Chapter III: Aunt Hetty

When Daniel Hart rode up in front of his house, Martha stood in the door, waiting his approach with some impatience. It was baking-day, her flour had given out, the great oven in the back kitchen had burned down, and was getting cold; in short the family baking for that whole week was in danger for want of a measure of flour to mould the bread with, and that lay in the bags swung across her father’s saddle. So out she ran at once, with her sleeves tucked up, her plump, white arms ready for instant work, and a tin basin in her hand.

“Come, father, jump down and untie the bags: I am in a desperate hurry. Another ten minutes and we should have had to heat over again. I’ve got the most splendid pan of beans, all ready for baking, with such a lump of pork on the top, all cut in checkers, and dropping open like a rose. Come, hurry up, do!”

Daniel Hart got down from his horse, and swung one of the bags over his shoulder, and marched into the porch. Somehow he did not feel able to speak on commonplace things, but untied the bag in silence, watching Martha as she took out the flour in handfuls and filled her basin.

“Martha,” he said, at last, “is Aunt Hetty in the kitchen?”

The girl lifted her rosy face, with a look of surprise. There was something unusual in the father’s voice.

“Aunt Hetty? Yes, father. Where else should she be? I left her raking up the coals with a long shovel.”

“Martha, wait a moment. There’ll be company here in a little while. I met your uncle, Joseph Bentley, and his darter on the cross-roads; and they’ll be here in a few minutes, without fail.”

“Uncle Joseph Bentley and his daughter from foreign parts!” cried Martha, all in a flutter of excitement. “Goodness me, what shall we get for supper? The baking won’t be out of the oven this two hours. Oh, father, do go kill a chicken, and I’ll put down a short-cake—that, with preserves and honey, will have to answer.”

Away Martha ran, bearing the flour between her plump little hands, while her apron streamed behind her, and the bright curls danced and twinkled around her face.

“Aunt Hetty! I say, Aunt Hetty, what do you think? Uncle Joseph Bentley and Cousin Gillian—what a name—are coming here to-day. You can hear the wagon tugging up the hill. Hetty! Hetty! where have you hid? Aunt Hetty!”

“I am here,” answered a faint, struggling voice, from the back porch; and Mehitable Hart came in, white and still as usual. But a less excited person would have remarked that her face, always colorless, was now almost ghostly, and that her small hands shook like leaves when she attempted to take the basin from her niece.

“Don’t take it all. Leave me enough for a short-cake. No! that’s not it. Leave enough out for that, and I’ll mould the bread. You look tired out. Here’s the butter, and there lies the rolling-pin. Goodness gracious! how fast they come! You can fairly hear the wheels clatter. But there’s a good deal of work in ten minutes: so now for it!”

Suiting the action to the words, Martha dusted the table with flour, plunged her arms into the kneading-tray, cut off a mass of dough, and went to work with wonderful vigor, rolling, pinching, and smoothing the shapeless substance into as dainty a loaf as ever dexterous hands moulded.

“There!” she exclaimed, smiling, as she laid the first white globe in its pan, “if they want a handsomer loaf than that, let them knead it, I say. Dear me, Aunt Hetty, how your hands shake! Do call old Dinah to roll out the cake, and go fix up a little. Put on a black silk apron and a nice cap: that’ll make a lady of you in no time!”

“Yes!” answered Aunt Hetty, in a low, hoarse voice, wringing her hands together with passionate violence, rather than from an effort to divest themselves of the clinging flour, “yes! niece, I am almost tired out;” and with these words trembling on her lips, the little woman opened a door and glided up a flight of back stairs to her own room.

When once there, she flung up the sash, looked wildly down the road; then creeping back to a far corner of the room, sat down, moaning softly, like a wounded kid.

At each new rattle of the wheels, she gave a start, and looked piteously around, as if seeking some covert; and when Martha came in, dusting her hands, all rosy and smiling with excitement, the little woman darted to her bureau, and began a vague search after something, while a timid apology for not being ready trembled unuttered on her white lips.

“Here, aunt! what on earth possesses you? That’s my bureau, and here’s your cap. Let me put it on for you. Why, how you shiver, and this poor little face is as white as curd. Wait a minute: this’ll never do. Let me hunt up the pink bows, and pin them on: with all this white you look like a ghost!”

Aunt Hetty sat down, both hands dropping helplessly to her lap, while she resigned herself to the busy fingers of her niece, with a frightened look, growing paler and paler, spite of the pink ribbons, as the wagon drew near the house.

“Here,” said Martha, taking the old lady’s face between her hands, and kissing her cold lips, “you are neat as a new pin: only do cheer up a little! What always frightens you so when company comes? Now I’ll fix up a trifle myself, and go down. Where on earth is my brown dress? Dear me, this hook never will fasten!”

Uttering these broken ejaculations, Martha Hart arrayed her pretty figure in a dress of dark merino, put on a neat muslin collar with cuffs to match, and hurried down to receive the coming guests. She had so long been the leading spirit of the household, that it seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to go out on the front porch, where the flour bags still lay in a heap, and wait for the visitors to descend from their homely conveyance; for, though a mere girl in all essentials she was far more mistress of the house than Aunt Hetty, its nominal head.

Still, with all her brightness and sweet ways, as her father called them, Martha was a little shy, and really modest. The presence of strangers made her cheeks glow like a peach, while her large, brown eyes cast timid glances from under the long fringes that would have provoked admiration from an artist, and which sent John Downs’s heart into his mouth the moment he sat his eyes on her.

