Part 6

“What! all your fineries on at this time of day? What do you think Mother Sarah will say to that?”

The pretty pink flush deepened in the girl’s cheeks, and she answered him almost as if she thought she had done something wrong,--

“I’ll be so careful, Jack. I won’t spoil it. By and by you’ll be gone; and I wanted to look nice when I saw the new pistol.”

This seemed extremely natural to Jack. The pistol was to him a matter of such moment that no amount of demonstration in its honor would have seemed too great. Viewed in this light, it really appeared quite a meritorious act that Conn should have put on the white dress; and he looked her over with that air of half-patronizing approval with which boys are apt to regard the good looks of their sisters and their cousins.

Then he exhibited the pistol. It had--as a boy’s knife or gun or boat always has--distinguishing and individual merits of its own. No other pistol, though it were run in the same mould, could quite compare with it, and it was by some sort of wonderful chance that he had become its possessor. Conn wondered and admired with him to his heart’s content. Then came breakfast, and then the marching of the Brighton Blues. This was a company of boys in blue uniforms,--handsome, healthy, wide-awake boys from fourteen to seventeen years old,--every one of them the pride of mothers and sisters and cousins. They were to march into Boston, and parade the streets, and dine at a restaurant, and see the fireworks in the evening, and I don’t know what other wonderful things.

Jack was in the highest spirits. He was sure he and his pistol were a necessary part of the day; and he sincerely pitied Conn, because she was a girl and must stay at home.

“‘_Bang, whang, whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife; Oh! a day in the city square, there is no such pleasure in life!’”

he quoted; and then he called back to her from the gate,--

“It’s too bad, Conn, that there’s no fun for you; but keep your courage up, and I’ll bring you something.”

And so they marched away, in the gay, glad morning sunshine, following their band of music,--a boy’s band that was, too.

Conn stood and watched them, with a wistful, longing look in her great violet eyes, and the soft, bright color coming and going on her girlish cheeks. At last she gathered a bunch of late red roses, and put them in her bosom and went into the house. She sewed a little, and then she tossed her work aside, for who cares to work on holidays? Then she took up her new book; but the tale it told seemed dull and cold beside the warm throbbing life of which the outside world was full. She wished over and over that she were a boy, that she might have marched away with the rest. Then she wondered if she could not go into town and see them from somewhere in all their glory. Very little idea had she of a Boston crowd on Fourth of July. She had been into town often enough, with her aunt or her uncle, and walked through the quiet streets; and she thought she should have little trouble in doing the same now. She looked in her purse; she had not much money, but enough so that she could ride if she got tired, and she would be sure to save some to come home. She called her Aunt Sarah’s one servant, and made her promise to keep the secret as long as she could, and then tell Aunt Sarah that she had gone to Boston to find Jack and see him march with the rest.

The girl was a good-natured creature, not bright enough to know that it was her duty to interfere, and easily persuaded by Conn’s entreaties and the bit of blue ribbon with which they were enforced.

And so Conn started off, as the boys had done before her, and went on her way. But she had no gay music to which to march, and for company she had only her own thoughts, her own hopes. Still she marched bravely on.

There were plenty of other people going the same way; indeed it seemed to Conn as if everybody must be going into Boston. Excitement upheld her, and she trudged along, mile after mile, across the pleasant mill-dam, and at last she reached Beacon Street. Her head had begun to throb horribly by the time she got into town. It seemed to her that all the world was whirling round and round, and she with it. But she could not turn back then; indeed, she did not know how to find any conveyance, and she knew her feet would not carry her much farther. Surely, she _must_ see Jack soon. He had said they should march through Beacon Street. She would ask some one. She had an idea that every one must know about any thing so important as the Brighton Blues. At last she got courage to speak to a kind-looking servant-maid in the midst of a group on the steps of one of the Beacon-street houses. The girl pitied her white face, so pale now, with all the pretty pink roses faded from the tired young cheeks, and answered kindly.

She did not know about the Brighton Blues, but she guessed all the companies had been by there, or would come. Wouldn’t the young lady sit down with them on the steps, and rest, and wait a little?

