 | CHAPTER XIII. The Morgesons |  |
13. CHAPTER XIII.
I was preaching one day to mother and aunt Merce, a sermon
after the manner of Mr. Boold, of Barmouth, taking the
sofa for a desk, and for my text, “Like David's Harp of solemn
sound,” and had attracted Temperance and Charles into the
room by my declamation, when my audience was unexpectedly
increased by the entrance of father, with a strange gentleman.
Aunt Merce laughed hysterically; I waved my hand to her, a
la Boold, and descended from my position.
“Take a chair,” said Temperance, who was never abashed,
thumping one down before the stranger.
“What is all this?” inquired father.
“Only a Ranz des Vaches, father, to please aunt Merce.”
The stranger's eyes were fastened upon me, and father introduced
me first; “My daughter,” and, “Mr. Charles Morgeson,
of Rosville.”
“Receive me as a relative,” he said, and turned to shake
hands with mother. “Your daughter's great-grandfather
Locke, was my grandfather's brother; I think that makes
a sufficient cousinship for a claim, Mrs. Morgeson.”
“Why not have looked us up before?” I asked.
“Why,” said Veronica, who had just come in, “there are
six Charles Morgesons buried in our grave yard.”
“I thought,” he said, “that the name was extinct. I saw
your father's in a State Committee List, and feeling curious
regarding it, I came here.”
He bowed distantly to Veronica, for no one introduced her,
but she did not return his bow, though she looked at him
fixedly. Temperance and Hepsey hurried up a fine supper
immediately. A visitor was a creature to be fed. Feeding
together removes embarrassment, and before supper was over
we were all acquainted with Mr. Morgeson. There were three
cheerful old ladies spending the week with us—the widow
Desire Carver, and her two maiden sisters, Polly and Sarepta
Chandler. They filled the part of chorus in the domestic
drama, saying, “A ha,” whenever there was a pause. Veronica
affected these old ladies greatly, and when they were in the
time, I doubt whether she would have seen Mr. Morgeson more
than once. That evening she played for us. Her wild, pathetic
melodies made our visitor's grey eyes flash with pleasure, and
light up his cold face with gleams of feeling; but she was not
gratified by his interest. “I think it strange that you should
like my music,” she said, crossly.
“Do you?” he answered, amused at her tone, “perhaps it
is; but why should I not as well as your friends here,” indicating
the old ladies.
“Ah, we like it very much,” said the three, clicking their
snuff boxes.
“You, too, play?” he asked me.
“Miss Cassy don't play,” answered the three, looking at me
over their spectacles. “Miss Verry's sun puts out her
fire.”
“Cassandra does other things better than playing,” Veronica
said to Mr. Morgeson.
“Why, Veronica,” I said surprised, going towards her.
“Go off, go off,” she replied, in an under tone, and struck
up a loud march. He had heard her, and while she played
looked at her earnestly. Then, seeming to forget the presence
of the three, he turned and put out his hand to me, with an authority
I did not resist. I laid my hand in his; it was
not grasped, but upheld. Veronica stopped playing.
He staid three days at our house. After the first evening
we found him taciturn. He played with Arthur, talked of his
children to him, and promised him a pony if he would go to
Rosville. With father he discussed business matters, and
went out with him to the ship yards and offices. I scarcely
remember that he spoke to me, except in a casual way, more
than once. He asked me if I knew whether the sea had any
influence upon me; I replied that I had not thought of it.
“There are so many things you have not thought of,” he
answered, “that this is not strange.”
Veronica observed him closely; he was aware of it, but was
not embarrassed; he met her dark gaze with one keener than
her own, and neither spoke with the other. The morning he
went away, while the chaise was waiting, which was to go to
Milford to meet the stage coach, and he was inviting us to visit
him, a thought seemed to strike him. “By the way, Morgeson,
why not give Miss Cassandra a finish at Rosville? I have not
told you of our Academy, nor of the advantages which Rosville
will you let her come to my house for a year?”
“Locke decides for Cassy,” she answered; “I never do
now,” looking at me reproachfully.
Cousin Charles's hawk eyes caught the look, and he heard
me too, when I tapped her shoulder till she turned round and
smiled. I whispered, “Mother, your eyes are as blue as the
sea yonder.” She glanced towards it, and saw it murmuring
softly, and creeping along the shore, licking the rocks and sand
as if recognizing a master. But I saw and felt its steady, resistless
heaving, insidious and terrible.
“Well,” said father, “we will talk of it on the way to Milford.”
“I have a kinder of a-creeping, about your cousin Charles,
as you call him,” said Temperance, after she had closed the
porch door. “He is too much shut up for me. How's Mis
cousin Charles, I wonder?”
“He is fond of flowers,” remarked aunt Merce; “he examined
all my plants.”
“That's a balm for every wound with you, isn't it?” Temperance
said. “I 'spose I can clean the parlor, unless Mis
Carver and Chandler are sitting in a row there?”
