 | Pictures of country life |  |
THE
HOUSE WITH TWO FRONT DOORS.
Twenty-five years ago there stood in a straggling village on
the banks of the Ohio, an old house, with two doors, and a
good many irregular windows in the front. Two clumsy chimneys
of stone showed squattily above the steep red gables—the
one for architectural effect, simply, the other the extension of a
veritable flue; and from this last, a cloud of black smoke
worked itself out, and after a little vain effort to keep itself up,
sagged towards the ground, for the air was heavy—the orange
light rapidly blackening against the yellow moss on the tops of
the western hills, and the evening coming in with the promise
of a wet night.
The village was not at all picturesque; a great hill that
extended as far as the eye could see, and the summit of which
seemed almost to touch the sky, formed its background, and
completely shut out the view in that direction. It was not one
of those poetic hills that are beautified with pasture-fields, shady
trees, flowery thickets—on the contrary, its village-side was
bare of vegetation, except, indeed, a scanty growth of stunted
oaks, together with some thistles, and dwarf blackberry vines,
which, in some sort, relieved its monotony of baked clay,
rain.
The village streets were still less attractive—unpaved for the
most part—full of ruts, where refuse soaked and rotted, and
obstructed at all points with idle carts, coopers' stuff, heaps of
shavings and the like. They had their share, too, of stray cows
and quarrelsome dogs, and were provided with mud-holes, at
convenient distances, where swine, with patches of bristles
scalded off by the ill-natured housewives, took such ease as their
nature loveth, and by grunting and squealing further provoked
the wrath of their oppressors, for the hearts of women are not
always so gentle as poets say, and if the truth be fairly spoken,
are, I am afraid, no less accessible to induration than the faces
with which hard fortune plays such terrible havoc. But notwithstanding
the facts recorded, the town was not without pretensions
which no transient abider therein could gainsay without
disadvantage.
The clergyman's house, with its close-shut windows, carved
portico, and grey garden wall, set round with austere box—its
gravelled walk, along which tall sunflowers baked their great
cakes brown, together with the red brick meeting-house,
with its solemn burial-ground, where a thousand low headstones
shrugged their shoulders beneath the two or three grand
monuments, were perhaps, the distinguishing ornaments of the
place—the centre about which clustered the more exclusive
piety—the evangelical pride, so to speak, of the village
folks.
The market-house, which was, in point of fact, a dismantled
canal boat set upon dry land, was also an object, not only of
general interest, but one which kindled local admiration almost
have doubled its value in consequence of this “improvement,”
and two or three owners of lots thereabouts retired from
business, and were thereafter clothed and fed, simply by virtue
of the market-house. No one will be disposed to doubt this
statement who has observed what a number of idiers a single
grocery store or turnpike-gate will maintain. I once knew two
able-bodied men to support themselves and their families on the
merits of a cross-road—but this, perhaps, was an extreme
case.
Then there was the squire's office, a diminutive lean-to of the
corner dry-goods store, in the official glory of which all ordinary
considerations of right and morality sunk completely out of
sight. The squire wore a weed on his white hat in memory of
the lamented Mrs. Bigsham, and this drew after him more than
a third part of the feminine sympathy of the town, and was perhaps
the basis of his popularity—every unmarried woman felt
as if that black band was an electric link between herself and
the great squire, which might at any time be converted to a
bond of perpetual union.
“The office,” as it was called, was the habitual resort of the
big academy boys—decayed pilots of river-boats, doctors' students,
who jested about “subjects” and drew teeth for half-price
—and, as may be inferred, the convocations of these learned
disputants were not a little promotive of exclusive feeling in the
neighborhood. True, the legal prestige was somewhat marred
by the fact that a poor shoemaker plied his trade in the rear of
the magisterial office, but aristocracy did all it could in self-defence
by suspending a curtain formed of a mosquito-net between
the bench of the obnoxious workmen and the arm-chair
screen would seem, it required not even that to separate the
young shoemaker, who was lame and melancholy, from the rude
and boisterous frequenters of the official department, so that a
more impenetrable stuff was not in the least necessary. He had
been in the village a year, or more, and nobody knew anything
about him except that he was a faithful and honest worker, and
put himself in nobody's way, for he moved about quietly as a
ghost, and with as little interest in the earth apparently. He
was known to the old woman with whom he boarded, as Peter
Gilbraith, and to the other towns people, who knew him at all,
as “Shoe Pete”—but whether called by one name or another elicited
from him no indication of pleasure or displeasure. Nature
had gifted him with eyes of wonderful beauty—hair that curled
itself all the more gracefully for his careless management,
and a smile of that strangely fascinating sort, that seems made
up of mingled scorn and sweetness; but accident had dishonored
his fair proportions by curtailing one leg of its rightful dimensions,
which obliged him to walk with a stick, and gave to his
shoulders a perpetual stoop.