And “the young lady” sat down. What could she do else, with the whole world whirling, whirling, and her feet so strangely determined to whirl out from under her? And then it grew dark, and when it came light again there was a wet cloth on her hair, and she lay on a lounge in a cool basement, and the kind girl who had cared for her told her that she had fainted. And then she had some food and grew refreshed a little, but was strangely confused yet, and with only one thought, to which she held with all the strength of her will,--that she had come to see Jack and must look for him till he came. So on the steps she stationed herself, and the crowd surged by. Military companies, grown-up ones, came and went with glitter of brave uniforms and joyful clamor of music, and Conn watched, with all her soul in her eyes, but still no Jack.

It was mid-afternoon at last when suddenly she saw the familiar blue, and marching down the street came the boyish ranks, following their own band--tired enough, all of them, no doubt, but their courage kept up by the music and the hope of fireworks by and by. Conn strained her eyes. She did not mean to speak, but after a little, when the face she longed for came in sight, something within her cried out with a sharp, despairing cry, “Oh, Jack, Jack!”

And Jack heard. Those who were watching saw one boy break from the long blue line, and spring up the step where Conn sat, and seize in strong hands the shoulders of a girl all in white, her face as white as her gown, and some red roses, withered now, upon her breast.

“Conn--Conn Richmond!” the boy cried, “what _does_ this mean?”

“Don’t scold--oh, _don’t_ scold, Jack!” said the pitiful, quivering lips. “I only came in to see you marching with the rest, and--I’m tired.”

“Yes,” said the girl who had befriended her, “and she fainted clean away, and she’s more dead than alive now; and if you’ve a heart in your bosom, you’ll let your play soldiering go, and take care of _her_.”

And just then Jack realized, boy as he was, that he _had_ a heart in his bosom, and that his Cousin Conn was the dearest and nearest thing to that heart in the whole world. But he did not tell her so till long years afterwards. Just now his chief interest was to get her home. No more marching for him; and what were fireworks, or the supper the boys were to take together, in comparison with this girl, who had cared so much to see him in his holiday glory?

He took her to an omnibus, which ran in those days to Brighton, and by tea-time he had got her home. He found his mother frightened and helpless, and too glad to get Conn back to think of scolding.

* * * * *

It was six years after that, that in the battle of Malvern Hill, July 1, 1862, Jack, a real soldier then, and no longer a boy playing at the mimicry of war, was wounded; and next day the news came to the quiet Brighton home.

Conn had grown to be a young lady in the sweet grace of her twenty summers, and she was her Aunt Sarah’s help and comfort. To these two women came the news of Jack’s peril. The mother cried a little helplessly; but there were no tears in Conn’s eyes.

“Aunt Sarah,” she said quietly, “I am going to find Jack.”

And that day she was off for the Peninsula. It was the Fourth of July when she reached the hospital in which her Cousin Jack had been placed. She asked about him, trembling; but the news, which reassured her, was favorable. He was wounded, but not dangerously. It was a girlish instinct, which every girl will understand, that made Conn put on a fresh white gown before she used the permission she had received to enter the hospital. She remembered--would Jack remember also?--that other Fourth of July on which they had found each other, six years before. As if nothing should be wanting of the old attire, she met, as she passed along the street, a boy with flowers to sell,--for the flowers bloomed, just as the careless birds sang, even amid the horrors of those dreadful days,--and bought of him a bunch of late red roses, and fastened them, as she had done that other day, upon her breast.

The sun was low when she entered the hospital, and its last rays kindled the hair, golden still as in the years long past, till it looked like a saint’s aureole about her fair and tender face. She walked on among the suffering, until, at last, before she knew that she had come near the object of her search, she heard her name called, just as _she_ had called Jack’s name six years before,--

“Oh, Conn, Conn!”

And then she sank upon her knees beside a low bed, and two feeble arms reached round her neck and drew her head down.

“I was waiting for you, Conn. I knew you would come. I lay here waiting till I should see you as you were that day long ago,--all in white, and with red roses on your breast,--my one love in all the world!”

