CHAPTER VI
It was the night for the weekly vestry lecture. I was left quite alone in the old kitchen. My uncle had extinguished the lamp in leaving, saying that it was “a waste to burn out oil for me.” The fire, also, had been carefully taken apart, and the brands laid at an incombustible distance from each other. The old clock kept up a sepulchral, death-watch tick, and I could hear the falling snow drifting gloomily against the windows.
I drew the old, wooden settle closer between the tall andirons, and sat sorrowfully gazing into the dying embers. What was to become of me? for it seemed impossible to bear longer the intolerable galling of my yoke. Even the charity of strangers seemed to me preferable to the grudging, insulting tolerance of my kindred. But, with my sixteen years’ experience of quiet valley-life, where should I turn my untried footsteps? To Him who guideth the little bird through the pathless air, would I look.
Weeping, I prayed.
“My poor child,” said a voice at my side; and Master Grey removed my hands gently from my tear-stained face, and held them in his own. “My poor Hetty, life looks very dark to you, does it not? I know all you suffer. Don’t pain yourself to tell me about it; I overheard your uncle’s crushing words. I know there are none to love you – none to care for you – none on whom you can lean. It is a bitter feeling, my poor child. I, too, have passed through it. You would go from hence, but where? Life is full of snares, and you are too young, and too inexperienced to brave them.
“Hetty,” and Master Grey drew me gently toward him, – “Hetty, could you be happy with me?”
Is the ship-wrecked mariner happy, who opens his despairing eyes at length in the long looked for, long prayed for, home?
Is the little bird happy, who folds her weary wings safe from the pursuer’s talons, in her own fleece-lined nest?
Is the little child happy, who wakes, sobbing, in the gloomy night, from troubled dreams, to find his golden head still safely pillowed on the dear, maternal bosom?
CHAPTER VII
It was very odd and strange to me, my new home in the great, busy city; with its huge rows of stores and houses, its myriad restless feet, and anxious, care-worn faces; its glittering wealth, its squalid poverty; the slow moving hearse, and the laughing harlequin crowd; its noisy Sabbaths, and its gorgeous churches, with its jeweled worshippers, and its sleepy priests; its little children, worldly-wise and old, and its never-ceasing, busy hum, late into the day’s pale light. I had no acquaintances: I needed none; for I moved about my pretty little home as in a glad dream. My husband was still “Master Grey,” but over a private school of his own, bounded by no “District,” subject to the despotic dictation of no “Committee.” In his necessary absence, I busied myself in arranging and re-arranging his books, papers and wardrobe, thinking the while such glad thoughts! And when the little mantel clock chimed the hour of return, my cheek flushed, my heart beat quick, and my eyes grew moist with happy tears, at the sound of the dear, loved footstep.
How very nice it seemed to sit at the head of that cheerful little table – to make, with my own hands, the fragrant cup of tea – to grow merry with my husband, over crest-fallen Zeb, and poor, stubborn little Bessie, and my uncle’s time-worn bug-bear of a memorandum book!
And how proud I was of him, as he sat there correcting some school-boy’s Greek exercise, while I leaned over his shoulder, looking attentively at his fine face, and at those unintelligible hieroglyphics, and blushing that he was so much wiser than his little Hetty.
This thought sometimes troubled me. I asked myself, will my husband never weary of me? I even grew jealous of his favorite authors, of whom he was so fond. Then I pondered the feasibility of pursuing a course of reading unknown to him, and astonishing him some day with my profound erudition. In pursuance of my plan, I would sit demurely down to some great, wise book; but I saw only my husband’s face looking out at me from every page, and my self-inflicted task was sure to end in some blissful dreamy reverie, with which Cupid had much more to do than Minerva.
CHAPTER VIII
“A proposition, Hetty!” said my husband, throwing aside his coat and hat, and tossing a letter in my lap. “It is from a widow lady, who desires that I should take charge of her little boy, and give him a home in my family, while she goes to the continent, to secure some property lately left her by a foreign relative. It will be advantageous to us, in a pecuniary way, to have him board with us, unless it should increase your cares too much. But, as you are so fond of children, it may, perhaps, after all, prove a pleasant care to you. She is evidently a superior woman. Every line in her letter shows it.”
