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CHAPTER LXIII
It was four o’clock of a hot August afternoon. The sun had crept round to the front piazza of the doctor’s cottage. No friendly trees warded off his burning rays, for the doctor “liked a prospect;” i. e. he liked to sit at the window and count the different trains which whizzed past in the course of the day; the number of wagons, and gigs, and carriages, that rolled lazily up the hill; to see the village engine, the “Cataract,” drawn out on the green for its weekly ablutions, and to count the bundles of shingles that it took to roof over Squire Ruggles’ new barn. No drooping vines, therefore, or creepers, intruded between him and this pleasant “prospect.” The doctor was an utilitarian; he could see “no use” in such things, save to rot timber and harbor vermin. So a wondrous glare of white paint, (carefully renewed every spring,) blinded the traveler whose misfortune it was to pass the road by the doctor’s house. As I said, it was now four o’clock. The twelve o’clock dinner was long since over. The Irish girl had rinsed out her dish-towels, hung them out the back door to dry, and gone down to the village store to buy some new ribbons advertised as selling at an “immense sacrifice” by the disinterested village shopkeeper.
Let us peep into the doctor’s sitting room; the air of this room is close and stifled, for the windows must be tightly closed, lest some audacious fly should make his mark on the old lady’s immaculate walls. A centre table stands in the middle of the floor, with a copy of “The Religious Pilot,” last year’s Almanac, A Directory, and “The remarkable Escape of Eliza Cook, who was partially scalped by the Indians.” On one side of the room hangs a piece of framed needle-work, by the virgin fingers of the old lady, representing an unhappy female, weeping over a very high and very perpendicular tombstone, which is hieroglyphiced over with untranslateable characters in red worsted, while a few herbs, not mentioned by botanists, are struggling for existence at its base. A friendly willow-tree, of a most extraordinary shade of blue green, droops in sympathy over the afflicted female, while a nondescript looking bird, resembling a dropsical bull-frog, suspends his song and one leg, in the foreground. It was principally to preserve this chef-d’œuvre of art, that the windows were hermetically sealed to the entrance of vagrant flies.
The old doctor, with his spectacles awry and his hands drooping listlessly at his side, snored from the depths of his arm-chair, while opposite him the old lady, peering out from behind a very stiffly-starched cap border, was “seaming,” “widening,” and “narrowing,” with a precision and perseverance most painful to witness. Outside, the bee hummed, the robin twittered, the shining leaves of the village trees danced and whispered to the shifting clouds; the free, glad breeze swept the tall meadow-grass, and the village children, as free and fetterless, danced and shouted at their sports; but there sat little Katy, with her hands crossed in her lap, as she had sat for many an hour, listening to the never-ceasing click of her grandmother’s needles, and the sonorous breathings of the doctor’s rubicund nose. Sometimes she moved uneasily in her chair, but the old lady’s uplifted finger would immediately remind her that “little girls must be seen and not heard.” It was a great thing for Katy when a mouse scratched on the wainscot, or her grandmother’s ball rolled out of her lap, giving her a chance to stretch her little cramped limbs. And now the village bell began to toll, with a low, booming, funereal sound, sending a cold shudder through the child’s nervous and excited frame. What if her mother should die way off in the city? What if she should always live in this terrible way at her grandmother’s? with nobody to love her, or kiss her, or pat her little head kindly, and say, “Katy, dear;” and again the bell boomed out its mournful sound, and little Katy, unable longer to bear the torturing thoughts it called up, sobbed aloud.
It was all in vain, that the frowning old lady held up her warning finger; the flood-gates were opened, and Katy could not have stopped her tears had her life depended on it.
Hark! a knock at the door! a strange footstep!
“Mother!” shrieked the child hysterically, “mother!” and flew into Ruth’s sheltering arms.
“What shall we do, doctor?” asked the old lady, the day after Ruth’s visit. “I trusted to her not being able to get the money to come out here, and her father, I knew, wouldn’t give it to her, and now here she has walked the whole distance, with Nettie in her arms, except a lift a wagoner or two gave her on the road; and I verily believe she would have done it, had it been twice the distance it is. I never shall be able to bring up that child according to my notions, while she is round. I’d forbid her the house, (she deserves it,) only that it won’t sound well if she tells of it. And to think of that ungrateful little thing’s flying into her mother’s arms as if she was in the last extremity, after all we have done for her. I don’t suppose Ruth would have left her with us, as it is, if she had the bread to put in her mouth. She might as well give her up, though, first as last, for she never will be able to support her.”