And the girl’s white face grew crimson with a swift, sweet joy, for never before had such words blessed her. She did not speak; and Jack, full of a man’s impatience, now that at last he had uttered the words left unsaid so long, held her fast, and whispered,--

“Tell me, Conn, tell me that you _are_ mine, come life or death. Surely you would not have sought me here if you had not meant it to be so! You _are_ my Conn,--tell me so.”

And I suppose Conn satisfied him, for two years after that she was his wife, and last night he gave the old pistol of that first Fourth of July to a young ten-year-old Jack Richmond to practise with for this year’s Fourth; and pretty Mother Conn, as fair still as in her girlhood, remonstrated, as gentle mothers will, with,--

“Oh Jack, surely he is too young for such a dangerous plaything.”

Father Jack laughed as he lifted little Conn to his knee, and answered,--

“Nonsense, sweetheart. He is a soldier’s boy, and a little pistol-shooting won’t hurt him.”

But how noisy it will be round that house on Fourth of July!

HER MOTHER’S DAUGHTER.

Syl Graham was an only child. Her name was Sylvia, but everybody called her Syl, except that sometimes, half playfully and half chidingly, her father called her Sylly. But that was a liberty no one else took,--and for which Mr. Graham himself was not unlikely to pay in extra indulgence.

Syl was seventeen, and she had never known any trouble in all her young, bright life. Her mother had died when she was two years old; and this, which might easily have been the greatest of misfortunes,--though Syl was too young to know it,--had been turned almost into a blessing by the devotion of her father’s sister, Aunt Rachel, who came to take care of the little one then, and had never left her since.

Not the dead Mrs. Graham herself could have been more motherly or more tender than Aunt Rachel; and the girl had grown up like a flower in a shaded nook, on which no rough wind had ever been allowed to breathe.

And a pretty flower she was; so her father thought when she ran into the hall to meet him, as he came in from business at the close of the short November day.

The last rays of daylight just bronzed her chestnut hair. Her face was delicately fair,--as the complexion that goes with such hair usually is,--colorless save in the lips, which seemed as much brighter than other lips as if they had added to their own color all that which was absent from the fair, colorless cheeks. The brown eyes were dancing with pleasant thoughts, the little, girlish figure was wonderfully graceful, and Papa Graham looked down at this fair, sweet maiden with a fond pride, which the sourest critic could hardly have had a heart to condemn.

“Are you cross?” she said laughingly, as she helped him off with his overcoat.

“Very,” he answered, with gravity.

“I mean are you worse than usual? Will you be in the best humor now or after dinner?”

“After dinner, decidedly, if Aunt Rachel’s coffee is good.”

Syl nodded her piquant little head. “I’ll wait, then.”

The dinner was good enough to have tempted a less hungry man than Mr. Graham, and the coffee was perfect. Papa’s dressing-gown and slippers were ready, upstairs; and when he had sat down in the great, soft easy-chair that awaited him, and his daughter had settled herself on a stool at his feet, I think it would have been hard to find a more contented-looking man in all New York.

“Now I’m very sure you are as good as such a bear can be,” said saucy Syl; “and now we’ll converse.”

To “converse” was Syl’s pet phrase for the course of request, reasoning, entreaty, by which Papa Graham was usually brought to accede to all her wishes, however extravagant. He rested his hand now on her shining chestnut braids, and thought how like she was to the young wife he had loved so well, and lost so early. Then he said teasingly,--

“What is it, this time? A Paris doll, with a trunk and a bandbox; or a hand-organ?”

“For shame, papa! The doll was four years ago.”

“All the more reason it must be worn out. Then it’s the hand-organ. But I must draw the line somewhere,--you can’t have the monkey. If Punch and Judy would do, though?”

“Now, Father Lucius, you know I gave up the hand-organ two years ago, and took a piano for my little upstairs room instead; and you know I’m seventeen. Am I likely, at this age, to want monkeys, Punch and Judys, and things?”

“O, no! I forgot. Seventeen,--it must be a sewing-machine. You want to make all your endless bibs and tuckers more easily. Well, I’ll consent.”

Syl blushed. It was a sore point between her and Aunt Rachel that she so seldom sewed for herself. Aunt Rachel had old-fashioned notions, and believed in girls that made their own pretty things.

