University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.

Gray

When Arnold that morning entered the little
cottage which had been the home of Hagar, she
was not there. In his search he was soon startled
by signs of her removal, but there was no clue to
the direction in which she was gone. Whoever
had assisted her, thus suddenly to turn aside from
affection, and rest, was perhaps heir to the scanty
property she had left, and would keep her secret.
Her lover paused a moment by the still scarcely
extinguished fire on the hearth, and on the mantle
saw a small pacquet inscribed with his name. He
broke the seal, and for an hour—insensible of the
increasing cold—forgetful of those who waited his

appearance at the church—he read the secret and
painful history in which was involved not Hagar's
fate alone, but the disappointment of the dearest
and fondest hopes he himself had ever dared to
cherish. The manuscript was as follows:

The past, my poor friend, presses me from you.
I cannot be your wife, and my heart aches, not so
much for myself, as for you, while I write this
necessary and irrevocable decision. If I might have
done so, I would gladly have gone hence with the
dark history I am about to unfold, locked in my
own brain, that I might have lived in your memory,
a vision of the night and the stars, that faded in the
morning.

As I begin my task my memories go back
beyond that portion of my life in which my destiny
was woven, and the tearful leisure of the few
nights before me, until we shall at last have parted,
I will devote to a record of the recollections which
are apt to hover about my heart. If they seem
trifling to you, it will not be while I myself am
thought of with any tenderness—and after that
time how you regard the reminiscences of my unfolding
and decaying will be of no more moment
to me than to yourself.

It is many years ago that I was a little innocent
child, gentle and loving; but my parents were

poor, and the toils of their hard and rough journey
made them negligent of me. I do not remember
of ever being kissed in childhood, even by my
mother. I do not think I ever was. I remember
seeing her always at work, and the patient and
weary look that she wore. My father, I felt always,
was not a good man. He often spoke harshly to
my mother, when at home, but he was not much
there, and I know that I was gladdest when he was
gone. I could not bear to see the tears in my
mother's eyes, and have her tell me to go out and
play, and that I would never be so happy again,
when I wonderingly stood about her, anxious to
soothe her sorrow, and yet half fearful of approaching
her. It was a sad pastime, my solitary playing,
for I had no sisters, and never but one brother,
and he many years younger than I. Sometimes I
sat in the shade, and tied grapes into a long chain,
wondering whether I could ever make enough to
reach round the world; and sometimes I climbed to
a small broken glass, which hung so high that
neither my father nor my mother could see within
it, I thought. It was a feat, I remember, difficult
to accomplish, and only by the aid of a little chair,
set on the table, could I, even by standing on tip-toe,
see myself in it at all. The arrangement of
my hair, which I had been told was golden and
pretty, was one of my favorite occupations, notwithstanding
that my mother often told me I had
better be learning to sweep. I knew it not at the
time, but I know now that we must have been
very poor. Our few articles of furniture were of a
ruder fashion than I have ever seen since. I never
went from home, except once, when I remember
going with my mother to visit a sick relation of
hers. On that occasion she curled my hair, and I
wore a new dress, made of an old one, which in
some remote time had been my grandmother's. I
had no bonnet, no shoes—but the first I had never
had, and the last I supposed were not to be worn
in the summer. We walked across the fields a
long way, and I grew weary (though I said I was
not) before we reached the house. At last we came
in view of it, or rather in view of the hollow in
which it stood. “We are almost there,” my mother
said; and, as she seated me on the topmost
fence-rail, and picked the briers from my feet, I
must have cried, so hot and tired was I, but for
the novelty before me. They were rich people I
was to see, my mother said, and I must behave
very nicely. There yet lay between us and the
house a field, that seemed to me interminable—a
part in stubble and a part newly plowed. The
heat twinkled against the ground, and, in the shade
of a distant tree the plow-boy was resting his
team. When we approached, he renewed his labor,
and I walked in the new furrow, close behind him,
to the end. How cool and moist the ground felt
to my feet. He kindly assisted us over the fence,
lifting me in his arms, and I remember he called
me a pretty girl, and gave me some berries. This
I recalled in after years, for we became friends, and
when I was grown he praised me with the same
words, and would have made me his wife.

