University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
UNCLE JOHN AND AUNT HULDAH.

To her gray-haired, serious, reverend uncle,
and to her white-haired, invalided, old-fashioned,
prim aunt, this Josephine of ours
could make herself quite as agreeable as to
that sparkling veteran of the world, Mr. Hollowbread.

Nor was it a small triumph on her part,
for they were not prepared to like her entirely.
Indeed, they had heard things of
her which had made them fear lest they
should find her a worrying guest, and be
obliged now and then to frown openly upon
her behavior.

Yet, before they had looked at her a minute,
and before she had uttered twenty sentences,
they were glad she had come to them,
and wanted to hold her in lap. A handsome
young face, a lively and intelligent and amiable
expression, sparkling eyes which can be
alternately pathetic and roguish, and a magnetism
of animal spirits playing through all,
make up a pretty sure passport to human favor.
Moreover, Josephine was a lady in carriage,
and was very clever for her age. She
had courtesy of manner, an unusual tact in
adapting herself to people, and a ready fund
of light, pleasant chitchat.

“I have surprised you,” she said, when she
had kissed the two elders. “I have come as
if I had rained down. But I thought it best
to get on here without giving you the trouble
of looking for me and going to meet me.
And wasn't it well that I did! Such a night
for you to be out in! And such a time as I
have had in getting here! I have driven a
hundred miles, and through four Noachian
deluges, since I left that station. You shall
hear all about it presently. I know it will
amuse you.”

“And did you come all alone through this
dreadful storm?” asked Mrs. Murray, poking
out her thin lips and opening wide her gray
eyes, like an infant expressing wonder.

She was a singular-looking old lady, by-the-way;
remarkably small and lean in figure,
with a little white, puckered face, an eager
expression, and jerky motions.

“There was a strange gentleman with
me,” said Josephine, not proposing to tell
much about Mr. Hollowbread. “Hacks were
searce, and he had to come a long way out
of his road, poor man, and got awfully wet
in looking for the house. Did you see him?
I do believe he could have spouted water
like a Triton.”

Old Mrs. Murray looked at her husband,
as if for an explanation; trembled all over,
like a kitten aiming at a marble; saw that
a joke was intended, and giggled.

“You have not changed at all since we
saw you last,” said the rector, smiling down
upon Josephine's frolicsome face, as if he
liked her well just as she was, and wished
that she might never change. He was a tall,
portly man of sixty-three, with a large, pallid,
dropsical but amiable face, his thin hair
almost white, and his whiskers entirely so,
his bearing at once ponderous and tremulous.
He looked much older than his years, and
yet he was clearly younger than his wife.

“Ah! my life has changed,” answered Josephine,
suddenly remembering the meeting
of which he spoke and the sorrows which had

befallen her since. “I have had enough to
change me, you know,” she added, lifting her
eyes to his as she uttered these last two
words, and disclosing tears which were surely
honest enough. Then she put a love of a
lace handkerchief to her pathetic face, and
murmured, “Poor Augustus!”

Yes, we must at last confess the fact that
she was a widow. The poor Augustus in
question was a nephew of the Reverend John
Murray, and had died two years previous to
the date of this history, so that his lovely
relict was already out of mourning. Probably
she could not now grieve for him very
keenly; but a bereavement has always two
sides of possible sorrow to it: the survivor
can at least bemoan his or her own loneliness.

“Yes,” sighed the rector, taking Josephine's
unemployed hand. “It is hard to have a
husband swept away so early.”

“Swept away so early!” repeated Mrs.
Murray, who had a curious way of echoing
her lord's observations, as if she were responding
to a litany.

“The Divine Providence seems to be very
careless of our earthly happiness.”

“Careless of our earthly happiness!” murmured
the old lady.

“But if we were blessed continually here,
we should never desire the better hereafter.”

“Never desire the better hereafter!” gasped
Mrs. Murray, getting a little out of breath.

“I need not tell you how we sympathize
with you in a sorrow which is partly our
own.”

