Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866», страница 7
KATHARINE MORNE
PART II.
CHAPTER IV
Soon after Fanny's funeral, Miss Mehitable told me she had found out who the lady was that wished for my painting at the fair. Her niece had pointed her out as she drove by in a barouche; and it was Miss Dudley.
My second copy was begun in the last fortnight of Fanny's life, as she slept and I sat beside her. I had not then had time, nor since had heart, to go on with it. But now, seeing an opportunity to do something more to fulfil her wishes and to "do anything for Miss Dudley," I took up my task again, and quickly finished it. Then, still unsatisfied, I roamed through the woods, and along the shore, to gather specimens of the native plants, insects, and shells that seemed to me most like the foreign ones that I had copied, and grouped and painted and framed them like the first. The Doctor left both for me at Miss Dudley's gate, with this inscription on the envelope: "A little offering of great gratitude, from a sister of Fanny Morne." I suppose, by the way, this is one source of the satisfaction that some real mourners find in wearing mourning, as they say, "for the dead,"—a vague longing, like mine, after they have passed beyond human care, to do or sacrifice still something more for them.
After that, there seemed to be nothing more that I could do for Fanny, nor anything that, for myself, I cared to do. From habit only, I employed myself. Julia, as she begged that I would call her, had a large basket of baby-clothes cut out. At that I seated myself after breakfast; and at that I often worked till bedtime, like a machine,—startled sometimes from my revery, indeed, by seeing how much was done, but saying nothing, hearing little, and shedding not a tear.
Julia would have remonstrated; but the Doctor said to her: "Let her alone for the present, my dear; she has had a great shock. Trust to nature. This cannot last long with a girl like Katy. It is half of it over-fatigue, carried on from her school-keeping to add to the present account." To me he said: "Katy, you may sew, if you like, but not in-doors, I will carry your basket out for you into the arbor; and in the afternoon I am going to take you to ride in the woods."
Our past selves are often a riddle that our present selves cannot read; but I suspect the real state of the case was, partly that, as the Doctor believed, I was for the time being exhausted in body and stunned in mind, and partly that, in those young, impetuous days, grief was such an all-convulsing passion with me, when I yielded to it, that to the utmost of my strength I resisted it at the outset, and seldom dared suffer myself to suffer at all. But, as he also believed, "this could not last long"; and it did not.
One afternoon, as I sewed in the arbor, a sweet little girl, who had been in Fanny's class in her Sunday school, stole into the garden and up to me, looked wistfully into my face as if seeking some likeness there, kissed my cheek timidly, laid a large nosegay of delicate flowers upon my knee, and crept away as gently as she came. The flowers were all white; and I saw at once that they were meant for Fanny's grave. I might go there for the first time now, as well as at any other time. The Doctor and his wife were out together, and no one was at home to question me.
Fanny had been laid, I need scarcely say, just where she wished. My guardian had driven me there early one morning to point out the place; and we found the withered clovers in the grass. It had rained often since. The swollen turf was nearly healed. I untied the flowers, and slowly, and with minute precision, arranged them in a cross above her breast. At last, when there was no blossom more to add or alter, I sat down again in my solitude where I sat with her so lately, with the same leaves fluttering on the same trees, the same grass waving on the same graves, and her beneath instead of upon it.
At first I could not think,—I could only cry. For now at length I had to cry; and cry I did, in a tornado and deluge of grief that by degrees swept and washed away the accumulated vapors from my mind, and brought it to a clearer, healthier calm. I believe God in His mercy has appointed that those who are capable of the strongest, shall not in general be capable of the longest anguish. At least, I am sure that it is so, not only with myself, but with one better and dearer than myself; so that the experience of life has taught me to see in the sharpest of pangs the happiest augury of their brevity.
Thus it could not have been very long before I was able to raise my head, and wipe my eyes, and look once more upon my two dear graves. The setting sun glowed over them. They looked soft and bright. From one of them the echo of an angel's voice seemed still to say, "Here, by mamma, is where I like to lie"; from both in unison I heard, "It is good and brave to look things in the face and on all sides; but then among the sides, never forget the bright side, little Katy."
