Kitabı oku: «Fresh Leaves», sayfa 9
CHAPTER VI
“I stepped in to inquire after poor Mary, this morning,” said a neighbor of Lucy Ford. “Poor dear! she’s to be pitied!”
They who have suffered from the world’s malice, know that the most simple words may be made to convey an insult, by the tone in which they are uttered. Lucy Ford was naturally unsuspicious, but there was something in Miss Snip’s tone which grated harshly on her ear.
“I regret to say Mary is no better,” Lucy replied, with her usual gentle manner. “If I could persuade her to take more nourishment, I should be glad; but she sits rocking to and fro, seemingly unconscious of every thing.”
“I should like to see the poor dear,” said Miss Snip.
Lucy hesitated; then blushing, as if she felt ashamed of her doubts, she led the way to Mary’s room. Every thing about it bore marks of the taste of the occupant. There lay her silent guitar; there a half finished drawing; here a book with the pearl folder still between the leaves, where she and Percy had left it. The beautiful tea-rose he had given her, drooped its buds in the window, for want of care, and the canary’s cage was muffled, lest its song should quicken painful memories. And there sat Mary, as her mother had said, rocking herself to and fro, with her hands crossed listlessly on her lap, her blue-veined temples growing each day more startlingly transparent.
“Quite heart-rending, I declare,” said Miss Snip, “and as if the poor dear hadn’t enough to bear, just think of the malice of people. I said it was a shame and that of course nobody would believe it of Miss Mary, and I never spoke of it, except to lawyer Beadle’s wife, and one or two of our set; but a rumor is a rumor, and when it is once set rolling, it has got to go to the bottom of the hill; but nobody, I’m sure, that ever knew Miss Mary, would believe she would be seduced by Percy Lee!”
“Lord-a-mercy! you don’t suppose she heard me?” exclaimed Miss Snip, as Mary fell forward upon the floor.
“Cursed viper!” shouted Jacob Ford, emerging from the ante-room, and unceremoniously ejecting Miss Snip through the door. “Cursed viper!”
“That’s what I call pretty treatment, now,” muttered Miss Snip, as she stopped in the hall, to settle her false curls; “very pretty treatment – for a disinterested act of neighborly kindness. Philanthropy never is rewarded with any thing but cuffs in this world, but I shan’t allow it to discourage me. I know that I have my mission here below, whether I have the praise of men or not. All great reformers are abused – that’s one consolation. I’ll step over to Mrs. Bunce’s now, and see if it is true that her husband takes a drop too much. They do say so, but I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Lucy,” said Jacob – and the poor old man’s limbs shook beneath him – “this must be the last arrow in the quiver. Nothing can come after this. Let her be, Lucy,” – and he withdrew his wife’s hands, as she bathed Mary’s temples – “let her be: ’tain’t no use to rouse her up to her misery – to kill her by inches this way. I am ready to lie down side of her. Lucy – I couldn’t muster heart to tell you, till a worse blow came, that we are beggars. ’Tain’t no matter now.”
“God be merciful!” said Lucy, overwhelmed with this swift accumulation of trouble.
“Yes, you may well say that. Just enough left to keep us from starving. My heart has been with her, you see,” said Jacob, looking at Mary, “and my head hasn’t been clear about things, as it used to be, and so it has come to this. I wouldn’t mind it, if she only – ” and Jacob dropped his head hopelessly upon his breast. Then raising it again, and wiping his eyes, as he looked at Mary, he said: “She never will look more like an angel than she does now. I thought she’d live to close these old eyes, and that my grand-children would play about my knee, but you see how it has gone, Lucy.”
