University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

The reader has not yet received a proper introduction to
the family of Mr. George Moxon, but there have been
good reasons for the delay. The family had its peculiarities,
and they were peculiarities so essentially idiocratic that
the most favorable circumstances were necessary to be in
conjunction, for their thorough exhibition.

For several days succeeding the events recorded in the
last chapter, the weather was hot and sultry; and, on the
evening which has been chosen for the introduction of this
family, it had cleared, and cooled, and refreshed itself, and
everything and everybody else, by the first thunder-shower
of the season. A big black cloud had risen slowly and gloomily
in the West; silver-headed giants had come up behind it,
and peeped over one another's shoulders into the valley,
slowly changing their places and climbing higher and higher,
until at last a broad grey screen hid them and the sky above
them, and spread over the heavens. And then there was
much hurrying to and fro, in the advance battalions of the
storm; and the roar of the chariot wheels and the tramp and
rush of the on-coming legions filled the air. At last, the scattering
shot of the first distant discharge fell pattering upon
the forest leaves and on the cabin roofs; while nearer, and
with still increasing vividness, flashed the magnificent artillery.

There was a great scene between the giants of the clouds
and the giants of the forests. At first, the former came
down on the wind in a hand-to-hand encounter. They
grappled, they wrestled, they writhed, they groaned, they

roared; but the forest giants were the victors, and, in the
first lull of the storm, their antagonists retreated, and took
up their position behind the clouds, from whence they kept
up a scattering fire upon the lower hosts, who, after the
heat of the conflict, stood bathing their brows in the sweeping
rain. Many an old oak—a soldier of the centuries—
was cleft through the helmet, and many a wounded veteran
pine smoked in the sweat of his agony.

The shower came on just before sunset, and continued
until the dusk of evening had almost deepened into night.
There was stillness and solemnity in all the cabins. To their
inhabitants, the storm was an exhibition of the power of
God; and it was no less a natural impulse than a recognised
Christian duty to keep reverently silent when His
voice was uttering itself in tones that had once echoed from
the sides of Sinai.

The house of the Moxons was peculiarly a solemn place.
It was in the presence of such an exhibition of power as the
storm presented that Mr. Moxon betrayed the weakest
points of his character. There was something so terribly
positive about the descent of a thunderbolt, the roar of the
wind, and the down-coming of the rain,—something so
seemingly regardless of him or his feelings,—something so
levelling in its effect upon social and all other distinctions,
that it took away his strength, made him forget his position,
and drove him to promises and prayer. He and his wife,
and two children, both girls, were gathered in their principal
room, and not a word was uttered.

Mr. Moxon sat leaning back in his chair,—his lips moving
in silent prayer, or his form cringing before the sharp
lightning; and only stirred his limbs to change their position,
which, in his nervous state, became painful after having
been sustained for very brief spaces of time. Mrs.
Moxon sat in another chair, holding in her arms her youngest
daughter, Rebekah, and divided her attention between

her, her husband, the window, and the bed near it, where
lay her oldest daughter, Martha, a convalescent from a
somewhat protracted illness.

Martha was the only one who had not been terrified by
the shower. She had lain upon her bed in such a position
as to witness through the window the progress of the storm,
and she had enjoyed it very keenly.

After the rain had mostly passed over, and nothing remained
to tell of the shower but the wet earth and the
flashing of the lightning, whose thunder came but feebly
back to the ear from the East, Mrs. Moxon rose from her
chair and sat down upon the bed. Taking the little invalid's
hand in her own, she said, “How does my little
daughter feel this evening?”

“Pretty well,” replied the child, giving her a look with
her large dark eyes.

“Do you know, Martha, who has cured you? You have
been very sick.”

“No! Who has?”

“God has cured you, my child, and you should be very
thankful to Him for it. I hope my little girl, when she says
her prayers to-night, will not forget to thank her heavenly
Father for his kindness to her, in making her well again.”

