University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.

—Castle of Indolence.

—Ibid.

“Brother Joseph, I hope you are quite well,”
said a tall, dark young woman, coming forward with
slow dignity, and presenting her hand, with a calm,
placid smile, asking, as she did so, whether he had
gained anything in mental stature since she last
had the happiness of seeing him.

By something in the arrangement of her hair, and
a peculiar perpendicularity, Mr. Wurth recognized
her at once as the person he had seen while sitting
on the block at the gate. Her manner and words
manifested neither surprise nor joy, nor did she
seem to feel any interest in the history of her
brother, aside from what she termed that of his
mental growth.

“Nancy, child,” she said, but without looking at
the girl, who had resumed her place by the cradle,
“don't rock the baby: it will unsettle his mind,
and destroy all his stability of character.”

“Where did you learn that philosophy, Eunice?”
asked Joseph, biting the smile off his lip.

“Nature,” she said, “is my only guide—my only
book. I have put aside all reading for the last
year, so imbued is everything with false notions;
and I may safely say I have grown more, mentally,
in that time than during any of the previous five
years of my life. Self-reliance, self-education, are
what we need. But our highest interest, Joseph, is
not understood, and the physical man, and the
physical woman, too, (here she looked hard at the
fat Mrs. Yancey), are fed to the neglect and starvation
of the soul; for the mind and the soul are,
sympathetically, one.”

“Are they?” asked Joseph, quietly smiling.

“We must endure the burden of existence, while
we are here,” continued the sister; “but this is a
troublesome and wicked world, at best, and we
should all be thankful that we are so soon to be
taken away.”

“Really, you have had a mental advancement!”
and the brother smiled, as before.

Disdaining the sarcasm, if she noticed it, the
woman continued her discourse, observing that she

had formed a scheme, mentally, of which she had
not hitherto spoken, inasmuch as her higher aims
met no correspondence; but that she was assured
of its feasibility, so soon as her mental attainment
would justify attempting it. Her soul's energies, all
her mental powers, were concentred on the subject
of the Indians. The rude, unsophisticated children
of nature, she felt, would be as wax in her hands;
but with civilized men, warped and dwarfed as their
souls were, by false education, she wished to have
nothing to do. In her brother she reposed some
trust, and she hoped he would eschew the vanities
of the world, and imitate her example, living
thenceforward, for the mind. She concluded with
an intimation that her self-communing had been
interrupted by his coming, and that she must resume
it for an hour, after which she would engage
in sewing for the greater part of the night, as she
was busily engaged in making unbleached cotton
cloth into shirts for the Indians.

“I wonder how she got her cotton cloth,” said
Mr. Joseph Arnold, when she was gone. “I never
knew her to earn money, and no one would be
simple enough to give her any.”

“Why, Josey, I can tell you,” answered Mrs.
Yancey, who had been edifying the stranger with
the history of her courtship and marriage: “it was
a piece William got for me to make up for the

children; but Euny wanted it so bad for the Ingens,
that I let her take it; and I am half sorry,” she
added, “for we have lost one of our best horses,
and our taxes were heavy this year, and it seems
hard to get another piece.” And Mrs. Yancey
rocked to and fro, laughing the while with an
expression of grim and unsatisfying humor.

“You were foolish, Nancy,” said Joseph; “and
the horse—it's a pity you should have lost him.”

“He died suddenly,” continued Mrs. Yancey,
“and William thought it was from being overheated.
Two little boys about the size of Johnny were
here from town, along in August, and one dreadful
warm day they made so much noise with their
playing, I told them to go out and catch Tom, and
ride, for their amusement; and all three mounted
him at once, and made him run across the meadow,
and up and down a steep hill, in the sun, till
they found he was giving out. That night he
would not eat, and in the morning the poor creatur
was dead.”

The children fell asleep about the floor, for Mrs.
Yancey liked to see children have their comfort,
and never made a point of sending them to bed, or
calling them up, before they were ready. Two or
three cats were perched upon the table, and two or
three more stretched at length on the hearth, enjoying
the warmth of the fire.

One leg was off the table, and half the chairs
were broken; the stove was cracked, and the door
hanging by one hinge; the floor was dusty, and
spotted with grease, and everything had a neglected
and slovenly air.

“Mother, there is a nice fire in the other room.
Wont you go in there, and the gentleman, and
uncle Josey?” asked little Nancy, appearing at the
door.

This room was no less shabby than the other—
the carpet faded and soiled, the paper torn from
the walls, the looking-glass broken, and every
thing else in conditions to match. There were no
cats on the table, but instead, some pretty plants,
one of which grew in a brown earthen pot—the
rest in broken tea-pots, sugar-bowls, and the like.

“Whew!” said Joseph, half whistling, as he saw
the plants, “how do you chance to have these? I'd
suppose you would think them too much trouble.
How many varieties of cacti have you here?”

“Mrs. Yancey, who did not understand what
was meant, said they belonged to Nancy; he must
ask her. “She had a great many,” she added,
laughing, “but she went to see her cousin Reuben,
last winter, and I forgot to bring them in, and
they all froze.”

“Nanny,” called Joseph, “where did you get
all those cacti?”

