Chapter III: Ancestry

It was a large dinner party assembled on Thanksgiving day to do honor to the little bride-elect, who bore herself with great dignity when the engagement was announced and congratulations heaped upon her and Roy. She would have liked to have been known by her real name, Hilton, but her mother objected, and as neither Roy nor his parents saw the necessity for the explanation it would involve she yielded to their judgment and was Fanny Prescott, as she had always been. Her mother could only stay for a few days in Boston, and on the morning of her departure Fanny said to Roy, who was to accompany them, “Let’s stop at Ridgefield over a train. I want to see where father used to live. Mother can go on without us. Will you?”

Roy was willing, and when the village ’bus in Ridgefield went up the hill from the 10 o’clock train it carried two young people who were looking about them as curiously as people were looking at them. Ridgefield had not grown much within twenty-three years, but there had been some changes. An electric car now connected it with Worcester and the intermediate towns and this gave it a thriftier appearance. A few houses had been added in the side streets and a new and large hotel built on the Common. In front of this the driver stopped, while a smart clerk came hurrying out.

“Not here. Take us to the Prospect House,” Roy said.

The clerk looked surprised as he turned on his heel, while the driver whipped up his horses, wondering why such swells, as his passengers undoubtedly were, should prefer the Prospect House to the Tremont. But it was none of his business, and he was soon at the Prospect House, which looked rather shabby and uninviting, with an air of neglect everywhere visible. The Tremont had killed it, and in his old age Uncle Zacheus had little heart to compete with his rival. A few boarders still clung to him, but transients were very rare, and when Roy and Fanny alighted from the ’bus and came up the walk he was greatly excited and called loudly to Dot to hurry up as somebody was coming. His welcome was cheery, as of old, as he advanced to meet the young couple.

“Glad to see you; yes, I be. Want a room? For one, or two? just married, ain’t you?” he said, not remembering Roy at all in his flurry.

“No, oh no!” Fanny exclaimed, blushing crimson. “We are not married, and have only stopped over a train to see where father used to live. I am Mark Hilton’s daughter, and I want you to show me his room and his office and everything, and then we are going to the cellar hole and the grave, and everywhere.”

Uncle Zacheus was at first too astonished to speak and stared open-mouthed at the girl whose blue eyes fascinated and confused him, they were so bright and large and clear, and seemed to take in everything at once within their vision. His wife, who had stopped to slip on a clean white apron and smooth her hair before going to receive her guests, now appeared on the scene, and, at sight of her, Uncle Zach recovered his speech so far as to give vent to his usual ejaculation. “Wall, I’ll be dumbed! Yes, I will!” he said, advancing toward Fanny and offering his hand.

For an instant she drew back. She had not expected what she found. Everything was so different from her life that it was hard to associate her father with this place and this queer little man making so free with her. A look from Roy reassured her and she gave her hand to Mr. Taylor, who nearly crushed it before he let go his hold. Roy was explaining now and talking to Mrs. Taylor, who remembered him having been there with his father and mother, and finally succeeded in conveying that fact to her husband’s rather hazy mind.

“Don’t I remember them young folks who was here a few years ago? Wall, I guess I do, and this is their boy and girl? I don’t understand it,” he said; then, as it began to dawn upon him more clearly, he continued, addressing himself to Fanny, “I know now; you are Mark’s girl, but you don’t look like him, unless it’s some trick with your eyes,—nor like your mother, neither. Who are you like, I wonder?”

He was scanning her very closely, and without at all considering what she was saying, Fanny answered him: “Perhaps I am like father’s great-grandmother, ’Tina. Did you ever see her?”

“Bless my soul, child; how old do you take me to be?” and Uncle Zach burst into a hearty laugh. “I’m only eighty-three, and Miss Dalton,—that’s ’Tina,—has been dead a hundred and twenty years; but I believe you _are_ like her. They say she was han’som’ as a picter, with blue eyes and yaller hair and clingin’ ways.”

Fanny was not particularly pleased to have her resemblance to ’Tina discussed, and Roy, who wished to change the conversation, said abruptly, “Can we go into the office where Mr. Hilton used to spend his time?”

“Certainly, and all over the house, too,” Mr. Taylor replied, leading the way to the office, where Fanny examined everything and sat in every chair and looked over the register of years ago which was brought out for her to see.

Turning back to the summer when her mother was there her tears fell fast on the yellow page, where traces of her father’s handwriting seemed to bring him near to her. Uncle Zacheus was crying, too. He did a good deal of that in his old age, but he apologized for it to Fanny, saying, “You must excuse me. I always cry when I think of Mark,—the best clerk a man ever had in a hotel, and when I heard he was dead, I cried myself sick. Didn’t I Dot? And Jeff wasn’t mentioned in the notice. He ain’t dead. No, sir! I’m always expectin’ him home. He’ll come before I die. Yes, marm! You want to see where your pa slep’? You shall; yes, marm! but ’tain’t no great of a place. You see them was good days, with the house so full that Mark had to sleep where he could catch it, close to the office; here ’tis.”