“Our own!” added the old lady, falling
considerably in the rear.

“We are glad, very glad, that you have
come to us.”

“Glad you have come to us!” repeated
Mrs. Murray, freshening up under the influence
of sympathy, and coming in almost even
with him.

They were, indeed, very sorry for their
relative, this beauteous and piteous young
widow, so full of graces and of grief. They
knew all the while that she had been an awful
flirt; they supposed that, short as her
married life had been, she had given her husband
no little uneasiness; and, moreover,
they had held poor Augustus himself in disrepute,
as an idle, hare-brained, ridiculous
spendthrift. Yet, when they saw his lovely
young widow crying there before them, they
could not help believing in the genuine pungency
of her affliction, and sympathizing
warmly with it. Old Mrs. Murray pulled out
her own handkerchief, and moistened it with
a few of the hard-wrung tears of age.

“Don't let us talk of it,” she said, softly.
“I am so sorry we put you in mind of it!”

“Don't blame yourselves,” answered Josephine,
with surprising cheerfulness, at the
same time removing her handkerchief, and
showing her fine eyes very slightly reddened.
One would be tempted to say that there had
not been above one drop in each of them.
“I shall learn to bear it better some day, I
suppose. People do learn such things.”

“God's will has been done, and it is our
duty to submit,” observed Parson Murray,
with a somewhat ex-officio air and tone, for
which we must strive to pardon him, remembering
how often he was called upon to make
such remarks, and also how little he had been
able to esteem “poor Angustus.”

“Our duty to submit,” echoed Mrs. Murray,
in her litany manner.

A minute later Josephine was narrating to
the elders her drive from the station, and
making them laugh heartily over the damp
calamities of Mr. Hollowbread. She told every
incident (except the flirting and the
claim-hunting) with an amazing minuteness
and with a picturesqueness and vivacity of
language which rendered the story almost a
work of genius. She was prodigiously diverting,
and her hearers could not help being
excessively amused, although they queried
in spirit whether their merriment was quite
proper. They were cheerful old people, but
they had high notions of the dignity incumbent
upon the Murrays, who were an ancient
and patrician family.

“Mr. Hollowbread?” at last inquired Mrs.
Murray. She wanted to get the name exactly,
for she kept a diary, and she meant to
set down the gist of this tale in her current
volume. “I thought you said he was a
stranger!” she immediately added, with a
puzzled air, bordering on suspicion.

“Oh, I heard his name in the cars!” explained
Josephine. “Some people spoke to
him, and called him Mr. Hollowbread.”

“A Congressman? I never heard of him,”
observed the rector, who was something of
a gossip, but took little interest in political
personages, unless they were leading Abolitionists.

“I never heard of him!” litanied Mrs.
Murray. “But don't you forget the name,
Mr. Murray,” she added, mindful of her diary.

Then, as it was a late hour for the old
lady, the propriety of getting to bed was
suggested to Josephine, and she was shown
to her room.

“She is very entertaining,” said the rector
to his wife, as they marched slowly to their
own sleeping-place, a vast apartment on the
parlor-floor. He quite chuckled with satisfaction
as he said it, not merely because he
himself had a weakness for gossip and laughable
narrations, but mainly because he was
delighted at finding a new toy for Mrs. Murray.
He was that rare specimen of man
who makes a pet of his wife; who watches
over her well-being and happiness with the
assiduity of a mother watching over an only
child; who unflinchingly sacrifices his own
case and his own tastes for her comfort, or
even for her mere amusement; and who is
disposed to use his fellow-mortals as mere

assistants and instruments in this loving
labor.

Nature had made him very affectionate;
nature had made it imperative with him
that he should have a pet, which should be
all his own, and subject to fondling by no
other hands; and fortune had devised that
he should only obtain such a pet in the
shape of a wife. The tenderness and the
sweet self-abnegation of his character were
shown in the extraordinary choice which he
had made.

