Chapter IX

The day following, Paul was downstairs before either Ida or Miss Ludington. He was sitting on the piazza, which was connected with the sitting-room by low windows opening like doors, when he heard a scream, and Ellen, the housemaid, who had been busy in the sitting-room, ran out upon the piazza with a face like a sheet.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.

“Sure I saw a ghost!” gasped Ellen. “I was on a chair dusting the picture, as I always does mornings, an’ I looked up, an’ there in the door stood the very same girl that’s in the picture, kind of smiling like. And so I give a yell an’ run.”

As she spoke Ida stepped out upon the piazza, and precipitately sheltering herself behind Paul, Ellen whispered, “Sure there she is now!”

On seeing that, instead of sharing her terror, he cordially greeted the ghost, the girl’s face showed such comical bewilderment that Ida smiled and Paul laughed outright.

“This is no ghost, Ellen. This lady is Miss Ida Ludington, a relative of Miss Ludington’s, who came to live here last night.”

“I hope ye’ll not mind me takin’ ye for a ghost, miss,” said Ellen, confusedly; “but sure ye are the livin’ image of the picture, and me not knowin’ anybody was in the house more than the family;” and she disappeared to tell her story in the kitchen.

Ida’s appearance was noticeably calmer than the night before. There was, indeed, no indication of excitement in her manner. Paul inquired how she had slept.

“I should think you might have had strange dreams,” he said.

“I did not dream at all. I slept soundly,” she replied. “But this morning when I woke up and recognized the familiar features of the room I have always slept in--the same books, the same pictures, the furniture just as ever--I had to sit down a long time to collect my thoughts and remember what had happened. I could remember it well enough, but to realize it was very hard. And then, when I went to the window and looked out and saw the meeting-house and the school-house and the neighbours’ houses, just where I have seen them from that window all my life since I was a baby, I had to sit down and think it all over, again before I could believe that I was not in Hilton, and last night all a dream.”

She spoke in a low, even tone, which was so evidently the result of an effort at self-control, that it impressed Paul more than any display of mental perturbation would have done.

At this moment Miss Ludington appeared on the piazza with a white, excited face, which, however, as soon as she saw Ida, became all smiles.

She had scarcely slept at all. The thought had kept her awake that Ida might vanish as mysteriously as she had come, and be gone at morning. From sheer weariness, however, she had at last fallen into a doze. On awaking she had gone to call Ida, and finding her chamber empty, had hurried downstairs full of apprehension.

Immediately after breakfast, Miss Ludington, to whom Ellen’s mistake, if mistake it could be called, had been related, took Ida upstairs, and made her exchange her white dress of the fashion of half a century before for one of her own, in order that her appearance might excite less remark among the servants pending the obtaining of a suitable wardrobe from the city.

There was another consideration which made the change of costume not only desirable, but necessary.

Ida’s dress, which had not seemed the night before, to casual examination, to differ from other cloth, had begun to crumble away in a very curious manner. The texture seemed strangely brittle and strengthless. It fell apart at a touch, and was reduced to a fine powder under the pressure of the fingers. She could not possibly have worn it even one day.

The dress of Miss Ludington’s, for which she exchanged it, had been made for that lady when considerably stouter than at present, but was with difficulty enlarged sufficiently for the full figure of the girl. Like all but the latest of Miss Ludington’s dresses, it was of deepest black, and, strikingly beautiful as Ida had been in white, the funereal hue set off the delicacy of her complexion, the pure expression of her face, and the golden lustre of her hair, like fresh revelations.

Paul was left pretty much to himself during the day. A large part of it was spent by the ladies in an upstairs chamber, which Miss Ludington had devoted to a collection of mementoes of the successive periods of her life from infancy.

“Come,” she had said to Ida, “I want to introduce you to the rest of the family. I want to make you acquainted with the other Miss Ludingtons who have borne the name between your time and mine.”

Having been an only child, Miss Ludington’s garments, toys, school-books, and other belongings had not been handed down to younger brothers and sisters, and eventually to destruction. It had been an easy matter to preserve them, and, consequently, the collection was large and curious, including samples of the wardrobe appertaining to every epoch, from the swaddling-clothes of the infant to a black gown of the last year.

After the period of youth, however, which Ida represented, the number and interest of the mementoes rapidly decreased, and for many years had consisted of nothing more than a few dresses and a collection of photographs, one or two for each year, arranged in order. They numbered not less than fifty in all and covered thirty-seven years, from a daguerreotype of Miss Ludington at the age of twenty-five to a photograph taken the last month. Between these two pictures there was not enough resemblance to suggest to a casual observer that they were pictures of the same individual.