Whether it were poverty or lameness, or both, that made
him shrink from the little observation he excited, or whether
misanthropy were a part of his nature, nobody knew, and very
soon nobody cared—for in what way could “Shoe Pete,” they
argued, enhance the value of town-lots, or contribute to social
pleasure? And true it is that his great sad eyes seemed to
rebuke the spirit of mirth, and his smile made the beholder of
it feel as if he were more than half despised. His dress was
careless (with the exception of the high-heeled shoe, which was
neat in the extreme) not slovenly, however, and it always bore
neglected hair and beard.
From sunrise till sunset his hammer was never still, and
sometimes late into the night, even, its whack, whack, sounded
upon the soft leather, so that it is not strange that reports
gradually went into circulation, that Shoe Pete was “laying
up” money; nor that overtures towards his acquaintance began
to be warmly pressed. He remained inaccessible, however, and
was observed to walk with less stoop, and to show a bright
indignant spot on either cheek, after some customer had
been unusually condescending with him.
But whether the season was a busy one or not, the young
shoemaker was never idle—his candle made the small window
above his work-bench shine till midnight, and his leather apron
was in requisition late and early. There was always a book or
a newspaper under his pillow, in the morning, his landlady
reported, and this fact was accepted by her as presumptive
evidence, that Peter Gilbraith was a great scholar, and though
it may seem like a small basis on which to found a reputation
for scholarship, it was sufficient, and puzzling questions in geography
and grammar began to be propounded to him by the
young villagers when they came to have their feet measured.
Nevertheless, the sun threw his last rays from the yellow moss
on the tops of the western hills and sunk completely out of sight
on the evening upon which our story opens, and the shoemaker
had never as yet received the slightest recognition from the
great Squire Bigsham. Is it very singular if he started and let
fall his hammer, as the great man pulled his chair about so that
he faced the mosquito-net curtain, and said with easy familarity,
and as if he were in the habit of addressing him every day—
instead of the public functionary I am?”
Gilbraith smiled, and took up his hammer.
“Let me see,” continued the squire, “how long have we
been acquainted?”
“I have worked in your office about a year, sir.”
“A year! Zounds! why it seems jest t'other day you come!”
He knew the time very well, but he wanted to make believe that
he was surprised so much time should have elasped without his
having cultivated friendly relations with his excellent neighbor.
The shoemaker had resumed his hammer and his old expression
of sad indifference.
The squire went on: “Bless my soul! a year! I wouldn't a'
believed any feller, if he'd a tole me that, exceptin' you, yourself.”
He laid special stress on the you, as if he held the young
man's veracity in high esteem.
The shoemaker smiled again at the implied compliment, but
made no other acknowledgment.
The squire was not to be thwarted, however—the news had
come to his ears that morning, that Shoe Pete had actually
purchased a lot adjoining the market-house, and paid a hundred
dollars down, for the same! so he gathered up his feet and said
—“Look-a-here now, did you ever see any man make a boot to
fit a feller's foot like that?”
Gilbraith clutched his hammer, or it must have fallen again
—the squire had, of a verity, indicated that shoemakers were
men, and at the same time had designated himself as a fellow!
He was too proud to disparage another man's work, and said
something to the effect that the boots seemed to have done
good service.
“Well, sir, I'll tell you, sir,” continued the squire, bringing
his courtesy to a climax, “I want for you to make me a pair of
tip-top stogy boots, and you may jes put your own price onto
'em, too.” The shoemaker said his time was fully engaged for a
month or more, but that he would attend the order at his
earliest convenience, and limping forward he took the requisite
measure with the air of conferring, rather than of receiving a
favor.
