University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.

Love, nor marriage, nor death, nor funeral, nor
anything else, may stay the wings of time; and the
season of bitterest sorrow, and the time of gladdest
rejoicing, are soon away in the by-gone. The days
blush open, and fade dimly down, and the weeks
come and go, and, smiling or weeping, we go out
to our harvesting of roses, or of thorns. We give
our children in marriage, and bury our dead, and
all the while our hairs are whitening, and the furrows
are deepening on our brows, till, at morning
or midnight, we meet the last enemy, and, after a
little feeble controversy, are heard of no more.

For a year the grass had grown over the grave

of Nanny, and the mother's tears fell less often on
the bright green mound than they did on the fresh
heaped earth.

By the unlettered headstone Joseph Arnold had
planted a willow, drooping ever, and weeping with
the dews and the rains; and here he might be seen
more often than any who knew her, and, however
solemn his musings were, he did not speak them,
but smiled when his sister asked where he had
been, and replied, with his old affectation, that he
had been to the graveyard to get up his spirits.

“Say to uncle Josey he tells a great story,” Mrs.
Yancey would reply, speaking to the baby; for
whomever she addressed in a negative way, she
was most apt to ask the baby to assume the responsibility.

Yet by whatever prompted, the first and the last
visits of the young man, on going from or returning
to the house of his brother-in-law, were to the
graveyard in which reposed his young niece.

As for Mr. Yancey, he had grown thinner in the
last year, but he worked on, cheerful and energetic
and hopeful as ever. The Indian shirts were not
yet worn out, but the Sunday coat was more
threadbare, and the hat had a few more indentations
than were visible when Eunice was married.

When the children broke the teapot of the new
set of china, Mrs. Yancey made coffee for a month,

till William could take her to town and supply the
deficiency; and when Joseph told her to get a duplicate,
she told the baby to tell him she wouldn't
do any such thing, for she meant to get another
just like the old one, if she could. To assist about
the house a small negro girl had been obtained,
but she could ill supply the place of Nanny. The
young Griselda had possessed something of her
father's nature, and they twain, within doors and
without, kept all in order; but now there was no
head of the family, it seemed, and all things were
awry, except the happy tempers of Nancy Yancey
and her little husband. The world went wrong,
but they never seemed to know it, or were quite
sure it would go right to-morrow; and age was in
the distance, not so far but that his shadow fell
upon their faces, yet they saw only youth, and
fortunate accidents, and never-ending pleasures, of
such sorts as to one or the other would give most
delight. Dear Mrs. Yancey would occupy the
great armed rocking-chair in years that bounded
her ideas of the farthest future, and the husband
would hold the plow for ever in his undecaying
fields, which sometime, he was sure, would yield
a harvest greater than should be needed for the
season's necessities.

And what changes have a year wrought with
Miss Eunice, or, as we must hereafter say, Mrs.

Wurth? When she appears in the fashionable
assembly does she wear the same narrow black silk
dress, and big Leghorn bonnet—resembling, as
much as anything, an old-fashioned churn set on
the top of a round table—by which she was always
recognized in the little stone meeting-house? The
world, the world! its hold is very strong upon us
all, theorize as we may, and the rich matron retained
as little of the country maiden as might be.
There were traces of identity, indeed, but this was
no fault of hers; powder and patches, laces and
lawns, did away with them as far as was possible
by art. The heavy mantle and costly bonnet were
worn with little grace; a fine style ill became her;
and under her novel supervision the quiet elegance
which pervaded the house of the first Mrs. Wurth
was broken up, and a showy and glaring discord
substituted.

Some very choice pictures—historical and landscape
pieces—were taken down and consigned to
the “spare-room,” with the wardrobe of the departed
and forgotten, and two portraits hung in their
places—herself and husband, of course—she in a
dress of crimson, fondling a lap-dog.

“My gracious! dear sakes!” exclaimed the nurse,
dancing and curtesying about before it, (she never
walked, or stood still, but ran or skipped when
she attempted the one, and her nearest approach to

the other was a graceful vibration from foot to
foot). “Dear sakes! Goodell, I shall go blind.”