The red flag of the auctioneer, so often the signal of distress, floated before Jacob Ford’s door. Strange feet roved over the old house; strange eyes profaned the household gods. Careless fingers tested the quality of Mary’s harp and guitar; and voices which in sunnier days had echoed through those halls in blandest tones, now fell upon the ear, poisonous with cold malice. When once the pursuit is started, and the game scented, every hound joins in the cry; each fierce paw must have its clutch at the quivering heart, each greedy tongue lap up the ebbing life-blood. Never was beauty’s crown worn more winningly, more unobtrusively, less triumphantly, than by Mary Ford; but to those whom nature had less favored, it was the sin never to be forgiven; and so fair lips hoped the stories were not true about her, while they reiterated them at every street corner; and bosom friends, when inquired of as to their truth, rolled up their eyes, sighed like a pair of bellows, and with a deprecating wave of the hand, replied, in melancholy tones, “don’t ask me,” thus throwing the responsibility upon the listener to construe it into little or much; pantomimic looks and gestures not yet having been pronounced indictable by the statute book; others simply nodded their heads, in a mysterious manner, as if they had it at their charitable option to send the whole family to perdition, with a monosyllable.
CHAPTER VII
Jacob Ford’s new home was a little cottage, just on the outskirts of the city; for Lucy said, “maybe the flowers, and the little birds, and the green grass might tempt Mary out of doors, where the wind might fan her pale cheek.” It was beautiful to see Lucy stifling her own sorrow, while she moved about, performing uncomplainingly the household drudgery. Mary would sit at the window, twisting her curls idly over her fingers, or leaning out, as if watching for Percy. Sometimes she would sit on the low door-step, when the stars came out, with her head in Jacob’s lap, while his wrinkled fingers strayed soothingly over her temples. She seldom or never spoke; did mechanically what she was bid, except that she drew shuddering back, when they would have led her across the threshold. Once she wept when Jacob brought her a violet, which he found under the cottage window. Jacob said, “dear heart! why should a little blossom make the poor thing cry?” Lucy’s womanly heart better solved the riddle: it was Percy’s favorite flower.
Their rustic neighbors leaned over each other’s fences, and wondered “who on airth them Fords was,” and why “the old man didn’t take no interest in fixin’ his lot. The trees wanted grafting, the grass wanted mowing, the gooseberries were all over mildew, the strawberries, choked with weeds; and it did really ’pear to them as though the old fellow must be ’ither a consarned fool, or an idiot, to let things run out that way. And the poor sick girl, she looked like a water-lily – so white, so bowed down; why didn’t they put her into a shay, and drive her out, to bring a little color into her waxen cheeks?”
The thrifty housewives said, “it was clear to them that the old lady hadn’t her wits, narry more than the old man, for she left her clothes’-line out all night, when every body knew that dew and rain would rot it; but what could you expect from shiftless city folks?”
For all this the country people were kind-hearted. New neighbors did not grow on every bush. Topics were scarce in Milltown, and every new one was hunted down like a stray plum in a boarding-school pudding. Yes, you might have gone further, and found worse people than the Milltown-ites. The little sun-burnt children learned to loiter on their way to school, “to pick a nosegay for the pretty pale lady.” Widow Ellis, under the hill, picked her biggest strawberries, and put them in a tempting little basket, covered with green leaves, for her curly-pated Tommy to carry to “poor Miss Mary.” Miss Trodchom baked an extra loaf of ’lection-cake, “in hopes the Fords’ daughter might nibble a bit, poor thing.” And farmer Jolly dropped his whip on purpose, over Jacob’s fence, to get a chance to tell the old man “that he had a mare as was as easy as a cradle, and a prettyish side-saddle that the sick girl might have, and welcome, if she took a notion.” And Mr. Parish, the minister, came, but he could not make much of Jacob, who told him “that if it was religion to be willing to see one’s own flesh and blood suffer, he did not want it.”
Poor old Jacob! Every earthly reed had broken beneath him, his unsteady steps were tottering toward the grave, and yet he threw aside the only sure Staff. He did not know, poor old man, so gradually had his heart hardened by contact with the world, “that it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Through no rift in the dark cloud which shadowed him, could he see bright Mercy’s sunbeam. One by one the lights had gone out in his sky, and still he groped about, blind to the rays of Bethlehem’s star. Poor old Jacob!
