Trumps | Page 3

arrive safely
where Grandpa Burt was determined she should arrive ultimately, at the
head of her husband's dinner-table, Mrs. Simcoe, ma'am.
Mrs. Simcoe was Mr. Burt's housekeeper. So far as any body could say,
Mrs. Burt died at a period of which the memory of man runneth not to
the contrary. There were traditions of other housekeepers. But since the
death of Hope's mother Mrs. Simcoe was the only incumbent. She had
been Mrs. Wayne's nurse in her last moments, and had rocked the little
Hope to sleep the night after her mother's burial. She was always tidy,
erect, imperturbable. She pervaded the house; and her eye was upon a
table-cloth, a pane of glass, or a carpet, almost as soon as the spot
which arrested it. Housekeeper nascitur non fit. She was so silent and
shadowy that the whole house sympathized with her, until it became
extremely uncomfortable to the servants, who constantly went away;
and a story that the house was haunted became immensely popular and
credible the moment it was told.
There had been no visiting at Pinewood for a long time, because of the
want of a mistress and of the unsocial habits of Mr. Burt. But the
neighboring ladies were just beginning to call upon Miss Wayne. When
she returned the visits Mrs. Simcoe accompanied her in the carriage,
and sat there while Miss Wayne performed the parlor ceremony. Then
they drove home. Mr. Burt dined at two, and Miss Hope sat opposite

her grandfather at table; Hiram waited. Mrs. Simcoe dined alone in her
room.
There, too, she sat alone in the long summer afternoons, when the work
of the house was over for the day. She held a book by the open window,
or gazed for a very long time out upon the landscape. There were
pine-trees near her window; but beyond she could see green meadows,
and blue hills, and a glittering river, and rounded reaches of woods. She
watched the clouds, or, at least, looked at the sky. She heard the birds
in spring days, and the dry hot locusts on sultry afternoons; and she
looked with the same unchanging eyes upon the opening buds and
blooming flowers, as upon the worms that swung themselves on
filaments and ate the leaves and ruined the trees, or the autumnal hectic
which Death painted upon the leaves that escaped the worms.
Sometimes on these still, warm afternoons her lips parted, as if she
were singing. But it was a very grave, quiet performance. There was
none of the gush and warmth of song, although the words she uttered
were always those of the hymns of Charles Wesley--those passionate,
religious songs of the New Jerusalem. For Mrs. Simcoe was a
Methodist, and with Methodist hymns she had sung Hope to sleep in
the days when she was a baby; so that the young woman often listened
to the music in church with a heart full of vague feelings, and dim,
inexplicable memories, not knowing that she was hearing, though with
different words, the strains that her nurse had whispered over her crib
in the hymns of Wesley.
It is to be presumed that at some period Mrs. Simcoe, whom Mr. Burt
always addressed in the same manner as "Mrs. Simcoe, ma'am," had
received a general system of instruction to the effect that "My
grand-daughter, Miss Wayne--Mrs. Simcoe, ma'am--will marry a
gentleman of wealth and position; and I expect her to be fitted to
preside over his household. Yes, Mrs. Simcoe, ma'am."
What on earth is a girl sent into this world for but to make a proper
match, and not disgrace her husband--to keep his house, either directly
or by a deputy--to take care of his children, to see that his slippers are
warm and his Madeira cold, and his beef not burned to a cinder, Mrs.

Simcoe, ma'am? Christopher Burt believed that a man's wife was a
more sacred piece of private property than his sheep-pasture, and when
he delivered the deed of any such property he meant that it should be in
perfect order.
"Hope may marry a foreign minister, Mrs. Simcoe, ma'am. Who knows?
She may marry a large merchant in town or a large planter at the South,
who will be obliged to entertain a great deal, and from all parts of the
world. I intend that she shall be fit for the situation, that she shall
preside at her husband's table in a superior manner."
So Hope, as a child, had played with little girls, who were invited to
Pinewood--select little girls, who came in the prettiest frocks and
behaved in the prettiest way, superintended by nurses and ladies' maids.
They tended their dolls peaceably in the nursery; they played clean
little games upon the lawn. Not too noisy, Ellen! Mary,