He threw open the door of a very small and plainly furnished room, at which Fanny looked askance, mentally comparing it with her own and her mother’s luxurious sleeping apartments. But she wouldn’t flinch, and stroked the pillow and smoothed the patchwork coverlet and tried hard to keep her tears from falling again. Everything was so different from what her father’s surroundings ought to have been. Even the saloon her mother had occupied and the pictures of Dot’s ancestors failed to impress her. Everything was scrupulously clean, but the furniture was old, the carpets were faded, the paper was dingy, and there was everywhere an air from which she shrank. Accustomed to every luxury money could buy, she was an aristocrat to her finger tips, and the Prospect House, as she saw it on that November day, was not at all to her taste.

“Now, let’s go to the ruin and the grave,” she said to Roy, who shrugged his shoulders, thinking he was bound on a rather gruesome business.

“I shall have to ask the way to both places, as I believe they lie in different directions,” he said, and turning to Mr. Taylor he began to make inquiries as to the best way of reaching the Dalton ruin and the cemetery and where to find ’Tina’s grave.

“Want to see that suller?” Uncle Zacheus exclaimed. “Why, all the timbers has fell in and there’s nothin’ left but a hole. I wonder it hain’t been sold afore now, though nobody wants it, there’s so much stuff told to this day about the ghost. They say she carries a candle now. In my opinion she’s enough to do repentin’, without spookin’ round where she used to live. I beg your pardon, Miss Hilton. I forgot I was speakin’ of your grandmarm, who lived more than a hundred years before you,” he said to Fanny, who was pale to her lips.

She knew he meant no harm and tried to smile, but it was a pitiful kind of smile, which made Roy’s heart ache for her.

“Poor little Fan,” he said, when they were out in the street. “This is a hard day for you. Hadn’t you better give up the ruin?”

“No;” she said resolutely. “I want to see what my father called his ancestral hall. It was there he asked mother to marry him. I made her tell me all about it. They sat on an old settee, and there were rats in the room. Oh, this must be where we turn, and there is the curb to the well they threw him in,” she added, as they reached the lane which led to the ruin.

When walking through the village Fanny had kept apart from Roy, but now she clung closely to him as they went down the road till they came to what was once the front entrance to the house. Window frames, door posts, heavy joists and portions of the roof lay piled together, with the dried remnants of the last summer’s weeds showing among the debris. The day was not cold for November, but the sky was leaden and there was a feeling of rain in the air. The trees were bare and the dead leaves lay in the path, or were piled against the fence and wall. There was no place to sit down and Fanny would not have sat if there had been. She was in a kind of dream, going over in imagination the events of more than a century ago. At last Roy brought her back to reality by kicking at a part of what might have been a pier to the wall and which, giving way, went crashing down into the cellar.

“What a pile of rubbish and what a place for ’Tina to promenade! I don’t wonder she brings a candle. She would certainly break her neck in the dark if it had not already been broken,” he said, without a thought as to how the last of his remark sounded.

But Fanny thought, and with a plaintive cry said to him, “Oh, Roy, how can you joke about my grandmother? You’d feel differently if she were yours.”

“She is mine,” Roy replied, “or is going to be, and what I said about her neck was rather mean. Honestly, though, Fan, you are too morbid over an affair which everybody has forgotten and for which you are in no way responsible. Let’s get away from here.”

“Wait till I’ve looked in the well,” Fanny replied.

She went to the well and leaning over the curb looked down, shuddering at the thought of a human body struggling there and calling for help.

“I am ready now for the grave,” she said, when her investigation of the well was finished.

“Must we go there?” Roy asked, rather dubiously.

“Yes, we must. I owe it to father. They are his people and mine,” Fanny answered, and the two retraced their steps through the village to the Prospect House, where Uncle Zach stood on the piazza and said to them, “Dotty’s getting dinner ready for you when you come back from the cemetry. Turn to your right and foller close to the wall clear down to the corner. They’re sunk in some, I guess.”

They found the graves without any difficulty, but, as Mr. Taylor had said, they were sunken and neglected. No one had cared for them since Mark went away. The grass around them was never cut and now lay in dry clumps upon them. The rose bush Mark had planted was dead and a huge burdock stood in its place. The headstones were weather-beaten and discolored, and that of ’Tina had partially fallen over. Fanny went down upon the ground and read the name “Christine Dalton.” There was nothing to tell where she was born or where she died, and in her nervous, morbid state Fanny found herself pitying the woman who had gone to her grave dishonored and despised.

