By way of contributing what grace she could, Phoebe gathered some roses
and a few other flowers, possessing either scent or beauty, and
arranged them in a glass pitcher, which, having long ago lost its
handle, was so much the fitter for a flower-vase. The early
sunshine--as fresh as that which peeped into Eve's bower while she and
Adam sat at breakfast there--came twinkling through the branches of the
pear-tree, and fell quite across the table. All was now ready. There
were chairs and plates for three. A chair and plate for Hepzibah,--the
same for Phoebe,--but what other guest did her cousin look for?
Throughout this preparation there had been a constant tremor in
Hepzibah's frame; an agitation so powerful that Phoebe could see the
quivering of her gaunt shadow, as thrown by the firelight on the
kitchen wall, or by the sunshine on the parlor floor. Its
manifestations were so various, and agreed so little with one another,
that the girl knew not what to make of it. Sometimes it seemed an
ecstasy of delight and happiness. At such moments, Hepzibah would
fling out her arms, and infold Phoebe in them, and kiss her cheek as
tenderly as ever her mother had; she appeared to do so by an inevitable
impulse, and as if her bosom were oppressed with tenderness, of which
she must needs pour out a little, in order to gain breathing-room. The
next moment, without any visible cause for the change, her unwonted joy
shrank back, appalled, as it were, and clothed itself in mourning; or
it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in the dungeon of her heart, where
it had long lain chained, while a cold, spectral sorrow took the place
of the imprisoned joy, that was afraid to be enfranchised,--a sorrow as
black as that was bright. She often broke into a little, nervous,
hysteric laugh, more touching than any tears could be; and forthwith,
as if to try which was the most touching, a gush of tears would follow;
or perhaps the laughter and tears came both at once, and surrounded our
poor Hepzibah, in a moral sense, with a kind of pale, dim rainbow.
Towards Phoebe, as we have said, she was affectionate,--far tenderer
than ever before, in their brief acquaintance, except for that one kiss
on the preceding night,--yet with a continually recurring pettishness
and irritability. She would speak sharply to her; then, throwing aside
all the starched reserve of her ordinary manner, ask pardon, and the
next instant renew the just-forgiven injury.
At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she took Phoebe's
hand in her own trembling one.
"Bear with me, my dear child," she cried; "for truly my heart is full
to the brim! Bear with me; for I love you, Phoebe, though I speak so
roughly. Think nothing of it, dearest child! By and by, I shall be
kind, and only kind!"