“Why, Miss Crum! But I hear your baby calling
from the nursery.”

“I can tell you, Goodell, that is not our Mrs.
Wurth,” said Miss Crum, looking over her shoulder,
toward the flashy canvas, as she left the parlors
with her old associate in the family service.

The even good nature and real kindness of the
housekeeper had in process of time won upon the
tart disposition of the nurse, who had made a compromise
of dignity, and in place of saying “Mrs.
Goodell,” or “Margaret,” said now with easy familiarity
and condeseension, Goodell. And so, as their
occupations kept them much apart, they proceeded
nicely till the reign of the second Mrs. Wurth
began; and this new sway, at the period to which
I wish to bring my reader, had been exercised for
a year.

One of those long soaking rains that fall and fall
when the earth is already perfectly drenched and
saturated, and when a thousand eyes are looking
impatiently for the sun, had been steadily coming
down for days, and the clouds looked heavier and
darker still than the first day they rose above the
city. Omnibuses, crowded down to the steps, men
with closely buttoned coats, and faces hidden
beneath umbrellas, hurrying up and down, and

women, in their worst bonnets and dresses, holding
aside their skirts and stepping carefully, and now
and then a closely-shut coach, were all that could
be seen.

Nor were the sounds such as enliven: the pattering
of the rain against the windows, the low,
dull thunder, which was scarcely known to be such,
and the quick ringing of the bell by some impatient
person at the door, or haply the rattling of the
wheels as some carriage was driven with unusual
speed, were all that claimed attention or broke the
oppressing silence which reigned in the dreary
houses.

A little lurid light glimmered about the sunset,
and the rain ceased long enough to induce some
hope, but with nightfall it came on again, in that
dull, steady way, which gives no indication of
an ending.

It was almost summer, but a fire burned in the
grate (for moisture was gathered in drops on the
walls), where, at the feet of her nurse, a child was
playing, now with a ball and now with a book,
which she affected to read. She was beautiful, and
looking very happy, for her heart held no sad
memory, even though Miss Crum had often shown
how and where she held her to see the funeral train
of her mother, long ago. That excellent person
still occupied her old position, in spite of frequent

disagreements, which would ere now have ended
in open quarrel and separation, but for circumstances
that were understood by the parties most
interested.

She tripped lightly from place to place, dusting
and brushing, and arranging, and reärranging,
though all things were in the most perfect order.
The rain seemed not to have affected her spirits,
and she even began to sing “Lely loly ly, lyly loly
le,” to a tune of her own improvisation, as she
examined the drawers of the bureau—unfolding
and folding various articles, and making many
separate parcels.

“Oh, mercy!” she suddenly exclaimed, in the
midst of her song, and violently shut the drawer
and seized the hand of little Catharine who, unobserved,
had stolen near, attracted by the song or
by curiosity.

“What has the child done?” asked Mrs. Wurth,
who never used more words than were necessary,
and never said Catharine, but always “Child.”

“Oh! don't you think,” replied the nurse, as
though a fearful calamity had been threatened,
“she had like to have seen”—here she hesitated a
moment, and added, “what I was doing!”

“How absurd, Araminta! the child—not three
years old!” And Mrs. Wurth renewed her occupation
of looking into the fire.

The nurse heeded not the scornful manner of the
lady, nor her contemptuous words, but, taking up
the little girl, began singing “Catharine, Catharine,
Catharine,” over and over, as if with a view of
soothing her to sleep.

“Who gave her that name?” asked the step-dame,
who well knew it was borne by her mother,
and was kept from making use of it by a jealous
and unholy feeling.

“What name?” said the nurse, still repeating it
in her song.

“The name she bears—what else should I
mean?”

“Who named her Catharine?”—here Miss Crum
kissed her charge—“it was her mother's name,
you know. She was the sweetest and most beautiful
woman in the world. And so young! she was
not twenty-one when she died. She was so refined,
and elegant! and all folks that knew her
said she was perfectly lovely.”