The customary loungers dropped in one after another, and
each, after a little subdued talk with the squire—the upshot of
which was, it is reasonable to infer, the prosperous fortunes of
the shoemaker—dexterously dipped his conversation so as to
include that hitherto ignoble person. But his replies were brief
and cold, and on the entrance of the doctor's student, who was
usually inflated with great news—the mosquito-net resumed its
ancient effectiveness, and Gilbraith, the transitory man, was
resolved once more into Shoe Pete.
“I say, Doc, what is it?” said one of the idlers, smelling the
news afar off, “anything new about that ere miss what was
smuggled into the two-door house t'other night?”
“A few particulars have transpired,” replied the student
whom they called Doc, and sliding his legs apart, he thrust his
hands deep in his pockets and waited to be questioned further.
“What miss?”—“Which two-door house?”—“You one
with so many winders?” were a few of the twenty questions
asked in a minute.
“He means the house with the two front doors into it, and
the two stone chimbleys onto it—well one ov them chimbleys is
false, and maybe there's someten else 'ats falser an what the
as we went to meetin' last night.”
Having thus brought himself to a level in point of importance,
with the young doctor, the squire moved his hand graciously
towards him, and abdicated in his favor. He, nevertheless,
was slightly offended—slid his legs a little farther apart,
and said haughtily “that he didn't know that he could enlighten
the fellers so well as Squire Bigsham.” This obliged the
squire to make a humiliating confession—to say, in fact, that
he “knew nothing except that a young woman, no better un
what she ort to be, appeerently, had been lately smuggled into
the two-door house, and that the feller what brought her,
had shortly afterwards disappeared between two lights, leaving
her with a limited amount of chink, and with no livin'
soul to do for her, except the greenest kind of a green-horn.”
The shoemaker had lighted his tallow candle, and the squire
his big lamp, for it had grown quite dark, and a sudden gust
had just driven a dash of rain, mixed with yellow leaves, against
the window. The door burst suddenly open, and a slender,
freckled-faced girl, with blue eyes, staring wide, and red hair
flying in wild disorder, stood fronting the wondering group, and
with many catchings of breath and earnest gesticulations, made
known the facts that she lived with a lady “that was took
awful sick—that she had been after the ould dochther and the
ould dochther wasn't in it, and she was afther the young
dochther to come with her to the lady, who lived in the house
beyant, wid the two doors—and the young dochther had a right
to go wid her if he had any sowl.”
“Hooraugh!” shouted some of the rude fellows, “Go wid
thought he had more pluck.”
And one of the most disreputable of the fellows seized his
hat, and volunteered to accompany the frightened girl, asseverating
that he himself was the young dochther.
All at once the shoemaker dashed aside the frail curtain,
and with his eyes flashing fire, stood in the midst of the vulgar
crew, almost erect.
“Whoever dares to lie further to this poor child, or to
insult her in any way,” he cried, “does it at his peril.” And
leaving the dastards dumb with astonishment, he motioned the
girl to follow him, and without another word went out into the
rain. Ten minutes afterwards the old woman with whom he
boarded, wrapt in shawls and bearing a lantern in her hand,
was feeling her way through the wet weeds of an alley towards
the old house with the two front doors.
Presently, through the windows of an upper room, the curtains
of which were carefully drawn, the lights were seen to
shine, and shadows to pass, as if there was hurrying to and
fro within, but the most watchful gossips could discern nothing
more. Rumor had not exaggerated the truth—that night,
when the storm was loudest and the sky blackest, the poor
young lady who had been a few days before cast helpless upon
her own sad fortune, took in her trembling arms the unwelcome
child that must bear witness to her frailty, through time
as deathless as the years of God.
The little window by which the shoemaker worked looked
toward the house with the two front doors, and often as he
drew out his long threads, his eyes wandered that way, his
own isolated condition quickened his sympathies for the young
cast stones. Sewing, and hammering, and pegging, he
dreamed a thousand dreams of improbable ways in which he
might serve her, and as he took his walk to his evening meals
he now and then went round by the lonesome house, and the
oftener he took that road the shorter it appeared, until it
seemed to him at last, as he climbed the weedy hill and
crossed the bare common, only to pass that house and hobble
down the hill again that he was taking the shortest way
home.
So far from losing anything in the estimation of the young
fellows who frequented the “office,” by the spirit he manifested
in defence of the poor girl and her mistress, he was
thereby promoted to a considerably higher degree of importance,
and it soon became a matter of no unfrequent occurrence
for them to address directly to him such narratives as involved
the exhibition of what they esteemed the most admirable
manly courage. But these polite attentions gained imperceptibly,
if they gained at all, upon his kindly feeling, and a
brief word, or a careless nod, was usually the only acknowledgment
he made.
