Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1880 — GRANDMAMMA’S WILL. [ARTICLE]

GRANDMAMMA’S WILL.

Ir I said that Grandmamma Gresham was a rain old woman, I suppose it would not be very reverential. But still, she certainly did take an immense interest in her personal appearance—and that with some reason. A tall and commanding figure and portly presence, her black eyes glittering in her pale face with nearly the glow of their youth, and not a silver thread yet {Minting any contrast with the blackness of her hair, there was something startling about her, as if she were the apparition of a dead youth. She was never visible till a late hour in the day, and any one who had the temerity to break the rule and enter her apartments would be verv apt to find her sitting before the old swinging mirror, “in which her grandmother had dressed to be married,” as she used to say, and occupied, with the help of old Rose, in twisting in a tress of false hair here, a curl there, in darkening an eyebrow, or making a cheek more blooming with her little hare's-foot—a curious weird face reflected on her from that glass meanwhile before which she so constantly practiced these rites, a handsome face when all the work was done. What she wished to do it for was not so easy to be seen, at least by us young people; for why should she care, we thought, who considered her loTely or unlovely? It waCs not easy for us, in the flush and glory .of our youth, to realize that she could not bear to acknowledge even to herself the departure of her own. and was but keeping up the sad fiction as she might. There was a full-length Sortrait in ita old frame in the great ark hall, the likeness of a graceful, stately girl in her peach-blos6om silk, and hood and scarf of black lace, with the great loose ringlets of shadow over her round shoulder, and blowing back from her dazzling brow, with the glow of expectation in the dark and shining eyes and in the joyous smile. Sometimes Grandmamma Gresham paused as she passed, and rested npon her cane, and looked at this lovely picture that brightened all the gloomy place; and we none of us ever dreamed that she was thinking what a travesty and caricature of it she was now, with her patches and powders and paints, and in the velvets and India Cashmeres that every night when she took them off were laid away, lest she might not rise to wear them again, in the big chest, for Amelia Gresham. But none of us had any of Grandmamma Gresham's beauty. The fact was, she was* not our grandmother. We were the descendants of her first husband by his previous marriage, and she had married twice since, and if life were long enough, might have had as many husbands as Gudrun the Beautiful, for all we knew. She had married our grandfather when she was very young, and on his early death bad married soon again, and had let his children drift none knew whither, he having left them each only a souvenir and a recommendation to the young stepmother, to whom in his infatuation and passion he had bequeathed every thing else. She had sailed on in her career of sunshine and shadow, losing husbands and children, but, with her handsome bank account, never knowing trouble that might have touched her more nearly; and now, in her old age, she had been forced by public opinion to take into his house the grandchildren of her first husband, left orphans and nearly penniless. She treated us with a gracious hauteur. “Manners like ice-cream,” Anne used to say; “such cold sweetness.” But although so distantly kind to us, all horlove was for Amelia Gresham, her last husband's daughter, a pretty minx, who, in return, cared at all for her, and would not live with her in the dingy rat-trap, as she called the dear old mansion-house, but made her home with relatives in a gay city, where grandmamma punctually paid her board, and only returned for afresh outfit of the favors and fineries with which grandmamma loaded her. f lt was understood, long before we came to the bouse to live, that grandmamma had made her will, and given all she had to Amelia Gresham, and we never thought of making any effort to have that disposition of things altered; for although it seemed a great outrage, if one reflected on it, the property having originally been our grandfather's; nevertheless it was her own now. and she had a right to do as she chose with her own. Moreover, I can't say, after all we had heard about her, but that we were w little pleased to see that she had a heart, and could really love somebody. We came to the house only while we were preparing ourselves to make our own way in life; for we each had some little aptitude, I with music, and Georgia with painting, and Anne—well. Anne was our beauty, and was to be married to Francis Evans at some time or other: that was her aptitude, apparently. Somehow both Georgia and I felt that we were as much concerned in the marriage as Aune, and it used to please Anne, although she laughed about it. “ Grandmamma has had three husbands all to herself,” she would say; “it’s a pity if we '*annol have one among us.” Eat while we were in her house we determined to do oar whole duty to grandmamma, forgetting the years of neglect and oblivion, and returning to her what we might for the remembrance of us at last. We considered her comfort in everything and before everything, from the moment that she put t» htwwkwping key* is par' hands.