Could I refuse? I looked for the bright side. It was not far to seek. In the first place, the worst was over. Never again could I lose what I had lost, nor—so at least I thought then—could I feel what I had felt. Secondly, my sorrow was only mine, and no one's else. Those whom I loved were happy, every one of them;—mamma and Fanny,—I could not doubt it,—happier far than I ever could have made them, even if I had always tried as hard as I did after they began to leave me,—safer than they could ever have been in this world, and safe forever; and Jim,—I would not begin now to think about him again, but just so much I must,—he was happy with Emma. Even thus much brought a fresh gush of tears, though not for him,—I could still truly say that I had never shed one for him, and that was some comfort to my pride at least;—but for Fanny; because I had sometimes thought that, when she was well and I had time to think of anything besides her, if I ever did tell anybody of the mistake and trouble I had fallen into, I would tell her,—and now, however much I might need advice and assistance, that could never be. My guardian and his wife were happy in each other, and would be happier still after I roused myself, as I must and ought, and ceased to sadden their home. The world in which I still must live was, whatever people might say of it, not all sin, sickness, or sorrow. Even where I sat, in one of those spots which most persons accounted the dreariest in it, I could hear the laughter of light-hearted children at their play, the soft lowing of cattle grazing in the pleasant fields, and shouts of strong men at their wholesome, useful work. I knew there must be sickness, sin, and sorrow in it; but could not I do some little to help them, with my free hands and the health and strength which were almost always mine? Very good I was not myself, but I had been watchfully brought up in an innocent home; there was no crime upon my conscience, and, even as I cast a rueful glance upon its blemishes, I heard a well-remembered voice say from a grave once more: "Have patience with my little daughter. Some of the richest fruits and souls are not the first to ripen. The chief thing that she wants is time to mellow."
And one of the brightest points in all the bright side was, that, in living so constantly through her illness with Fanny, who lived with God, I had been perforce brought nearer to Him, and therefore naturally learned to dread Him less and love Him more than I had done; so that I hoped, as I know my mother did, that the sunshine of His grace would help to mellow me.
Another bright point was, that I need not go back to Greenville. The present mistress was glad to keep the school, and the committee willing to keep her.
My desultory thoughts still growing calmer, I began to form plans for my way of living, as I used to do aloud, when I could talk them over with my mother and Fanny. I did not plan anything great, however, because I was conscious of no great powers.—I already, I think, began to divine the truth of what a wise woman afterwards said to me, "Your own nature must settle your work," or rather of what she implied, though she did not say it: In laying out your work, you should do your best to take the diagonal between your nature and your circumstances.—But I resolved, such as I was, to try to make the most of myself in every way, for myself, my neighbors, and my God.
I was to stay at my guardian's for the present. He forbade my trying to teach again, for some months at least. It was my duty, as well as my pleasure, to obey him. In the mean time, I could prepare myself to teach better when I began again. I would draw and paint at odd times. Two hours a day I would try to divide between history and the English classic poets, of both of which I knew sadly little. Julia often drove out with her husband; and then I could study by myself. When she was at home, if I could not always chat with her as formerly, I could read to her in French, which she liked to hear; and that would be much more sociable and cheerful for her than my sitting mute. I would now exert myself to walk out every day for exercise, so that there would be no reason for her giving up her place in the Doctor's chaise to me. I blushed to think how often I had suffered myself to be foisted into it by her already. By my walks, I would earn leave to sit with her in-doors; and then I could save her many steps and little household cares. Then what should I do for her husband? Sing to him in the evening, and begin, if he liked it, to-night. It might be a little hard the first time; but if so, there was all the more reason for having the first time over. There was no need of my choosing sad songs, or any that Fanny was fond of.