The squire's boots were a complete success, and served to
give him at once the reputation of a “tip-top” shoemaker;
but this was not enough to lift him out of the socket of
obscurity in which he was sunken, and give him anything like
a desirable social position. But what was termed genteel
patronage began to be extended to him and by degrees he
became known as little Gilbraith, and to be called Shoe Pete
only behind his back.
One evening, when an importunate creditor presented himself
“Mr. Gilbraith, could you make it convenient to lend me five
dollars for a day or two?”
“Certainly, sir, with the greatest pleasure,” replied the
shoemaker, with a heartiness that he had never before been
known to use, and opening a well-filled purse he presented the
note.
As the squire went forward to receive it, the mosquito-net
curtain intercepted his way and with one dash of his great
hand he swept it to the ground, with the outraged exclamation:
“What dingnation fool ever put this thing up here anyhow!”
As may be supposed, it was never hung up again, and thus
the line of demareation between the “office” and the “shop,”
became somewhat wavering.
The yellow leaves were coming down in the fall rain, when
the shoemaker invested his first earnings in the lot adjoining
the market-house, in consequence of which the squire acknowledged
his humanity, and when the Christmas snow hung its
white garlands on the box along the clergyman's grounds,
heaped higher the mounds in the graveyard, and lay all unbroken
before the house with the two front doors, a bright tin
sign bearing the name of Peter Gilbraith, between two gilt
boots, was nailed on the office door in close proximity to the
squire's letter-box, and an apprentice had been taken into the
shop, and with this assistance the young shoemaker found it
difficult to fill his orders.
“I think I will not go to supper to-night,” he said to his
apprentice one evening, as the last sunlight glittered on the
snow that hung over the caves of the house with two doors.
he had just lifted his hand to draw the curtain across the little
window, preparatory to lighting the candle when a new and
joyous light came suddenly into his eyes, and leaving the curtain
undrawn, he leaned his face against the window for some
minutes, and said, at length, with a changed tone and manner:
“I believe I will go, after all.”
The next minute the apprentice looked out, and was surprised
to see him going up the hill through the unbroken snow,
directly away from the house of the old woman with whom he
took his meals. He did not see the house with the two front
doors—much less the young woman at the window, holding a
little child in her arms, and trying to make it see the moon
come up, and if he had he would have been just as much at a
loss to know why Peter walked that way, and indeed that
young man might have found it difficult to explain the puzzle
himself.
“I never saw his lameness interfere so little with his
walking, as it seems to now, in spite of the snow,” mused
the apprentice, and he drew the curtain, and lighted the candle.
The snow hung in a great roll over the top of the stone chimney,
unstained and unmelted. “There is no fire below,” thought
Peter, and he sighed.
“Perhaps it is the woman's black hair that makes her face
look so pale,” he thought, as walking slowly he gazed upon her;
but suggestions of scanty fare would not be silenced, and he
sighed again and walked more slowly than before. Just then
the little child thrust its naked arms from out the ragged blanket
in which it was wrapt, and began to cry bitterly.
Peter stopped and stood still. In spite of the tender coaxings
and cooings of the woman, which Peter could hear from
where he stood, the child cried more and more bitterly. Moved
by a sudden impulse he walked directly to the door nearest to
which the woman stood. She saw him and opened it at once,
with an air of such modest sweetness, as caused him to take
off his hat—a civility he had never shown to anybody since
coming to the village until then.
There was no fire, sure enough, and the other evidences of
comfort were all as meagre as imagination could have pictured
them. He hesitated for a moment when the young
woman paused as if expecting him to make known his errand,
but charity is never long in suiting means to ends, and he
replied to her silence that he was in need of a person to bind
shoes, and not knowing where to seek with the hope of success,
had ventured to inquire of whomever he chanced to see.
Before he had spoken half-a-dozen words the baby lifted its
head from its mother's shoulder, and with tears in its bright
wondering eyes remained looking at him, perfectly quiet—one
dimpled shoulder peeping from the ragged blanket above and
two little bare feet, blue with cold, dangling below.
Is it any wonder if Peter took both those little feet in his
hand, and tried to warm them under the pretence of seeing
whether he had ever made so small a shoe?