It was Sabbath morning. Jacob stood at his cottage door, gazing out. Each tiny blade of grass bent quivering under its glistening dew-drop. The little ground-birds on the gravel walk were picking up their early breakfast; the robins were singing overhead. The little swallows flew twittering round the cottage eaves. The leaves were rustling with their mysterious music. The silver mist wreathed playfully over the hill-sides, whose summits lay bathed in sunshine. Every thing seemed full of joyous life. Where was the Master hand which regulated all that harmony? The birds sang – the leaves danced – the brooks sparkled – the bee hummed – why did He make man only to suffer? It was all a riddle to poor Jacob. He took his staff, and sauntered away under the drooping lindens. The Sabbath bell was calling the simple villagers to church. Across the meadows, down the grassy lane – the rosy maiden, the bent old man, and the lisping little child. Jacob looked after them as they went. Jacob never had been to church – not since he was a little child. Sunday he always posted his books, squared up his accounts, wrote business letters and the like of that; shortening the day at both ends by getting up later and going to bed earlier. Sunday to him was no different from any other day in the week – except that he transferred his business from his counting-room to his parlor; and yet – here he was, leaning on his staff, before the village church, almost wishing to go in with its humble people. He looked about as if he expected somebody to be astonished that Jacob Ford should be standing so near a church door; but nobody seemed to notice it, or look at all surprised. By-and-by he crept on a little further, and seated himself on a stone bench in the porch, with his chin upon his staff. The butterfly and the bee passed in and out; even the little birds flew in at the church door, and out at the open window; and still old Jacob sat there – he could scarcely have told why. Now he hears the choir sing,
“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave, and follow Thee;
Naked – poor – despised – forsaken —
Thou from hence my all shalt be.
“Though the world despise and leave me,
They have left my Saviour too;
Human hearts and hopes deceive me,
Thou art not like them, untrue.”
As the song died away, old Jacob’s tears flowed down his cheeks; the words soothed his troubled spirit like a mother’s lullaby.
“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Who promised that?
How did the minister know how “heavy laden” was Jacob’s spirit?
How did he know that for sixty years he had been drawing water from broken cisterns? Chasing shadows even to the grave’s brink?
How did he know that on that balmy Sabbath morning, his heart was aching for something to lean on that would not pass away?
“Come unto me.”
Old Jacob took his staff, and tottered out into the little church-yard He did not know he was praying, when his soul cried out, “Lord help me;” but still his lips kept murmuring it, as he passed down the grassy road, and under the drooping lindens, for each time he said it, his heart seemed to grow lighter; each time it seemed easier for old Jacob to “come.” And so he entered his low doorway, and as he stooped to kiss his daughter’s cheek, the bitterness seemed to have gone from out his heart, and he felt that he could forgive even Percy, for His sake of whom he had just so recently craved forgiveness.
“What is it?” asked Lucy, awed by the strange expression of Jacob’s face, and laying her hand tenderly upon his arm; “what is it, Jacob?”
“Peace!” whispered the old man, reverently; “God’s peace – here Lucy;” and he laid his hand on his heart.
Lucy took old Jacob’s staff and set it in the corner. Good, kind Lucy! She did not think when she did so, that he would need it no more. She did not know when the sun went down that night, that death’s dark shadow fell across her cottage threshold. She did not know, poor Lucy, when she slumbered away the night hours so peacefully by his side, that, leaning on a surer Staff, old Jacob had passed triumphantly through the dark valley; and when at length the little twittering sparrows woke her with their morning song, and she looked into the old man’s cold, still face, the pale lips, though they moved not, seemed to whisper, “Peace, Lucy – God’s peace.”
CHAPTER VIII
“Is it possible you care for that girl yet, Tom? A rejected lover, too? Where’s your spirit, man? Pshaw – there’s many a fairer face than Mary Ford’s; besides, she is more than half crazy. Are you mad, Tom? You wouldn’t catch me sighing for a girl who had cried her eyes out for the villainy of my rival.”