“She’s fit for nothing but a parlor ornament,” said the doctor, “never was. No more business talent in Ruth Ellet, than there is in that chany image of yours on the mantle-tree, Mis. Hall. That tells the whole story.”
CHAPTER LXIV
“I have good news for you,” said Mr. Lescom to Ruth, at her next weekly visit; “your very first articles are copied, I see, into many of my exchanges, even into the – , which seldom contains anything but politics. A good sign for you, Mrs. Hall; a good test of your popularity.”
Ruth’s eyes sparkled, and her whole face glowed.
“Ladies like to be praised,” said Mr. Lescom, good-humoredly, with a mischievous smile.
“Oh, it is not that – not that, sir,” said Ruth, with a sudden moistening of the eye, “it is because it will be bread for my children.”
Mr. Lescom checked his mirthful mood, and said, “Well, here is something good for me, too; a letter from Missouri, in which the writer says, that if “Floy” (a pretty nom-de-plume that of yours, Mrs. Hall) is to be a contributor for the coming year, I may put him down as a subscriber, as well as S. Jones, E. May, and J. Noyes, all of the same place. That’s good news for me, you see,” said Mr. Lescom, with one of his pleasant, beaming smiles.
“Yes,” replied Ruth, abstractedly. She was wondering if her articles were to be the means of swelling Mr. Lescom’s subscription list, whether she ought not to profit by it as well as himself, and whether she should not ask him to increase her pay. She pulled her gloves off and on, and finally mustered courage to clothe her thought in words.
“Now that’s just like a woman,” replied Mr. Lescom, turning it off with a joke; “give them the least foot-hold, and they will want the whole territory. Had I not shown you that letter, you would have been quite contented with your present pay. Ah! I see it won’t do to talk so unprofessionally to you; and you needn’t expect,” said he, smiling, “that I shall ever speak of letters containing new subscribers on your account. I could easily get you the offer of a handsome salary by publishing such things. No – no, I have been foolish enough to lose two or three valuable contributors in that way; I have learned better than that, ‘Floy’;” and taking out his purse, he paid Ruth the usual sum for her articles.
Ruth bowed courteously, and put the money in her purse; but she sighed as she went down the office stairs. Mr. Lescom’s view of the case was a business one, undoubtedly; and the same view that almost any other business man would have taken, viz.: to retain her at her present low rate of compensation, till he was necessitated to raise it by a higher bid from a rival quarter. And so she must plod wearily on till that time came, and poor Katy must still be an exile; for she had not enough to feed her, her landlady having raised the rent of her room two shillings, and Ruth being unable to find cheaper accommodations. It was hard, but what could be done? Ruth believed she had exhausted all the offices she knew of. Oh! there was one, “The Pilgrim;” she had not tried there. She would call at the office on her way home.
The editor of “The Pilgrim” talked largely. He had, now, plenty of contributors; he didn’t know about employing a new one. Had she ever written? and what had she written? Ruth showed him her article in the last number of “The Standard.”
“Oh – hum – hum!” said Mr. Tibbetts, changing his tone; “so you are ‘Floy,’ are you?” (casting his eyes on her.) “What pay do they give you over there?”
Ruth was a novice in business-matters, but she had strong common sense, and that common sense said, he has no right to ask you that question; don’t you tell him; so she replied with dignity, “My bargain, sir, with Mr. Lescom was a private one, I believe.”
“Hum,” said the foiled Mr. Tibbetts; adding in an under-tone to his partner, “sharp that!”
“Well, if I conclude to engage you,” said Mr. Tibbetts, “I should prefer you would write for me over a different signature than the one by which your pieces are indicated at The Standard office, or you can write exclusively for my paper.”
“With regard to your first proposal,” said Ruth, “if I have gained any reputation by my first efforts, it appears to me that I should be foolish to throw it away by the adoption of another signature; and with regard to the last, I have no objection to writing exclusively for you, if you will make it worth my while.”
“Sharp again,” whispered Tibbetts to his partner.
The two editors then withdrawing into a further corner of the office, a whispered consultation followed, during which Ruth heard the words, “Can’t afford it, Tom; hang it! we are head over ears in debt now to that paper man; good articles though – deuced good – must have her if we dispense with some of our other contributors. We had better begin low though, as to terms, for she’ll go up now like a rocket, and when she finds out her value we shall have to increase her pay, you know.”
(Thank you, gentlemen, thought Ruth, when the cards change hands, I’ll take care to return the compliment.)
