University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
MISS GILBERT VISITS THE SKY, AND LITTLE VENUS TAKES UP
HER PERMANENT RESIDENCE THERE.

Where was Fanny Gilbert's mother during the exhibition?
What could keep the mother of little Fred
away? She was asleep—she was resting. She had
been asleep for two years. She had rested quietly in
the Crampton graveyard during all this time, “making
up lost sleep.” She had been hurried through life, and
hurried out of life. She had bent every energy to realize
to Dr. Gilbert his idea of a woman and a wife. She
had ambitiously striven to match him in industry—to
keep at his side in all the enterprises he undertook;
but her stock of strength failed her in mid-passage, and
she had fallen by the way. She had known no rest—
no repose. There was not a room nor a piece of furniture
in her house that did not give evidence of her tireless
care. Her Sabbath was no day of rest to her. She
taught, she visited the poor, she managed the village
sewing-circle, she circulated subscription-papers for charities,
she attended all the religious meetings in sunshine
and storm; and what with maternal associations, and

watchings with the sick, and faithful care of her own
family, she wore herself quite away, and faded out from
Dr. Gilbert's home, and from the sight of her children.

Everybody mourned when good Mrs. Gilbert died,
but everybody drew a long breath of satisfaction, as if
it were pleasant, after all, to think that she was resting,
and that nobody could wake her.

Her death shocked Dr. Gilbert, but it did not stop
him. On the contrary, he seemed to plunge into the
work of life with fresh energy. He could not pause
for an instant now. New schemes for the employment
of his time were devised. The temporary paralysis of
grief terrified him. To stand still, to cherish and linger
about a sorrow—this he could not bear. He must act
—act all the time—or die. People who looked on said
that Dr. Gilbert was trying to “work it off.” He fancied
that there was no way by which he could so appropriately
show his grief for her as by following her example.

“Aunt Catharine,” sister of the sleeping wife and
mother, kept house for Dr. Gilbert, and did what she
could for the children. This was very little, for the
doctor had his own ideas about their training, which he
allowed no one to interfere with.

It was supposed by the gossips of the village that
Dr. Gilbert would ultimately marry Aunt Catharine;
but it is doubtful whether he ever dreamed of such a
thing. She was a woman who, if we may credit her
own declaration, “never loved a man, and never feared
one.” It was pretty certain that she did not love the
doctor, and quite as certain that she did not fear him.
She held his restlessness in a kind of contemptuous horror,

and felt herself irresistibly drawn into antagonism
with him. She loved his children, and served them
affectionately and devotedly for the mother's sake; but
the doctor always aroused her to opposition. If he
spoke, she contradicted him, or felt moved to do so.
If he acted, she opposed him, or desired to oppose him.
She was neither cross-grained nor malicious; but a will
that acknowledged no ruler, and that did not recognize
her existence any more than if she had been a house-fly,
bred an element of perverseness in her character.

Of course, Aunt Catharine was not an admirer of
infant schools. She had not attended the exhibition.
Possibly she would have liked to see Fanny and Fred,
but she would not humor Dr. Gilbert. Accordingly,
when he and Fanny walked into the house, after bidding
the people of the parsonage good-night, they by no
means anticipated a cordial greeting.

Aunt Catharine had very black eyes, set in a sharp,
honest, sensible face, and they looked very black indeed
that night. Now there was an infallible index to the
condition of Aunt Catharine's mind, which both father
and daughter perfectly understood. When she was
knitting very slowly, and rocking herself very fast, they
knew that a storm was brewing in the domestic sky;
when she was rocking very slowly, and knitting very
fast, the elements were at peace.

When they entered the parlor, the rocking-chair was
in furious action, and the knitting-needles were making
very indifferent progress.

“Well, I'm glad it's done, and over, and through
with,” exclaimed Aunt Catharine, decidedly.

“Done, and over, and through with, eh? And finished,

and performed, and consummated, I suppose,”
responded the doctor with a pleasant sarcasm.