We never intruded on her in the solemn hours whea the eat before her glees, if we oould avoid it, except onoe, that I remember; we always spoke kindly of Amelia Gresham, and treated her like a prince** on her rare and brief vieite; and we did really listen with Interest to grandmamma's twilight recitals of her past festivities and triumph*, as she set with the gknr of the ooad Are reflected from the crimson curtains in life-like warmth on her pale face, for it was all like some romance to us who had seen eo little of either factivity or triumph in oar poverty-stricken lives. The only time that we varied oar manners toward Amelia Gresham was when she once tossed her head and gave grandmamma some shockingly rode speech on one of these occasions, and started to ran from the room with her fingers at her ears, when Anne, whose position as the married one—or at least, you know, we felt as if she were as good as the married (me—gave her more authority than the rest of us, laid her band timidly upon Amelia’s arm, and said, in a halfwhisper, "It isn't possible you are so cruel ss to wound the old heart that loves you so!” And Amelia, who had perhaps never been reproved in all her life before, turned on Anne with agase of astonishment, and then broke out laughing. “ Oh, you little nonnetter* ahel&ughed. “If you are going to be so caroral of people’s feelings, you had better begin by considering mine, bored to death with the thousand-and-first hearing of this sort of stuff.” "Bored to death,” said Georgie, “ when it's like a story!” Grandmamma was looking at Amelia. I saw a tear suddenly start in her hard, glittering eve. “ Ah, don't mind her,” I whispered, stealing my hand over and taking hers, for I sat on a low seat near her; “she'sonly jesting.” And grandmamma looked in the nre then, without making any reply, but took my hand between her own; she showed her age in her hands, and always wore finemeshed mitts to hide their shriveled backs, just as she bound her throat up high with lsce. But Amelia saw the little action, which, I am sure meant nothing, and burst out in one of her rages, which grandmamma, for all her majesty, had trembled under before; because it is always the one that loves that is at a disadvantage; the other is in the saddle. “Oh year’ she cried. “Honeying round her with your pusaying ways! Let me tell you, she likes honesty. And you won’tget a dollar of Mrs. Gresham’s money, for all—” “Let me tell youP' blazed out our gentle Anne at that, “that we don't want a dollar of Mrs. Gresham’s money. W e are making ourselves ready to earn our own. 0 Ana we think more of many other things than we do of money. And whoever gets it, anyway, we shall not forget that it was our grandfather’s money, not theirs.” “That is so,” said Grandmamma Gresham, as if the thought had never occurred to her before. But she rose slowly, and grasped her cane, and went away to her own rooms, and we did not see her for three days, Rose waiting on her till she was ready to re-appear again.

“ Isn’t it too bad, Francis,” asked Anne that night, “ that anybody should have our own grandfather’s house but ourselves?” But she checked herself as Amelia came back with a rose in her hair, and even frowned down Georgie's innocent remark about its being such a dear old place. And that it was: an elm-shaded, E -gabled, century-old house, set in ns, with a patch of blue lake just r it, and the slope of a green hill just behind it—a hill on whose summit the cannon had been fired on every Fourth of July, and on every Twentysecond of February, and on every anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, since time began for those days. It gave a oertain liveliness to the still region, the dragging up of great guns, with the following of little boys, and all the stirring scene of the loading and scattering and touching off, to which latter sometimes every pane of glass in the house shook. “It is very greeable,” said Amelia once, happening to be there at the time; “ and when I burly own the house, I shall make such a rout about it that the town will choose another spot for its cannonading!” But for my part lam glad to say now that I never disliked to hear it, and have sat listening for the reports, at times, when they would roll and roll away and awav into the woods in the far horizon till the echoes became a' sort of music. . . It was not ,a great while after the night when Amelia came back with the rose in her hair that I began to notice, a strange trouble in our sweet Anne’s face. Her great gray eyes would dilate and grow fixed in reverie, and at one time such a deep color would burn in on her face, and at another she would be so deathly white! apd at last when 1 saw Francis walking in the garden with Amelia, and her glance pursuing them, I knew what it meant. I might have known before if I had had the sense to understand the angry expostulation of Grandmamma Gresham with Amelia that once I overheard; but it never occurred to me that any one could be so shameful as Amelia was. But I knew how to sympathize with Anne better than once I might have done, to be tender with her, and to let her alone; fori had begun to think that, after all, giving music lessons would not be the work of my life, since Dr. Dinsmore had begun to visit us. How innocerft we were, we girls! We surely thought that grandmamma bad sent for him about her health.

