University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

Burns.

Byron.

Time, that great alchemist in whose alembic all
things are changed—debased, or purified, or stript
of glosses, shadows or deceits—has passed onward
through some fifteen years. The excellent Mrs.
Goodell is still the housekeeper of Mr. Frederick
Wurth, whose good-natured face has grown red
and round, while his locks have become gray and
thin, and who remains in that listless and rosy indolence
which knows no discontent with action or
opinion, or with what to others are the most vexing
caprices of the world. The housekeeper is old

now, but she has lost none of her pleasant cheerfulness,
her tidiness, or activity, and on holidays
she makes a noticeable figure about her dominion,
in the ancient fashioned black silk dress which her
young mistress, Catharine, gave her on her wedding
day.

Mrs. Eunice became, years ago, the centre of a
circle, in which theologies, philosophies, systems
of economy and polity, and half the institutions
built up by the race in a hundred generations,
were demolished with as much ease as Athos, by
that old conqueror who found the mountain in
his way, was cast into the sea. Her mind had
been cultivated until men were seen by her in all
their natural grossness and deformity, and she
made terrible resolves against the continuance of
their tyrannous monopolies, in the council, and the
field, and all varieties of out door affairs. She had
been chairwoman of some scores of committees
formed to demand of governors and presidents the
liberation and pardon of the most depraved wretches
sentenced to penitentiaries or to scaffolds; she was
perfectly convinced that the “philosopher of Jerusalem”
was far behind the editor of the Transcendent
Transcendentalist, and that the Twelve
whom he commissioned to teach his doctrine were
less advanced than the standing committee of the
Society of Unappreciated Women, of which she

herself was a vice president. Observing that the
hens yielded undue deference to the roosters, every
one of whom seemed to think himself really entitled
to be a cock of the walk, she said it was no
wonder, with the examples they had before them
of men's hateful assumptions, and she organized a
powerful society for the assertion, vindication and
preservation of Biddies' Rights; but though it passed
alarming sets of resolutions, the society's labors
availed but little, so obstinate is mistaken nature,
and so difficult is it to put down abuses that have
been long quietly submitted to. Annoyed at the
difficulties in the way of a reconstruction of society,
but confident that the luminous theories she had
propounded in her communications to The Hour
Glass and The Old Roman, and in her speeches, in
assemblies of the disenthralled, would bear rich
fruit hereafter, she went abroad, to confer with the
great lights of Progression in other countries, and
died—in wet blankets, and hooped about with
galvanic rings—of rage and wonder that she was
met by no processions, and that Jane Eyre, to
whom she had written a letter, knowing her to be
happily married, had not sent a carriage to the
landing to invite her to a conference of a few
months on the best means of promoting the amelioration
of the condition of the sex.

Miss Crum survives these additional fifteen years

without appearance of much decay. She never
married the doctor, or any body else, but has a
nice room of her own, in the house of a younger
brother, furnished, she says, with all a heart can
desire. The ingrain carpet is faded, and it is nicely
darned; her five windsor chairs are painted red,
and Mrs. Goodell thinks they look almost as good
as mahogany; her rocker, which belonged to her
great aunt, has a cushion covered with handsome
chintz, and a tidy of white cotton, knit with her
own hands; of what material her bureau was made
it might be difficult to tell, but it shines as clearly
as the most freshly polished rosewood; by her high
and narrow bed, is a small cherry stand, on which
the brightest of candlesticks is always in its place,
and from it she sometimes takes a cup of tea, if
she really thinks it will do her good; and a footstool,
in the covering of which is wrought a white
dog with black eyes and a red nose—with one or
two other and unimportant articles—completes her
household furniture. Her two little curls look
much as they looked twenty years ago, and she has
flounces yet for fit occasions. And she is still
industrious—making, mending, keeping the house
in order, and taking care of the children, whom
she thinks she will make her heirs if they grow up
to please her, and are likely to do well in the world.
Her chief delight is in an ancient canary bird that
never sings. Its plumage is faded, and it picks the
feathers from neck and wings till only its devoted
mistress could tell whether it were bird or beast.
Nevertheless, it seems to her a “thing of beauty,”
and by the hour she talks to it as though it were
a reasoning creature, feeding and scolding it, and
giving it medicine, and sometimes whipping it
with her knitting-needle. By what chance it
became her property I never knew, but it must be
regarded as a fortunate event for both. “Nothing
in its life became it like the leaving it,” any one
would say over its dead body, save her whose
loving hands so long have fed it. She very rarely
goes abroad, unless some gossip more than commonly
fresh and pleasant is added to her secrets, or
some private grief leads her to consultation with
the ever faithful Goodell, with whom she never
doubts of sympathy.

