University of Virginia Library

5. V.

On my arrival home, I found that my anticipation had been
correct—the young schoolmaster had preceded me, and sat at
the parlor window deep in the mysteries and merits of—

His manner and salutation were civil enough, and very
graceful withal, and I was struck at once with his beauty,
which was such as imagination gives the poet; but there was
an indefinable something in his manner which made me feel
myself an interruption to his pleasure, even before he resumed

his book, which, however, he presently did, after a little commonplace
talk about the beauty of the sunset. This, to confess
the truth, was vexatious, for most young ladies are pleased
with but that demeanor which seems to say they are the only
women in the world. The relations in which we stood involved
no obligation on the part of either of us farther than that of
common courtesy; and though, as I said, the young man
silently resumed his book, I felt it my privilege as it was my
pleasure to remain in the parlor, as his own apartment awaited
his occupation when he pleased. Moreover, he interested me,
and perhaps I was not without hope, that when the twilight
deepened a little more, he would begin some conversation. I
wish that with any word painting I could bring his picture
before you, but my poor skill is insufficient, and I cannot hope
to give the faintest idea of that dreamy and spiritual expression
which chiefly made him what he was, the most beautiful person
I had ever seen.

He was a little above the medium height, straight as an
arrow, and of faultless proportions. His hair was of a perfect
and glossy black, and hanging in wavy half curls down his
neck and temples, gave to his face a look almost girlish. His
eyes were very large and dark, but soft and melancholy, and
along the delicate whiteness of his cheek the color ran blushing
whenever he spoke. His hands too evinced his gentle origin.
Closer and closer to the page he bent his head, as ebbed away
the crimson tide in which, an hour ago, the sun had drifted out
of view, and not till star after star came sharpening its edges
of jagged gold in the blue, did he close the volume.

He did not speak, however, when this was done, but locking
his hands together like a child, watched the ashy and sombre
clouds which in the south were mingling into one, for a few
minutes, and then, absorbed, as it seemed, with his own
thoughts, walked slowly in the direction of the wood, that held
in its rough arms the waning splendor that rained off with
every sough of wind.

Every moment the atmosphere grew more sluggish and
oppressive, and the broad dim leaves of the sycamore, that
shadowed the well, drifted slowly slantwise to the ground.

The summer had shaken from her hot lap the fierce thunderbolts,
and there was no broken rumble nor quick sharp rattle
to lend terrible grandeur to the autumn's dismal and pitiless
storms, for one of which the night was preparing.

The time was very still, and as I sat on the low mossy doorstep,
I could hear the voices of neighbors half a mile away, as
they hurried the milking, and the rattle of the dry boards
where the apple-sheds were being covered. Distinctly down
the clayey hill, a mile to the south, I heard the clatter of fast-falling
hoof-strokes, then it was lost in the damp hollow and up
the long dusty slope, but I pleased myself with guessing at
what points the horseman had arrived at such and such times,
till almost at the expected moment he appeared on the neighboring
hill, darkening through the lessening light. Holding
the ragged rim of his chip-hat with one hand, he reined in his
fiery sorrel at the gate of our house, and beckoned me to
approach. Before I reached him, or even recognized him, for
he was the young man I had met at Mrs. Knight's, I divined
from the straight rod balancing on the arched neck of his impatient
horse, the melancholy nature of his errand: little Henry
Hathaway was dead. Scarce any preparation was requisite,
and, wrapt in my shawl and hood, I was soon on the way.

Mr. Hathaway's house was nearly a mile south of ours,
and half that distance off the main road, to the west, so that to
reach it most conveniently I struck across the fields. From
the duty before me I shrank somewhat, not from any unwillingness
to lend my aid, but I was young, unused to death, and
half afraid; and when I reached the woods through which my
way led, the rustling leaves beneath my feet seemed to give
out the mournfulest sound I had ever heard. A few steps
aside from my path, sitting on a mossy log, beneath an arbor
of wild grapes, I beheld some vision of mortality, and suddenly
stopping, gazed with intensity of fear. That any sane person
should be in such place at such time, was not very probable,
for at that period our neighborhood was free from those troubled
wanderers who people the dreariest solitudes with the white-browed
children of the imagination, and soften the dull and
dead realities with atmospheres of song. I think, however, it