To trace the gradual process of change from year to year during the intervening period, was an employment which never lost its pensive fascination for Miss Ludington. For each of these faces, with their so various expressions, represented a person possessing a peculiar identity and certain incommunicable qualities--a person a little different from any one of those who came before or after her, and from any other person who ever lived on earth.

As now the grey head and the golden head bent together over one picture after another, Miss Ludington related all she could remember of the history and personal peculiarities of the original.

“There is, really, not much to say about them,” she said. “They lived very quiet, uneventful lives, and to anybody but us would, doubtless, seem entirely uninteresting persons. All wore black dresses, and had sad faces, and all found in their thoughts of you the source at once of their only consolation and their keenest sorrow. For they fully believed--think of it!--fully and unquestionably believed that you were dead; more hopelessly dead than if you were in your grave, dead, with no possibility of resurrection.”

“This is the one,” she said, presently, as she took up the picture of a woman of thirty-five, “who had the fortune left to her, which has come down to me. I want you to like her. Next to you I think more of her than I do of any of the rest. It was she who cut loose from the old life at Hilton which had become so sour and sad, and built this new Hilton here, where life has been so much calmer, and, on the whole, happier, than it had got to be at home. It was she who had the portrait of you painted which is downstairs.”

Ida took up a picture of the Miss Ludington of twenty-six or seven.

“Tell me something about her,” she said. “What kind of a person was she?”

The elder woman’s manner, when she saw what picture it was that Ida had taken up, betrayed a marked embarrassment, and first she made no reply.

Noticing her confusion and hesitation, Ida said, softly, “Don’t tell me if it is anything you don’t like to speak of. I do not care to know it.”

“I will tell you,” replied Miss Ludington, with determination. “You have as good a right to know as I have. She cannot blame me for telling you. She knows your secrets as I do, and you have a right to know hers. She had a little escapade. You must not be too hard on her. It was the outcome of the desperate dulness and life-weariness that came over her with the knowledge that youth and its joys were past, leaving nothing in their place. The calm and resignation to a lonely existence, empty of all that human hearts desire, which came in after-years, she could not yet command. Oh, if you could imagine, as I remember, the bitterness of that period, you would not be too hard upon her for anything she might have done! But, really, it was nothing very bad. People would not call it so, even if it had ever become known.” And then, with blushing cheeks and shamed eyes, Miss Ludington poured into Ida’s ears a story that would have disappointed any one expectant of a highly sensational disclosure, but which stood out in her memory as the one indiscretion of an otherwise blameless life. That she imparted it to Ida was the most striking evidence she could have given of the absolute community of interests which she recognized as existing between them. She was greatly comforted when Ida, instead of appearing shocked, declared that she sympathized with the culprit more than she blamed her, and that her misconduct was venial.

“I suppose,” said Miss Ludington, “every one, in looking back upon their past selves, sees some whom they condemn, and, perhaps, despise, and others whom they admire and sympathize with. And I confess I sympathize with this poor girl. Those I don’t like are some whom I remember to have lacked softness of heart, to have been sour and ungenerous; these, for instance,” indicating certain pictures. “But it is hardly fair,” she added, laughing, “for us two to get together and abuse the rest of the family, who, no doubt, if they were present, would have something to say for themselves, and some criticisms to offer on us--that is, on me. None of them would criticize you. You were the darling and pride of us all.”

“If I do say it,” Miss Ludington presently resumed, “we have been a very respectable lot on the whole. The Ida Ludingtons have been good babies, good children, good girls, good women, and, I hope, will prove to have been respectable old women. In the spirit land, when we all meet together, there will be no black sheep among us, nor even anybody that we shall need to send to Coventry: But I do not see why special affinities should not assert themselves there as here, and cliques form among us. You will belong to them all, of course, but next to you I know that I shall be fondest of that poor girl I told you about, of her and of the Ida Ludington who built this new Hilton thirty years ago.”

“And now,” she said, as they finished looking over the pictures and talking about them, “I have introduced you to all who have borne our name from your day to mine. As to those who came before you, the baby Ida and the child Ida, you remember them even better than I do, no doubt. I would give anything if I had their pictures, but the blessed art of photography was not then invented. These keepsakes are all I have of them.” And taking Ida over to another part of the room, she showed her a cradle, several battered dolls, fragments of a child’s pewter tea-set, and a miscellaneous collection of toys.