But it was growing late. They would be anxious. I must get up and go home. Go home!—without my home-mates?—leave them here?—with no kiss,—no good-night? I stood up, and sat down again. The blinding, choking passion, that had seemed over, swelled up into my eyes and throat once more. O that lonely, empty life! Must I go back to it? How long would it last? This was my only real home. When might I come here to sleep?
In an instant it would have been all over again with my hardly-won calm; but in that instant a white and gray fluttering between the green graves caught my tear-blurred sight. I thought it that of a living dove, but, going nearer, found only a piece of torn newspaper, which had been wrapped around the stems of the flowers, playing in the wind; and on it my attention was caught by these quaint and pithy lines, printed in one corner in double columns:—
"THE CONDITIONS
"Sad soul, long harboring fears and woes
Within a haunted breast.
Haste but to meet your lowly Lord,
And he shall give you rest.
"Into his commonwealth alike
Are ills and blessings thrown.
Bear you your neighbors' loads; and
* * * * *
"Yield only up His price, your heart,
Into God's loving hold,—
He turns with heavenly alchemy
Your lead of life to gold.
"Some needful pangs endure in peace,
Nor yet for freedom pant,—
He cuts the bane you cleave to off,
Then …"
The rest was torn away. "'And,'" repeated I, impatiently,—"'Then'! 'And—then'—what?" There was no answer, or at least I heard none; but the verses, so far as they went, struck my excited fancy as a kind of preternatural confirmation of the faint outline of life and duty which I had been sketching. I marked the date of the day upon the white margin with my pencil, and took the paper with me as a memento of the time and place, trimmed its torn edges carefully, and laid it in Fanny's little Bible.
CHAPTER V
The next morning, at breakfast, Dr. Physick said: "You did me a good office, Katy, by singing me to sleepiness last night. I was as tired as a dog,—no, as a whole pack of Esquimaux dogs,—and, instead of lying awake and saying to myself, every time I turned over, 'What in this wide world am I ever going to do with that poor little Nelly Fader?' I only repeated, whenever I came to myself a little, 'Nelly Bligh shuts her eye when she goes to sleep'; and then I followed her example."
"I only wish," said I, "that there was any good office beside that I could do you."
"Well, now I think of it, there is one that I should be very much obliged to you to do, to me and Nelly Fader besides. I've got to hurry off in the direction opposite to her Uncle Wardour's; and you talked of walking. Take this paper. Empty it into a wine-bottle. Fill it up with spring-water. Cork it. Gum these directions on it. Take them to Nelly. Read them to her, and make her understand them if you can, and follow them, which I can't. I happen to have a better sample of the drug than is often in the market; and she may as well have the benefit of it. Her aunt's a goose, and she's a baby. But, as she's likely to be a suffering baby for some time to come, we must try to have patience, and take extra pains with her."
"Is she going to die?" asked I, anxiously.
"No, no! I've no idea she is. No such good luck, poor little victim! 'Only nervous,' as people say. I can't find out that there's much else the matter. I utterly hate these cases. She ought to be under the care of a sensible woman; and if there only was such a one in the profession, I'd guarantee her her hands full of patients out of my practice alone."
"A female physician!" cried I, in horror.
"O Phil! what will you say next?" exclaimed his wife, laughing.
"Well, only wait till you're a male physician, then, and see," returned he, jumping into his chaise, and relieving his own nerves with a crack of the whip, which put new vivacity into those of De Quincey.
I made ready at once, for the day was sulky. It had been weeping, and had not yet begun to smile.
Nelly lived with her uncle, the apothecary, Mr. Wardour, and his widowed sister, Mrs. Cumberland. As I neared the door, I heard her voice, which was not dulcet, from the parlor-kitchen: "What's this here winder open for?"
"It felt so close in here," was the plaintive little answer; "and the Doctor said I ought to have the air."
"Does he think we can afford wood enough to warm all out-doors with?"
I knocked; but Mrs. Cumberland was deaf, and went on: "My sakes alive, child! what's all this?"
"The stewed damsons."
