 | CHAPTER VII. The Morgesons |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
My life at grandfather Warren's was one kind of penance,
and my life in Miss Black's school another. Both were different
from my former life. My filaments found no nourishment,
creeping between the two; but the fibres of youth are strong,
and they did not perish. Grandfather Warren's house, now
that I lived in it, reminded me of the casket which imprisoned
the Geni. I felt that I had let loose a Presence I had no power
over—the embodiment of its gloom, its sternness, and its
silence.
With feeling comes observation; after that, one reasons. I
began to observe. I found that aunt Mercy was not the aunt
Merce I had known at home. She wore a mask before her
father. There was constraint between them; each repressed
the other. The result of this mutual relation was a formal,
petrifying, unyielding system. A system, which, from the
fact of its satisfying neither, was kept up the more rigidly; on
the one side from a morbid conscience, which reiterated its
monitions against the dictates of the natural heart; on the
other out of respect and timidity.
Grandfather Warren was a little, lean, leather-colored man.
His head was habitually bent, his eyes cast down; but when
he raised them to peer about, their sharpness and clear intelligence
gave his face a wonderful vitality. He chafed his small,
well-shaped hands continually; his long polished nails clicked
together with a shelly noise, like that which beetles make flying
gentle blood ran in his veins, as I have said. All classes in
Barmouth treated him with invariable courtesy, though they
were not aware of this fact. But he was aboriginal in character,
not to be moved by antecedent, or changed by innovation—a
Puritan, without gentleness or tenderness. He
scarcely concealed his contempt for the emollients of life,
or for those who needed them. He whined over no misfortune,
pined for no pleasure. His two sons, who broke loose from
him, went into the world, lived a wild, merry life, and
died there, he never named. He found his wife dead by his
side one morning. He did not go frantic, but selected a text
for the funeral sermon; and when he stood by the uncovered
grave, took off his hat and thanked his friends for their kindness
with a loud, steady voice. Aunt Mercy told me that after
her mother's death his habit of chafing his hands commenced;
it was all the difference she saw in him, for he never
spoke of his trouble, or acknowledged his grief by word
or sign.
Though he had been frugal and industrious all his life, he
had no more property than the old, rambling house we lived
in, and a long, narrow garden attached to it, where there were
a few plum and quince trees, a row of currant bushes, aunt
Mercy's beds of chamomile and sage, and a few flowers. At
the end of the garden was a peaked-roof pig sty; it was cleanly
kept, and its inhabitant had his meals served with the regularity
which characterized all that grand'ther Warren did.
Beautiful pigeons lived in the roof, and were on friendly
terms with the occupant on the lower floor. The house was
not unpicturesque. It was built on a corner, and faced the
streets, without offering them the apology of a yard for interposition.
One front was a story high, with a slanting roof; the
other, which was two-storied, sloped like a giraffe's back, down
to a wood-shed, which was kept orderly. Clean cobwebs hung
from its rafters, and neat heaps of fragrant chips were piled
on the floor.
The house had many rooms, all more or less dark and irregularly
shaped. The construction of the chambers was involved.
I could not get out of one without going into another.
Some of the ceilings slanted suddenly, and some so gradually
that where I could stand erect, and where I must stoop, I
never remembered, until my head was unpleasantly grazed, or
my eyes filled with flakes of ancient lime dust. A long chamber
in the middle of the house was the shop. It always smelt
sprinkled water on the unpainted floor, and swept it. I usually
followed her wherever she went. While she swept I made my
thumb sore, by snipping the bits of cloth that were scattered
on the long counter by the window with grand'ther's shears,
whose bows were covered with green flannel; or I scrawled
figures with gray chalk, where I thought they might catch his
eye. When she had finished sweeping she carefully sorted
the scraps, and put them into boxes under the counter; then
she neatly rolled up the brown paper curtains, which had been
let down to exclude the afternoon sun; shook the old patchwork
cushions in the osier-bottomed chairs; watered the rose-geranium
and the monthly rose, which flourished wonderfully
in that fluffy atmosphere; set every pin and needle in its place,
and shut the door, which was opened again at sunrise. Of late
years grand'ther's occupation had declined. No new customers
came. A few, who did not change the fashion of their
garb, still patronized him. His income was barely three hundred
dollars a year — eked out to this amount by some small
pay for offices connected with the church, of which he was a
prominent member. From this income he paid his pulpit tithe,
gave to the poor, and lived independent and respectable. Mother
endeavored in an unobtrusive way to add to his comfort;
but he would only accept a few herrings from the Surrey
Ware every spring, and a basket of apples every fall. He invariably
returned her presents by giving her a share of his
plums and quinces.
I had only seen grand'ther Warren at odd intervals. He
rarely came to our house; when he did, he rode down on the
top of the Barmouth stage coach, returning in a few hours. As
mother never liked to go to Barmouth, she seldom came to see
me.
| CHAPTER VII. The Morgesons | |