In pursuance of Mr. Tibbetts’ shrewd resolution, he made known his “exclusive” terms to Ruth, which were no advance upon her present rate of pay at The Standard. This offer being declined, they made her another, in which, since she would not consent to do otherwise, they agreed she should write over her old signature, “Floy,” furnishing them with two articles a week.
Ruth accepted the terms, poor as they were, because she could at present do no better, and because every pebble serves to swell the current.
Months passed away, while Ruth hoped and toiled, “Floy’s” fame as a writer increasing much faster than her remuneration. There was rent-room to pay, little shoes and stockings to buy, oil, paper, pens, and ink to find; and now autumn had come, she could not write with stiffened fingers, and wood and coal were ruinously high, so that even with this new addition to her labor, Ruth seemed to retrograde pecuniarily, instead of advancing; and Katy still away! She must work harder – harder. Good, brave little Katy; she, too, was bearing and hoping on – mamma had promised, if she would stay there, patiently, she would certainly take her away just as soon as she had earned money enough; and mamma never broke her promise —never; and Katy prayed to God every night, with childish trust, to help her mother to earn money, that she might soon go home again.
And so, while Ruth scribbled away in her garret, the public were busying themselves in conjecturing who “Floy” might be. Letters poured in upon Mr. Lescom, with their inquiries, even bribing him with the offer to procure a certain number of subscribers, if he would divulge her real name; to all of which the old man, true to his promise to Ruth, to keep her secret inviolate, turned a deaf ear. All sorts of rumors became rife about “Floy,” some maintaining her to be a man, because she had the courage to call things by their right names, and the independence to express herself boldly on subjects which to the timid and clique-serving, were tabooed. Some said she was a disappointed old maid; some said she was a designing widow; some said she was a moon-struck girl; and all said she was a nondescript. Some tried to imitate her, and failing in this, abused and maligned her; the outwardly strait-laced and inwardly corrupt, puckered up their mouths and “blushed for her;” the hypocritical denounced the sacrilegious fingers which had dared to touch the Ark; the fashionist voted her a vulgar, plebeian thing; and the earnest and sorrowing, to whose burdened hearts she had given voice, cried God speed her. And still “Floy” scribbled on, thinking only of bread for her children, laughing and crying behind her mask, – laughing all the more when her heart was heaviest; but of this her readers knew little and would have cared less. Still her little bark breasted the billows, now rising high on the topmost wave, now merged in the shadows, but still steering with straining sides, and a heart of oak, for the nearing port of Independence.
Ruth’s brother, Hyacinth, saw “Floy’s” articles floating through his exchanges with marked dissatisfaction and uneasiness. That she should have succeeded in any degree without his assistance, was a puzzle, and the premonitory symptoms of her popularity, which his weekly exchanges furnished, in the shape of commendatory notices, were gall and wormwood to him. Something must be done, and that immediately. Seizing his pen, he despatched a letter to Mrs. Millet, which he requested her to read to Ruth, alluding very contemptuously to Ruth’s articles, and begging her to use her influence with Ruth to desist from scribbling, and seek some other employment. What employment, he did not condescend to state; in fact, it was a matter of entire indifference to him, provided she did not cross his track. Ruth listened to the contents of the letter, with the old bitter smile, and went on writing.
CHAPTER LXV
A dull, drizzling rain spattered perseveringly against Ruth’s windows, making her little dark room tenfold gloomier and darker than ever. Little Nettie had exhausted her slender stock of toys, and creeping up to her mother’s side, laid her head wearily in her lap.
“Wait just a moment, Nettie, till mamma finishes this page,” said Ruth, dipping her pen again in the old stone inkstand.
The child crept back again to the window, and watched the little pools of water in the streets, as the rain-drops dimpled them, and saw, for the hundredth time, the grocer’s boy carrying home a brown-paper parcel for some customers, and eating something from it as he went along; and listened to the milkman, who thumped so loudly on the back gates, and seemed always in such a tearing hurry; and saw the baker open the lid of his boxes, and let the steam escape from the smoking hot cakes and pies. Nettie wished she could have some of them, but she had long since learned only to wish; and then she saw the two little sisters who went by to school every morning, and who were now cuddling, laughingly together, under a great big umbrella, which the naughty wind was trying to turn inside out, and to get away from them; and then Nettie thought of Katy, and wished she had Katy to play with her, when mamma wrote such a long, long time; and then little Nettie drew such a heavy sigh, that Ruth dashed down her pen, and taking her in her arms and kissing her, told her about,
“Mistress McShuttle,
Who lived in a coal-scuttle,
Along with her dog and her cat,
What she did there, I can’t tell,
But I know very well,
That none of the party were fat.”
