Aunt Eleanor

“ Margaret told Eleanor that first evening, “and we’ll never, never tell anybody all the foolish games we play and the things we say to each other. I can just barely manage to be grown up in the bosom of my family, and when I am in the company of your esteemed Aunt Beulah, but up here in my room, Eleanor, I am never grown up. ”

“ Eleanor felt it, every word of it, as well as the embrace of those kind arms and her aunt's kisses upon her lips; but she was silent.
"How come you here, my darling?"
"They have sent me away from home."
Mrs. Caxton saw that there was some difficulty of speech, and she would not press matters. She put Eleanor into a seat, and looked at her, and took off her bonnet with her own hands; stooped down and kissed her brow. Eleanor steadied herself and looked up.
"It is true, aunt Caxton. I come to you because I have nowhere else to be."
"My love, it is a great happiness to have you, for any cause. ”

“ Eleanor—what is the matter?"
"Ma'am?"
"You are drawing a very long breath, my dear. Where did it come from?"
The reserve which Eleanor had all her life practised before other people, had almost from the first given way before her aunt.
"From a thought of home, aunt Caxton. I shall not be so happy when I get back there."
"The happiness that will not bear transportation, Eleanor, is a very poor article. But they will not want you at home." ”

“ Carlisle."
Eleanor lifted her head to look into her aunt's face for the decision to come.
"The rule of judgment is not far off, Eleanor; it is the golden rule. 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.' My dear, take the case of the person you could like best in the world;—would you have such a person marry you if his heart belonged to somebody else?"
"Not for the whole world!" said Eleanor raising her head which had fallen again. "But aunt Caxton, that is not my case. My heart is not anybody's." ”

“ Meanwhile—will you keep Miss Foster here?'—he pointed to the garden—'out of the way?'
'I must think of Aunt Pattie, remember,' said Eleanor quickly.
'Ah! dear Aunt Pattie!—but bring her too.—I see perfectly well that Alice has already marked Miss Foster. She has asked me many questions about her. She feels her innocence and freshness like a magnet, drawing out her own sorrows and grievances. My poor Alice—what a wreck! ”

“ To-night it is as black as ink outside. There are no stars. I feel as if there should be no stars. If there were, there might be some strange little bit of comfort in them that I could cling to. I do not want any comfort from outside to shine upon me to-night. I have got to draw all my strength from a source within, and I feel it welling up within me even now.
“I wonder if I have been selfish to leave the people I love so long without any word of me. I think Aunt Gertrude and Aunt Beulah and Aunt Margaret all had a mother feeling for me. ”

“ But Eleanor and Aunt Pattie are well satisfied. They find their acquaintance all around them. It is a general flutter of fans, and murmur of talk. Already people are standing on their seats looking down on the rapidly filling church. In press the less favoured thousands from the Piazza, through the Atrium and the Eastern door—great sea of human life spreading over the illimitable nave behind the two lines of Swiss and Papal Guards, in quick never-ending waves that bewilder and dazzle the eye.
Lucy found the three hours' wait but a moment. ”

“ Eleanor did not answer; she thought her aunt was slightly fanatical.
"There is another reason for not getting an answer, Eleanor. It is, not believing that an answer will be given."
"Aunty, how can one help that?"
"By simply looking at what God has promised, and trusting it. 'But let a man ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.'"
"Aunt Caxton, I am exactly like such a wave of the sea. And in danger of being broken to pieces like one." ”

“ She tripped on the trailing folds of that nightgown her Aunt Beulah—it was funny that all these ladies should call themselves her aunts, when they were really no relation to her—had insisted on her wearing. Her own nightdress had been left in the time-worn carpetbag that Uncle David had forgotten to take out of the “handsome cab.” She stumbled against the silver pipes. They were hot; so hot that the flesh of her arm nearly blistered, but she did not cry out. Here was another mysterious problem of the kind that New York presented at every turn, to be silently accepted, and dealt with. ”