was by no process of reasoning that I likened the dimly-outlined
shape before me with that son of the morning, of whom
heaven disburthened itself so long ago. A shower of wet
leaves rained down on me, for the fine drops were already
drizzling and pattering on the interlocked branches overhead,
as I stood, more from inability to fly, than from courage, before
the object which my fancy alone made terrible—
spoke a voice, so musical that fear vanished, though it was not
till another moment that I recognized the schoolmaster. When
I did so, flushing in the wake of fear came anger, and I replied,
“If you intend to enact fantastic tricks of this sort, I pray you
will choose an auditor next time who can fitly repay you—for
myself, I must remain your debtor.” Having spoken thus, I
swept along the rustling leaves, with an air that might have
done credit to an injured princess, as I fancied. Thoughtless
and ungentle as my manner was, it was productive of a maturity
of acquaintance, which greater civility would probably
not have induced; for immediately the young man joined me,
and so sweetly apologized that I could not but forgive him.
Of course he did not at first recognize me more than I him,
and so for a time remained silent under my scrutiny.

Though no longer afraid of shadows, having found one apparition
so harmless, I was not sorry to have the lonesome way
enlivened by the cheerful influence of my new friend's company.
I think, however, neither of us felt any real pleasure in the
other's society, and I may say, neither then nor ever after.
Upon this encounter, we had each felt bound to manifest cordial
feeling, but kept all the while a belligerent reserve force to fall
back on at any moment.

There was about Mr. Spencer—for that was his name—a
distant and measured formality, which I mistook for pride and
self-sufficiency; the sentences came from his thin lips with cold
regularity, as though chiseled in marble; I felt then and
always the disagreeable sensation of an utter impossibility of
saying or doing anything which could in the least interest him.

He was young, as I said, and perhaps he seemed more youthful
than he was. Had we both been some years older, I might
have recognized, under the blind and statue-like beauty that
could “view the ripened rose, nor seek to wear it,” the signs
of a passion that had burned itself to ashes.

In interchanges of words, and not of thoughts, we climbed
the fences, walked the logs over the runs, crossed the stubble
land, and struck into the lane where the yellow dust was dimpling
more and more with the steady and increasing rain. As
we drew near the house we became silent, for all about it
seemed an atmosphere of death. Our footsteps, on the moist
earth, did not break the hush; even the watch-dog seemed consciously
still, and, having turned his red eyes on us as we
passed, pressed his huge freckled nose close to the ground
again, whining low and piteously. A few sticks were burning
on the hearth—for the rain had chilled the air—the flames
flickering up, wan and bluish for a moment, and then dropping
down into a quivering and uncertain blaze; there was no crackling
and sparkling, no cheerfulness in it; and seated before it
was the mother, rocking to and fro, her tears falling silently
among the brown curls of the mateless little boy who rested
his head on her knees.

Two women, in very plain caps, and with sleeves turned
back from their wrists, were busying themselves about the
house, and in the intervals of work officiously comforting the
mourner. I could only take her hand in mine; I had no words
to illumine the steep black sides of the grave; in all the world
there was nothing that could fill her empty arms; why should
I essay it? One of the women directed us in a whisper to the
adjoining room. Little Henry was already dressed for the
coffin, and, kneeling beside the hard bed on which he lay, was
Kitty Lytle, combing and curling his hair, that he might appear
to his mother as life-like as possible. Her own rippling
lengths of golden yellow fell forward, half veiling her face,
which, in its expression of earnest tenderness, made her perfectly
beautiful. The young man stepped hurriedly toward the
dead, but his eyes rested on the girl.

On the mantle stood half a dozen empty phials, with small

packages, cups, and teaspoons, and in one corner of the room
the death-bed—the impression of his face still fresh in the
pillow. A napkin was pinned over the small looking-glass,
and the table was draped in white.

I wondered to see Kitty do her sad work so calmly, for she
was younger than I, who trembled even to touch the shroud,
but in thought and feeling, as I afterward learned, she had far
outgrown her years, and never lingered from the most painful
duty. While Ady timidly remained with her mother, she had
come through the night and the storm, and in her gentle ministries
of love seemed first to have entered into her proper
sphere.

The sash rattled in the window as the winds went and
came, and across the panes trailed darkly the leafless vines of
the wild rose, but little Henry slept very quietly all the while.

Silent for the most part, and conversing in low tones, when
speaking at all, we sat—young watchers with the dead. Hetty
Knight, who had also preceded me, kept in the dimmest corner,
too bashful to speak in the presence of a stranger, and Mr.
Spencer persisted in remaining, though I had twice informed
him that it was not at all needful, inasmuch as Mr. Francisco
was expected to sit with us. So, stormy and mournful, the
night wore on.