“Well, I'm glad it's done, then.”

“Done?” said the doctor with emphasis. “Done?
It's only begun.”

“You'll find it's only begun, I guess, before the
week is out,” replied the woman. “Do you suppose
the little babies you've been tormenting in church all
day will get through the week without being sick?
There was poor little Fred, who was so tired that he
could not go to sleep, and cried for an hour before he
shut his eyes.”

“A little natural, childish excitement,” said the
doctor, a shadow of apprehension coming over his face
unbidden. “He will be rested and all right in the
morning.”

“Dr. Gilbert,” said Aunt Catharine, laying aside her
knitting, and raising her forefinger excitedly, “I have
been longing to speak my mind for a month about this
business, and now I am going to speak it, and I want
Fanny to hear me.”

“Well, be quick about it,” said the doctor impatiently,
“for I have a good deal of writing to do to-night,
and time is short. Besides, Fanny is tired, I imagine.”

“Yes, you always have work to do, and time is always
short, and Fanny is always tired. It was always
so when your wife was living, and it is about her that
I'm going to speak. You had as good a wife, Dr. Gilbert,
as a man ever had, if she was my sister; and she
might just as well be alive now, and sitting in this room,
as to be lying in the graveyard yonder. I don't say
you killed her, but I say the life she led killed her, and

the life she led was the life you marked out for her, and
encouraged her to lead. Mind you, Dr. Gilbert, I don't
say this to taunt you. What's done can't be helped.
I can't bring her back, and if it were to recall her to her
old restless life of work, work, work, I wouldn't bring
her back if I could. She's better where she is. No, sir,
I wouldn't lift my finger to call her from the grave, if
that would do it. What I say, I say for her children.
They are going on in the same way. Fanny is working
herself to death. If she had not your constitution, she
would be lying by the side of her mother now. Think
of a girl of sixteen, with her education finished, and the
work of her life begun! It's awful, it's shameful, it's
outrageous. And there is your precious little boy, only
five years old—his mother's boy. He's just as sure to
die before his time as you keep on with him in the way
you have begun—heating his brains with arithmetic and
geography and history and comets, and all sorts of stuff,
that children have no more business with than they
have with your medicine-case, and showing him up to a
church full of people, and getting him so excited that he
can't sleep, and keeping him shut up in a school-room
all day, when he ought to be at home playing in the
dirt.”

Aunt Catharine said all this impetuously, with tears
that came and went in her eyes without once dropping.

“Is that all?” inquired the doctor coolly.

“It's God's truth, what there is of it, any way,” replied
the excited woman.

What he would have said if Fanny had not been
present, he did not say; so, with forced calmness, he
simply responded: “Well, well, Catharine, we'll not

quarrel; but I think I understand these matters better
than you, and I propose to manage my children, and
conduct their education as I think best.”

Aunt Catharine had “spoken her mind,” and, as
usual on such occasions, was aware that she had made
no impression—produced no effect. But she felt better.
The fire was spent, and turning kindly to Fanny, she
told her that she was looking very weary, and had better
retire. Then, gathering up her knitting, she went
up stairs to her own room.

Father and daughter sat a while in silence, the latter
waiting for the former to speak; but he turned to his
little desk, and was soon busy with his papers.

As Fanny rose and bade him “Good night,” he said,
without lifting his head: “You had better look in and
see how Fred is.”

The fatigues of the day showed themselves plainly in
the girl's heavy eyes, pale lips, and languid motions, as
she left the room, lamp in hand, and climbed the stairway.
The excitement that had held her up for weeks
was gone, and the natural reaction, with the warning
words her aunt had spoken, and the reawakened memories
of her dead mother, filled her with the most oppressive
sadness. Vague dissatisfaction, undefinable
unrest, took the place of ambitious aspiration, and the
delight of strong powers in full exercise.