The little girl lay reflecting upon the information conveyed
by her mother, and was evidently inclined to doubt
its correctness. At length, to settle a preliminary question,
she said, “Mamma, who made me vomit?”

Mrs. Moxon turned and looked at her husband, who
heard the reply, and who, being unable to answer the question
satisfactorily to himself or the child, said nothing. The
mother was saved from the necessity of continuing the conversation
in that direction by a sudden exclamation of the
child, whose eyes had reverted to the window.

“Oh, mamma! mamma!” exclaimed the little girl; “I
saw God light a star then!”

“I guess not, my child,” said the mother.

“Yes, I did, mamma, and I saw him throw down the coal,
clear down by the clouds there, till it fell into the water,
and went out.”

The father and mother were both confounded, but their
condition was not unusual, when in conversation with this
child. Neither parent had been able to pursue a train of
thought with her for any considerable, or at least any
satisfactory distance, without being overwhelmed by some
unanswerable question, shocked by some strange remark,
or startled by some wild revelation. Yet both felt that they
must not stop talking with her and to her, and while the
mother, in particular, trembled to hear her speak, she could
not refrain from the endeavor to train her wild fancies and
regulate her imagination. In this endeavor, religion was
her only means; but religion, by some strange though by
no means unusual fatality, was just the subject, of all others,
to set her imagination running upon its wildest freaks.

The mother still sat upon the bed. She wondered what
she should say next. At last she thought she would try, if
possible, to resume the thread of conversation she had
originally commenced. “Martha,” said she, “you must
not only be thankful to God for taking care of you while
you have been sick, and for curing you, but you must try,
when you get well, to be a very good little girl, and do all
you can to please Him and glorify Him.”

Martha turned her large eyes towards her, and said,
“Mamma, how do you do when you glorify God?”

Mrs. Moxon was puzzled at this question, straightforward
and natural as it was, but she tried to answer it. “We
must glorify God,” said she, “by doing all He wishes to
have us, and by praising Him, and loving Him, and trying
to have everybody else love and praise Him.” She was
not exactly satisfied with her own exposition, but she
deemed it correct, so far as it went, and paused.

“What does God love to be praised so for?' 'inquired
the child.

Unfortunately the mother could think of nothing better
in reply than to ask her why she loved to be praised.

Martha looked at her mother, with her wonderful eyes
big with a new and strange apprehension, and said, “God
isn't proud, is He, mamma?”

The poor mother rose despairingly from the bed, and
resumed her seat in the chair.

“You must try to go to sleep now, Martha,” said Mr.
Moxon, breaking a silence that he had maintained since the
commencement of the storm.

“I wish you would go to sleep with me, papa,” replied
the child, “for then you could go to my brick house, and
see everything I've got there.”

“Your brick house? What do you mean by your brick
house?”

“I've got a brick house, and a blue cat in it,” said the
child, “just as blue as the sky, and it has got red rings
round its eyes, and a whole parcel of little red kittens, all
made out of bricks. Just think, papa! All made out of
bricks! And I've got a beautiful doll in it, with wings—I
guess her wings are green—I guess they are. Her name is
Martha Brick, and she can say all her letters, and spell
Nebuchadnezzar both ways; and I've got some beautiful
birds! Oh! they're just as beautiful! that fly right
through the window when it's down, and then one of them
'lights on the blue cat's head, and they keep 'lighting on
one another, till they pile clear up to the plastering; and
pretty soon I step on the blue cat's tail, and she screams,
and runs up the chimney, and that tips all the birds over,
and they laugh just as loud as they can laugh, and fly
and get on to the backs of the little brick kittens, and
drive them round the rooms and round the rooms; and
pretty soon a great black man comes into the room and

blows his nose, and the birds all fly out of the window
again, and—”

“Martha! Martha! my dear child, you will tire yourself,
so that you will not sleep to-night, if you do not stop
talking in this way,” exclaimed her father.

