 | CHAPTER III. Pictures of country life |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
The breakfast was a pleasant one. George had been working
in the garden for two hours, he said, and should have half
the seeds in the ground before dinner.
Eliza was greatly elated, and saw the fulfillment of her best
hopes speedily coming. She could not praise him enough, and
in accepting what seemed to her a wonderful performance,
as a matter of course.
“Don't you think, Casper,” she said, at last, determined to
force some praise from him, “that George is a pretty good boy,
after all?”
She had better not have asked it. He had simply done his
duty, Casper said, but the motive seemed to him questionable.
It was partly the result of shame, and partly an effort to buy
off punishment. As soon as George betrayed indications of any
thorough reformation, he should be glad to acknowledge it.
Pretty industriously for half a day George kept at work, and
with the assistance of Eliza, part of the seeds were got into the
ground, and when at noon he related his achievement to Casper,
she made no mention of the hand she had lent.
“Now you are to go to school,” she said, when the dinner
was past; but George replied that he was too tired, and could
not learn if he did. With much coaxing and many promises, he
was induced to set out at last: but one excuse for loitering
offered itself after another, and finally at the pond he stopped,
and having pelted the geese for an hour, he stretched himself in
the shavings before the cooper's shop, and slept away another
hour; another was passed in shaving hoop-poles and piling
staves, and then the school was dismissed, and joining the other
boys the truant went home.
With a good deal of coaxing, and hiring, and scolding, and
some wholesome fear of the master, the garden was at last
planted; but Eliza, though she tried to conceal it, had done
most of the work, and all the while George had only gone to
school when he chose.
One day he told his sister he knew a little boy who had made
dollars the last year by selling eggs, and if she would buy a
hen and a dozen chickens, oh he would be the best boy in the
world, and do everything she desired. He knew where he
could get them if he only had two dollars.
Of course Eliza gave the money. She would work a little
later every night and soon earn it, and of course she told Casper
about it, and insisted that he should see in it great speculative
ability on the part of George, but he could only see that
she had thrown away her money, and said so, which displeased
her, of course, and there was an interval of estrangement.
The seeds were soon mostly picked out of the garden beds,
and the beds scratched level with the paths, and then the
mother hen came daily home from travelling through the weeds,
or from some neighbor's garden with a broken legged chicken,
or with a diminished number, till finally she drowned herself in
trying to rescue the last one from a pail of milk, and so ended
the garden and the chicken speculation.
George now professed himself inclined to return to school.
He believed he would be a teacher after all—Eliza concluded
his strongest bent was towards learning, and he went to
school.
But his zeal soon abated—he liked work better—the cooper
would pay him four shillings per day; and packing his books
he went to work with the cooper. Eliza was telling the master
how well he was doing, when he came in with one hand
bandaged and bleeding—he had cut off two fingers!
In the course of a few months the wound was healed, but he
should never be able to work, and one day, about the middle
of the afternoon, found him in school. He soon told his sister
would be the very making of him to send him to the academy
three miles away. George would walk the distance, the exercise
would be beneficial, and she must manage some way, she
hardly knew how, to pay for it. His old hat would not do to
wear to the academy, he must have a new one—his old coat
would not do, the tailor would furnish one, and Eliza would
sew for it. At last arrangements were concluded, and he went
to the academy. He soon discovered the walk to be too long,
it so overcame him that he could not study. He knew of a
horse he could hire to ride for a trifle, and the horse was
hired and George rode to school, and Eliza worked later into
the night and earlier in the morning. She had never been so
hopeful—he would be able to teach in the academy after
a while, and all her troubles past. If he had the time for
books, he said, that was consumed in riding to and from school,
and then if he could have a room and study as the other boys
did, of evenings, he should get on twice as well. So the horse
was given up. It took almost as much to pay for riding as to
hire board, Eliza said, and George was provided with board
and lodging at the academy, and patiently she toiled on.
The days were the happiest now she had ever seen, Casper
was all kindness when the boy was out of his sight; they
would be so happy, and her toils would all be over before long
—she was telling him so, and he listening in half credulous
delight, for what lover has not some faith in his mistress, when
George, books and bundles and all, strode into the house, and a
great chilly, black shadow came in with him.