In accordance with her habit, not less than in obedience
to the suggestion of her father, she took her way to
her room through the chamber of little Fred. He lay
moaning and feverish upon his pillow, his fair cheeks
flushed, and his hands tossing restlessly. She was too
weary to sit by him, so she unconsciously repeated the

words of her father: “A little natural, childish excitement.
He will be rested and all right in the morning.”
Then she kissed his hot lips, and passed into her own
chamber.

She was so weary that she could hardly wait to prepare
for her bed; but when she lay down, sleep came
quickly—a kind of half sleep, half swoon, that went almost
as quickly as it came. After a time, which seemed
very long, but which was, in fact, very short, she found
herself, almost instantaneously, painfully wide awake, as
if sleep had snatched and strained her to its bosom, and
then thrown her hopelessly off.

Then all the scenes and all the triumphs of the day
thronged her mind. She was again in the church. Admiring
eyes were upon her; she heard the applause
again; and again the flush of gratified pride warmed
her heart and her cheeks, as she recalled the words of
praise that were spoken to her in the presence of her associates.
Again the little children were revolving
around the chalk planetarium, obedient to her will.
Noiselessly, beautifully, they swam around in her waking
dream, to the rhythm of ideal harmonies. The little
comet went and came, and went and came again, and
still her ears rang with the applause of the admiring assembly.

She lay thus, the events of the day re-enacting themselves
in her brain, careless of sleep, but locked in a delicious
and half-delirious repose. In retiring, she had
neglected to extinguish her lamp, and was glad to have
it burning. At not infrequent intervals she had heard
her little brother moaning and muttering in his sleep.
At last the clock struck twelve, and soon afterwards

she heard the sound of footsteps in the hall—a delicate,
measured tread, light as the step of a fairy—jarring
nothing, awaking no resonance, but constant—now approaching
her door, then receding and fading away till
its velvet fall almost escaped her strained and sharpened
sense.

Her mother! What wonder that the words her
aunt had spoken should call up the well-remembered
form? What wonder that her quickened imagination
at this midnight hour should conceive the presence of
the loving spirit around the beds which her feet, while
living, had visited so fondly and so frequently?

Fanny heard the little parlor clock faintly strike the
half-hour before she thought of stirring. She was not
superstitious. Her father's spirit was in her, and when
it was roused, she was calm, self-poised, and courageous.
She rose from her bed, determined to learn the cause of
the footsteps which she still heard. Taking the lamp in
her hand, she opened the door into the hall, and holding
the light above her head, peered into the passage. At
its farther end she saw a small white object approaching
her slowly, and knew at once that little Fred was walking
in his sleep. She did not dare to speak to him, for
he was near the stairway. As he came nearer to her,
she saw that his eyes were open, in an unwinking, somnambulic
stare, and further, that he was still enacting
the part of the comet in his dream. He came up, gradually
increasing his speed, then suddenly he darted
around her, and started on another circuit out into the
unknown spaces. Fanny followed him, took him by the
hand, and quietly led him to his bed, and lay down by
his side, afraid to leave him.

Now she did not dare to fall asleep. She could not
risk her little brother again to the danger of walking off
the stairs. Now she must think, to keep herself awake.
The most exciting thoughts would be the most welcome.

Of all the words spoken to her, or spoken within her
hearing, during the day, there was one which had left the
deepest impression, and was charged with the most grateful
suggestions. There were words of praise that had
been appropriated for immediate consumption; this was
kept sacredly for future use, as a precious morsel to be
devoured in secret. There were words which had settled
like a flock of singing birds among her fresh sensibilities;
this had wheeled and hovered alone above her,
waiting till the others had gone before it would come
down and nestle at her heart.

A career! Dr. Bloomer had told her, with abundant
emphasis, that she had a career before her. Rev. Jonas
Sliter had yoked her name with a woman famous in history,
as one to whom a great career was possible—one,
indeed, who had already commenced a career. Even
Rev. J. Desilver Newman had been compelled, by his
sense of justice, to accord to her the power of achieving
a great career. She had caught the taste of public applause,
and it was sweet—sweeter than any thing she
had ever known. Her inmost soul had been thrilled by
its penetrating flavor, and she became conscious of a new
hunger, a new thirst, a new longing. A new motive of
life was born within her, and she must have a career
that she might win more praise, and drink more deeply
at the fountain which the day and its events had opened
to her.