"'Stewed damsons,' indeed!—Stewed stalks and stewed leaves and stewed creaturs! Didn't you have faculty of yourself enough to know that they'd got to be picked over before they went into the pot? There, there, child! don't you go to cryin', whatever you do."
I knocked louder.
"There's somebody to the door; mebbe it's the Doctor. You go and see what's wanted, an' don't take no more concern about these. I'll see to 'em."
After a little delay, occasioned perhaps by the need of rubbing the eyelids, which were red, a little pallid lass, apparently about sixteen years old, shyly opened the door, and looked relieved, I thought, to find only me at it. She had a small and pretty nose and mouth, large, heavy blue eyes, flaxen hair drawn neatly, but unbecomingly, away from her face, looked modest and refined, but sadly moped, and was dressed in dark green, which set her off much as spinach does a dropped egg.
"Miss Nelly?" said I.
"Yes, Miss Morne," said she.
I had never seen her before; but it afterwards came out that she had peeped at me through the blinds of her chamber.
"I have brought you a little treat from Dr. Physick."
"O," said she, looking rather pleased; "then isn't he coming to-day?"
"No; he sent me instead."
"I am glad to see you," said she, timidly, but beginning to look really pretty, as her countenance went on brightening. "Won't you walk in?"
I did so, sat down opposite to her in the cold, shaded "best parlor," and went over the directions to her aloud. She kept her face civilly turned towards me; but it grew utterly blank again, and I saw she was not paying the least attention. So I played her a genuine teacher's trick, which I had learned in my school-room. "Now," continued I, "will you be so good as to repeat to me what I have been saying, so that I may be able to tell Dr. Physick that I explained it to you perfectly? He was rather particular about it."
Of course she could not; but this obliged her, in common courtesy, to listen the second time, which was all I wanted. Then I rose.
She went with me to the door, saying, "I am sorry to give so much trouble. You are very kind to take so much for me."
"It will be a 'joyful trouble,' if it does you good."
"You are very kind to me. Do you like roses?"
"Indeed I do. Do not you?"
"I don't know. I used to."
There were three blossoms and one bud on a monthly rose-bush, which stood in an earthen pot by the front door. In an instant she had gathered them all, in spite of my protestations. She added two or three from a heliotrope, and the freshest sprigs from a diosma, a myrtle, and a geranium, all somewhat languishing, and tied them together for me with a long blade of grass.
"It is plain," said I, as I thanked her, "that you still care enough about flowers to arrange them most sweetly. These look as if they were sitting for their picture. I should like to paint them just as they are."
"Can you paint?"
"A little. Cannot you?"
"No; I can't do anything."
"Shall we make a bargain, then?" I ventured to say, as she looked and seemed so much like the poor baby the Doctor had called her. "We will each of us try to do something for the other. If I succeed in painting your flowers, and you succeed in following your directions, you shall have the picture."
She blushed deeply, looked half ashamed and half gratified, but altogether more alive than she had done till now, and finally managed to stammer out: "It's too good an offer—too kind—to refuse; but it's more than I deserve, a great deal. So I'll try to mind Dr. Physick, to please you; and then—if you liked to give me the picture, I should prize it very much."
I nodded, laughed, went home, put the flowers in water on Julia's work-table, read to her, and went into the heart of the town to do some shopping for her. After our early dinner, I said I was a little tired; and she drove with her husband. I took out my paper, brushes, and palette, set Nelly's nosegay in a becoming light, and began to rub my paints; when wheels and hoofs came near and stopped, and presently the door-bell rang.
"Are the ladies at home?" asked a smooth, silvery, feminine voice, with a peculiarly neat, but unaffected enunciation.
"No'm, he ain't," returned the portress, mechanically; "an' he's druv Missis out, too. Here's the slate; or Miss Kitty could take a message, I s'pose, without she's went out lately ago."
"Take this card," resumed the first voice, "if you please, to Miss Morne, and say that, if she is not engaged, I should be glad to see her."