“Nobody ever shed a tear for you, I dare say, but I will,” she said, and sitting upon the stone where her mother had sat with Mark Hilton when he told her the story of ’Tina, she began to cry very low to herself, so that Roy might not hear and laugh at her. “Where is he?” she said, when she had paid sufficient respect to ’Tina, and looking up, missed him from her side.

She saw him at last in the distance standing near the monument of Gen. Allen, and his loud call came to her across the rows of graves which intervened.

“I say, Fan, ar’n’t you some connection to Gen. George Allen, who served in the Revolutionary War, was wounded at Bunker Hill and Saratoga, and did a lot more things, and died regretted by friend and foe?”

She did not answer, and he continued, “Come away from that damp, lonesome place. I got chilly there myself. Come up here and visit another ancestor, who, perhaps, wasn’t any more respectable than those you are mooning over, but he has a stunner for a monument and an obituary as long as my arm.”

Fanny was getting tired and cold, and went up the slope to where Roy was waiting for her.

“Yes, that is mother’s grandfather,” she said, rather cheerfully, as she looked at the monument and read the inscription upon it.

There was some difference between this costly stone and well-kept enclosure where a number of Allens were lying and the sunken, neglected graves under the shadow of the wall, and Fanny felt the difference, and her spirits began to rise in the vicinity of the Allens, who represented the aristocracy of the cemetery. Both belonged to her, the grand monument and the sunken graves, the Allens and the Daltons,—but the Allens were the nearest of kin,—they were like what she was born to and had been accustomed to all her life and she felt a thrill of pride on reading the eulogy on her great-grandfather, who had rendered such service to his country and been so highly esteemed by his fellow-citizens.

“Good blood there, of the bluest kind,” Roy said, teasingly. “It ought to make amends for forty ’Tinas.” Then, as the shrill whistle from the shoe shop came echoing across the fields, he continued: “Twelve o’clock; time we were going, if you have seen enough of your ancestors. I’m getting hungry.”

He was very practical and led Fanny so adroitly from what he called “an ancestral fit” that she was quite herself by the time they reached the Prospect House. Mrs. Taylor had prepared a most appetizing dinner for them, which she served upon a small round table placed near a window and the stove, where they could have both warmth and light. All her best things were on duty and Fanny, who found the dinner excellent, began to change her mind with regard to the hotel. In the summer it must be very pleasant, especially on the broad piazzas, and perhaps she should come again, she said to Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, as she bade them good bye.

“Bless you, child, I hope you will,” Uncle Zacheus replied, holding her hand and trying to keep back his tears which his wife told him he needn’t shed so often unless he had softening of the brain, of which they were signs. “It is good for my old eyes to see young people. There don’t many come since they built the big stone tavern on the Common. I began to run down when Mark went away. A good feller, that, and I cry when I think of him dead. I can’t help it if ’tis sign of soff’nin’. I remember the old days when Mark and your mother and this young man’s father and mother was here and the house was full of young voices and courtin’ and love-makin’ from mornin’ till night. Your young man,—I know he is yourn by the way he looks at you,—has a good face like his father and mother. You’ll be happy with him, and he’ll be happy with you. Your face ain’t like nobody’s, but makes me think of some flower that is ever so sweet and lovely and modest,—I can’t remember the name. ’Tain’t a rose, nor a pink, nor a piney.”

Roy laughed, and suggested, “Lily of the Valley.”

“I swan, that’s it. Lily of the Valley,” Uncle Zach returned, and continued, “I s’pose I must say good bye and God bless you and make you happy. Good bye.”

He turned to leave them, when Fanny took his hand again,—the one her mother had kissed years ago—and pressed her lips upon it just as Helen had done.

“I’ll surely come again,” she said, and then hurried away, for it was getting near train time and they were going to walk.

That kiss was too much for Uncle Zach. Softening of the brain or no softening of the brain he must cry, and he did, while his wife derided him for his weakness.

“I shall cry if I want to,” he said, evincing considerable spirit for him. “I never told you of it, but her mother kissed my hand three and twenty years ago when she went away and I’ve never seen her since, and never shall, nor this little girl, neither. She will come, maybe, but I shan’t be here. I’m wearin’ out. There’s more ails me than sofnin’ of the brain. I’m old,—most eighty-four. I’m slippin’ away from you, Dotty, and from the places I love so well.”

Here his feelings so overcame him that he cried like a child, while his wife, touched by the sight of his tears, tried to comfort him.

“No you ain’t slippin’ away,” she said. “You’ll see ’em again. You are good for ten years more, and so am I, and I am seventy-eight. Wipe up, there’s somebody comin’.”

He wiped up, and under the combined effects of a traveller who wanted dinner and Dotty’s assurance of ten years longer lease of life he was quite cheerful until he heard the rumble of the train which was to take Roy and Fanny away. Then a sense of loneliness came over him again and he kept whispering to himself, “Good bye, good bye, Mark’s gal and Craig’s boy. I shall never see you again. Good bye.”