He did not like the boys at the academy, nor the teachers,
nor anything. He could not eat at his boarding-house—he was
believed he was sick, and feared he would die; but the master
neither believed the one nor feared the other, and so the old
estrangement came again.
When the youth professed himself well he went to work
with the tailor, but did not like it, and so was home for awhile;
then he went with the blacksmith, but that was too hard: then
he was home for awhile, helping her, Eliza said; then he went
into the store, grew tired and was home for awhile, helping
Eliza again.
She was discouraged now, and a good deal in debt. She
was growing old faster than years made her grow old; the
rose died in her cheek, and her eyes lost their lustre—even the
master did not praise them any more, and this made her sadder
than all.
Suddenly George formed the resolution of going to school
again. He believed “old Casper” was a pretty good teacher,
after all.
Eliza began to think she would allow Casper the right to
control him now, by becoming his wife, but he did not urge the
marriage any more. She was almost resolved to approach the
matter herself. George should be kept at school whether he
would or not—she would tell Casper so that night. She arose
with the resolution and looked towards the school-house, and
there came George, running crookedly home, his eyes blind
with tears, and holding up the crippled hand as if it had been
mutilated anew.
“The master had struck his poor hand with a rule,” he said,
“and all for laughing because he saw him kiss Sophie Swain,
and not because he did anything wrong.”
There was a quick revulsion of sympathies and resolves on
the part of Eliza. Sophie Swain was a pretty girl of sixteen,
the daughter of the richest man in town. She saw plainly
enough now why Casper said nothing about marriage, and she
thought it was too bad that he should take to abusing her
poor brother as well as herself on account of his charmer. As
long as she lived, George should not be maltreated in that way,
that he shouldn't.
All this and more, Eliza resolved she would say, and all this
and more she did say in tones of no measured mildness. Of
course she did not care how often the master kissed Sophie
Swain, nor how soon he married her, if he wanted to. She was
sure she would not stand in his way if she could, and she knew
very well that she could not; he had ceased to feel even the commonest
interest in her. But one thing she would and could do
—she would prevent him from beating poor George to death.
When she had exhausted all epithets of reproach and denunciation,
and was still from sheer prostration, the master replied
in his perfectly quiet and self-possessed way, which to Eliza
was especially provoking, that it was true as George said. He
had kissed Sophie Swain, that he could not be blind to her
beauty, and she seemed not averse to his acknowledgment of
it. He had made no love to her, and did not propose to if
Eliza would grant him the happiness of continuing his suit, or
rather if she would be reasonable and terminate it in marriage,
this he professed himself willing, nay, anxious to conclude at
once. Not only his heart but his judgment, he said, sanctioned
the proposal he had made her.
“It was true he had struck George,” he said, “but not injuriously,
and Eliza should have sense enough to know it.
It was the first time he ever used the liberty herself
bestowed on him, and he insisted that then and there their relations
should be definitely settled.”
In all he said he neither elevated nor lowered his voice in
the least. If he saw Eliza's tears, he did not seem to see
them, nor did he once touch her hand, nor move one inch towards
her, but having concluded what he had to say awaited
her answer, snapping the blade of his pen-knife backward and
forward, and not even lifting his eyes towards her.
This conduct was certainly badly calculated to make a passionate
woman reasonable.
Checking her tears in very anger, she told him he was a
strange lover. He replied that he had a strange mistress, and
besides she must remember he was not a passionate boy. Eliza
begged his pardon. She had, for the moment, forgotten that
only his judgment sanctioned his proposal to her, and that his
heart was averse to it—interested, doubtless, in a much younger
and handsomer woman.
“If you will make gratutious interpretations, you must
make them,” said the master, his lip curling slightly; “but I
have no replies for them.”
Eliza insisted that she had interpreted his words legitimately,
and that for her part she saw no reason why he should drag
his judgment in at all. To which he replied most provokingly,
that he feared his judgment had been dragged forward less
than it should have been!
There were some more words, as angry and unreasonable as
they could be on one side, and most severely reasonable and
concise on the other. When they parted, it was with the declaration,
use his judgment as he liked, for the future, it was nothing to
her. And when he asked if he might not hope for leniency,
she said, “No!”
| CHAPTER III. Pictures of country life | |