“I can go to sleep on my bed in the brick house,” said
the little girl, looking through the window up to the stars,
“for oh! there's a beautiful angel, just as big as he can be,
comes every night and sits on my bed, and tells me the
prettiest stories, and sings the prettiest songs; oh! they're
just as pretty! and sometimes there's two angels, and one
stands on the head-board and the other stands on the foot-board,
and they reach over, and take hold of hands, and
kiss one another, and jump over one another's shoulders,
and the blue cat and all her little kittens get into bed
with me, and we sleep just as warm as can be, till the great
black man comes in and blows his nose, and then the
angels fly away, and the blue cat goes up chimney, and the
little kittens all cuddle up into a pile.”

“Why, Martha,” exclaimed the mother, “where do you
get such notions?”

“At the brick house,” replied Martha, “and I've got a
great many more of them. I wish papa would go to the
brick house with me and see them.”

Mr. Moxon drew his chair to the bedside of his child,
and took her worn little hand in his own, hoping to quiet
her nervousness and to induce her to go to sleep. The
room was dark, and the younger child was already sleeping
in the arms of her mother. The silence of the group
seemed to grow deeper and deeper, until sleep would almost
have claimed possession of them all, but there were two
who were wakeful still.

Mr. Moxon knew that Martha was not asleep, and Martha
knew that he was not. At last both father and daughter
were seized with an involuntary shudder at the same moment.

“He went by then,” whispered the child.

“Who went by?” inquired the father.

“The black man. Didn't you see him, papa?”

“I felt something—something like a shadow,” replied
the father. “Do you smell anything, Martha?”

The little child snuffed the air with her thin and sensitive
nostrils, and said “Yes.”

“What is it?”

“I don't know,” replied the child, “but I've smelled that
a great many times at the brick house.”

“You don't mean, Martha, that you smell that when you
see him at the brick house, do you?”

When the utterance of this question was completed, the
father found, to his surprise, that, by one of those strange
transitions incident to a highly nervous organization, the
child had passed into the realm of sleep, as though an angel
had shut the door of the senses with a noiseless push;
and the little dreamer's “brick house” had opened of itself,
and given her sudden entrance.

Mr. Moxon still held the little hand within his own, and
busied his mind with the strange revelations of his child.
The coincidence of the shudder that visited her and himself,
at the same moment, was called up. There was an
influence that affected him and his child alike—that was
certain. She saw what she called a black man, and he felt
that something had passed his window that had cast a shadow
upon him—a shadow felt, not seen. They had both
been affected by a peculiar perfume also. What was it all?
Were they alone touched by these strange influences?
Were those influences the offspring of disease? If not,
were they—but no, they could not be! So, carefully rising,
and relinquishing the hand that had grown soft, warm, and
moist within his own, the minister made a place for the
repose of the other child, where the mother silently laid
her. The parents then withdrew together, and sought the

only other room they possessed, that they might, without
disturbing the children, unite in their evening devotions.

The prayer uttered by Mr. Moxon that evening was one
that his wife did not entirely understand. He prayed for
the forgiveness of sins that had possibly been committed
unwittingly. This was something that she did not comprehend,
especially as the prayer was uttered with remarkable
fervor and deep solemnity. Then he prayed mysteriously
with reference to the presence, the wiles, and the power of
the great adversary of souls, and seemed burdened with
some vague and overshadowing apprehension of evil. The
prayer was long, and Mrs. Moxon, wearied with long watchings,
and the new and strange influences within and around
her, was glad when it was concluded, and immediately
sought her bed.

The father, however, went to Martha's bedside, and
drawing a chair near to it, leaned over to listen to her
breathing, and to catch any dream-born whisper that might
find utterance. There the poor man sat for hours in the
darkness, sometimes looking through the window heavenward,
then out into the night, upon shapes that formed
themselves of, and clothed themselves with, the darkness,
and then moved and melted into nothingness. Then he
came back to the child, and at last her peaceful breathing
began to have a soothing influence upon him, and, leaving
her, he retired to rest.