“It is a pity,” said Grandmamma Gresham to him one day, “ that such nice girls should be destitute. But then there is one thing—such nice girls do not need money. I had none.” Bat it was the very next morning that Dr. Dinsmore asked me to be his wife. And I was so glad, and so proud, and so .surprised, and so sorry, too, for Anne, that I had to go to some one, and I did burst in on Grandmamma Gresham at her toilette, and Lid my face on her poor old breast, and cried there. She laughed at me, although she lifted my face aud smoothed my hair; that is, she laughed in own way—she was very careful about laughing, on account of her teeth. “Well, my dear,” said she, “ you are going to have a good husband, and that is enough for anybody. I shall give you your wedding gown, but that is all I ehall give you. Amelia seemed to find it a great deal pleasanter with Grad mamma Gresham than she ever had before, and now it was her flying visits that were made the other way, and she came back and staid longer at the mansion-house every time. “ Mrs. Gresham is getting so old 'and infirm,” she would say, by way of explanation, to those out of the family who made remarks; and at first grandmamma would stare at such an unwonted exhibition of good feeling, and then she would tremble and get very angry at the imputation. It was when Amelia was away on one of her short stays that grandmamma sent for some gentlemen to come and see her, and she was closeted in her sitting room with them nearly all day; but we were none the wiser, and we did not say anything about it to Amelia, when she came in with Francis, who had met her at the station. She gave ns no time, in fact, for as soon as she had thrown off her cloak and fan, she plunged into the German lesson that Francis was giving her, while Anne sat by with a trembling lip. That girl had even taken to reading Blaukstone with him, he having assured her she would find it fine; he was studying law himself, and had been any time this five years. What a dreary wlmfcr season that

was! I remember how gray sad* dark It seemed, si though I was so full of happiness myself. Bat I oould not got Anne from under her cload into my sunshine. She began to go oat skxte, though, to the morning serrioe of a neighboring church, and came home always afterward with her white faoe full of peace. “Don’t mind me, dear,” she said; “lam going to be happy as ever by-and-by. We do not know what is beet for ns. What if I had found out he was not worthy when it was certainly too latef” Tet she did not break with Francis into many words, although lover-like behavk#had ceased. I think she felt she dared not give him up altogether for his own soul’s sake, and that if he came book to her, worthy or not, she would do him faithful serrioe yet; and so she waited. It was at about this time that one day we found Grandmamma Gresham sitting dead before her glass. It was a great shook to us. But I don’t think it eras any greater shook than it was to see Amelia auiokly and quietly go to grandmamma's drawers, and take out the jewels and laces there, carry them away to her own room, and oome down to dinner that night with the diamonds in her ears. We were not quite prepared for her taking the head of the table; but she did, and of course Anne said nothing. On the day after the funeral, having assembled os all in grandmamma’s sit-ting-room, she produced the will, and requested Dr. Dinsmore to read it. It gave everything to her. “lam very sure there is a later will than that, miss,” said Rose, firmly. ■ Amelia dismissed her on the spot, ss Rose might have known she would; but Rose repeated firmly what she said, and then Dr. Dinsmore calmly told Amelia that she oould not afford to let such a statement pass as that. But of course we could not have overhauled Amelia’s trunks if we had wanted to do so, that is, without more publicity and scandal than we oared to have, although, to tell the truth, on a hint from Rose, we had already privately looked in every nook and corner that we oould command, and had taken down and opened every book in the library, but to no purpose. There had been something m Grandmamma Gresham’s manner toward Anne, especially of late, that made Georgie and me think she oould not be meaning to leave her altogether unbefriended; the more, too. because she seemed to feel bitter and ashamed Concerning Amelia’s oonduct. I will confess that I was more malicious than avaricious about it, however. I knew that Francis Evans was only thinking of Amelia’s inheritance; that in his heart it was Anne for whom he cared, and he was selling his soul’s birthright for a mess of pottage, and I should have liked to balk and baffle him.