My husband immediately answered in the affirmative, and the child arrived a week after. He was a fine, intelligent, gentlemanly boy of eight years, with large hazel eyes, and transparently beautiful temples: disinclined to the usual sports of childhood, sensitive, shy, and thoughtful beyond his years – a human dew-drop, which we look to see exhale. He brought with him a letter from his mother, which powerfully affected my husband. During its perusal he drew his hand repeatedly across his eyes, and sat a long while after he had finished reading it, with his eyes closed, in a deep reverie. By-and-by he said, handing me the letter, “there is genius there, Hetty. I never read anything so touchingly beautiful. Mrs. West must be a very talented and superior woman.”
I glanced over the letter. It fully justified my husband’s encomiums. It was a most touching appeal to him to watch with paternal care over her only child; but while she spoke with a mother’s tenderness of his endearing qualities, she wished him taught implicitly, that first of all duties for the young, obedience. Then followed allusions to dark days of sorrow, during which the love of that cherished child, was the only star in her sky.
I folded the letter and sat very still, after my husband left, in my little rocking-chair, thinking. Such a gifted woman as that my husband should have married. One who could have sympathised with him and shared his intellectual pursuits; who would have been something besides a toy to amuse an idle hour, or to minister to his physical necessities. Perhaps it was of this that my husband was thinking, as he sat there with his eyes closed over the open letter. Perhaps he had wed me only from a generous impulse of pity, and that letter had suddenly revealed to him the happiness of which he was capable with a kindred spirit. I was very miserable. I wished the letter had never reached us, or that I had declined the care of the child. Other letters, of course, would come, and the boy would keep alive the interest in the intervals. I wept long and bitterly. At length I was aroused by the entrance of little Charley. A bright flush mounted to his forehead, when he saw my swollen eyes. He hesitated a moment, then gliding up to my side he said, sweetly, “Are you sick? Shall I bathe your head? I used to bathe mamma’s head when it pained her.”
I stood abashed and rebuked in the child’s angel presence, and taking the boy, her boy, in my arms, I kissed him as tenderly as if I had been his mother; while in his own sweet way he told me with childish confidence of his own dead papa; how much he loved mamma; how many, many beautiful things he used to bring her, saying that they were not half good, or half handsome enough for her; how distressed he used to be if she were ill; how carefully he closed the shutters, and tip-toed about the house, with his finger on his lip, telling the servants to close the doors gently; and how he promised him little toys, if he would not disturb mamma’s slumbers; and then, how like diamonds his eyes shone, when she got well; and what beautiful flowers he brought her for her vases; and what a nice, soft-cushioned carriage he brought for her to take the air; and how tenderly he wrapped the shawls about her, and how many charges he gave the coachman, to drive slowly and carefully. And then, how dear papa, at last, grew sick himself; and how mamma watched day and night beside his bed, forgetting to sleep, or eat, or drink; and how nobody dared to tell her that the doctor said he must die; and how papa grew fainter and weaker, and how he said, “Kiss me, Mary, and lay your cheek to mine; I can’t see you.” And then, how mamma fainted and was carried out, and for many, many long days didn’t know even her own little Charley; – and how dreadful it was when she first waked, and tried to remember what had happened; and how nobody could comfort her but Charley; and how he used often to wake up in the night, and find her with a lamp looking at him, because when he was asleep he looked so much like dear, dead papa; and how bitterly she would sob when she was sick, because papa was not there to pity her, and bathe her aching head; and how he (Charley) meant, when he grew up to be a man, to get a nice house for her, and put everything she wanted in it, and make her just as happy as he could.
Well has the Saviour said, “Of such is the kingdom of Heaven.” That night I bent over little Charley’s bed, blessing the little sleeper for his angel teachings, with a heart as calm and peaceful as the mirrored lake, reflecting only the smile of Heaven.
Time passed on. Life became earnest; for a little heart pulsated beneath my own, and a strange, sweet, nameless thrill sent to my chastened lips a trembling prayer. Tiny caps and robes, with many a hope and fear interwoven in their delicate threads, lay awaiting the infant’s advent. I, myself should know the height, and breadth, and depth of a mother’s undying love. What could come between me and this new found treasure?
Meantime letters continued to come from Charley’s mother to her boy, and my husband. It was impossible for me to blind myself to his growing interest in them. On the days they were expected, (for she wrote at regular intervals,) he would be absent and abstracted, or if any delay occurred, almost irritable. When they were received, his eye kindled, his step became elastic, and his whole face grew radiant with happiness.