“ Eleanor hesitated. “The doctor at first thought he might develop brain fever, but I am told all danger of that is past.”
“What is the matter with him?” persisted Cynthia. “I asked the nurse what the trouble was, but she never told me. Was his attack also caused by the shock of Uncle James’ death?”
“Yes, from shock,” answered Eleanor, mechanically. “You must not blame your aunt if her manner is distrait; she is a very reserved woman and dreads, above all things, letting herself go and breaking down.” ”

“ Whereas, if Eleanor kept away, the dismal certainty would by degrees become public, that there was to be no match at all between Rythdale and the Lodge. "Stay away till it all blown over, Eleanor," wrote her mother; "it is the least you can do for your family." And the squire even sent a word of a letter, more kind, but to the same effect. He wanted his bright daughter at home, he said; he missed her; but in the circumstances, perhaps it would be best, if her aunt would be so good as to keep her.
Eleanor carried these letters to Mrs. Caxton, with a tear in her eye, and an humbled, pained face. ”

“ Manisty struck his hand against the railing.
'How is one to be civil about this visit! Nothing could be more unfortunate. These last critical weeks—and each of us so dependent on the other—Really it is the most monstrous folly on all our parts that we should have brought this girl upon us.'
'Poor Miss Foster!' said Mrs. Burgoyne, raising her eyebrows. 'But of course you won't be civil!—Aunt Pattie and I know that. When I think of what I went through that first fortnight—'
'Eleanor!'
'You are the only man I ever knew that could sit silent through a whole meal. ”

“ Upon my word, he bears a very striking resemblance to the youth whom I saw upon my garden wall!"
"Indeed! Well, that is strange," returned Aunt Eleanor, "I know of no youth at all like him."
"There must be one in the vicinity whom he very much resembles!"
"How very extraordinary! Why, whom can it be!"
"Indeed, 1 know not," returned the reverend gentleman, "there appears to be some little mystery about it, which probably time will solve. I have only to say that I am sorry the affair happened, and beg to apologise for the trouble I have given." ”

“ When she acts like Mrs. O’Farrel’s aunt I pretend she is her, and we don’t quarrel. She says does Uncle David go much to see Aunt Beulah, and I say, not so often as Uncle Jimmie does. Then she says does he go to see Aunt Margaret, and I say that he goes to see Uncle Peter the most. Well, if he doesn’t he almost does. You can’t tell Mrs. Madam Bolling that you won’t tattle, because she would think the worst.”
Eleanor grew to like Mademoiselle. She was 150 the aging, rather wry faced Frenchwoman who had been David’s young brother’s governess and had made herself so useful to Mrs. ”

“ Where are they to go, aunt Caxton?"
"Some in one place and some in another. You may leave them here, Eleanor, when they are done, and I will take care of them. Shall I have the garden flowers cut for you?"
"O no, ma'am, if you please!"
Mrs. Caxton stood a moment longer watching Eleanor; the pretty work and the pretty worker; the confusion of fair and sweet things around her and under her fingers, with the very fine and fair human creature busy about them. Eleanor's face was gravely happy; more bright than Mrs. Caxton had ever seen it; very much of kin to the flowers. ”

“ A dish was crowned with red and white strawberries in the middle of the table, and Eleanor stood decorating it slowly with ivy leaves and blossoms of white heath.
"It is not certain, my dear, he will come home to-night," Mrs. Caxton said as she watched her.
"No, aunty,"—said Eleanor with a slight start, but then going on with her occupation. "What about it?"
"Nothing. We will enjoy the flowers ourselves."
"But he thought he would be at home to-night, aunt Caxton?"
"He could not be sure. He might easily be detained. You have got over your fear of Mr. Rhys, Eleanor?" ”

“ Eleanor's face was very sober.
"Aunt Caxton," she said at length,—"my life seems such a confusion to me!"
"So everything seems that we do not understand," Mrs. Caxton said.
"But is it not, aunty? I seem taken from everything that I ought most naturally to do—papa, Julia, mamma. I feel like a banished person, I suppose; only I have the strange feeling of being banished from my place in the world."
"What do you think of such a life as Mr. Rhys is leading?"
"I think it is straight, and beautiful,"—Eleanor answered, looking still into the fire. "Nothing can be further from confusion. ”