“Curse him!” said Tom Shaw, striking his boots with a light cane he held in his hand; “he is safe enough, at any rate, for some time to come; good for a couple more years, I hope, for striking that fellow in prison. When he comes out, if he ever does, he will find his little bird in my nest. Half-witted or whole-witted, it matters little to me. I am rich enough to please my fancy, and the girl’s face haunts me.”
“Pooh!” said Jack; “you are just like a spoiled child – one toy after another, the last one always the best. I know you – you’ll throw this aside in a twelvemonth; but marriage, let me tell you, my fine fellow, is a serious joke.”
“Not to me,” said Tom, “for the very good reason that I consider it dissolved when the parties weary – or at any rate, I shall act on that supposition, which amounts to the same thing, you know.”
“Not in law,” said Jack.
“Nonsense,” replied Tom; “I am no fool; trust me for steering my bark clear of breakers. At any rate, I’ll marry that girl, if perdition comes after it – were it only to spite Percy. How he will gnash his teeth when he hears of it, hey? The old man is dead, and the old woman is left almost penniless. I’ll easily coax her into it. In fact, I mean to drive out there this very afternoon. Mary Ford shall be Mrs. Tom Shaw, d’ye hear?”
“Good day, Pike! Haven’t got a pitchfork you can lend a neighbor, have ye? Ours is broke clean in two; I’m dreadful hard put to it for horseflesh, or I would drive to the village and buy a new one. You see that pesky boy of mine has lamed our mare; it does seem to me, Pike, that boys allers will be boys – the more I scold at him, the more it don’t do no good.”
“And the more it won’t,” said the good-natured farmer Rice. “Scolding never does any good no how – the boy is good enough by natur’ – good as you was, I dare say, when you was his age. I wouldn’t give a cent for a boy that hain’t no friskiness about him, no sperrit like; but you see you don’t know how to manage him. You are allers scolding, just as you say. It’s ‘John, go weed those parsnips; ten to one, you careless dog, you’ll pull up the parsnips instead of the weeds;’ – or, ‘John, go carry that corn to mill; ten to one, you’ll lose it out of the wagon going.’ I tell you, Pike, it is enough to discourage any lad, such a constant growling and pecking; now I want my boys to love me when they grow up. I don’t want them glad to see the old man’s back turned. I don’t want them happier any where than at their own home. That’s the way drunkards and profligates are made – that’s the way the village tavern thrives. I tell you, Pike, if you lace up natur too tight, she’ll bust out somewhere. Better draw it mild.”
“O, don’t talk to me, neighbor,” said Rice, impatiently. “Them’s modern notions; thrash children, I say. When I was a lad, if I did my duty, it was well; if I didn’t, I knew what to expect. It is well enough for your children to love you; of course they oughter, when you’ve brought them into the world; but I say they’ve got to mind, any how; ‘obey your parents;’ that’s it; plain as preaching.”
“Yes,” said farmer Rice, “I believe in that; but there’s another verse in the same book, that runs this way – ‘Parents provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.’”
“Well – well,” said Mr. Pike, uneasily, “I hate argufying, as I do bad cider. Your neighbor, Mr. Ford, dropped off sudden like, didn’t he? What’s the matter of him?”
“Some say one thing – some another; but I think, neighbor, it was just here. That ere old man has been in harness these sixty years – it was a sort of second natur to him to be active. Well, he was taken right out of the whirl and hubbub of the city, where people can’t hardly stop long enough to bury one another, and sot right down in this quiet place, where there’s nothing a-going but frogs and crickets, with nothing to do but to brood over his troubles. Well, you see such a somerset at his time o’ life wan’t the thing; of course it upsot him. He’d lean over this fence, and lean over that, and put on his hat, and take it off, and walk a bit, and sit down a bit, and act just like an old rat in a trap, trying to gnaw his way out. It was just as if you should pull up that old oak-tree, that has grown in that spot till its roots strike out half a mile round, and set it out in some foreign sile; it wouldn’t thrive – of course not.”