Veronica, who had hovered between the parlor and the hall
while cousin Charles was taking his leave, so that she might
avoid the necessity of any direct notice of him, but had heard
his proposition about Rosville, said, “Cassandra will go
there.”
“Do you feel it in your bones, Verry?” Temperance asked.
“Cassandra does.”
“Do I? I believe I do.”
“You are eighteen; you are too old to go to school.”
“But I am not too old to have an agreeable time; besides, I
am not eighteen, and shall not be till four days from now.”
“You think too much of having a good time,” said mother.
“I foresee the day when the pitcher will come back from the
well, broken. You are idle and frivolous; eternally chasing
after amusement.”
“God knows I don't find it.”
“I know you are not happy.”
“Tell me,” I said, striking the table with my hand, making
Veronica wink, “tell me how I shall feel, and act.”
“I have no influence with you, nor with Veronica.”
“Because,” said Verry, “we are all so different; but I like
you, mother, and all that you do.”
“Different,” she exclaimed, “children talk to parents about
a difference between them!”
“I never thought about it before,” I said, “but where is the
family likeness?”
Aunt Merce laughed, and Veronica said, “Philosophy.”
“There's the Morgesons,” I said, “I hate 'em all.”
“All?” she echoed; “you are like this new one.”
“And grand'ther Warren”—I continued.
“Your talk,” interrupted aunt Merce, jumping up and walking
about, “is enough to make him rise out of his grave.”
“I think,” said Veronica, “that grand'ther Warren nearly
crushed you and mother, when you were girls of our age. Did
you ever know that you had any wants then? Did you dare
to dream anything different from what he laid down for you?”
Aunt Merce and mother exchanged glances.
“Say, mother, what shall I do?' I asked again.
“Do?” she answered in a mechanical voice; “read the
Bible.”
“I have; but am I, myself, there?”
“Veronica's life is not misspent,” she continued, without
heeding my remark, and seeming to forget that Verry was still
there. “Why should she find work for her hands, when neither
you nor I do?”
Veronica slipped out of the room; I went to mother and sat
on the floor beside her. I loved her in an unsatisfactory way.
What could we be to each other? We kissed tenderly; but
she was saddened by something regarding me, which she
could not explain, because she refused to explain me naturally.
I thought she wished me to believe that she could have no infirmity
in common with me—no temptations, no errors—
believing that she must repress all the doubts and longings of
her heart, for example's sake. Yet my curiosity was always
excited, and always baffled, because she impressed me deeply;
I never ceased to feel emotion towards her, though she gave
me no reason for it.
There was a weight upon me all that day, a dreary sense of
not being what she wished.
When father came home he asked me if I would like to go
to Rosville. I answered, “Yes.” Mother must go with me
then; he could not leave home. The sooner I went the better.
He also thought Veronica should go. She was called,
and consulted, and provided Temperance would accompany us
to take care of her, she consented to go. It was all arranged
that evening. Temperance said we must wait a week at least;
had been shut up in a band-box for three years, must be
made.
We started on our journey one bright morning in June.
We were to go to Boston in a stage coach, a hundred miles and
more from Surrey, and thence to Rosville, forty miles further,
by railroad. We stopped a night on the way to Boston at a
country inn, which stood before an egg-shaped pond. Temperance
re-made our beds, declaiming the while against the unwholesome
situation of the house; the idea of anybody's living
in the vicinity of fresh water astonished her; to impose upon
travelers' health that way was too much. She went to the
kitchen to learn whether the landlady cooked, or hired a cook.
She sat up all night with our luggage in sight, to keep off what
she called `prowlers' — she did not like to say robbers, for fear
of exciting our imaginations — and frightened us by falling out
of her chair towards morning. Veronica then insisted upon
her going to bed, but she refused, till Veronica threatened to
sit up herself, when she carried her own carpet bag to bed
with her.
We arrived in Boston the next day and went to The Bromfield
House in Bromfield street, whither father had directed us.
We were ushered to the parlor by a waiter, who seemed struck
by Temperance, and who was treated by her with respect.
“Mr. Shepherd himself, I guess,” she whispered.
Three cadaverous children were there eating bread and butter
from a black tray on the centre table.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Temperance, “what bread those
children are eating; it is made of sawdust.”
“It's good, you old cat,” screamed the little girl.
Veronica sat down by her, and offered her some sugar plums,
which the child snatched from her hand.
“We are missionaries,” said the oldest boy, “and we are
going to Bombay next week in the `Cabot.' I'll make the natives
gee, I tell ye.”
“Mercy on us!” exclaimed Temperance “did you ever?”
Presently a sickly, gentle-looking man entered, in a suit of
black camlet, and carrying an umbrella; he took a seat by the
children, and ran his fingers through his hair, which already
stood upright.
“That girl gave Sis some sugar-plums,” remarked the boy.