Her soul was on fire with a newly-kindled ambition.

Life grew golden and glorious to her. Projects of
achievement rose like fairy palaces in her imagination,
and ran out in glittering lines to its farthest verge. She
would be an authoress. She would write books. She
would reveal her life in poetry, the music of whose numbers
should charm the world, and compel the world to
give her homage. She would hold the mirror up to life
in fiction, and win the plaudits of the nations, like women
of whom she had heard. She would become a great
painter. She would cross the seas, and gather from the
masters their secrets, and then she would return and
glorify her name and her nation by works of unequalled
art. She would become a visitor of prisons, and a minister
of mercy to the abodes of infamy and of misery,
and win immortality for a life devoted to works of charity.
She would be a missionary, and, on “India's burning
sands,” plant the standard of the Cross. She would
stand before public assemblies, and there assert, not only
her own womanhood, but the rights of her sex. She
would have a career of some kind.

In one brief hour of dreaming, all the charm of domestic
home-life had faded. The thought of marriage,
its quiet duties, and its subordination of her life and will
to the life and will of another, became repulsive to her.
Even Crampton was become too small for her, and the
praise of the humble country pastors that had so elated
her, grew insignificant, almost contemptible. One thing
was certain—she could never keep an infant school again.

Gradually the period of wakefulness passed away.
Little Fred became more cool and quiet, and slept
sweetly. Already she had launched out into the sea of
sleep on a vessel under full sail, and was waving her

handkerchief to the crowd of friends on shore, whom she
had left for an indefinite term of years, for a pilgrimage
to the shrines of classic art, when the door-bell was rung
violently, and she was startled into consciousness again.
She heard her father's prompt step in the hall, and then
she listened for the errand of the messenger. The voice
was that of a boy, evidently very much out of breath
with running.

“Please, Dr. Gilbert, come down to our house just
as quick as you can,” said the boy.

“Whose house is our house?” inquired the doctor
gruffly, unable to make out the boy in the darkness.

“Why, you've been there forty times. You know
Mr. Pelton's, don't you?”

“Oh! yes; who is sick at Mr. Pelton's?”

“Not anybody as I knows of,” said the boy, taking
a long breath. “It's the next house—Mr. Tinker's.”

“Well, who is sick at Mr. Tinker's?” inquired the
doctor impatiently.

“You know Ducky, don't you?”

“Ducky who? Ducky what?”

“Why, don't you know little Ducky Tinker?
You've seen her forty times,” exclaimed the boy in a
tone of indignant astonishment.

“Look here, boy,” said Dr. Gilbert, “if you know
who is sick, tell me.”

“Well, you know little Venus, don't you?” exclaimed
the boy, in a tone that said, “If you don't know
her, it is beyond my power to go further.”

“Little Venus?”

“Yes, little Venus. Of course you know her. You
saw her in church forty times to-day.”

“Oh! yes; I understand. I'll be down there directly,”
said the doctor, and slammed the door in the
boy's face.

Fanny, amused with the lad's cool oddity, and pained
to hear of the sickness of one of her little pets, rose and
went to the window to make further inquiries. Putting
out her head, she saw him sitting on the door-step, and
overheard him talking to himself.

“Spiteful old customer, any way. Wonder if he
thinks I'm going home alone. No, sir—you don't catch
me. I'll sit here and blow till he comes round with his
old go-cart, and then I'll hang on to the tail of it, and
try legs with that little Kanuck of his. Hullo! Who's
there? Tell me before I count three, or I'll fire. One—
two—”

These last words were addressed to a dark figure
that appeared at the gate to interrupt the boy's soliloquy.
“I want the doctor,” said the figure, just in time
to save himself from the boy's fatal “three.”

“You can't have him,” said the boy promptly.

