Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 481 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

6 of God’s first laws. Sinful wastefulness brings all other iniquities in its train.” Without removing her clothes, the girl threw herself on the bed, and burst into an agony of tears. ‘Oh, I cannot stay in this dreadful place!” she cried to herself. ‘‘I shall die! I shall die!” For a time it seemed as if her heart would burst. She had to bury her face in the pillow, to stifle the cries that rose from her aching breast. But she was exhausted by her long journey the excessive strain on her nerves since she had been in the company of ber guardian, and the want of sleep; and in the reaction following her aroxism of weeping, she sunk into a troubled rowse. The nightmare that followed took its coloring from a picture she had once seen of Dante’s In- ferno. _ She dreamed that she was in the midst of a boundless waste, in which grew no living thing, the ground being covered with ashes, while the heavens were hidden by low-hanging clouds of sulphurous smoke, which rose ever through crevices in the ground. All about her walked shadowy figures, cowled and gowned, so that she could not. see their faces, trailing their black vestments behind them as they moved with bowed heads, like hopeless penitents. ‘They seemed to wring their hands, hidden in the sleeves of their sackcloth draperies; and one and all uttered the most dolorous cries and proane of heart-wrung anguish she had ever 1eard, An oppressive burden seemed to cumber her breast, filing it with dull pain. It flashed across her mind that she was in the place of endless torment; and ina wild agony of terror of burst the bonds of sleep, and started up- right. She wasstill in darkness, and still those weird cries filled her ears. She strained her eyes to see the haunting figures; but they seemed to have been swallowed up in the rayless gloom, as if the black clouds had suddenly dropped to aah enveloping her in their impenetrable olds, It was several seconds before she could suffi- ciently clear her mind to realize that she was sitting on a bed fully dressed, and that the sounds she heard came from below stairs. But gradually she recalled where she was, and then she recognized the voice of her strange guardian. He was pacing the floor below, and giving ut- terance to sounds as terrible as those she had heard in her dream. Breathlessly the affrighted girl listened. She could not distinguish the words he spoke; but presently she made up her mind that he was praying, in such an agony of soul as she would not have dreamed it possible for a human being to endure, He wailed, he sobbed, he groaned, he cried out in wild, inarticulate bursts of anguish. But another voice blended with his. It was that of his wife, Its higher pitch carried the articulations more distinctly, where her hus- band’s was muffled by the intervening floor. Now she groaned in response to some fervid appeal of his: ‘Amen, good Lord!” Again it was: ‘“Yake Thy curse from us, oh God!” And yet again: ‘* Save our souls alive from the burning!” These responses seemed to lash the feelings of the man to wilder fury. Then the woman seemed to plead with him and soothe him, until se cries sunk.to moans, and finally into dead si- ence, But now from some other part of the house— it seemed the room adjoining Edith’s—came the sound of suppressed sobbing and low, tremulous crying, t was so guarded as to indicate that the weep- er was afraid of being heard, It abruptly ceased at the sound of an opening door below, and an ascending tread on the stairs. Filled with undefined terror, Edith crept un- der the bedclothes and covered her head, and so lay palpitating, breathless. CHAPTER V. THE HEATHEN CHINEE, “Goop morning, aunt Mercy! I am ashamed to present myself in this untidy condi- tion; but I haven’t been able even tosmooth my hair, since I was too tired last night to think to get anything out of my trunk.” Without any means of making her toilet in ci4 ‘ al . nas eS 2 eee, -_--eoo- e+; +; +-—-—_ si Little Ah Sin. her room, Edith had been able only to straight- en out her dress a little before coming down- tairs. She found Mrs. Swayne kneading an immense batch of bread in the kitchen. ‘‘T am surprised that your trunks are so large, and that there should be more than one,” said the woman, stiffly, almost sternly. ‘I know nothing of the life to which you have been accustomed; but here we are people who live in the fear of the Lord, and who use His bounties frugally. I shall be pained to learn that you are taken up with the vanities of this wicked world, and given to adorning the body, which in the end must molder in the grave, with fripperies not meet for a child of God.” ‘dith flushed scarlet, as she dropped her eyes, following the disapproving glance of her stern mentor over her person, Her dress was a dainty affair, most becoming- ly cut and trimmed, with a knot of gay ribbon at the throat. ‘‘T—T have plainer dresses than this,” she stammered, yet with a dismayed consciousness that the simplest of her tasty little morning wraps could not by any possible alteration be made to look as hideously ugly as the straight calico gown Mrs. Swayne wore, Mrs. Swayne passed that matter, and renewed her attack at another point. ‘‘Tt is unseemly to have your hair flying about your shoulders like that,” she said. ‘‘ It will be more modest and more pleasing in the sight of heaven to wear it braided and wound in a simple knot, or confined in a net, if indeed it would not be removing a snare from your path to have it cut off.” At that Edith fairly gasped with dismay. In her fanatical hatred of beauty, could this hard old woman contemplate such a sacrilege as the sacrifice of her hair? Her nostrils dilated, and her eyes grew large and dark, as, looking her hostess steadily in the eye, she said, in low, firm, yet thoroughly re- spectful tones: ‘No, aunt Mercy! My papa loved to see m hair this way. I shall always wear it so, thoug I will try to please you in other things.” But what was there in her words to produce so startling an effect? The woman’s sallow face turned livid with sudden pallor. She shrunk back, lifting her hand as if to ward off a blow, and so sunk almost fainting into a chair. ‘Aunt Mercy! What have I done?” cried Edith, springing forward with quick remorse. But the woman waved her off, apparently un- able to speak. ‘‘Oh! what have