“Miss Hathaway,” spoke a coarse voice—a rough discord to
the time—“he says the coffin will be here by sunrise,” and,
dripping and streaming from the rain, Mr. Francisco entered
the apartment consecrated to silence by that awful shadow that
must ever make heavy the heart, with the shuffling step and
unquiet manner with which he would have gone into his father's
barn. Having thrown himself in a seat, in a graceless fashion
which left his legs drifting off to one side, as though hinged
at the knees very loosely, he asked, in a jocular tone, if we
were all skeert. There was an exchange of smiles and glances
between Kitty and the schoolmaster, as Hetty replied, that for
one, she was never scared before she was hurt. Destitute of
those common instincts of refinement, which are better and
more correct than all teachings, these two young persons fraternized
that night in a way that was visibly annoying to the

stranger. Mr. Francisco probably feared that a subdued manner
would be attributed to cowardice, and, therefore, in mistaken
pride of manhood, was unusually brusque. After some
pretending conversation between himself and Hetty—for they
evidently talked of what they were not thinking—they gradually
relapsed into silence. Leaning her head on the table Kitty had
fallen asleep, and, under pretence of chilliness, the schoolmaster
withdrew to the adjoining room, having first carefully wrapt
my shawl about the pretty plump shoulders of the sleeping
girl: I don't know why he should never have thought that I
might need it, but he did not.

I as heartily wished myself out of the way of the young
lovers as they could wish me, and more especially when, taking
an ear of corn from his pocket, the young man began shelling
off the grains and throwing them, two or three at a time, in the
face of Hetty, whose laughing reproofs were so gentle they did
not correct the offence, and probably were not designed to
do so. I could not make myself into thin air, but I did the
best for them which the circumstances permitted. Taking up
a torn newspaper, the only readable thing I could find, I turned
my face away, and read and re-read a pathetic article of that
sort which seems to have been invented for the first pages of
the country journals. I was not so absorbed, however, as not
to hear the facetious youth address his lady love with, “Did
you ever see a cob that was half red?”

“No,” was the reply; and thereupon, of course, he drew his
chair near Hetty's, as if to exhibit the phenomenon, but to her
surprise he said, “'T other half is red, too!”

“Oh, if you ain't the greatest torment!” said Hetty; and
the jostling of the chairs told of their closer proximity.

“'T is half red, any how,” said the beau; “red as your cheek,
and I could make that redder an what it is!”

Whether the boasted ability was vindicated by experiment,
I do not know; a rustling of capes and collars, and a sort of
playful warfare, were my only means of inference. Presently
the whispers became inaudible, and having read in the paper how
a queen's sumptuous breakfast was removed untasted on the
morning after her divorce, how the plumes failed to hide the

pallor of her discrowned brow, sadder perhaps for the lost love-light
than the vanishing glory—with other interesting particulars
of the mournful story — I nestled beside Kitty and
feigned the sleep which had so softly wooed her, from pain and
all the world of love that fancy may have painted, to the
golden sphere of dreams; and though this pretence of sleep
did not much refresh me, it was all the same to the lovers, and
but for my accommodating artifice they might never have made
our clergyman the promises they did a year thereafter.

Toward morning, listening to the winds as they cried about
the lonesome homestead, and the vines, creaking against the
window pane, where the rain pattered and plashed, I passed
over the borders of consciousness, and woke, not till the lamp
was struggling with the day, that was breaking whitely through
the crimson—the clouds lifting and drifting away, and the rain
done.

In the dimmest corner the two most wakeful watchers still
kept their places, and by the mingling light the schoolmaster
was reading to Kitty, in a softly, eloquent tone, that most
beautiful creation, beginning—

Was the voice with which he told another's love interpreting
his own? or why ran the blushes so often along his cheek, and
why beneath his dark eyes burned those of the listener?

From the cherry tree came the cock, not flapping his wings
and crowing proudly, but with the water dripping from his tail,
drenched into one drooping feather; in the milk-yard were dry
and dusty spots, where the cattle had slept; the doves came
down in flocks, pecking, now themselves and now their scanty
breakfasts; and warm and yellow across the hills came the sunshine,
to comfort the desolate earth for her lost leaves and
flowers. But no one bent over the white bed of little Henry,
saying, “Wake, it is day;” and silently the mother laid her
hand on his forehead, in placid repose under its golden crown
of curls; silently her quivering lips pressed his—and that was all.