With what interest I looked at everything! I
had never seen any rich people before. The principal
house was of brick, and seemed to have stood
a great while, for the green moss had crept all over
the walls, and the wood-work was fallen partly to
decay. This part of the building was low, and
long, and narrow; the chimneys were square and
large; and at the windows hung close shutters,
which were of a black ashen color, the natural hue
of the wood so long exposed to the storm and sunshine,
and they were so heavy as to have lost their
shape, and taken that of diamonds, so that they
could not be shut. The earth appeared to have
grown about the house, for on opening the door
there was a descent of one or two steps to the level
floor, and the room had such an air, smelling of
damp and mold, as might have greeted us on entering
a cellar.

The furniture was homely enough. An old-fashioned
clock, which reached from the floor to

the ceiling, a bureau and table, both covered with
white diaper linen, some unpainted chairs, with
bottoms of fine split wood, I think were the chief
articles. The wall had never been plastered, but it
was nicely whitewashed, and the floor was without
a carpet. On the hearth stood an old washing-tub,
filled with earth, in which grew a thrifty orange
tree, tall as I was then, and I thought it the crowning
attraction of the place. A cucumber vine grew
by its side, trained over its boughs, and with the
young fruit dropping in curious little bottles, to
produce unnatural forms—a device, as I learned
afterward, of John Dale, the plow-boy, as was also
a curiously made bird-house, on the top of a pole
planted before the door, and higher than the dreary
mansion itself.

I had ample time for observation, as I was left
alone while my mother went to the adjoining room
to see our sick relation, Aunt Elizabeth, as I was
taught to call her. I could hear the voices of poeple
talking, but not distinctly, and I longed very
much to examine the young eucumbers; but I
feared to leave my seat, and could only amuse myself
by looking at the clock, and listening to the
dozen round-backed guinea-fowls, that kept up an
incessant noise. At last, with my cheek resting on
one arm, I fell asleep, and did not wake till a tap
on the window-pane, by which I sat, aroused me,

and a strange voice said, “Is this the little girl that
helped me plow?”

I was awake in an instant. The face was all
radiant with joy, and I caught something of the
spirit that illumined it.

No introduction was necessary; the window did
not divide us long; I was shown not only the bottled
cucumbers and the bird-house, but the various
kinds of fowls, and beautiful rabbits, beside many
other things that were curious, because new. The
rear portion of the house was of logs, with a chimney
of stones on the outside, against which some
baskets, filled with straw, were hung for hens'
nests. These I visited with my new acquaintance,
and had my apron filled with eggs, which were
carried in for dinner.

The kitchen was sunken farther in the ground
than the other portion of the house, so that the
rain-water which had fallen a day or two previously
stood over the floor to the depth of an
inch or more, and the fire was kept, therefore, and
the meals prepared, in a shed, screened from the
sun by branches of adjacent trees.

Within this summer kitchen, Squire Davids, my
aunt's husband, when I first saw him, sat mending
a pair of old shoes, and tending potatoes that were
roasting in the hot ashes, covered over with coals.
He was a large man, with florid complexion, and

almost entirely bald, having only a thin fringe of
white hair falling on his neck and forehead, while
the rest of his head was bare, and seemed hard and
polished, like a shining stone.

He had been once or twice in the Legislature, in
consequence of his early settlement in the country,
I believe, and he was much esteemed for wisdom,
not only by his wife, who was in the habit of saying
that he had a wonderful gift of argument, but
by all the people of the neighborhood.

He was by every body regarded as a good man,
without a question as to his particular theology;
he was sent for to visit the sick, to talk with and
pray for them, and, if need were, to write their
wills; and he knew something of the human system,
and the diseases to which it is subject, and so
compounded excellent medicines of roots and herbs,
which some, whom they had benefited, thought
infallible for any manner of complaint, and often
affirmed that they never could desire a better doctor,
or knew of one to whom a skill in physic was
so natural.