Daniel Hart went out to the wagon as it drew up, and, before Mr. Bentley could dismount, took Gillian in his arms, holding her close to his bosom, while he looked in her face.

Gillian was surprised to feel his great heart swell against her side, and to see his massive features quivering like those of an infant. When he set her upon the ground his eyes were full of tears—so full that he could not see his daughter through the mist. She drew close to her father, whispering softly,

“Did he love my mother very much, papa?”

But Mr. Bentley did not answer. His feelings were not so warmly impulsive as those he witnessed: contact with society had driven them deeper into his nature. While the farmer’s heart heaved, his only stood still.

“And this,” he said, approaching Martha, “is my niece, no doubt. Gillian, she should be about your own age.”

The two girls looked at each other shyly at first, but after a moment Gillian ran up the steps with a bright smile on her face, and one hand extended, for she saw, by the blushes that came and went on Martha’s face, a thousand unspoken welcomes that went to her heart at once.

“So you are my cousin; I am very glad!” she exclaimed. “Why, it seems like home already!”

“This is your home,” said Daniel Hart, coming up the steps, with a spirit of self-abnegation breaking from every feature. “The house, the land, from the hill top to the turnpike, is all your father’s: as for us, we do not own a foot.”

“Indeed! well, that’s of no sort of consequence, I fancy!” cried Gillian, looking around: “oh! there is the orchard, and here is the great walnut. I remember it all—all but the—the——”

Gillian broke off suddenly, shocked by her own thoughtlessness. She saw at once that it was the memory of her mother which had made her father so pale, and filled that strong man’s eyes with tears.

“It is a beautiful view,” she added, softly; “some day, my cousin, we will go all over it. Dear me! who is that?”

The two girls had walked into the hall as Gillian was speaking, and stood in the door of the family sitting-room. Opposite them was a long, old-fashioned mantle-glass, and in it Gillian saw the figure of a little woman shrinking away behind the window drapery, so pale and terrified that it made her start and open her eyes with wonder.

“Oh! it is only Aunt Hetty; you are sure to like Aunt Hetty; come in and speak to her!” cried Martha, cheerfully; “she’s a little backward with company, but the dearest, nicest—oh! indeed——”

Martha broke off with a little start, for that instant Aunt Hetty came forward, with a swift, noiseless movement, and stood close to Gillian, gazing in her face, with a scared, earnest look.

“Sister! oh, sister!”

The words dropped rapidly from her lips, and she caught hold of Gillian’s dress, with a tender, pleading motion that perplexed the young girl exceedingly.

“Why, aunt, what is the matter? You haven’t got a sister in the wide world that I know of. This is our lady cousin from foreign parts. I told you all about it up-stairs,” said Martha.

“I know—I know!” said Aunt Hetty, lifting one little hand to her forehead. “It is Sarah’s child, not—not herself. I know that, but cannot realize it. Let me look at myself.”

She went up to the mantle-glass, and peered at the pale face that met her for more than a minute. When she turned away, the most wan smile that Gillian ever saw gleamed on her lips.

“Can you believe it?” she said, mournfully, pointing to Martha. “I was like her then!”

“Why, aunt, how strangely you talk!” said Martha, bewildered by this singular address.

“Do I?” murmured the old lady. “Do I? What was it all about?” She seemed tempted to address Gillian again, in the same vague way, but with one of her warm-hearted impulses the young girl threw her arms around the little woman and kissed her two or three times. “So you were my mother’s sister. I understand it now—and I look so much like her; of course that must be it. No wonder it disturbs you, aunt. Dear! how strange it seems to call any one aunt. Won’t you kiss me, dear lady?”

The old lady began to tremble under the caresses which the bright girl lavished on her, and Gillian remembered, after, that she did not return her kiss, but rather struggled in her embrace than responded to it.

“Oh, that’s right,” the farmer called out, entering the hall. “That’s right, Mehitable: welcome the gal with a whole heart; she must not feel strange among us.”

“I could not feel strange here, Uncle Daniel,” cried Gillian, smiling brightly while the tears leaped to her eyes. “See how I have got all the names! I, who never had a relative before. Uncle, aunt, cousin! Isn’t it delightful?”

“That’s kind and hearty,” replied the farmer. “Take our cousin up-stairs, Martha, while this young chap and I bring in the trunks. Aunt Hetty will see about supper while you get acquainted.”

The two girls went up-stairs, but directly Martha came down again to hurry the trunks. John Downs had one on his shoulder, mounting the stairs. Martha stepped aside to let him pass, and then she observed, with a blush, what remarkably fine eyes the young fellow had. Amid all her excitement this thought would come back to her mind all the evening; for, according to the custom of those times, the driver sat down at the same table with his passengers, and Martha was placed directly opposite him during supper.

I don’t pretend to know how it happened, but when Martha Hart went to bed that night she had learned that John Downs owned two-thirds of a sloop on the river, beside the iron-gray horses, the Pennsylvania wagon, and some bank-stock in New York—that his father had been one of the first settlers in the river town where he made his home; and altogether she gathered a very satisfactory account of his antecedents, though she certainly had no sort of business with the information; but then Martha came naturally to her curiosity, for all that part of the country had been settled from New England.