And then she narrated the exciting adventures of “The Wise Men of Gotham,” who went to sea in that rudderless bowl, and suffered shipwreck and “total lass of life,” as the newsboys (God bless their rough-and-ready faces) call it; and then little Nettie’s snowy lids drooped over her violet eyes, and she was far away in the land of dreams, where there are no little hungry girls, or tired, scribbling mammas.
Ruth laid the child gently on her little bed, and resumed her pen; but the spell was broken, and “careful and troubled about many things” she laid it down again, and her thoughts ran riot.
Pushing aside her papers, she discovered two unopened letters which Mr. Lescom had handed her, and which she had in the hurry of finishing her next article, quite forgotten. Breaking the seal of the first, she read as follows:
“To ‘Floy.’
“I am rough old man, Miss, and not used to writing or talking to ladies. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t ask; but I take ‘The Standard,’ and I like your pieces. I have a family of bouncing girls and boys; and when we’ve all done work, we get round the fire of an evening, while one of us reads your pieces aloud. It may not make much difference to you what an old man thinks, but I tell you those pieces have got the real stuff in ’em, and so I told my son John the other night; and he says, and I say, and neighbor Smith, who comes in to hear ’em, says, that you ought to make a book of them, so that your readers may keep them. You can put me down for three copies, to begin with; and if every subscriber to ‘The Standard’ feels as I do, you might make a plum by the operation. Suppose, now, you think of it?
“N. B. – John says, maybe you’ll be offended at my writing to you, but I say you’ve got too much common sense.
“Yours to command,“John Stokes.”
“Well, well,” said Ruth, laughing, “that’s a thought that never entered this busy head of mine, John Stokes. I publish a book? Why, John, are you aware that those articles were written for bread and butter, not fame; and tossed to the printer before the ink was dry, or I had time for a second reading? And yet, perhaps, there is more freshness about them than there would have been, had I leisure to have pruned and polished them – who knows? I’ll put your suggestion on file, friend Stokes, to be turned over at my leisure. It strikes me, though, that it will keep awhile. Thank you, honest John. It is just such readers as you whom I like to secure. Well, what have we here?” and Ruth broke the seal of the second letter. It was in a delicate, beautiful, female hand; just such an one as you, dear Reader, might trace, whose sweet, soft eyes, and long, drooping tresses, are now bending over this page. It said:
“Dear ‘Floy’:
“For you are ‘dear’ to me, dear as a sister on whose loving breast I have leaned, though I never saw your face. I know not whether you are young and fair, or old and wrinkled, but I know that your heart is fresh, and guileless, and warm as childhood’s; and that every week your printed words come to me, in my sick chamber, like the ministrations of some gentle friend, sometimes stirring to its very depths the fountain of tears, sometimes, by odd and quaint conceits, provoking the mirthful smile. But ‘Floy,’ I love you best in your serious moods; for as earth recedes, and eternity draws near, it is the real and tangible, my soul yearns after. And sure I am, ‘Floy,’ that I am not mistaken in thinking that we both lean on the same Rock of Ages; both discern, through the mists and clouds of time, the Sun of Righteousness. I shall never see you, ‘Floy,’ on earth; – mysterious voices, audible only to the dying ear, are calling me away; and yet, before I go, I would send you this token of my love, for all the sweet and soul-strengthening words you have unconsciously sent to my sick chamber, to wing the weary, waiting hours. We shall meet, ‘Floy’; but it will be where ‘tears are wiped away.’
“God bless you, my unknown sister.
“Mary R. – .”
Ruth’s head bowed low upon the table, and her lips moved; but He to whom the secrets of all hearts are known, alone heard that grateful prayer.
CHAPTER LXVI
That first miserable day at school! Who that has known it – even with a mother’s kiss burning on the cheek, a big orange bumping in the new satchel, and a promise of apple-dumplings for dinner, can review it without a shudder? Torturing – even when you can run home and “tell mother” all your little griefs; when every member of the home circle votes it “a shame” that Johnny Oakes laughed because you did not take your alphabet the natural way, instead of receiving it by inoculation, (just as he forgets that he did;) torturing – when Bill Smith, and Tom Simms, with whom you have “swapped alleys,” and played “hockey,” are there with their familiar faces, to take off the chill of the new schoolroom; torturing – to the sensitive child, even when the teacher is a sunny-faced young girl, instead of a prim old ogre. Poor little Katy! her book was before her; but the lines blurred into one indistinct haze, and her throat seemed filling to suffocation with long-suppressed sobs. The teacher, if he thought anything about it, thought she had the tooth-ache, or ear-ache, or head-ache; and Katy kept her own secret, for she had read his face correctly, and with a child’s quick instinct, stifled down her throbbing little heart.