“I hope you thanked her, Clarissa,” said the father.
“No; she didn't give me enough,” the child answered.
“They have no mother,” the poor man said apologetically
deeply. She bowed, and moved away. Mother rang the
bell, and when the waiter came gave him a note for Mr. Shepherd,
which father had written, bespeaking his attention. Mr.
Shepherd soon appeared, and conveyed us to two pleasant
rooms with an unmitigated view of the wall of the next house
from the windows, which had been made large on its account.
“This,” remarked Temperance, “is worse than the pond.”
Mr. Shepherd complimented mother on her fine daughters;
hoped Mr. Morgeson would run for Congress soon; told her
she should have the best the house afforded, and retired with
a bow.
I wanted to shop, and mother gave me money. I found
Washington street, and bought six wide, embroidered belts, a
gilt buckle, a variety of ribbons, and a dozen yards of lace. I
repented the whole before I got back; for I saw other articles
I wanted more. I found mother alone; Temperance had gone
out with Veronica, she said, and she had given Veronica the
same amount of money, curious to know how she would spend
it, as she never had been shopping. It was nearly dark when
they returned.
“I like Boston,” said Verry.
“But what have you bought?”
She displayed a beautiful gold chain, and a little cross for
the throat; a bundle of picture books for the missionary children;
a sewing silk shawl for Hepsey, and some toys for Arthur.
“To-morrow, I shall go shopping,” said mother. “What
did you buy, Temperance?”
“A mean shawl. In my opinion, Boston is a den of thieves.”
She untied a box, from which she took a sky-blue silk shawl,
with brown flowers woven in it.
“I gave eighteen dollars for it, if I gave a cent, Mis Morgeson;
I know I am cheated. It's sleazy, isn't it?”
The bell for tea rang, and Mr. Shepherd came up to escort
us to the table. Temperance delayed us, to tie on a silk
apron, to protect the plum-colored silk, for, as she observed to
Mr. Shepherd, she was afraid it would show grease badly. I
could not help exchanging smiles with Mr. Shepherd, which
made Veronica frown. The whole table stared as we seated
ourselves, for we derived an importance from the fact that we
were under the personal charge of the landlord.
“How they gawk at you,” whispered Temperance. I felt
my color rise.
“The gentlemen do not guess that we are sisters,” said
Veronica quietly.
“How do I look?” I asked.
“You know how you look, and that I do not agree with
your opinion. You look cruel.”
“I am hungry.”
Her eyes sparkled with disdain.
“What do you mean to do for a year?” I continued.
“Forget you, for one thing.”
“I hope you won't be ill again.”
“I shall be,” she answered with a shudder; “I need all the
illnesses that come.”
“As for me,” I said, biting my bread and butter, “I feel
well to my fingers' ends; they tingle with strength. I am
elated with health.”
I had not spoken the last word, before I became conscious
of a streak of pain, which cut me like a knife, and vanished;
my surprise at it was so evident that she asked me what
ailed me.
“Nothing.”
“I never had the feeling you speak of in my finger ends,”
she said sadly, looking at her slender hand.
“Poor girl!”
“What has come over you, Cass? An attack of compassion?
Or do you wish to leave an amiable impression with
me?”
After supper Mr. Shepherd asked mother if she would go
to the theatre. The celebrated tragedian, Forrest, was playing;
would the young ladies like to see Hamlet? We all went, and
my attention was divided between Hamlet and two young men
who lounged in the box door, till Mr. Shepherd looked them
away. Veronica laughed at Hamlet, and Temperance said it
was stuff and nonsense. Veronica laughed at Ophelia, also,
who was a superb black-haired woman, toying with an elegant
Spanish fan, which Hamlet in his energy broke. “It is not
Shakespeare,” she said.
“Has she read Shakespeare?” I asked mother.
“I am sure I do not know.”
That night, after mother and Veronica were asleep, I persuaded
Temperance to get up, and bore my ears with a coarse
needle, which I had bought for the purpose. It hurt me so,
when she pierced one, that I could not summon resolution to
have the other operated on; so I went to bed with a bit of
sewing silk in the hole she had made. But in the morning, I
other ear bored. When mother got up I showed her my ears
red and sore, and told her that I must have a certain pair of
white cornelian ear-rings, set in chased gold, and three inches
long, which I had seen in a shop window. She scolded Temperance,
and then gave me the money for them.
The next day mother and I started for Rosville. Veronica
decided to remain in Boston with Temperance, till mother returned.
She said that if she went, she might find Mrs. Morgeson
as disagreeable as Mr. Morgeson was; that she liked
The Bromfield; besides, she wanted to see the missionary
children off for Bombay, and intended to go down to the ship
on the day they were to sail. She was also going to ask Mr.
Shepherd to look up a celebrated author for her. She must
see one if possible.
| CHAPTER XIII. The Morgesons | |