As the time drew near for the birth of my infant, I grew timid with sad forebodings. I was sitting, one evening at twilight, watching the setting sun, and thinking of the quiet grave it was gilding, where my silver-haired father slept, in the old church yard, when my husband entered. An expression of pain flitted over his features, as he looked at me, and taking my hand, he said, gently, almost tenderly, “You are less well than usual, Hetty; you must not sit here, moping, by yourself.”
I laid my head upon his shoulder with a happiness I had not known for many months. “Listen to me, dear Grey,” said I; “I have a confidence to repose in you that will ease my heart.
“It was pity, only, that drew your heart to mine; you do not love me. I have known it a long while since. At first, the discovery gave me a pang keener than death; but I have had a long and bitter struggle with myself, and have conquered. It is not your fault that you cannot love me. To the many voices of your heart, which cry, ‘Give, give,’ my response is weak and unsatisfying. Your wife should be gifted. She should sympathise with you in your intellectual pursuits. She should stimulate your pride, as well as your love. Such an one is Charley’s mother. Your heart has already wed her, and as God is my witness, I have ceased to blame you. We cannot help our affections. I cannot help loving you, though I know her mysterious power over your heart. I have seen your struggles, your generous self-reproaches, in some sudden outburst of kindness toward me, after the indulgence of some bright dream, in which I had no share. Dear Grey, she is worthy of your love. She has a heart, noble, good and true; a heart purified by suffering. I see it in every line she writes. Should I not survive the birth of my infant, I could give your happiness into her keeping without a misgiving, though I have never looked upon her face.”
Little Hetty’s noble heart has long since ceased to throb with joy or pain. To her husband’s breast is folded the babe, for whose little life her own was yielded up. Threads of silver prematurely mingle amid his ebon locks; for memory writes only on bereaved hearts the virtues of the dead, while, with torturing minuteness, she pictures our own short-comings, for which, alas! we can offer no atonement but our tears.
AUNT HEPSY
It was a comical little old shop, “Aunt Hepsy’s,” with its Lilliputian counter, shelves and stove, and its pigmy assortment of old-fashioned ginghams, twilled cambrics, red flannels, factory cotton and homespun calicoes; its miniature window, with its stock of horn-combs and candy, tin horses and peppermint drops, skeins of yarn and Godfrey’s Cordial, gaudy picture books, and six-penny handkerchiefs, from whose center Lafayette and George Washington smiled approbatively upon the big A’s and little A’s printed round the border.
“Aunt Hepsy;” so every brimless-hatted urchin in the neighborhood called her, though it would have puzzled them worse than the multiplication table, had you asked them why they did so. Year in and year out, her ruddy English face glowed behind the little shop window. Sometimes she would be knitting a pair of baby’s socks, sometimes inventing most astonishing looking bags out of rainbow fragments of silk or ribbon. Sometimes netting watch-guards, or raveling the yarn from some old black stocking, to ornament the “place where the wool ought to grow,” on the head of some Topsy doll she was making. Sometimes comforting herself with a sly pinch of snuff, or, when sunbeams and customers were scarce, nodding drowsily over the daily papers.
Aunt Hepsy had been a beauty, and her pretty face had won her a thriftless husband, of whom champagne and cigars had long since kindly relieved her. And though Time had since forced her to apply to the perruquier, he had gallantly made atonement by leaving her in the undisputed possession of a pair of very brilliant black eyes. Add to this a certain air of coquetry, in the fanciful twist of her gay-colored turban, and the disposal of the folds of her lace kerchief over her ample English bust – and you have a faithful daguerreotype of “Aunt Hepsy.”
From the window of her little shop she could look out upon the blue waters of the bay, where lay moored the gallant ships, from whose tall masts floated the stars and stripes, and whose jolly captains might often be seen in Aunt Hepsy’s shop, exchanging compliments and snuff, and their heavy voices heard, recounting long Neptune yarns, and declaring to the buxom widow that nothing but the little accident of their being already spliced for life, prevented their immediately spreading sail with her for the port of Matrimony. Aunt Hepsy usually frowned at this, and shook her turbaned head menacingly, but immediately neutralized it, by offering to mend a rip in their gloves, or replace a truant button on their overcoats.
It was very odd, how universally popular was Aunt Hepsy. She had any number of places to “take tea,” beside a standing invitation from half-a-dozen families, to Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, and to New-Year’s suppers. She had an eligible seat in church, gratis; an inexhaustible bottle of sherry for her often infirmities; fresh pies on family baking days, newspapers for stormy day reading; tickets to menageries, and invitations to picnics.