I said?” urged the girl, ap- pealingly, with clasped hands. ‘‘Go! go!” gasped the woman. ‘‘ You will find a basin and towel just outside the door,” ‘* But you will forgive me?” petitioned the dis- tressed girl, almost kneeling to her. The woman stamped her foot, with that sud- den passion which ‘is born of unendurable pain, crying almost savagely: ‘Obey me!” And the affrighted girl, who had never before been treated with such violence, hurried trem- ulously from the room, She found atin wash-basin and a half-used bar of brown soap on a flat stump; flanked by a bucket of water; while a coarse roller towel hung on a peg against the slab wall of the house. The towel was scrupulously clean, as was everything else she had seen in or about the house. She was therefore able to wash her face and hands with comfort, though she could not bring herself to thread her golden hair with the comb and brush that were supplied for gen- eral use. On timidly re-entering the large kitchen— which, by the way, was the most home-like room in the house—she found Mrs, Swayne re- stored to her wonted stony. self-possession. But her appetite was pretty well frightened out of her, so that she partook of her breakfast of bread and milk sparingly enough to win the favor of an anchorite. While she was thus employed, an elfish lit- tle girl—whose sobbing she had heard the night before—entered shyly. Her pale face was light- ed by great dark, wonder-wide eyes, and framed in jet-black hair, the beauty of which could not be disguised by the sober way in which it was combed down over the plop ‘‘What a little old woman!” thought Edith, in wondering delight. ‘‘ As old-fashioned as a a c= Puritan of two hundred years ago.” nd she at once sought to win her confi- dence. But she found that, while her slightest request was obeyed with painful precision, she could win no natural response to her endear- . ; , f 5 j ms 1 \ *. Ta. ; tr : ; - ? “ “— - Fa i- a a “Ps A >? : . sd Ree oh 1 «.. ‘4 aww 7 ct ee - Je * er ments. The child submitted to her caresses, but with wondering bashfulness, as if she did not know what to make of it all. Her growing uneasiness, and the frequent turning of her great dark eyes toward her mother, directed Edith’s attention thither. Mrs. Swayne proceeded with her work grim- ly: Was she displeased? Edith could not guess. However, she took the little girl, who—she learned—was named Jerusha; out of doors, to look for Little Ah Sin. Upon being asked if she had seen him, Jerusha replied that she had, adding: ‘*Is he your little brother?” The idea set Edith off in a merry ane Instead of joining her, the little girl looked at her in astonishment, as if laughter were a thing wholly unfamiliar to her. They found Little Ah Sin warily on the look- out for Edith, but shrewdly taking in everything that went on about him. e did not seem very well pleased with his surroundings. ‘* Alla man catchee bell y-ache!” was his laconic summary, in reply to Edith’s inquiry. But he took kindly to little Jerusha; and from the moment of their introduction they became fast friends. That morning she took her first lesson in laugh- ter, at some of his quaint antics; but the mo- ment they returned to the house, she became again the sober-sided’ little Puritan that Edith had first seen. So Edith Vernon’s new, strange life began. She found that all the people of the ranch sat together at meat, around a long table in the kitchen; and night and morning they were as- sembled to hear the reading of the Bible, and to kneel in prayer. Abednego Swayne always chose those chapters in the scriptures which contained the darkest pictures of human sin and Divine vengeance; and his prayers were so terrible that the hardy herders turned pe. and trembled. They filled Edith with wondering horror. It seemed as if he lived under the shadow of some awful curse—as if his soul were wrung with a foretaste of the untold agonies of eternal dam- nation! For all that, love was a necessity of her nature; and she sought to win her way to the clouded hearts of these unhappy people, to seeif she could. not shed some ray of brfhitness over them, She found the woman utterly unapproachable. Those worldly dresses, that golden hair, and the bright, sunny happiness—with its gay song and rippling laughter—which she could not dampen, were thorns in the side of Mrs. Swayne. But the ‘‘ deacon” yielded somewhat to Edith’s coaxing little ways. It him with the assurance that anything she asked. would be granted. Once when she had drawn his arm about her and nestled her head on his: shoulder, she was surprised by the fall of a tear on her cheek. He put her away abruptly when he discovered what had happened; but she knew that her place in his heart was secure. No longer afraid of him, she took her place near him at prayers, and when next he wrestled with the fiends of despair, she reached out her hand and placed it gently on his. He seized it convulsively, and bending over it, burst into sobs, the stormy passion of his plead- ing for the aversion of the divine wrath givin place to broken expressions of confidence in an gratitude for God’s mercy and forgiveness, After that it became an understood thing that they were to kneel hand in hand; and while her band was often wet with his tears, the savage harshness that had at first shocked and fright- ened her gradually grew milder. In all things she softened him, save one. He treated Little Ah Sin with rigid justi¢e; but he could not be brought to look upon him kindly. Whenever Edith | perm the cause of her protege, he shook his head gloomily, and repeated what he had said in the beginning: i oa ‘A worshiper of Belial! An abomination in the sight of the Lord! A fire-brand in a house- hold of God’s servants!” For his part, Little Ah Sin seemed to have none of this religious prejudice. He knelt with the rest at prayers, without protest. But while: he sat listening to the reading, his bias-cut eyes wandering furtively from face to face, or while he bowed with only his ears on the alert, it was impossible to tell whether his devotions were of- — fered to the true God, or to some hideous wooden image which he had left in his own country, re- oyresented possibly by an equally ugly amulet. hidden beneath bis Clothes, As has been said, he and little Jerusha became fast friends, and after a time it was noticed that they were frequently off alone together. ot so that she went to. ‘ “aa ~~