To the doctor, and “Mis. Hall,” with their anti-progressive notions, a school was a school. The committee had passed judgment on it, and I would like to know who would be insane enough to question the decision of a School Committee? What did the committee care, that the consumptive teacher, for his own personal convenience, madly excluded all ventilation, and heated the little sheet-iron stove hotter than Shadrack’s furnace, till little heads snapped, and cheeks crimsoned, and croup stood ready at the threshold to seize the first little bare throat that presented its perspiring surface to the keen frosty air? What did they care that the desks were so constructed, as to crook spines, and turn in toes, and round shoulders? What did they care that the funnel smoked week after week, till the curse of “weak eyes” was entailed on their victims for a lifetime? They had other irons in the fire, to which this was a cipher. For instance: the village pump was out of repair, and town-meeting after town-meeting had been called, to see who shouldn’t make its handle fly. North Gotham said it was the business of East Gotham; East Gotham said the pump might rot before they’d bear the expense; not that the East Gothamites cared for expense – no; they scorned the insinuation, but they’d have North Gotham to know that East Gotham wasn’t to be put upon. Jeremiah Stubbs, a staunch North Gothamite, stopped buying molasses and calico at “Ezekial Tibbs’ East Gotham Finding Store;” and Ezekial Tibbs forbade, under penalty of losing his custom, the carpenter who was repairing his pig-sty, from buying nails any more of Jeremiah Stubbs, of North Gotham; matches were broken up; “own cousins” ceased to know one another, and the old women had a millenial time of it over their bohea, discussing and settling matters; no marvel that such a trifle as a child’s school should be overlooked. Meantime there stood the pump, with its impotent handle, high and dry; “a gone sucker,” as Mr. Tibbs facetiously expressed it.
“You can’t go to school to-day, Katy, it is washing-day,” said old Mrs. Hall; “go get that stool, now sit down on it, at my feet, and let me cut off those foolish dangling curls.”
“Mamma likes them,” said the child.
“I know it,” replied the old lady, with a malicious smile, as she gathered a cluster of them in one hand and seized the scissors with the other.
“Papa liked them,” said Katy, shrinking back.
“No, he didn’t,” replied the old lady; “or, if he did, ’twas only to please your foolish mother; any way they are coming off; if I don’t like them, that’s enough; you are always to live with me now, Katy; it makes no difference what your mother thinks or says about anything, so you needn’t quote her; I’m going to try to make a good girl of you, i. e. if she will let you alone; you are full of faults, just as she is, and I shall have to take a great deal of pains with you. You ought to love me very much for it, better than anybody else in the world – don’t you?”
(No response from Katy.)
“I say, Katy, you ought to love me better than anybody else in the world,” repeated the old lady, tossing a handful of the severed ringlets down on the carpet. “Do you, Katy?”
“No, ma’am,” answered the truthful child.
“That tells the whole story,” said the doctor, as he started up and boxed Katy’s ears; “now go up and stay in your room till I send for you, for being disrespectful to your grandmother.”
“Like mother – like child,” said the old lady, as Katy half shorn, moved like a culprit out of the room; then gathering up in her apron the shining curls, she looked on with a malicious smile, while they crisped and blackened in the glowing Lehigh fire.
But miserable as were the week-days – Sunday, after all, was the dreadful day for Katy; the long – long – long Sunday, when every book in the house was put under lock and key; when even religious newspapers, tracts, and memoirs, were tabooed; when the old people, who fancied they could not go to church, sat from sunrise to sunset in their best clothes, with their hands folded, looking speechlessly into the fire; when there was no dinner; when the Irish girl and the cat, equally lawless and heretical, went to see their friends; when not a sound was heard in the house, save the ticking of the old claw-footed-clock, that stood in the entry; when Katy crept up to her little room, and crouching in a corner, wondered if God was good – why he let her papa die, and why he did not help her mamma, who tried so hard to earn money to bring her home.
The last bright golden beam of the Sabbath sun had slowly faded away. One by one the stars came gliding out. He who held them all in their places, listening ever to the ceaseless music of their motion, yet bent a pitying ear to the stifled sob of a troubled child. Softly – sweetly – fell the gentle dew of slumber on weary eyelids, while angels came to minister. Tears glittered still on Katy’s long lashes, but the little lips parted with a smile, murmuring “Papa.” Sleep on – dream on – little Katy. He who noteth the sparrow’s fall, hath given his angels charge to keep thee.