“A family physician,” said Amelia, with a great dignity that did not become her sort of nose, “is allowed some license, but perhaps so muoh will not be thken again when it is known that I now have a protector—” “A protector!” said Georgie, without thinking. “ Yes,” she answered. “And I wiH tell you now, because we are going, away for a week, that I don’t suppose it will be particularly pleasant for yon to be here on our return, as Francis and I were married this morning.” There was a dead silence for a moment in the gloomy room that dark winter morning, and then the report a cannon rolled through the air, followed by another, and I remembered, as I ran to the window, hardly knowing what I, did, but doing anything in my embarrassment, that it was the Twentysecond of February. “ Washington’s Birthday,” said GeorF'e, feeling just as I did. “ Dear me ! should think the Father of his Country might have had powder enough in his lifetime—” But she stopped, for Dr. Dinsmore was speaking, aud I never shall forget how proud I felt as I turned and looked in his honest eyes. “ We cannot congratulate Amelia,” he said, “on your choice of a husband who has been willing to play so infamous a part —” All at once the dark room was illumined by a mighty flash, and a report clapped through it and out again, and seemed to shake the very rafters of the roof and the Stones of the foundation. The great gun on the hillside bad burst, and at the same moment Grandmamma Gresham’s swinging glass, in which her own grandmother had dressed to be married, as she so many times had told us, answered to the fearful vibration, rent in cracks, like the rays of a great sun, from side to side and from top to bottom, in coudtless splinters, ana the shivered, shattered bits tumbled out upon the floor, aud with them a large folded sheet of paper. •

“ * Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror cracked from side to side; “The curec is come upon me,” cried The Lady of Hhallott,’" I exclaimed, in a sort of hysterical exoitement, as I saw that paper and sprang for it. / Amelia's quick eyes had seen it, too, though, and she also darted in its direction. Rose was before her. “It is madam's last will,” she said. “It is {‘ust her way. She was always hiding ler things. I knew it. She tuckedn between the back-board and the glass, you see. I knew it, for I witnessed it, though she bound me to silence.” And she gave the paper to Dr. Dinsmore. It was very brief. But when it was read it was found that out of the greatly-diminished estate Amelia had an annuity of four hundred dollars a yoar; and the mansion-house, with all it contained, and with everything else, belonged to Anne and Geofgie. “Under the circumstances, sir,” said Dr. Dinsmore, as he folded the paper again, “you will scarcely wish to remain any longer under the roof you have outraged.” And obliged to obey that commanding glance, Francis Evans and his wife, like two whipped hounds, passed through the door he held open. “Heaven bless George Washington and the man that invented gunpowder!” I cried. And Rose ran to pack the great chest and the trunks, by Anne’s direction, and send them after Mrs. Evans, who had walked off with the two diamonds in her ears.— Harper's Bazar.

Theodore Snediker, of No. 606 Broadway, has been arrested at the instance of his wife, who lives at No. 867 Grand street, on a charge of abandonment. Snediker tells a curious story. He has been in the habit, he says, of calling at his wife’s house every Saturday night in order to give her money. She would refuse to accept it, but he would force it into her hand or leave it on the table. At length she would not admit him, and he then placed the money under the door. The next week the crack under the door was filled with rags, and he broke a window and threw the money in. He says that his wife was of a very jealqps disposition, and that she would follow ana watch him when on his way to work. The most singular feature of the whole matter, however, is that Snediker has brought a suit for divorce from his wife on the ground of cruel and inhuman treatment. He is a large man and she is of a diminutive size. -N. T. Tribune. . Whatever variety of potatoes an planted, select the best tubers for seed. Plant large, well-formed, smooth potatoes, as it is evidence of a large, wellformed variety, evidence of soundness and health, evidence of perfection; and in order to produce the best of anything the surest way is to sfeftfet the West to grow from.