“Now, papa, you are not good-humored at all. I had better have asked you before dinner. You don’t even let me tell you what I want.”

Papa sobered his face into a look of respectful attention, and waited silently. But now Syl was not quite ready to speak.

“Don’t you think pomegranate is a pretty color, papa?”

“What is it like?”

“O, it’s the deepest, richest, brightest, humanest red you ever saw.”

“Why, I think it must be like your lips;” and he drew her to him, and kissed the bright young mouth with a lazy content.

“Perhaps it _is_ like my lips; then, surely it will look well _with_ them.”

“Where does this blossom of beauty grow?”

“It grows at Stewart’s. It has been woven into a lovely, soft-falling silk, at four dollars a yard. Twenty-five yards makes a gown, and eight yards of velvet makes the trimming and the sleeveless jacket, and the velvet is six dollars a yard. And then there is Madame Bodin, she charges like a horrid old Jew,--forty dollars just to look at a gown; and then there are the linings and buttons and things. Have you kept account, papa, and added it all up in your head?”

“I think it means about two hundred dollars. Isn’t that what you call it, Sylly?”

“Yes, if you please. It’ll be _worth_ that, won’t it, to have your daughter look like a love, when all the people come on New Year’s Day?”

“So that’s it,--that’s what this conspiracy against my peace and my pocket has for its object,--that Miss Syl Graham may sit at the receipt of callers on New Year’s Day, in a robe like a red, red rose. O Sylly, Sylly!”

Syl pouted a little, the most becoming pout in the world.

“Well, I’m sure I thought you cared how I look. If you don’t, never mind. My old black silk is still very neat and decent.”

“September, October, November,--it’s nearly three months old, isn’t it? What a well-behaved gown it must be to have kept neat and decent so long! And as to the other, I’ll consider, and you can ask me again when I come home to-morrow.”

Syl knew what Papa Graham’s considers meant, and how they always ended. She had gained her point, and she danced off and sang to the piano some old Scotch airs that her father loved, because Syl’s mother used to sing them; and Papa Graham listened dreamily to the music, while his thoughts went back twenty years, to the first winter when he brought his girl-bride home, only a year older, then, than Syl was now. He remembered how the firelight used to shine on her fair, upturned face, as she knelt beside him; how sweet her voice was; how pure and true and fond her innocent young heart. And now Syl was all he had left of her.

Should he lose Syl herself, soon? Would some bold wooer come and carry her away, and leave him with only Aunt Rachel’s quiet figure and fading face beside him for the rest of his life?

Just then Syl might have asked him not in vain for any thing, even to the half of his kingdom.

Next morning Syl went into the sewing-room. A young girl just about her own age was there--altering, sewing, making all the foolish little fancies in which Syl’s heart delighted, though her idle fingers never wrought at them. Out of pure kindness of heart Syl found her way into the sewing-room very often when Mary Gordon was there. She knew her presence carried pleasure with it, and often she used to take some story or poem and read to the young listener, with the always busy fingers, and the gentle, grateful face.

But to-day she found the girl’s eyes very red as if with long weeping. If Syl was selfish it was only because she never came in contact with the pains and needs of others. She had “fed on the roses and lain among the lilies of life,”--how was she to know the hurt of its stinging nettles? But she could not have been the lovesome, charming girl she was if she had had a nature hard and indifferent to the pains of others.

To see Mary Gordon’s red eyes was enough. Instantly she drew the work out of the fingers that trembled so; and then she set herself to draw the secret sorrow out of the poor, trembling heart.

It was the old story, so sadly common and yet so bitterly sad, of a mother wasting away and fading out of life, and a daughter struggling to take care of her, and breaking her heart because she could do so little.

“I’m used to all that,” the girl said sadly, “and I don’t let myself cry for what I can’t help. But this morning I heard her say to herself, as I was getting every thing ready for her, ‘O, the long, lonesome day!’ She thought I did not hear her, for she never complains; but somehow it broke me down. I keep thinking of her, suffering and weary and all alone. But I can’t help that, either; and I must learn to be contented in thinking that I do my best.”