“I bought them in town,” answered the girl,
appearing at the kitchen door, her sleeves turned
back from the wrist, and as if she were very busy.

Mr. Arnold doubtless expected her to manifest
some astonishment at his plural termination of the
name; and, though she did not, he repeated it, as
if in admiration, saying, “Beautiful cacti!”

There were some peculiar forms of expression,
for which he had an especial fondness. He liked
to hear himself making use of them.

“Did you have any cholera, Josey, about where
you were last summer?” asked Mrs. Yancey, in the
same good-natured tone in which she said everything.

“Not a bit,” was the reply. “I hoped it would
come after the shooting season; we wanted something
to enliven us.”

“What a curious disposition you have,” said the
simple-minded woman; “most young men would
not want the cholera to come near them.”

“Yes, I often wished the cholera would come
along,” repeated the brother; “our caboose was dull
enough when we had killed all the game within
fifty miles of us. Just think what a caboose among
red men would be, and in so vast a wilderness.”

Mr. Joseph Arnold invariably said “red men,”
instead of Indians.

“What did you say was dull, Josey?”

“I don't know,” said Joseph. “What were we
talking about?”

“Why, about Indians and the cholera.”

“Oh!” as if suddenly recollecting, “I was saying
how dull our caboose was among red men, after we
had killed all the game.”

“What country were you in, Josey?'

“Just over here in Oregon,” he replted, as though
the distance were as nothing to him.

“That is a good long way off. I expect you
have seen a hundred Indians there in a day, sometimes,”
and so she rambled, in her easy way, from
one thing to another. She had no great hopes or
fears, disappointments or sorrows, to serve as the
subjects for her conversation.

She had indeed been a little slow in getting her
wool picked, and William had the sheep sheared
early too, but she had visited some, and received
a good many visitors. One might as well live
while they did live, she thought. Nanny was at
school part of the time, and Euny thought more
of her mind than her body, and so the summer was
gone before she knew it. But after all, the long
winter evenings would be a nice time to pick wool,
and if the boys hadn't their new trowsers they
couldn't wear them out. And she concluded with
the comfortable reflection that William always got
things in some way.

And, to verify her assurance, Mr. William Yancey
came in while she spoke—his market-basket filled
with various packages, such as grocers provide
and housewives need. He looked worn down with
excessive and protracted toil, but spoke in a cheerful
tone, and seemed neither discouraged nor dissatisfied.

In spite of her want of management, Nancy was
to him the best woman in the world; and now, as
she offered him the rocking-chair, he declined with
all the kindly gallantry which had characterized
him as her lover.

“That is the way he always humors me, Josey,”
said Mrs. Yancey. “The other day I wanted to
make some soap; it should have been made in
April, to be sure, but in April I didn't feel like
boiling soap, and William wanted to get my leeching-tub
and kettle and all my fixings in the back
yard, out of sight, because they didn't look pretty;
but I told him I must have them in front, so, as I
boiled my soap, I could see what was going on;
but it's a pity I had it there, for the wind blew
the blaze against a young tree and withered it to
death; it was a tree that William thought a great
deal of, too.”

Cheerfully, almost gaily, talked the diminutive
and amiable personage whom his wife called William,
joining, as often as he could, in the conversation.

There was a beautiful Eden just before him.
Like the mariner of whom the poet sings:
and though he came never the nigher, he did not
abandon that blest faith in time and energy which
is all that redeenis us from despair. Beautiful gift
of our divine Father, how many souls are stayed up
from anguish by its strength!

Presently after the coming home of the basket,
Nanny appeared and arranged the tea-things, blushing
all the while with a sweet and captivating
timidity. She was fair and slight, with large melancholy
eyes, a low musical voice, and a smile
irresistibly winning. Duty in her hands became a
pleasure, and young as she was, all the household
care and a great part of its toil devolved on her.
It was so natural and easy for Nanny to do this
and that, her mother said, she herself seemed only
in the way when she tried to assist; and Eunice
had wisely concluded, in her higher mental development,
that some persons had no mind at all,
and labor was their only legitimate province.

Snow-white bread and golden butter, tarts, and
cream, and many other delicacies, and substantial
viands—all things on the table, indeed, were spread
with tasteful care, and as the delicious fragrance of

the supper filled the room, Nanny skipped away to
call her aunt Eunice.

When that lady came she brought her sewing,
at which she continued to stitch all the while, only
now and then sipping tea, or pausing to remark on
the absurdity of eating at night, and its injurious
effect on the mind.

This world and all its interests—railroads and
telegraphs, bread and pie making, poems and histories,
loves and marriages, no matter what was said
of all or any of them, “What are they to me? or
how will such conversation avail the growth of my
intellectual organization?” was her only reply.

“Faith without works, is dead,” said Joseph
abruptly, as he balanced a slice of white bread on
his fore finger.

“We all know that,” said Mrs. Yancey.

“Yes, but what does he mean by it?” said Eunice,
betraying a momentary feeling in the speculations
of a worldling.

“Who made the warm fire? who prepared this
nice supper?” asked Joseph, and repeated again
“Faith without works is dead.”

Mrs. Yancey laughed, Eunice frowned, and Nanny
smiled gratefully, assured of a sympathy and
friendliness between herself and her uncle Joseph.