“ Yet here in her bag was Margaret Elizabeth's note, found awaiting her on her return from Chicago an hour ago.
In it her niece apologised contritely for the inexcusable manner in which she had spoken, and continued: "It makes me unhappy, dearest Aunt Eleanor, to think of disappointing you, for you have been the kindest aunt in the world, but I have discovered in the last few days what I ought to have known all along, that I cannot marry Mr. McAllister. The reason is there is some one else. ”

“ On the fifth week of Eleanor’s stay Beulah became a real aunt, the cook left, and her own aunt and official chaperon, little Miss Prentis, was laid low with an attack of inflammatory rheumatism. Beulah’s excitement on these various counts, combined with indiscretions in the matter of overshoes and overfatigue, made her an easy victim to a wandering grip germ. She opened her eyes one morning only to shut them with a groan of pain. There was an ache in her head and a thickening in her chest, the significance of which she knew only too well. She found herself unable to rise. ”

“ Aunt Margaret’s grandfather sits at the head of the table, and talks about things I never heard of before. He knows the govoner and does not like the way he parts his hair. I thought all govoners did what they wanted to with their hairs or anything and people had to like it because (I used to spell because wrong but I spell better now) they was the govoners, but it seems not at all.
“Aunt Margaret is lovely to me. We have good times. I meant to like Aunt Beulah the best because she has done the most for me but I am afrayd I don’t. ”

“ They managed it."
"But in such a case, my dear, a woman owes it to herself and to her suitor and to her parents too, to be explicit."
"I do not think I compromised the truth, aunt Caxton," said Eleanor, passing her hand somewhat after a troubled fashion over her brow. "Mr. Carlisle knew I never encouraged him with more favour than I gave others. I could not help being with him, for mamma and he had it so; and they were too much for me. I could not help it. So the report grew. I had a difficult part to play," said Eleanor, repeating her troubled gesture and seeming ready to burst into tears. ”

“ I can only pray that it will be found to be all a mistake, and come out right in the end. Surely such beautiful people as you and Uncle David can find the way to each other, and can help Uncle Jimmie and Aunt Gertrude, who are a little blinder about life. Surely, when the stumbling block is out of the way, you four will walk together beautifully. Please try, Aunt Margaret, to make things as right as if I had never helped them to go wrong. I was so young, I didn’t know how to manage. I shall never be that kind of young again. I grew up last night, Aunt Margaret. ”

“ Aunt Beulah says not to develope my poetry because the theory is to strengthen the weak part of the bridge, and make me do arithmetic. ‘Drill on the deficiency,’ she says. Well I should think the love part was a deficiency, but Aunt Beulah thinks love is weak and beneath her and any one. Uncle David told me privately that he thought I was having the best that could happen to me right now being with Aunt Margaret. I didn’t tell him that the David doll always gets put away in the box with the Aunt Margaret doll and nobody else ever, but I should like to have. He thinks she is the best aunt too. ”

“ He ought to know that I love him so dearly and deeply that I could help him even in helping her. It isn’t like him not to share his anxieties with me. Aunt Beulah is a grown up woman, and has friends and doctors and nurses, and every one knows her need. ”

“ Eleanor asked; anxiously.
“Yes, once,” answered Mrs. Lennard, “and that’s the most singular part of the story. About three years after my marriage I was in London, and Fred and I were very, very poor, for his aunt hadn’t then forgiven him for making a catspaw of her at Lausanne, and he had no remittances from her, and nothing but his pay and an occasional present from Louisa, who married a rich city man soon after our elopement. I had had one baby, a little girl, who was then a year and a half old, and who was christened after Fred’s rich aunt ”

“ It was like Eleanor to do things decently and in order.
“Dear Aunt Margaret,” her letter ran. “My grandmother used to say that some people were trouble breeders. On thinking it over I am afraid that is just about what I am,—a trouble breeder. ”