“But can’t you stay at home with her and work there?” cried Syl, all eager sympathy and interest.

“No, I can’t get work enough in that way. People want their altering and fixing done in their own houses, and plain sewing pays so poorly. Sometimes I’ve thought if I only had a machine, so I could get a great deal done, I might manage but to hire one would eat up all my profits.”

Syl thought a little silent while; and it was a pretty sight to see the fair young face settle into such deep earnestness.

“Well,” she said at length, “at least you shall stay at home with her to-morrow; for all those ruffles can be done just as well there as here, and you shall carry them home with you. And you’d better go early this afternoon; there’ll be enough work to last you, and I can’t bear to think of her waiting for you, and wanting you, so many long hours. We’ll give her a little surprise.”

Mary Gordon did not speak for a moment. I think she was getting her voice steady, for when she did begin it trembled.

“I _can’t_ thank you, Miss Syl,--it’s no use to try; but the strange part is how you understand it all, when you’ve no mother yourself.”

“Ah, but you see I have papa and auntie, and I just know.”

That day, after Syl and Aunt Rachel had lunched together, Syl said, in a coaxing little way she had,--

“Aunt Rachel, we never want to see the other half of that cold chicken again, do we?”

“Why, Syl--we”--

“Why, auntie, no--we never want to-morrow’s lunch furnished coldly forth by this sad relic. And there’s a tumbler of jelly we don’t want, either--and those rolls, and,--let me see, can sick people eat cake?”

“Why, Syl Graham, what are you talking about! Who’s sick?”

Syl grew sober.

“I’m thinking about poor Mary Gordon’s mother, auntie. She’s sick, and dying by inches; and Mary has to leave her all alone; and I’ve told her she shall stay at home to-morrow and make my ruffles, and we’ll pay her just the same as if she came here. And don’t you see that we must give her her dinner to take home, since she can’t come here after it?”

Aunt Rachel never said a word, but she got up and kissed Syl on each cheek. Then she brought a basket, and into it went the cold chicken and a cold tongue and jelly and buttered rolls and fruit, till even Syl was satisfied; and she took the heavy basket and danced away with it to the sewing-room, with a bright light in her dear brown eyes.

“I think you’d best go now,” she said. “I can’t get your mother, waiting there alone, out of my mind, and it’s spoiling my afternoon, don’t you see? And because you mustn’t come here to dine to-morrow, you must carry your dinner home with you; and Aunt Rachel put some fruit and some jelly in the basket that maybe your mother will like.”

That night, when Mr. Lucius Graham let himself into the hall with his latch-key, his daughter heard him and went to meet him, as usual. But she was very silent, and he missed his teasing, saucy, provoking Syl.

“Why, daughter, are you in a dream?” he asked once during dinner; but she only laughed and shook her head. She held her peace until she had him at her mercy, in the great easy-chair, and she was on the stool beside him, as her wont was. Then, suddenly, her question came.

“Papa, do you think a pomegranate silk without velvet would be very bad?”

He was inclined to tease her, and began with “Hideous!” but then he saw that her lips were fairly trembling, and her face full of eagerness, and forbore.

“How did you know you were to have the silk at all? But you know your power over me. Here is your needful;” and he put into her hands ten bright, new twenty-dollar bills.

“O, thank you! and _do_ you think it would be bad without the velvet?”

“Sylly, no; but why shouldn’t you have the velvet if you want it?”

And then came the whole story of poor Mary Gordon, and--in such an eager tone,--

“Don’t you see, with the money the velvet would cost, and a little more, I could get her the sewing-machine; and Madame Bodin wouldn’t ask so much to make the dress if it is plainer?”

Mr. Graham was a rich man, and his first thought was to give her the money for the machine, and let her have her pretty dress, as she had fancied it, first. But a second thought restrained him. She was just beginning to learn the joy and beauty of self-sacrifice. Should he interfere? He kissed her with a half-solemn tenderness, and answered her,--

“You shall do precisely as you please, my dear. The two hundred dollars is yours. Use it _just_ as you like. I shall never inquire into its fate again.”