He was exceedingly industrious, and all his life
accomplished himself the chief business of his farm,
until about the period of my visit, when his various
more public duties drew so largely on his time that
he consented to employ a boy as his assistant—a
man was not to be thought of. And of even this

unworthy innovation, he often spoke as if he were
ashamed.

He took me on his knee, while my mother was
preparing the table for dinner, and made many
inquiries concerning my industrial habits and abilities,
to my no small discomfiture, for I could but
confess that I was ignorant to an extent that
shocked him. “Why, Elsie, my little daughter,”
he said, “your mother will quite ruin you.”

He then asked me my age, and, on my replying
that I was almost eight years old, he hastily put me
down, and looked at me with a real or affected
astonishment that brought tears to my eyes.

“No, no,” he said directly, “this will never do:
a nice looking little girl, almost eight years old,
almost a woman, and not know how to milk a cow,
nor sweep the house! Elsie will have to come and
live with her aunt Elizabeth and uncle David, and
learn how to make bread, and puddings, and be a
woman.”

He then smoothed my curls—the pretty curls
my mother had made—all away from my forehead,
and, after plaiting them, tied them in a sort of knot
on my head, with one of the waxed strings with
which he had been mending the shoe. After this,
he told me that I must have a comb, and do up my
hair like a lady—that only babies let curls fall
about their faces. I was mortified, and wished I

had staid at home, especially when he told me of
a dozen girls he knew, none of them so old, and all
so much superior to me. One had made a quilt containing
a thousand pieces, another could bake in
the brick oven, and another had made her father a
shirt as well as anybody except in the stitching and
the button-holes.

It seemed that dinner would never be ready and
interrupt this conversation; but it was, at last, and
as he seated me at the table he inquired of me
if I never thought I ought to earn my bread before
I ate it.

I had never thought of any such thing, and I felt
so badly that presently I went from the table, and
resuming my old seat, counted the broken panes of
glass in the windows. After a little while I was
taken to see my aunt, and the old man repeated in
my hearing all my indolence and worthlessness,
saving, in conclusion, “I guess we must take the
child, Lizabeth, and try to make something of
her.” My aunt, as I afterwards found, was a kind-hearted,
ignorant old woman, no less industrious
than her husband, and of so frugal a disposition,
even in sickness, that she would have no hired
assistance, compelling the squire on such occasions,
with perhaps the occasional assistance of some
neighboring spinster, to be himself his housekeeper.

She was tall and dark—stooping much, either

naturally, or with years. Her dress, winter and
summer, was of black flannel, with straight sleeves,
and skirt inconveniently narrow; and her cap of
white cambric, worn without trimming or borders,
and low over the forehead, across which lay the
wrinkles, as they did indeed all down her face, to
the point of her sharp chin.

The lonely, homesick feeling that came to me, as
I sat in the silent parlor, looking at the tall clock,
and listening to the guinea-hens, as they sunned
their variegated humps, was new to me, and
strange, but gradually, in custom, it was forgotten
or lost

There is no life perhaps so turbulent, or filled
with such momentous incidents, that its earliest
glimpses of the world beyond the limits of home
can be forgotten; veterans on battle fields have
died exulting at the brave ascent of kites held by
their childish hands; and statesmen sitting with
closed eyes, in senates that have trembled at their
words, have felt the approach of tears with never
dying memories of a mother's praise at their first
triumphs in the school room. I have no power to
tell you of all my life's vicissitudes since then,
of the wild interblendings of heaven and hell
through which I have passed, the days of smiling
hope or nights of pitiless despair; but I do not
know that there is any point in all my experience

to which my mind of its own accord goes back
more frequently than to these scenes at the Davids'
farm house.

Yet I have not lingered thus long on this first
visit, so much for its own interest or importance,
as because I soon after went to remain with my
uncle and aunt, and that day's history became in a
degree my biography for the next seven years.