“Oh, dear! Goodell,” she exclaimed, when last
she visited her excellent friend, “I've met with the
dreadfulest misfortune! never a man comes into
my house without committing some despicable
act!”

“Why, Miss Crum! what misfortune has happened?”

“Don't you think,” she explained, “I had a
housefly, which I had taken great pains to keep
alive all the winter, and the other day I sent for

the doctor to prescribe for my pet bird, and the
ugly thing must have carried it away in his hat,
for I have never seen it since.”

“Why, Miss Crum! That was a misfortune.
But we all have our troubles. A gentleman yesterday
happened to put his cane on my beautiful
black silk dress, and made a rent in it. But he
did not notice the accident. I suppose he did not
know anything about it.”

And the two verd-antiques sat down to a cup of
tea, or rather to many cups, and in the grounds of
each successive one Mrs. Goodell read the fortunes
of herself and friend.

Both were speedily to get money, and, somewhere,
either a black-eyed man or a blue-eyed
man was thinking of one of them, and must needs
cross water to come to her.

But as I have said, neither of these handsome
young fellows had appeared. The water was
probably very wide, but this is a point difficult
ever to ascertain precisely through a tea-cup.

Joseph Arnold has been long years abroad. He
has studied the wonders of nature and of art. He
has measured himself with other men, and his
confidence in himself has been increased. He has
done what his hand found to do; he has learned to
love mankind, and in loving, he has learned to
pray and to hope; and he has learned that we are

of little account without charity. More than forty
years he has lived in the world, and more than
thirty of them were wasted in vain and idle schemes
for the reformation of society—himself needing
most to be reformed—and in cogitating wonders
he would do, with a fair chance, and if so many
fools were not in his way. In the resolution at last
came the opportunity, and he discovered that no
greater obstacle than himself ever impeded his
advancement in usefulness and reputation. He
says often now, with confidence that it is true, that
energy, with faith, may retrieve the darkest past
that can cast a shadow on the present or the future.
This he said long ago, in conversation with Nathan
Warburton, but he failed then. Some seeds, chance-sown,
however, have sprung up at last, and borne
fruit.

“Really, uncle Josey,” said Mrs. Yancey, a day
or two after the coming home of her brother, “how
very handsome you are grown!”

“It is a beautiful provision,” he answered, “that
to those who love us we can never grow old nor
plain.”

“Don't miss a single house,” called Mrs. Yancey
to the youngest child, who was just leaving home
on the important mission of telling all the neighbors
that uncle Joseph was come, and would
preach in the old stone church to-morrow.

“Shall I tell the woman who wears the black
clothes?” asked the child, pausing, and swinging
on the gate.

“It's curious what made you ever be a preacher,
Josey,” said Mrs. Yancey.

“An eloquent discourse I once heard from a
very strange man; a bunch of flowers and a cup
of water brought to my sick bed by that poor little
black girl who lived with you so many years ago,
when she was sick herself, and dying—these, with
the beautiful good life of little Nanny, were, I believe,
the chief human influences.”

“I say, mother, shall I tell the woman that
wears the black dress?” asked the boy again; and
as he swung to and fro, the gate, on one hinge previously,
gave way, and he fell to the ground.

