 | II. Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West |  |
2. II.
These relatives were but recently established in a country
home, having belonged originally to one of the northern seaport
towns. The family embraced but three persons, the father,
whose life had in some capacity been passed mostly at sea,
and two daughters—all unfitted by education and habit for their
new position.
Of course Charlotte had heard much of her uncle, Captain
Bailey, and his daughters, and in childish simplicity supposed
them to be not only the grandest but also the most excellent
people in the world. They dwelt in her thoughts on a plane
of being so much above her, that she involuntarily looked up to
them and reverenced them as if they were of a fairer and purer
world.
Through all her childhood it had been a frequent wish that
some of uncle John's folks would come, but uncle John's folks
never came, and so she grew into womahood without being
much disenchanted. Nobody about Clovernook was at all
comparable to them in any respect, as they lived in the beautiful
region of her dreams.
Mrs. Ryan and Mrs. Bailey were sisters, who in early life
were all in all to each other. Marriage had separated them, by
distance much, by circumstances more. Mrs. Bailey went to
an establishment in town, and after a round of dissipations and
gaieties, became a small link in the chain of fashion, having
married out of, and above her previous and fit position. Mrs.
Ryan, who as a girl was the less dashing and spirited of the
two, became a farmer's wife, and with the energy and determination
which characterized her always, struck at once into the
wilderness in search of a new home.
Sad enough was the parting of the sisters, and many the
promises to write often, and to visit each other as soon as
might be; but these promises were never kept, and perhaps it
was well they never were, for far outside of the blessed oneness
of thought and feeling in which they parted, would have been
their meeting! Absence, separate interests, different ways of
life, soon did their work.
As I said, they never met, and so never knew that they had
grown apart, but each lived in the memory of the other, best
and most beautiful to the last. But though each mother taught
her children to love and reverence the good aunt that lived far
away, and whom possibly they would see some time, the young
Baileys failed to be impressed with that respect and admiration
for their country relations, which the country relations felt for
them.
After a series of successes came adverse fortune to the Baileys,
then the death of the wife and mother, and so, partly in
the hope of bettering their condition, and partly to escape mortification,
the broken and helpless family removed from their
statelier home and settled in the neighborhood of our beautiful
city in the west. For they fancied, as many other people do
who know nothing about it, that the farmer's is a sort of holiday
the harvest time; that then the labor of a day or two fills the
barn with bright sheaves and sweet hay; and that all the while,
and without any effort, cattle and sheep and horses are growing
and fattening, and plenty flowing in. A little experience sufficed
to cure the Baileys of this pleasant conceit. In truth, they
did n't go to work in the right way, with an honest determination
that compels success. Farming and housekeeping were
begun as delightful experiments, and when the novelty was lost,
they fell back into lamentations and repinings for the opulence
they had lost. Briers made sorry work with Captain Bailey's
ruffles, and the morning dew was unfavorable to the polish of
his boots; the corn did n't fall into baskets of itself, nor the
apples come home without having been first shaken from the
trees, and picked up, one by one. Weeds and burs ran over
the garden and choked the small vegetables; the cows grew
lean, and their milk dried away, to the astonishment of all parties—for
nobody suspected they were not milked regularly and
rightly, or that their wants were not attended to, and some
fearful distemper was supposed to have attacked them, as day
after day flocks of buzzards and crows were seen settling in
hollows where the poor creatures had died. But Captain Bailey's
troubles were trifles compared with the afflictions of his
daughters, who not only sighed and cried, but wished themselves
dead, a dozen times a day. The hard, yellow balls of butter,
which they fancied would be so nice, required more labor and
care in the making than they were willing to bestow; bread
was taken from the oven black and heavy; and, in fact, the
few things that were done at all were not done well, and general
weariness and dissatisfaction was the consequence.
“I wish I was in heaven!” exclaimed Miss Sally Bailey, one
day, more wrathfully than piously, turning at the same time
from the churn and hiding her eyes from the great splash of
cream that soiled the front of her lavender colored silk.