She always procured lodgings at a cheaper rate than anybody else; had the pleasantest room in the house at that, the warmest seat at table, the strongest cup of coffee, the brownest slice of toast, the latest arrival of buckwheats, the second joint of the turkey, and the only surviving piece of pie. To be sure, she always praised ugly babies, asked old maids why they would be so cruel as to persist in remaining unmarried, entreated hen-pecked husbands to use their powerful influence over their wives to secure to her their custom; begged the newly fledged clergyman to allow her a private perusal of his last Sunday’s able discourse; complimented ambitious Esaus on the luxuriant growth of their very incipient, and microscopically perceptible whiskers; asked dilapidated, rejected widowers, when they intended taking their choice of a wife out of a bevy of rosy girls, and declared to Editors that she might as well try to get along without her looking glass, as without their interesting newspapers.
One day, the little shop was shut up. Nine o’clock came – eleven o’clock, and the shutters were still closed, and Aunt Hepsy so punctual, too! What could it mean? Old Mrs. Brown was ready to have fits because she couldn’t get another skein of yarn to finish her old man’s stockings. Little Pat Dolan had roared himself black in the face, because he couldn’t spend his cent to buy some maple sugar; and the little match girl stood shivering at the corner for a place to warm her poor benumbed fingers, while the disappointed captains stamped their feet on the snow, stuffed their cheeks with quids, and said it was “deuced funny,” and an old maid, opposite, who had long prayed that Aunt Hepsy’s reign might be shortened, laid her skinny forefinger on her hooked nose, and rolled up the whites of her eyes like a chicken with the pip.
It was no great enigma, (at any rate not after you found it out!) Rich old Mr. Potts ventured into Aunt Hepsy’s shop, one day, to buy a watch-ribbon. He was very deaf; so Aunt Hepsy had to come round the counter to wait upon him, and the upshot of it was, that she and Cupid together, hailed him through an ear-trumpet; and all I know about it is, that they have now a legalized right to a mutual pillow and snuff-box, and that the little shop window still remains unopened, while the old maid hisses between her teeth, as Aunt Hepsy rolls by in her carriage, “How do you suppose she did it?”
THOUGHTS AT CHURCH
I have an old-fashioned way of entering church, before the bells begin to chime. I enjoy the quiet, brooding stillness. I love to think of the many words of holy cheer that have fallen there, from heaven-missioned lips, and folded themselves like snow-white wings over the weary heart of despair. I love to think of the sinless little ones, whose pearly temples have here been laved at the baptismal font. I love to think of the weak, yet strong ones, who have tearfully tasted the consecrated cup, on which is written, “Do this in remembrance of me.” I love to think of those self-forgetting, self-exiled, who, counting all things naught for Gethsemane’s dear sake, are treading foreign shores, to say to the soul-fettered Pagan, “Behold the Lamb of God.” I love to think of the loving hearts that at yonder altar have throbbed, side by side, while the holy man of God pronounced “the twain one.” I love to think of the seraph smile of which death itself was powerless to rob the dead saint, over whose upturned face, to which the sunlight lent such mocking glow, the words, “Dust to dust,” fell upon the pained ear of love. I love, as I sit here, to list through the half open vestry door, to the hymning voices of happy Sabbath scholars, sweet as the timid chirp of morn’s first peeping bird. I love to hear their tiny feet, as they patter down the aisle, and mark the earnest gaze of questioning childhood. I love to see the toil-hardened hand of labor brush off the penitential tear. I love – “our minister.” How very sad he looks to-day. Are his parish unsympathetic? Does the laborer’s “hire” come tardily and grudgingly to the overtasked, faithful servant? Do censorious, dissatisfied spirits watch and wait for his halting?
Now he rises and says, slowly – musically, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Why at such sweet, soul-resting words, do his tears overflow? Why has his voice such a heart quiver? Ah! there is a vacant seat in the pastor’s pew. A little golden head, that last Sabbath gladdened our eyes like a gleam of sunlight, lies dreamlessly pillowed beneath the coffin lid: gleeful eyes have lost their brightness: cherry lips are wan and mute, and beneath her sable vail the lonely mother sobs. And so the father’s lip quivers, and for a moment nature triumphs. Then athwart the gloomy cloud flashes the bow of promise. He wipes away the blinding tears, and with an angel smile, and upward glance, he says, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”