“Can't have him? Who are you?”

“Don't you know me? You've seen me forty
times. I know you like a book.”

“Well, why can't I have the doctor? Isn't he at
home?”

“Yes, he's at home, but he's spoke for.”

“But I must have him,” said the man decidedly.

“Why, what's the row down to your house? Mars
sick?”

“Mars sick? Who's Mars?”

“Why, don't you know Mars? Well, that is funny.
Didn't go to the exhibition, did you?”

“Oh! yes. It is Mars. He is very bad, and the
doctor must see him now. Where is the doctor?”

“Well, if you think Mars is very bad, I wonder
what you would think of Venus,” said the boy, intent
on diverting the man's attention from the doctor.
“Screaming all night, folks all up, poultices all over
her, paregoric no use. Don't know a thing.”

At this moment the doctor drove round, having
harnessed his own horse, and was hailed by both messengers
at the gate. The messenger of Mars made
known his errand, and the doctor promised to visit that
planet immediately after his return from Mr. Tinker's.
In the meantime, the messenger of Venus had secured
his hold of the tail of Dr. Gilbert's gig, and was soon
on his way, half running, half riding, and trying his legs
very successfully with the little black pony.

Fanny went back to her bed, fearful and distressed,
wondering if all her little planets were going to fall.
Examining little Fred once more, and finding him still
composed, she surrendered herself to her pillow, and
when she awoke again, it was not only daylight, but the
sun was shining brightly in at her window.

She rose, and dressed little Fred and herself, and descended
to the breakfast-room. The boy had little of
the elasticity of his years, and she felt languid and miserable.
Aunt Catharine received them with anxious
eyes, and was evidently relieved to find them both able
to be upon their feet.

“Where is father?” inquired Fanny.

“Out, looking after his men in the field, as usual,”
replied Aunt Catharine. “I don't believe that man

slept two hours last night, and he was up all the night
before. I wonder he lives.”

It was the breakfast hour, and promptly on the
stroke of the clock he entered the room. He looked at
little Fred anxiously, but he did not speak to him.
There was a cloud upon his face which Fanny understood,
but which Aunt Catharine could not interpret.

“Who called you up last night?” inquired Aunt
Catharine.

“That's more than I know,” replied the doctor
evasively, while an expression of hard pain passed over
his face.

Fanny regarded him with marked apprehension, and
on the impulse inquired, “Are they very sick, father?”

Dr. Gilbert looked in her face, and saw that she
knew what Aunt Catharine did not.

“Both have been very sick, but both are relieved.
Your little Mars is much better. Your little Venus,
Fanny—”

Dr. Gilbert paused. His daughter noticed his hesitation,
turned pale, and dropped her knife and fork.
He could not bear to speak the word in presence of little
Fred.

“Little Venus—” suggested Fanny, repeating the
commencement of his broken sentence.

“Little Venus,” pursued the doctor, “has taken her
place in the sky.”

Little Fred looked up, with his eyes full of wonder,
and said, “Has she really, and truly, papa?”

“Yes, really and truly, my boy.”

“Well, I want to take my place in the sky, too.
Can't I take my place in the sky with Venus? I won't

run against her,” said the boy with eager enthusiasm.

“Little Venus is dead, my boy,” said the doctor,
his eyes filling with tears.

“Dead? dead?” inquired the little fellow, his eyes
wide with solemn wonder. “Who killed her? What
made her die? I don't believe it was right that little
Venus should die; was it, papa?”

“Yes, it was right, my child, for God took her
away.”

Aunt Catharine moved uneasily in her chair. It
was all she could do to maintain silence. It seemed to
her straightforward, honest mind, almost blasphemy to
attribute to God an event occasioned by the excitements
and exposures to which the delicate childhood of little
Venus had been subjected.

Fred's brain was sorely puzzled, and as his young
reason found no way to grasp and adjust the event, he
burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping. The doctor
could not withstand this, and starting as if he had
been smitten in the face, he rose and left the room.