At twenty-five, while yet one of the handsomest
young men of his time, he married a
lady fifteen years his senior, mainly because
she had fallen desperately in love with him,
but largely, too, because of his instinctive
eagerness to be loved supremely. There
was money in the match, but that counted
for naught in his estimation; he had abundant
means of his own. He really married
out of pity—out of gratitude for preference
—out of affection, and a passionate yearning
for affection.

It would be difficult to imagine a more
devoted husband than he had been. His
wife had, of course, rapidly grown old on his
hands, but his loyalty, his fondness, his attentions
had never failed, and he had become
only more tender with the continuance of
his service. He had ruled his life entirely
to compass the one end of her happiness.
When at one time her health failed, he gave
up his clerical duties, and traveled years for
her sake; and when she wished once more
to see him publicly useful, he had, for her
sake, resumed his labors.

What must have been still more difficult,
he had subordinated his minutes as well as
his years to her comfort, watching all the
livelong day to care for and amuse her. If
he went out, it was because she wanted to
go with him; if he staid within, it was because
she was unable to go out. As she advanced
in years, and her mind lost somewhat
of its early vigor, he sought trifling diversions
for her.

At sixty-three he was a gossip-monger and
an inventor of child-like babblings for the
pleasure of this tottering woman of seventy-eight.
Many people laughed at him for this
seemingly misplaced tenderness, and this
seemingly undignified frivolity of mind.
But to one who looks closely into his motives,
and who does not object to a one-sided
development and a waste of intellectual
power, his life can appear scarcely less than
beautiful.

It was all the more beautiful because it
had brought him suffering. Much watching;
countless hours of confinement in close
rooms or in sick-chambers; daily intercourse
with a person so much his senior; lack of
exercise, and consequent loss of digestion—
these things had aged him early. His white
hair, the paleness and flabbiness of his face,
his swollen joints and feet and hands, the
tottering of his heavy gait, were all signs
of disease. He was dropsical, rheumatic
and dyspeptic, with a blister or two about
him very frequently, and medicine-bottles
always upon his night-table. Worse still,
his nervous constitution had suffered terribly,
and he was subject, in case of irritation,
to attacks of spasmodic excitement, almost
amounting to hysteria.

It seemed, also, as if his mind had deteriorated,
so fond was he of small social gossip
and reminiscences, and so much time did he
spend in trivial conversation.

There were people who declared that Mrs.
Murray was a younger spirit and a sounder
intellect than her husband. But strange as
his life was, and deficient as it had been in
exhibition of masculine power, it was morally
as spotless as the record of a human being
can well be. Never had he done a deed
which he might not have confessed without
shame in the face of the whole world.

“Yes, she is very entertaining,” repeated
the rector, rejoicing over his wife's new plaything.

“Why, so she is, Mr. Murray,” answered
the old lady, in equal gratulation. “What a
story she made of that man getting out in
the puddles and rain!” she giggled, in a
spasmodic way, as if laughing were sharp
exercise for her. “What was his queer
name?” she asked, looking for her writing-materials.

“Hol-low-bread!—H-o-l-l-o-w-b-r-e-a-d—
Hollowbread,” said the rector, pronouncing
it very plainly, and then spelling it, and then
pronouncing it again. “Mr. Hollowbread
—a Congressman,” he explained, loudly. “I
dare say the soaking was good for him.
Most of those political lambs of the Lord's
flock need washing very often.”

“Why, Mr. Murray!” exclaimed Mrs. Murray,
giggling again, but throwing up her
hands in mild remonstrance.

Her husband was a joker, and, like many
other clergymen, he frequently used devout
phraseology in a humorous sense; but, although
she had listened to this sort of thing
from him for forty years, she was still not
entirely wonted to it.

“Mr. Hollowbread!” she presently repeated,
and sat down to put the name on paper.
It was her custom to make brief notes for
her diary before going to bed, and then to
extend them in the morning during the hour
between dressing and breakfast.