“Get right up and run along,” said the mother;
“it didn't hurt you much.” But, with his dress
doubly disordered and soiled, and a spot, blue and
purple, on his forehead, the child came stumbling
toward the house.

An old lean cow, and two or three starved pigs,
walked over the prostrate gate into the yard; another
child was sent to call William to put it up,
and the hurt idler was told to bathe the bruised
places in cold water. But Mrs. Yancey did not let
either accident disturb her.

“Get the basin of water for him, Nancy,” said

the brother, imperiously, as though it were a thing
quite impossible for the child to do, “and hush
his crying, with some little show of motherly kindness.”
As he spoke he arose, with a solemn air,
and set out as his own herald, walking abstractedly
over the fallen gate.

It was summer time, and the sunset of no love-lier
afternoon had ever brightened the world. The
air was sweet with perfume from the hay-fields, and
the mowers, with scythes on their shoulders, were
going homeward, while the waiting watch-dog
“bayed deep-mouthed welcome.” The farmers sat
at their open doors, some with the last newspaper,
and some with babies on their knees, while within
might be seen the white table-cloth and the busy
housewife giving promise of pleasant consummations
of the duties of the day.

To Arnold the world had never looked so beautiful,
and never had he been so entirely happy, as
when, one after another, old and familiar voices
welcomed him home. As he saw the glory of the
sunset, and drank in the sweet air, and thought
of those cordial greetings, he repeated to himself
fragments of grateful songs that echoed to the
sweetest music through his soul.

The mist of purple fire faded in the west, and
the green reaches of trees stood against the clear
sky, before the round was completed, for he was

often detained to see how one child had grown, and
hear of the marriage of another, and how another
had died far away in adventurous quests of fortune
or distinction.

By the cross-roads stood the old stone meeting-house,
looking as it had looked in the unforgotten
years of his own boyhood. Where the turf had
been smooth when he went away, there were
graves, with long grass wrapping them warmly
about, and others upon which no sod had yet
grown, but the narrow paths wound among them,
and the trees bent over them, as he had seen
the paths wind and the trees wave over graves
on which he had looked with hurried awe in
the twilights of the days when he was a child.
The birds now and then fluttered uneasily, as he
passed beneath the branches in which they rested,
and the wind rustled the leaves with a low and
melancholy sound, which seemed more mournful
than any such sound had ever been to him.

Suddenly over the silence there came a low, soft
song, pleasantly interrupting his reveries. “There
is no habitation that I know of hereabouts,” he
said, and listening, he was at first tempted to
believe it “some fairy creature of the elements;”
but presently he felt assured the tenderness and the
touching pathos belonged to humanity, and doubly
assured when he discovered, on the opposite side

of the graveyard, the glimmering of a light. As
he approached, he saw that it proceeded from a
cottage, hidden among the trees, a little removed
from the ruins of a cabin long ago in decay. A
pretty cottage it seemed, but so low, and so buried
among the trees and shrubbery, that he had failed
of seeing it, except for the song. Leaning against
the trunk of a walnut tree, he listened till the last
echo was still. There was something in the voice
that went directly to his heart, and more than once
he lifted his eyes in the hope of seeing the singer,
but the door was closed, and though the window
was open, the white curtain was dropped over it,
and with impatient curiosity he was compelled
to await the answer of his summons for admis-sion.

The lamp was shaded within, so that he saw
imperfectly when the door unclosed and its ray
fell on a woman, whose smile was sad as her song.
His errand required but a moment, but he saw
that the person he addressed was not youthful;
that her face was very pale; that her hair was of
the goldenest auburn, and her dress of the deepest
mourning.

Her manner was quiet, and her voice musically
low; but, though such manner and voice must
needs be civil, he could not fail of perceiving that
his apology for intruding on a stranger—that he

thought himself acquainted with all the people of
the neighborhood—and his announcement of a
sermon the next day, were received with perfect
and undissembled indifference.