The nurse embraced every opportunity of lauding
the late Mrs. Wurth—her grace and wit, her
gentleness, and personal charms—whenever with
Mrs. Eunice, as she said to Goodell, “merely to
irritate her.” It was her delight to caress the child
in the presence of the reigning mistress, and to
point out, with ingenious phrases, fitted to annoy
that once philosophical specimen of her sex, all

those resemblances in the one that were suggestive
of contrasts in the other, or that could induce most
mortification in her heart, or keenest regret in the
heart of her husband. There are many women
who are suspected of very little cleverness until
they have fit occasions for displays of malice,
when they evince a genius as brilliant and fearful
as it is unexpected. Our Araminta, though she
had “never been able to see in any man such
qualities as she could endure in a husband,” could
yet see a great way into those mill-stones called
hearts, and she was rarely so happy as when bringing
fire from their flinty centers.

“Mrs. Wurth,” it was her wont to say, as though
there were no other Mrs. Wurth, “had such exquisite
taste in dress, and everything else! I hope
little Catharine will be just like her.”

All this was excessively annoying to the step-mother,
and jealousy of the dead Catharine grew
into dislike of her child, amounting, if not to
hatred, to a hateful repugnance; and something of
the feeling was extended to the nurse, whom she
called “Araminta,” or “nurse,” with all the emphasis
which, for the same purpose, she used in
addressing the housekeeper, to intimate her superior
position, by her name of “Mrs. Goodell.”

Persons who have to serve, have often a peculiar
sensitiveness respecting the social elevation of their

employers, and are especially jealous of any vulgar
pretension. The dignified and elegant Miss Araminta
Crum, who “might in her day have married
almost any body in the city,” was severely tried in
being compelled by her “affection for the dear
little Catharine” to an obedience to the caprices
and whims of “such an upstart as Mrs. Eunice,”
and to-night she could not resist the temptation of
strengthening her false impression in reference to
the child's name, by these allusions to the mother.
Who would be so likely as the father to call the
child Catharine? The reasonable inference, however,
was not the fact, as, soon after the death of
his wife, Frederick Wurth left home for a year's
adventure and pleasure, having scarcely seen his
daughter, and perhaps never having thought of
such a matter as the selection of her name.

The good Mrs. Goodell, whose love for her late
mistress was sincere, had named the baby, and also
carefully preserved the black silk dress and silver
spoons up to this period.

“Take that child to bed,” said the step-mother,
after enduring the nurse's song half an hour.

“I don't want to go,” the victim answered, her
eyes wide open; and Miss Crum continued her
song for a moment, as though she had not heard
the direction; then, slowly rising, she presented
Catharine for a kiss, to her “mama,” who, ashamed

to refuse, touched her lips to the child's forehead,
without speaking to her, or looking at her.

And the nurse, telling her she must be a little
lady, and sleep with Goodell to-night, embraced
her as if that parting were the most painful incident
in all her history.

In the morning the house seemed in strange confusion.
The servants were in high glee, and the
breakfast evinced such liberality, in variety and
abundance, as justified suspicions that all things in
the establishment were to be on a new scale of
munificence, while the general satisfaction, which
none seemed able to conceal, was not less suggestive
of some happy fortune. Miss Crum presided
with a pleased smile, while Mr. Frederick Wurth
really laughed out, saying, “The muffins are so
very funny this morning.”

“Why don't mama come?” asked the child, and
Miss Crum informed her little girls must not ask
questions.

After a while, however, she was told, to her
great discontent and bewilderment, that she had a
little sister up stairs, whom some good old lady
had brought from far away to be her companion
and the sharer of her playing.

When Mrs. Wurth appeared at breakfast again,
poor Miss Crum was informed that her services
were no longer required; and that estimable woman

said she was as glad to go as any one could be to
have her: she was only grieved to leave the darling
Catharine in the hands of such a low creature; at
which scarcely civil speech Mrs. Goodell held up
both hands and exclaimed “Why, Miss Crum!”