When he returned to his shop that night, he found two
young women, one of them the squire's daughter, waiting to
have measures for shoes taken.
They whispered and laughed with one another, not a little
rudely the shoemaker thought, as he was getting ready his measure,
and their orders were given in a manner that certainly
presumptuous and troublesome.
She doubted very much whether he would be able to suit
her at all, she said, as she tossed her golden curls from her fire-red
cheeks; but she should not hesitate to send him back
twenty pairs of shoes, if he failed so many times to please her
—it was so hard to make such people understand what one
wanted—and with this little indication of her superiority and
willfulness, and with an indignant fling of her flounced skirt, she
withdrew without so much as the slightest bend of her pretty
neck.
But Mr. Gilbraith gave little attention to her saucy airs—
his thoughts were too busy with the pale-faced mother, and
her shivering baby.
When spring came, two more lots were added to the first
one, and the prosperous shoemaker built himself a fine new
shop with a great square show window, and a sign almost as
big as the squire's front door. And as a finishing stroke of
finery, there was an imported carpet on the floor, and
three yellow windsor chairs for the accommodation of the
ladies.
He was called Mr. Gilbraith almost altogether, and his store
was the fashionable one of the place; and when a brick pavement
was laid down in front of the door and an awning
stretched above it, that direction became the exclusive promenade;
and every day, after sunset, some twenty or thirty young
women were to be seen tripping over the pavement, and turning
their faces away from the window, of course. And last,
and first, and oftenest, the squire's daughter was sure to go by,
and more than any one else she stopped to examine the slippers
her curls coquettishly, and smile in a most bewitching fashion.
But the shoemaker worked on at these times just as if her
pretty face was not at the window, and stimulated by his indifference
she stepped into the shop one evening and inquired the
price of a pair of slippers which she said had taken her fancy.
He replied without so much as glancing towards her. “I should
like to have them fitted,” she said, with a little more deference
in her tone than she had hither to used, and sitting down in the
yellow windsor chair she extended her little foot. The young
man motioned his apprentice to wait upon the lady, but she
would not be thus defeated. “They don't please altogether,”
she said, “perhaps it is the fault of the fitting—will you be
kind enough to give me your opinion, Mr. Gilbraith.” It was
the tone rather than the words that elicited the young man's
attention. He laid aside his work, and shaking back his curls
with a grace of artlessness surpassing art, came forward, the
faint color of his face heightened for the moment to a flush of
confusion that made him positively handsome. The young lady
thought so, and apologized for the trouble she was making.
He was not used to such deference, and as he fitted the slipper,
held the little foot in his hand longer than need were
“There! that is perfect,” exclaimed the beauty, referring to
the slipper.
“It is the foot that makes the shoe look so well,” he replied;
“shall I send them home for you?”
Oh no! the beauty would not give him so much trouble, she
was already greatly obliged—and with a bright smile and a
low courtesy that seemed to say she was receiving a favor, took
the parcel in her white hand and was just stepping from the
arm and a child hanging over her shoulder, came in.
All women love babies—the squire's daughter was no exception;
and with an ingenuous exclamation of delight she
stopped, took the rosy face of the little one between her hands,
and kissed eyes and mouth and cheeks, prattling the while, in
such a pretty way as went straight to the heart of the mother,
and made a softer impression on the shoemaker than all her
coquettish arts could ever have done, for some strange affinity
had drawn him towards that little helpless creature from the
dawn of its unfortunate existence. It often happened thereafter
that when the village beauty passed the shoemaker's
shop, he was at the door or window, and gradually the
exchange of the evening salutation began to be looked to by
both as the event of the day.
All the summer long the pale face was seen at the window
of the house with the two front doors, and late into the night
the candle would shine on the tired fingers that were always
busy binding shoes. The path up the hill from the shoe-shop
to the door was worn quite distinctly along the sod, and the
shoemaker was observed to walk along it very frequently
—more frequently, the neighbors thought, than business
required.
Meantime the baby grew more and more in the affection of
the young shoemaker, and he would often take with him when
he went to the house, a flower or an apple or some other trifle
to please her baby eyes, and she would reach her hands up to
be taken on his knee, and he would bend his head and allow
her to make playthings of his curls, at will. No wonder she
grew fond of him and learned to clap her hands and crow
the love to reward the love?” And when this little child had
found access to his heart it became gradually more accessible
to others, for the humanizing influence of love, even for a flower
or a dumb animal, is beyond calculation. Like the dew and
the rain that help to mould the dust into the rose, it falls
into the desert of life, and straightway a garden is produced.