“I don't wonder Angustus was bewitched,”
resumed Parson Murray, after waiting for
madame to finish her memoranda. “I don't
discover beauty so frequently as some people
are favored to do,” he added, remembering,
perhaps, that his wife had never been handsome—at
least, not in his time. “But Josephine
is certainly pretty, as well as a good
talker.”

“Why, so she is, Mr. Murray,” agreed the
old lady, not only without jealousy, but with
enthusiasm. “No wonder Augustus was bewitched.
I do hope she will behave herself
as one of our family ought to. We will
keep her always, and leave her something.”

Mrs. Murray had a great respect for her
property. It was inherited property; it was
old family property; it was much nobler
than earned property. To leave such wealth
as this to any one would be much more than
enrichment: it would be like conferring honors,
decorations, patents of nobility.

“Don't talk about your will, Huldah,”
begged the rector. “It always makes you
sick — and me, too,” he added, remembering
that he must not hint to her that she
was specially feeble. “There will be time
enough to consider about a legacy to Josephine
when she has shown herself worthy
of one.”

“Well, I say so, Mr. Murray — that's just
my opinion—there's always plenty of time.
You are always in such a hurry.”

We give this speech of madame's to show
how she emphasized words, and also what
confusion she sometimes got into as to who
had said which.

“She must have been sobered since those
times,” continued Mr. Murray, referring to
days when scandal had taken Josephine in
hand. “She was a mere child then—only
nineteen. Besides, Augustus was to blame.
He had no business to love such society as
he did, and to lead his wife into it. I can't
believe any worse of her than that she suffered
for being found in the company of evildoers.”

“He was a harum-scarum. To think of
his spending and losing all that money in
six years! A hundred thousand dollars
gone in six years!” exclaimed Mrs. Murray,
lifting both her hands in excitement, as she
had often lifted them before over this financial
tragedy. “How could he do it? And
he only twenty-seven! Why, he was only
married two years. It wasn't her fault, Mr.
Murray.”

“She was somewhat extravagant, I fear.
Young women in these days are brought up
to be so. But it was the stock-gambling
which took the most of it.”

Mrs. Murray threw up her hands again.
Stock-gambling was a sin which had come
up since her mind had lost somewhat in vigor,
and she had never been able to comprehend
its nature precisely. She had a vague
idea that stocks were gambled for over card-tables,
and she could see clearly that that
must be a frightfully wasteful and wicked
diversion. To bet gold and bank-bills was
heinous enough, but absolutely to bet one's
stocks—dear me!

“And that is the end of the Murray money
on that side!” moaned the lady. “All that
part of the Undivided gone!”

This word, “undivided,” she pronounced
with a sorrowful reverence which demands
explanation. The principal wealth of the
surviving Murrays consisted in an unshared
estate, which had been accumulating under
wise management for nearly three-quarters
of a century, and which had gradually become,
not merely a great property, but also
an object of family pride, and hereditary
glory, a fetich. Out of this store the father
of Augustus had withdrawn his share, and
Augustus had wasted it.

“Traveling is very expensive,” continued
Mrs. Murray, unable to quit the woeful subject
of this departed money. “Augustus carried
her all over Europe. Every one knows
that that is expensive.”

“It cost us ten thousand a year,” answered
the rector, who had tastes suitable to an
archbishop, and would long since have reduced
himself to poverty but for his more
prudent wife. “I don't suppose they got
along on a cent less. It must be confessed
that some of my flesh and blood are fearful
fools.”

“And she only has her own little property!
How much did you say? Only five or six
thousand dollars! We must leave her something,
Mr. Murray.”

“Hadn't we better wait till morning,
Huldah?” remonstrated the rector, fearful
lest his venerable invalid should make herself
wakeful and pass a bad night.

“Well, I say wait, Mr. Murray. You are
always in such a hurry! I meant to wait,”
answered the old lady, just a little peevishly,
for she was very tired and dozy.

“Yes, you said so,” conceded the patient
husband; and that was the last of their conversation
for that night.