes, and a dozen merry girls beside, were my sworn friends
and very firmest allies, none of them knew anything of the keen wonder
and almost painful longing with which I pictured the future to myself.
They knew, of course, the simple facts, that as I had no father or
mother, I was to go and live with my aunt, who had been in Europe until
this summer and whom I had not seen since my mother died; that she had
three daughters, one older, two younger than myself; that she had sent
me some pretty things from Paris, and was, probably, very kind, and I
should have a very nice time.

They knew only these bare beams and framework of the gorgeous fabric I
had reared upon them; they little knew the hours of wakefulness in which
I wondered whether I should be happy or miserable in that new home;
whether my aunt would love me as I already most ardently loved her;
whether the new cousins were at all like Nelly and Agnes; and whether
they were prepared to value the wealth of affection I had in reserve for
them. But time would soon settle all this into certainty; and my aunt's
last letter, containing all the