Everybody said, “What a change has come over Gilbraith
—he is not the Shoe Pete he used to be at all;” but no one
dreamed what had wrought the change.
And the summer went by and the bright leaves fell on the
brighter head of the little girl as the shoemaker tugged her
about among the hollyhocks and poppies of the door-yard.
The house with the two front doors had a smoke in its chimney
all that winter, and the gossips said the mistress of it was
binding the shoemaker's heart as well as his shoes, but the
wisest gossips are at fault, sometimes.
It was the week before Christmas and the pale-faced shoe-binder
was at her work, paler and perhaps more melancholy
than usual, for it was hard to get along at the best, and it was
now mid-winter, and her health, less robust than it used to be,
was scarcely equal to the demands upon it.
Little Orphie, for so the fatherless child had been named,
had learnt to lisp, “mother,” but she called that name less
often than Gabriel as she persisted in designating Mr. Gilbraith.
She had fallen asleep in his arms, and her upturned
face seemed asking to be kissed as her bright little head rested
against his bosom. He pulled down her coarse seanty dress,
for her bare legs dangled out of it, and said speaking partly
Orphie shall have a new dress, bright as the poppies she likes
so much.”
Perhaps it was the allusion to her birthday that awoke in
the mind of the mother unwelcome memories, for throwing
down her work with angry haste, she laid the child in the cradle,
and with a scornful flush on her cheek removed it from the
warmth of the firelight into the darkest corner of the room.
“What did you do that for?” asked the shoemaker with
both authority and displeasure in his tone.
“What right have you to dictate in reference to my child?”
she replied, and resumed her work with an averted face.
“The right which my love for her gives me,” he said, in a
tone very gentle and winning.
The mother's heart was touched, and hiding her face in her
hands she burst into tears—poverty, shame, pride, and sorrow,
had produced a momentary feeling of harshness even for her
child, but the next instant she was humbly and heartily repentant.
“I wish I was dead,” she sobbed, at length, “or that I
never had been born—that would be better; nobody cares for
me in the world, and even you are stealing from me the heart
of my child!”
The young man was making some tender apology, to the
effect that it was through the child's heart that he had hoped
ultimately to reach the mother's, when a loud knock on the
door arrested the attention of both parties, and caused the
baby to sit suddenly upright, and stare wonderingly about.
“You may bring her cradle back where it was,” said the
mother softly, and hastily brushing the tears away, she opened
surprise when she saw that the visitor was Squire Bigsham.
“You need not trouble yourself about the cradle,” she said,
almost coldly, and aside, as it were, to the shoemaker, and
from that moment, gave her undivided attention to the more
distinguished guest.
When Mr. Gilbraith returned home he found a dainty little
note awaiting him—Miss Bigsham presented her compliments
and begged the honor of Mr. Gilbraith's company on Christmas
Eve.
“By George! but she's the prettiest girl what's in this
town?” exclaimed the apprentice, as he presented the note, and
he added, as he saw the smile on his employer's face, “I cut
the best piece of ribbon in the store to make rosyetts to put
onto her shoes!”
“Quite right,” replied Mr. Gilbraith, and refolding the note,
he placed it carefully in his vest pocket.
The following evening the mistress of the house with the
two front doors failed to return her work, as usual—the
next day the apprentice was sent for it, and received the
answer that it was not yet completed. Among the rest were
a pair of slippers for Miss Bigsham. They must be sent home
before the Christmas Eve, and having waited as long as he
could, Mr. Gilbraith went himself, and in a mood less amiable
than common. Not a stitch had been set in the slippers,
and the fingers that should have done that work were busy
making a shirt for Squire Bigsham.
The shoemaker was angry, but his first expression of displeasure
was arrested by little Orphie, who clung to his knees,
saying, “Gabriel, Gabriel,” in her almost wild delight. He
house.
Christmas Eve saw him at Squire Bigsham's, and no one of
all the gay assembly so much honored by the squire's beautiful
daughter as he. She was noted for her graceful dancing,
but that night she preferred, strangely enough, her friends
thought, more quiet amusements. Mr. Gilbraith, however, was
not ignorant of the fact that his inability to dance influenced
her preference, nor could he remain quite insensible to that
preference, for Miss Bigsham was the admiration of the village,
and he to whom she extended her lightest favor was
deemed fortunate indeed. Pride has more authority in matters
of love than we are apt to believe, and the shoemaker's heart
had its share of vanity and weakness.