I rose in some confusion, pushed my little table into the darkest corner of the room, received the white card from Rosanna's pink paw, in which it lay like cream amidst five half-ripe Hovey's seedlings, read "Miss Dudley" upon it, told Rosanna to ask her to please to walk in, and took up my position just within the door, in a state of some palpitation.
In another minute a gray-haired, rather tall and slight, and very well-made lady, with delicate, regular, spirited features, was before me, telling me with a peculiar kind of earnest cordiality, and a sympathy that expressed itself fully in tones, though not in words, that she could not content herself with writing her acknowledgments to me; she must come and see me herself, to tell me how pleased and gratified and touched she was by the offering that I had sent her.
I felt myself too much moved by the associations connected with it, and called up by her, to answer readily; and she, as if conjecturing this, led the conversation gently off, at first to painting in general, and afterwards, as I grew more at my ease with her, back again, with an appearance of genuine interest, to mine.
"There was one little shell," said she, "in your native group, which was quite new to me, and—which is more remarkable—to my brother."
"Was it like this?" asked I, taking a specimen from my paint-box.
"Precisely. We felt sure the portrait must be true to life, because all its companions were such faithful likenesses; and then it had itself such an honest, genuine, individual look. But is it to be found on this coast?"
"Yes. If Mr. Dudley has not met with it, it must no doubt be very rare; but, near the same spot always, just beyond Cedar Point, under the rocks in the little cove that lies farthest to the south, I have found it more than once."
"You must be quite an enthusiast in natural history. Have you studied it long?"
"No, ma'am, never. I mean," continued I, answering her look of surprise, "never from books. I believe I should enjoy it more than any other study; but I know so little yet of other things, and there are so many other things that one needs more to know." I felt my cheeks burn; for no sooner was I helplessly launched into this speech, than I perceived what an awkward one it was to make to the sister of an eminent naturalist. Notwithstanding, as I thought it was true, I could not take it back.
"I agree with you entirely," said she with a reassuring smile. "Such studies are fitted much more for the coping-stones than the foundation-stones of a good education. But then, if you will not think me too inquisitive, pray let me ask you one thing more; and that is, where and how you came by all the information that that group showed."
"Only by playing on the beaches and in the woods when I was a child. My mother did not like to keep me in, because she thought that that had impaired my sister"—here my voice would break, but I would go on,—Fanny's dear name should not die out of memory while I lived—"my sister Fanny's health; but they were afraid to let me run quite wild, and so she—my sister—led me out often wherever I wished to go, and helped me fill a little pasteboard museum which she made for me."
Miss Dudley's large, soft, trusty brown eyes met mine tenderly, as she said: "These things must indeed possess a more than common interest for you then. Have you that museum now?"
"No, ma'am; I sometimes wish I had. I gave it away when I went to Greenville to keep school," I added; not that I supposed it would matter anything to her, but that I thought it just as well to make sure of her understanding my position in life.
"That is so natural to us all,—to part with these little relics when we are still very young, and then to wish them back again before we are much older! You would smile to see a little museum that I keep for my brother,—not his scientific collection, which I hope some day to have the pleasure of showing you,—but 'an olla podrida in an ancestral wardrobe,' as my little Paul calls it, of his and my two little nieces' first baby-shoes, rattles, corals, and bells, wooden horses, primers, picture-books, and so forth, down to the cups and balls, and copy-books, which they have cast off within a month or two, each labelled with the owner's name, and the date of deposit. No year goes by without leaving behind some memento of each of them, or even without my laying aside there some trifling articles of dress that they have worn. It is a fancy of my brother's. He says that others may claim their after-years, but their childhood is his own,—all of it that is not mine,—and he must keep it for himself, and for them when they come back to visit him in his old age. It is a birthday treat to them already to take the key from my split-ring, and look together over the half-forgotten things. But there is one thing there—a manuscript on the topmost shelf—which they do not know about, but which we take out and laugh over sometimes when they are all in bed,—a record that I have kept of all the most diverting things which we have heard them say, ever since they began to learn to talk." She checked herself,—I fancied because she remembered that, in her enthusiasm about the children, she had forgotten to what a new acquaintance she was speaking. She rose to take leave, and resumed, shaking hands with me cordially,—she had, I observed, a remarkably cordial and pleasant, earnest way of shaking hands,—"But upon the subject of my museum, Miss Morne, I need hardly beg you to be more discreet than I, and not to mention a domestic trifle of so little general interest."
