Chapter 61

JOEL ROGERS' MONUMENT.

It was a very merry party which met next day at the farm-house, and Mr. Jerrold was the merriest of them all, though he could not understand exactly why he was so light-hearted and glad. The fact that Joel Rogers died by his father's hand remained the same, but it did not now affect him as it once had done. Bessie seemed to have taken all the shame and pain away. He was very fond of her, always calling her daughter when he addressed her, and when, after dinner was over, she came and sat at his side, and laying her hand on his, said to him, "Father, there is something I very much wish to do, and I want your consent," he answered, unhesitatingly: "You shall have it, no matter what you ask."

"Thanks," Bessie said, with a triumphant look at Grey, who was standing near. "I thought you would not oppose me, even if Grey did. You see, I have so much money that it burns my fingers, and I think I must have lived in America long enough to have caught your fever for change, or else the smell of plaster and paint at Stoneleigh awakened in me a desire for more, for, what I wish to do is to tear down this old house and build another one, where we can spend our summers. This house, though very nice and comfortable, is falling to pieces, and will tumble down in some high wind. The plastering is off in two of the rooms up stairs, and a part of the roof has fallen in over the bedroom and wood-shed. Aunt Hannah says the snow was suffered to lie there last winter while she was with us in Wales. So you see we must do something, and I have the plan of such a pretty place, which I want to call Stoneleigh Cottage after my old home. Your room and Aunt Hannah's are to be the pleasantest of all, with a bow-window and fire-place in both, and there is to be a fire-place in the hall, which is to be finished in oak, with a wide staircase and a tall clock on the landing, and the windows are to have little colored panes of glass at the top, and the floors are to be inlaid and waxed, with rugs of matting instead of carpets, as we want everything cool for summer, and we will have a big piazza where we can have tea or breakfast, or even a dance, if we like. Won't that be nice?"

Bessie had talked very rapidly, with a feeling that she did not have the sympathy of her hearers. She had conceived the idea of pulling down the old house and building a new one while she was in Wales, alleging to herself as one reason that both Hannah and Grey would enjoy themselves better under a roof which did not cover a grave, while the other reason was not then quite clear enough in her own mind to be put into words, but she had said nothing to any one until the morning of the day when she broached the subject to his father. Together with Grey, she had gone over the old house, which, from having been shut up so long, seemed more dilapidated than ever. But Grey opposed her plan, and Hannah opposed it, while Mr. Jerrold grew hot and cold by turns, as he thought what might possibly be brought to light if the house were removed and any excavations made, as there might be. As if divining what was in his mind, Bessie continued:

"I do not mean to have the new house just where this one stands, but farther to the right. We can fill up the cellar with the debris, and have loads of earth brought in and make a kind of plateau, with it terrace all around it. We can make that plateau so lovely with shrubs, and flowers, and grass. I once saw one like what I have in mind, at a country place in England, and in one corner, under a willow tree, was a little grave; the only son of the house had been buried there, and I thought it so lovely to have a monument of flowers, and trees and singing birds."

Locking into the blue eyes fixed so earnestly upon him, Mr. Jerrold read what she meant, and said to her:

"You shall do as you like; if Hannah does not object."

Hannah, too, began to get a glimpse of the truth, and so did Grey, and when she said, "You are all willing--it is settled?" they answered yes, and Grey went with her to choose the site for the new house, which in her impetuosity, she declared should be commenced at once saying she would remain in Allington during the summer and superintend it herself.

It was Bessie who choose the site, to the right of the old building and near a great flat rock which she said she meant to have in a corner of the yard, as it would be such a nice play-house for children.

"Yes, a very nice play-house for children," Grey said, winding his arms around her and kissing her blushing cheek, and then they sat down upon the rock and talked of and planned the house, and Bessie told him all that was in her mind in regard to the plateau, which she meant to make as beautiful as a garden, so that no one would ever dream it held a grave.

"I ought to do something for him," she said; "and as my grandmother was fond of flowers, and grass, and singing birds, so I am sure was he, and he shall have them in abundance, and maybe he will know that his sister's granddaughter is doing it for him, and be glad."

In the light of this new idea, Mr. Jerrold, Hannah and Grey entered heart and soul into Bessie's project, and within a week a plan for the cottage had been drawn, and a contract made with the builders who were to commence work at once. Neither Hannah nor Bessie were present when the walls of the main building went crashing down into the cellar they were to fill, but when it came to the bed-room and wood-shed, Hannah, Bessie, Grey and his father sat under a tree at a little distance, watching nervously while the men took down timber after timber, until the spot was clear, and the ground as smooth as it usually is under a floor where there is no cellar.

"Oh," Bessie said, with a sigh of relief, as she turned to Grey, who was sitting next to her, but her eye went past him to Hannah, who, with her hands clasped tightly together, sat as rigid as a block of marble, gazing so intently at the spot which held so much horror for her that she did not at first know when Bessie stole softly to her side; but when the young girl wound her arm around her neck, and kissing her softly, said: "They have let him into the light, and I am so glad; it does not seem now like a hidden grave," the tension on her nerves gave way, and she burst into a paroxysm of tears, the very last she ever shed over that hidden grave. For, like Bessie, she felt better, now that the sunlight was falling upon it, and by and by, when everything was accomplished, and Bessie had carried out her idea, she felt that the dead man's monument would be worthy of a far nobler personage than he who slept beneath it.