“No,” said Mr. Pike, “I see, I see – it would be just so with me, if I was set down where he came from – that etarnal rumbling and whiz buzz would drive me clean distracted. The last time I staid in the city over night, I thought every minute the last day had come, there was such a tearin’ round. But what’s become of the old woman and her sick darter?”
“She took it hard – she did – but the girl is sort of image-like – don’t feel nothing, I reckon. Pretty, too – it’s a nation pity. They’ve got enough left to keep them alive, milk and fresh air, like the rest on us. I don’t want no better fare. There’s some talk, so my old woman says, about a fellow who drives out here, who is going to marry the girl; – nothing but woman’s gabble, I guess; you know if they didn’t talk they wouldn’t say nothing.”
“Fact,” said Mr. Pike, profoundly, “I often think on’t; but come, I can’t stay prating here all day – where’s the pitchfork you was going to lend me?”
“There it is,” said Mr. Rice; “and now remember what I told you about that boy of yourn; there’s more good in that Zekiel, than you think for; – remember now, a little oil makes machinery work easy, Pike.”
“Yes, oil of birch,” said farmer Pike, chuckling at his own wit, and cracking his horse-whip at a happy little vagrant robin, as he went through the gate and down the road.
CHAPTER IX
Summer had danced by – the chill wind whistled through the trees – the nuts were dropping in showers, and the leaves rusted beneath the traveler’s foot; the golden-rod and barberry clusters alone remained to deck the hedges, and the striped snake crawled out on the rock to sun himself only at midday. Widow Ford’s cottage looked lonely and desolate, stripped of its leafy screen; but the squirrels might be seen leaping from tree to tree as merrily as if old Jacob still sat watching them in the door-way. Lucy moved about, sweeping, dusting, replenishing the fire – but the silver hair glistened on her temples, and her step was slow and weary. Now and then she would lean against the mantel, and look at Mary – and then wander restlessly into the little bedroom – then, back again to the mantel.
“You still think it best to consummate this marriage?” said the clergyman to Lucy, in a low voice.
“Only that I would not leave her alone,” said Lucy, tremulously. “I shall soon be in the church-yard by the side of Jacob. Mr. Shaw knows all – he loves her, and wishes to make her his wife. I believe he will be kind to her. As for Mary, poor thing, you see how it is,” and she glanced at her daughter, who sat with locked fingers – her long lashes sweeping her colorless cheek. One might have taken her for some beautiful statue, with those faultless marble features, and that motionless attitude.
Mr. Parish sighed, as he looked at Mary; but he had little time to discuss matters, if that were his intention, for the sound of approaching carriage-wheels announced Mr. Shaw.
“At twelve, then, to-morrow,” said he, as he took up his hat, “if you are of the same mind, I will perform the ceremony as you desire.”
Mr. Parish walked home in a very thoughtful mood. Through his acquaintances in the city, he had learned the history of the family. He knew the length and breadth of the shadow which had fallen across their hearth-stone. He saw that it was true, as Lucy had said, that her own strength was fast failing; still it seemed to him sacrilege to bestow Mary’s hand in marriage, when her heart was so benumbed and dead. He would have offered her a shelter in his own house, had he been master of it; but, unfortunately, he had married a lady who lost no opportunity to remind him that her dowry of twenty thousand dollars was payment in full for the total abnegation of his free will. This was not the first occasion on which the clanking of this gentleman’s golden fetters had sounded unmusically in his reverend ears; in truth, he would much have preferred his liberty, even at the expense of eking out a small salary by farming, as did the neighboring country clergy. Mrs. Parish lost no opportunity to remind her husband that he was sold, by such pleasant remarks as the following: That it was time her house was re-painted, or her barn re-roofed, or her carry-all re-cushioned. When she felt unusually hymeneal, she would say, “Mr. Parish, you can use my horses to-day, if you will drive carefully.” That she invariably and sweetly deferred to her husband’s opinion in company, was no proof of the absence of a private conjugal understanding, that he was to consider himself merely her echo.