I could only bow, but longed, as I attended her to the door, to assure her of the particular interest which I had already begun to feel in every trifle which belonged to her.
Her little barouche, and long-tailed, dark-gray ponies, vanished with her down the road; and I was left walking up and down the room. The "kind o' poor-lookin', pale-lookin', queer-lookin' lady," that Miss Mehitable had described,—was this she? How are we ever to know people by descriptions, when the same person produces one impression on one mind and quite another on another,—nay, may have one set of inherent qualities brought out by contact with one character, and quite another set by contact with another character? Have I described Miss Dudley? No,—and I cannot. She was both unique and indescribable.
Most people impress us more, perhaps, by their outward and physical, than by their inward and psychical life. On a first interview with them, especially, we receive an impression of clothes, good or otherwise, of beauty or plainness or ugliness of feature, and of correctness or uncouthness of manner. These are the common people, whether ladies and gentlemen, or simple men and women. There are, however, others, in all ranks and conditions, so instinct and replete with spirit, that we chiefly feel, when they have come in our way, that a spirit has passed by,—that a new life has been brought in contact with our own life.
Of these was Miss Dudley. But because, ever since the day I write of, I have loved to think of her, and because I know that, when I rejoin her, I shall leave some behind me who will still love, and have a right to hear of her, I will indulge myself in saying something more. That something shall be what I said to myself then, as I promenaded to and fro,—that bodily exercise was one of my safety-valves in those times,—in the endeavor to work off so much of my superfluous animation as to be in a state to sit down and paint again; and thus I spake: "I must have had before me an uncommonly fine specimen of a class whose existence I have conjectured before, but by no means including all the wealthy, who wear their purple and fine linen both gracefully and graciously, fare not more sumptuously than temperately every day, and do a great deal, not only directly by their ready beneficence, but indirectly by their sunny benignity, to light up the gloomy world of Lazarus." And though I was but a budding theorist in human nature, and often made mistakes before and afterwards, I never found myself mistaken there.
When Julia came in an hour after, she said to me, as I looked up from my roses and my rose-colored revery, "Katy, you look like an inspired sibyl! What has come over you?"
"Miss Dudley," said I.
"What! has she really—been here? How I wish I had seen her! What did she wear?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you. Wait, I will try. O yes! it comes back to me;—a silver-gray shot poplin, or silk, made full, but, I think, quite plain; a large red Cashmere shawl, rather more crimson and less scarlet than they usually are,—it glowed gloriously out from the gray;—then some kind of a thin, gray bonnet, with large gray and crimson crape and velvet flowers in it,—hibiscus or passion-flowers, or really I don't know what,—that seemed just to marry the dress to the shawl."
"Pretty well for you, Katy! Rather heavy for the season; but I suppose she was afraid of this east wind. You liked her, then?"
"Very much."
"So does the Doctor, always. Some people call her proud; but he says, that is only their way of expressing their view of the fact that she has a good deal to make her so, and more than enough to make them so, if they had it instead of her."
"I dare say. I should not think she was a person to take liberties with; but she was very sweet and kind to me."
"You are not a person to take liberties with anybody, nor to have any taken with you; and so I dare say she recognized a kindred spirit."
"Now, Julia, by your paying me such a compliment as that, I am certain you must want to have your bonnet taken up stairs for you; and so you shall."
"Ah! now I shall always know what string to pull when I wish to put a skilful attendant in motion. Phil would take my bonnet up stairs for me in a moment, if I bade him; but when I went up myself after it, it would be sure to stare me in the face, topsy-turvy, dumped bolt upright on the feather."