Many a night after that, when he had been passing the
evening with the squire's daughter, he would go home by the
way of the house with the two front doors, and sometimes linger
a long time watching the lights as they moved about, sighing
regretfully; for the breach created between him and the
pale-faced young woman on the occasion of the squire's first
visit to her was destined never to close up, and be as it was
before. Little Orphie, however, did not share in the alienation,
and when her birthday came round, true to his promise,
he gave her the new dress, red as it could be, and exceedingly
beautiful in her eyes.
“You had better give it to the great beauty who has made you
so blind to everybody else,” said Orphie's mother ungraciously.
“Why do you decline to-say Miss Bigsham?” answered the
shoemaker, “for doubtless it is she to whom you allude—surely
that name is not so obnoxious to you.”
A conversation beginning thus was not likely to end in a
more agreeable state of feeling than had previously existed,
and from that day the old breach was visibly widened, and the
intercourse between the lovers, for such they had really been,
was restricted entirely to the shoe-binding.
Once, indeed, afterwards, he knocked on one of the two doors
with the express design of humbling all his pride, and expressing
fully the sentiment which needed not the warranty of
expression, but when the door was opened by the hand of
Squire Bigsham, his tenderness and courage received together
a stroke from which they never recovered.
The springtime just beginning to bud in his nature was
blighted—he withdrew into himself, and suffered the old hardness
and indifference to divide him from men and women again.
The squire's daughter lost her brief power, and though she
tried to cover her discomfiture with gaiety and flirtation, she
steadily refused all offers of marriage, and the roses died out
of her cheeks, one by one.
When five years were gone her curls were put plainly away,
and she was grown as quiet and reserved almost as the shoemaker
himself, with whom meantime the world had continued
to prosper, and he was become one of the richest and most
influential of the citizens among whom he lived, for the little
town where he settled had grown to a city.
Little Orphie was big enough now to bring and carry work
to and from her mother's house; every day she was seen tripping
down the hill with a bundle in her arms, and every day the
shoemaker kissed her and called her his little sunbeam, and so
she was in fact, for she lighted his lonesome life more than anything
else.
The squire's daughter and he had been almost estranged for
the last year. One day, to his surprise, she came to see him,
her face pale and her eyes swollen from weeping; her father
was about to be married, she said, to the woman who lived in
the house with the two front doors—she could never be reconciled
to such a marriage, and was about to leave her native
home to make room for the intruder, and could not go away
without seeing Mr. Gilbraith once more, and feeling that they
parted good friends. Her trembling voice and wet cheeks
told how bitter, at best, that parting must be; suffice it that it
never came about, and that instead, she became in due course
of time, the mistress of a fine house of her own, and the wife
of Mr. Gilbraith.—Everybody envied the couple and thought
them very happy, and so perhaps they were; nevertheless the
husband had his fits of melancholy, and had, it was reported,
a room set apart in his fine house where he was accustomed to
retire for hours together, during which times even his beautiful
wife was excluded from his sympathy.
The house with the two front doors was deserted, and when
Squire Bigsham's wife sat in the front pew of the church, or
invited her friends to dine, it was no longer remembered that
she had ever lived there in neglect and poverty.
When little Orphie was sick, Mrs. Gilbraith went home, and
when she died Mrs. Bigsham shook hands with Mr. Gilbraith,
and in the child's grave all unfriendly feeling was buried.
When Peter Gilbraith, junior, was christened, there was a
great merry-making at Squire Bigsham's, and when he was six
years old there was no boy to be found who had so fine a
beauty and so manly a courage as he. It was the autumn of
that year, a rainy night, and the yellow leaves were coming
before a little fire, very happily, and making plans for the celebration
of their wedding day. Little Peter was playing in the
room specially dedicated to his father—he was fond of being
there because it was a liberty not often granted him. Suddenly
he came staggering towards his parents—his eyes staring
wide, and his face white as it could be. As soon as he could
speak he said that while he was at play, a little girl wearing a
red dress came to him and kissed him, and that when he spoke
to her she turned into a shadow. The anniversary celebration
was talked of no more that night.
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