"I don't wonder mother thinks it seems like some old haunted house we read about. It is just the spot for a lively ghost. I wish I could see one," he thought, as he drove into the side-yard, and, giving his horse to the care of the chore-boy, Sam, who was in the barn, he went stamping into the kitchen.
CHAPTER V.
THE OLD MAN AND THE BOY.
Old Mr. Jerrold had failed rapidly within a few weeks, but as long as possible he dressed himself every day and sat in his arm-chair in the kitchen, for the front room was rarely used in winter. At one time, when Hannah saw how weak her father was growing, and knew that he must soon take to his bed, she suggested that he should occupy the south room, it was so much more sunny and cheerful than his sleeping apartment, which was always dark, and gloomy, and cheerless. But her father said no very decidedly.
"It has been a part of my punishment to keep watch in that room all these dreadful years, and I shall stay there till I die. And, Hannah, when I cannot get up any more, but must lie there all day and all night long, don't let any one in, not even Miss Grey, for it seems to me there are mirrors everywhere, and that the walls and floor have tongues, and I am getting such a coward, Hannah—such a coward, I am too old to confess it now. God has forgiven me; I am sure of that, and the world need not know what we have kept so long, you and I. How long is it, Hannah? My memory fails me, and sometimes it seems a thousand years, I have suffered so much, and then again it is but yesterday—last night. How long did you say, Hannah!
"Thirty-one years next Thanksgiving, was Hannah's reply, spoken, oh, so mournfully low.
"Thirty-one years, and you were a girl of fifteen, and your hair was so brown and glossy, just like your mother's Hannah—just like hers, and now it is so grey Poor child! I am so sorry for you, but God knows all you have borne for me, and some day you will shine as a star in His crown, while I, if I am permitted to enter the gates, must have the lowest seat."
It was the last of October when this conversation took place, and the next day but one the old man did not get up as usual, but staid in bed all that day, and the next, and the next, until it came to be understood between himself and Hannah that he would never get up again.
"Shall I send for Burton?" Hannah asked, and he replied:
"No, he does not care to come, and why trouble him sooner than necessary? He is not like you. He is grand and high, and ashamed of his old father, but he is my son, and I must see him once more. He will be up on Thanksgiving Day, and I shall live till then. Don't send for him. I cannot have him in this room—can't have anybody—don't let them in! Can no one see under the bed?"
"No, father, no one can see: no one shall come in," Hannah answered.
Then for weeks she kept her lonely watch over the half-crazed old man, who started at every sound and whispered piteously:
"Don't let them come here, Hannah. I am too old; and there is Grey—the boy—for his sake, Hannah, we will not let them come for me now!"
"No, father, they shall not come. Grey need not know," Hannah always replied, though she had secretly cherished a hope that some time in the future, when the poor old father was dead, she would tell Grey and ask his help to do what she fully meant to do when her hands, bound for thirty years, should be loosened from the chain.
She could trust Grey, could tell him everything, and feel sure that his earnest, truthful blue eyes would took just as lovingly at her as ever, and that he would comfort and help her as no one else could do.
Such was the state of affairs at the farm-house on the morning of Thanksgiving Day, when Hannah was making her preparations to go to Grey's Park for two hours or more, just to sit through the dinner and see Grey, whom she had not seen since his return from Europe.
Her father was not as well that morning. Thanksgiving was always a terrible anniversary for him, for as on that day the several members of a family meet again around the old hearth-stone, so the ghosts of the past all came back to torture him and fill him with remorse.
"How it blows," he said, as the wind shook the windows of his room, and went screaming around the corner of the house. "How it blows, and I seem to hear voices in the storm—your voice, Hannah, as it sounded thirty years ago, when you cried out so loudly, and I struck you for it, and beat old Rover, too. Do you remember it?"
"Yes, yes, father, but don't talk of it to-day; try to forget; try to think only that Grey is here, and that you will see him to-morrow."
"Grey, the boy with the big blue eyes which look so straight at you that I used sometimes to wonder if he did not see into my heart and know what I was hiding?" the old man replied. "Grey, the little boy who would sit on that bench in the woodshed, and kick the floor until I sweat at every pore with fear, and whom I would not touch till he captured my hands, and held them in his soft, warm ones, and kissed them, too, my wicked old hands, kissed by Grey's baby lips. Would he touch them now if he knew? I used to think if I lived till he was a man I would tell him; and maybe you will do it after I am dead. He is coming here to-morrow, you say, and Burton; but Burton isn't like Grey. He is proud and worldly, and a little hard, I am afraid; but the boy, tell him how I love him; try to make him understand, and when he comes to-morrow maybe he will kiss me again. It will be for the last time. I shall never see him more. But hark, what's that? Don't you hear bells? And there is the stamping of feet at the door. Go, child, quickly, and not let them in here."
Hannah, too, heard the sound and the opening of the kitchen door, and hurrying from her father's bedside, she called out, sharply:
"Who is it? Who's there?"
"My name is Norval, on the Grampian hills," was replied, in the well-remembered voice of Grey, who continued, merrily, as he approached her: "And you, dear Aunt Hannah, you are the dame with the wonderful name which forward and backward still reads the same."
He did not attempt to waltz with her, as he had done with Lucy; he had tried it once, but she went the wrong way, and he told her there was no more dance in her than in the kitchen tongs. So now he only wound his arms around her and kissed her many times, and when she sat down in a chair, he stood over her and smoothed her hair and thought how gray it had grown within the year. He had no suspicion that there was any secret sorrow weighing upon her, but he knew that her life was a hard one, owing to the peculiarities of his grandfather, and now as he looked at her, he felt a great pity for her, and there was a lump in his throat, as he stooped to kiss her again and said:
"Poor auntie, you look so tired and pale. Is grandpa so very sick, and more troublesome than usual?"
Hannah had not cried in years. Indeed it was the effort of her life to keep her tears back, but now, at the sound of Grey's sympathetic voice and the touch of his fresh, warm lips upon her own, she broke down entirely, and for a few moments sobbed as if her heart would break, while Grey in great concern, knelt down before her, and tried to comfort her.
"What is it, auntie?" he said. "Is it because you are so lonely, and are afraid grandpa will die? I'll take care of you then, and we will go to Europe together, and you shall ride on a mule and cross the Mer-de-Glace. I used to think when I was over there how we would some day go together, and I would show you everything."
At