Yielding to Bessie's earnest solicitations Grey decided to remain with her in Allington during the summer and superintend in person the work, which, owing to good management and the great number of men employed, went on so rapidly that by the last of October everything was done except the furnishing, which was to be put off until Spring, for before the autumn came it was known that Hannah would never occupy the house save as she went there a visitor. The words spoken to her many years before by the Rev. Charles Sanford had been repeated, and this time her answer had been:

"Yes, Charlie, if you do not think it too ridiculous for people as old as we are to marry. Why, I am almost sixty."

"But just as dear and young to me as if you were sixteen," was the reply of the Rev. Charles, who was quite as much in love as he had been nearly forty years before, when he asked Hannah Jerrold to be his wife.

Of course after it was settled he went straight to Martha's grave and staid there all the afternoon, and did a little gardening around it, and trained the rose-bush around the head-stone, and picking a half open blossom, put it in his button-hole and silently apostrophized the dead woman at his feet, telling her that though he was about to bring a new mistress to the home where she had reigned supreme, he should not forget her, and should so far as was consistent, see that all her ideas were carried out, especially as far as his health was concerned. Then be walked thoughtfully away, whispering to himself;

"Martha was a very good and excellent woman, but I loved Hanny first, and God forgive me if it is wrong to say it, I think I love her the best."

Then he went and told Miss McPherson, who called him and Hannah fools, to think of marrying at their time of life, but said she was satisfied if they were. Then he told Lucy Grey, who congratulated him warmly and was sure he would be happy. Then he told Bessie, who cried at first because her Aunt Hannah was not to live with her, and then entered heart and soul into the affair and became as much interested in the wedding and the wedding outfit as if the bride-elect had been a young girl in her teens instead or an elderly woman in her fifties. Then he told his senior warden, who, having himself been married three times, had nothing to say, but hurried home with the news, which was all over Allington by the next day, and was received differently, according to the different natures of the receivers. Some were very glad, and predicted that the rector would be far happier with Hannah than he had been with Martha, while others wondered what that worthy woman would say if she knew that another was to fill her place, and _all_ calculated the ages of the respective parties, making _him_ out younger than he was and _her_ a great deal older. But neither he nor she ever knew what was said, and they would not have cared if they had, for both were supremely happy and thankful for the peace and blessedness which had crowned their later life. Fifty and even sixty is not so very old, at least to those who have reached it, and Hannah neither looked nor felt old when in her becoming traveling dress of seal brown she stood up in the parlors of her brother's house on Beacon street and was made Mrs. Charles Sanford.

This was early in February, and six weeks before, on Christmas Eve, there had come to that same house on Beacon street a little black-eyed, black-haired boy, as unlike either Bessie or Grey as a baby well could be.

"He is not like any one I have ever seen of your family," the old nurse said, when she brought the sturdy fellow to Bessie, who, the moment she looked at him exclaimed:

"Why, Grey, he is exactly like Neil; his eyes, his hair, his expression, and Neil will be so glad. We must have his picture taken at once and sent to Neil, with a lock of his hair."

Grey thought it doubtful if Neil would be quite as enthusiastic over Bessie's baby as she seemed to think, but when a few hours later she drew his face down to hers and whispered to him:

"We will call baby Neil McPherson, won't we?" he fondly kissed the little mother, and answered hesitatingly:

"Yes, darling, we will call our baby Neil McPherson, if you like."

And so with a birth, a christening, and a wedding the winter passed rapidly at No. ---- Beacon street, and by the first of May Bessie was again in Allington, armed and equipped for settling Stoneleigh Cottage, and giving the finishing touches to the plateau, which with the advance of summer, began to show marks of great beauty, and to attract general attention. Bessie's idea of raising it two feet above the level of the ground had been carried out, and the sods which had been placed upon it, and the terrace around it in the autumn, were fresh and green as velvet in the early spring, while of the roses, and lilies, and flowering shrubs which had been planted with so much care, not one had died, and many of them blossomed as freely as plants of older growth. The plateau was Bessie's especial pride and care, particularly that corner of it over which the bedroom once stood. Here she had an immense bed of pansies, heart-shaped and perfect in outline, and in the center a cross, where only white daisies were growing.

"Grandmother liked pansies and daisies the best, and I thought, perhaps, he did, too; and then mother's name was Daisy, you know," she said to Hannah, who rightly guessed that this bank of flowers was Bessie's _In Memoriam_, not only to her uncle, but to her mother as well.

And very beautiful the heart-shaped bed of human-faced pansies, with the daisy cross in the center, looked all the summer long, and many admired and commented upon it, but only five persons ever knew that the white cross marked a grave.