Little did his brother clergymen who exchanged with him in their thread-bare suits of black, dream of the price at which his pleasant parsonage surroundings were purchased. Little did they dream, when they innocently brought along their wives and babies on such occasions, the suffering it entailed on “brother Parish.”
No, poor simple souls, they went home charmed with the hospitality of their host and hostess, charmed with their conjugal happiness, and marveling as they returned to their own houses, what made their rooms seem so much smaller, and their fare so much more frugal than before. Had they been clairvoyantly endowed, they might have seen brother Parish, after he had smilingly bowed them down the nicely rolled gravel walk to their wagons, return meekly to the parlor, to be reminded for the hundredth time, by Mrs. Parish, of that twenty thousand dollar obligation. Well might personal feelings come in, to strengthen his ministerial scruples, lest he should join carelessly in wedlock, hands which death only could unclasp.
“He oughter be ashamed of hisself marrying that poor crazed thing, even if the old lady is willing,” said farmer Jones’ wife, as Tom Shaw’s smiling face peered out of the carriage window, on his wedding day. “It hardens the heart awful to live in the city; riches can’t make that poor cretur happy; a pebble stun and a twenty dollar piece, are all one to her. Now my daughter Louizy is no beauty; she is clumsy and freckled, and brown as a butternut; but she is too fair in my eyes, to be sold that way. I wish I knew what crazed that Mary Ford. Ah – here comes parson Parish; maybe I’ll get it out of him.”
“Good day, sir – met the bridal carriage, I suppose, on the road – queer wedding that, of Miss Mary’s. Is it true, that Squire Ford’s house took fire, and Miss Mary lost her wits by the fright?”
“I never heard of it,” replied the parson – taking the Maltese cat in his lap, and manipulating her slate-colored back.
Mrs. Jones might have added, “Nor I either,” but nothing daunted, she tried another question.
“Scarlet fever p’rhaps, parson? that allers leaves suthing behind it, most commonly. My George would have been left blind, likely, if he hadn’t been left deaf. They say it was scarlet fever that done it.”
“Do they?” asked the parson.
“Confound it,” thought Mrs. Jones; “I’m sure the man knows, for he was very thick there at the cottage. I’ll see if my gooseberry wine won’t loosen his tongue a little;” and she handed the minister a glass.
“Sometimes I’ve wondered, parson, what made old Ford walk round so like an unquiet sperrit. He didn’t do nothing he hadn’t oughter, did he? It wasn’t that that crazed Miss Mary, I s’pose? That old man got up and sat down fifty times a minute.”
“So I have heard,” answered the impenetrable parson, sipping his wine.
“She wasn’t crossed in love nor nothing, was she?” asked the persevering querist; “that sometime plays witchwork with a woman.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” said the parson. “I hear Zekiel Jones is engaged to your Louisa.”
“My Louizy!” screamed Mrs. Jones, walking straight into the trap; “My Louizy engaged to Zekiel Jones! a fellow who don’t know a hoe-handle from a hay-cutter. I guess there’ll be a tornady in this house afore that marriage comes off. I do wish people would mind their own business, and not meddle with what don’t consarn ’em. Now who told you that, parson?”
“Well, I really don’t remember,” replied the minister; “but you know it matters little, so there’s no truth in it,” and dexterously escaping through the dust he had raised, he bowed himself down the garden walk; while Mrs. Jones stood with her arms a-kimbo, in the doorway, ejaculating: “Zekiel Jones and my Louizy – a fellow who goes to sleep in the middle of the day in haying time, and a gal who can churn forty pounds of butter a day! Gunpowder and milk! I guess so.”