“It 's no use for us to try to live like anybody,” answered
Kate, “and we might as well give up first as last, and put on
linsey, and work, and work, and work till we die!”
And both girls sat down and bent their eyes on the floor,
which their father was; poor man, he had come in from the
field with a thorn in his hand, and with the blood oozing from
the wound, was vainly searching under chairs and tables, and
shoving his hand one way and the other across the carpet, for
the needle lost in his endeavor to perform with it a surgical
operation.
“I do wish,” he said at last, a little petulantly, “I could
ever have any body to do any thing for me.”
“I am sure I am sorry for the accident,” said one of the girls,
“if that will do you any good.”
“I do n't think it will,” was the reply; and the other sister
offered assistance, assuring her father, and as though he were
responsible for it, that she could feel nothing less than the
broomstick in her clumsy fingers, so it was useless to try to
handle a needle.
Having survived the operation, Captain Bailey, who was
really disposed to do the best he could, pinned a towel against
his vest, and took hold of the churn, saying, “Now, my dears,
I'll make the butter, while you arrange the dinner.”
“I would like to know what we are to arrange,” said
Kate, tossing her head, “there is nothing in the house that I
know of.”
“Surely there is something,” the father said, working the
dasher most energetically; “there is pork, and flour, and apples,
and cream, and butter, and potatoes, and coffee, and tea,
and sugar”—there the girls interrupted him with something
about a meal suitable for wood-choppers.
Captain Bailey was now seriously discouraged, and without
speaking again, continued to churn for two hours, but the cream
was cold and thin, and at the end of that time looked no more
likely to “come” than at first, so giving the churn a jostle to
one side, with something that sounded very like an oath, the
gentleman removed the towel which had served him for an
apron, and taking down his gun from the wall, walked hurriedly
in the direction of the woods. But he was one of those men
who are called good-hearted, and though he managed badly,
never doing either himself or anybody else any good, still,
fellow he is.” So, of course, his amiability soon returned, and
having brought down two squirrels and a wood-cock, whistling
out the hope and good-nature that were in his heart. “Well,
Sally,” he said, throwing down the game, “here is something
for dinner.”
“Very well,” she replied, but without looking up, or ceasing
from her work of rubbing chalk on the cream-spot of her
dress.
Kate, since her father's departure, had bestirred herself so
much as to pin a towel about the churn, set it one side, and fill
the tea-kettle, after which she seated herself with the last new
novel.
“Well my dear, what is the news with you?” asked the
captain, punching the fire at the same time, in an anxious way.
“The news is,” she answered, “that two chickens have
drowned themselves in a pail of dish-water, and the pig you
bought at the vendue is choked to death with a loaf of burnt
bread—when I found it, it was in the last agonies,” she continued,
laughing, “and I do n't see what we are to do.”
“An idea strikes me,” answered the father, in no wise discouraged.
“Write to your cousin—what's her name? who
lives out in Clovernook—she's a housekeeper, I'll warrant you;
write to her to come and visit you for a month or two, and initiate
you in the ways of the woods.”
“A good notion,” said Kate, throwing down her book, and
the dinner went forward better than any one had done since the
housekeeping began.
The farm selected by Captain Bailey, was east of the Queen
City—not so far, however, but that some of the spires, and it
is a city of spires, were clearly visible from its higher elevations.
Both house and grounds were seriously out of repair,
having been abandoned by the person who purchased and fitted
them up, and sold ultimately at a sacrifice. They were well
suited for the present proprietor; the spirit of broken-down
assumption reigned supreme everywhere: you might see it
perched on the leaning posts of the gateway, and peering from
under the broken mullions of the great windows. It had been
eleared, when pebbles and flowers bordered the rivulets, and
the eminence on which stood the house was terraced into green
stairs. The tall red chimneys were some of them fallen partly
down now, and the avenue leading from the gate to the hall
was lost in weeds and grass, through which only a wagon-track
was broken.
One or two trellised summer-houses stood pitching down the
hill, and here and there a rose-bush or lilac lopped aside devoid
of beauty, except the silver seives woven amongst them by the
black and yellow spiders.
| II. Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West | |