 | CHAPTER XXV. The Morgesons |  |
25. CHAPTER XXV.
Before Spring, there were three public events in Surrey.
A light-house was built on Gloster Point, below our house. At
night there was a bridge of red, tremulous light between my
window and its tower, which shortened the distance. A town
clock had been placed in the belfry of the new church, which
stood in the western part of the village. Veronica could see
the tips of its gilded hands from the top of her window, and
could hear it strike through the night, whether the wind was
fair to bring the sound or not. The light-house reminded her
of distance. With the clock it was different. She liked to
hear the hours cry that they had gone. Soon after the clock
was up, she recollected that Mrs. Crossman's dog had ceased
to bark at night, as was his wont. She sent her a note, inquiring
about the dog, for she thought there was something poetical
in connection with nocturnal noises, which she hoped Mrs.
Crossman felt also. Fanny conveyed the note, and read it
likewise, as Mrs. Crossman declared her inability to read
writing with her new spectacles, which a pedlar had cheated
her with lately. She laughed at it, and sent word to Veronica,
that she was the curiousest young woman for her age that she
had ever heard of; that the dog slept in the house of nights,
for he was blind and deaf now; but that Crossman should get
a new dog with a loud bark.
A new dog soon came, so fierce, that Abram told Temperance
her people were afraid to pass Crossman's. She guessed
evil consciences, which pricked them when they remembered
Dr. Snell.
The third event was Mr. Thrasher's Revival. It began in
February, and before it was over, I heard the April frogs
croaking in the marshy fields behind the church. We went to
all the meetings, except Veronica, who continued her custom
of going only on Sunday afternoons. Mr. Thrasher endeavored
to proselyte me, but he never conversed with her. His manner
changed when he was at our house; if she appeared, the man
tore away the mask of the minister. He was a Bible banger,
making the dust fly from the pulpit cushions too much to suit
her; besides, he denounced sinners with vituperation, larding
his piety with a grim wit which was distasteful. He was
resentful towards me, especially after he had seen her. It was
needful, he said, from my influence in Surrey, that I should
become an example; and he asked me if I did not think
my escape from sudden death in Rosville, was an especial indication
from Providence, that I was reserved for some work?
Surrey was never so evangelical as under his ministration,
and it remained so until he was called to a larger field of usefulness,
and offered a higher salary to till it. We settled into
a milder theocracy after he left us. Mr. Park renewed his
zeal, about this time, resuming his discussions; but mother paid
little attention to what he said. There were days now when
she was confined to her room. Sometimes I found her softly
praying. Once when I went there, she was crying aloud, in
a bitter voice, with her hands over her head. She was her
old self when she recovered from these attacks, except that
she appeared more indifferent to the practical details of life.
And we forgot that she had them. She sought amusement
more, and liked to have me with her, to make her laugh, and
aunt Merce was near her, to pet her, as she always had done.
Abram Handy, inspired with religious fervor during the revival,
was also inspired with the twin passion—love—to visit
Temperance, and begged her, with so much eloquence, to
marry him before his cow should calve, that she consented, and
he was happy. He should have the best of butter to sell, if
Temperance would make it. He spent the Sunday evenings
with her, coming after conference meeting, hymn book in hand.
She was angry and ashamed, when I happened to see them
sitting in the same chair, and singing, in a quavering voice,
“Greenland's Icy Mountains.” She continued morose for a
week, in consequence.
“What will Veronica do without me?” she said. “I vow
I wish Abram Handy would keep himself out of my way; who
wants him?”
“She will visit you, and so shall I.”
“Certain true, will you really?”
“If you will promise to return our visits. Leave Abram at
home, for a week now and then.”
“Done. I can mend your things, and look after Miss Morgeson.
Your mother is not the woman she was, and you and
Veronica haven't a mite of faculty. What you are all coming
to, is more than I can fathom.”
“Who will fill your place?”
“I don't want to brag, but you won't find a soul in Surrey
to come here, and live, as I have lived. You will have to
take a Paddy; the Paddies are spreading, the old housekeeping
race is going. Hepsey and I are the last of the Mohicans,
and Hepsey is failing.”
She was right, we never found her equal, and when she
went, in May, a Celtic dynasty came in. We missed her
sadly. Verry refused to be comforted. Symptoms of disorganization
appeared everywhere; but they died away after a
while, or we ceased to notice them.
In the summer Helen visited Surrey. Her enlivening gayety
was the means of our uniting round her. She was never
tired of Veronica's playing, nor of our society; so we must
stay where she and the piano were. We trimmed the parlor
with flowers every day. Veronica transferred some of her
favorite books to the round table, and privately sent for a set
of flower vases. When they came, she said we must have a
new carpet to match them, and although mother protested
against it, she was loud in her admiration when she saw the
handsome white Brussels, thickly covered with crimson roses.
Helen's introduction proved an astonishing incentive; we set
a new value on ourselves. I never saw so much of Veronica
as at that time; her health improved with her temper. She
threw us into fits of laughter with her whimsical talk, never
laughing herself, but enjoying the effect she produced. To
please her, Helen changed her style of dress, and bought a
dress at Milford, which Veronica selected and made. The trying
on of this dress was the means of her discovering the letters
on Helen's arm, which never ceased to be a source of interest.
She asked to see them every day afterwards, and
touched them with her fingers, as if they had some occult
power.
“Do you think her strange?” I asked Helen.
“She has genius; but she will be a child always.”
“You are mistaken; she was always mature.”
“She stopped in the process of maturity long ago. It is her
genius which takes her on. You advance by experience.”
“I shall learn nothing more.”
“Of course, you have suffered immensely, and endured that
which isolates you from the rest of us.”
“You are as wise as ever.”
“Well, I am married, you know, and shall grow no wiser.
Marriage puts an end to the wisdom of women; they do not
need it.”
“You are nineteen years old?”
“What is the use of talking to you? Besides, if we keep
on we may tell secrets that had better not be revealed. We
might not like each other so well; friendship is apt to dull if
there is no ground of speculation left. Let us keep the bloom
on the fruit, even if we know there is a worm at the core.”
I owed it to her that I never had any confidante. My proclivities
were for speaking what I felt; but her strong common
sense influenced me greatly against it. I naturally felt
more freedom towards men, and her teaching was the more
easy to me, as she never invaded my sentiments.
Her visit was the occasion of our exchanging civilities with
our acquaintances, which we neglected when alone. Tea parties
were always fashionable in Surrey. Veronica went with
us to one, given by our cousin, Susan Morgeson. She had
taken tea out but twice, since she was grown, she told us, and
then it was with her friend Lois Randall, a seamstress. To
this girl she read the contents of her blank-books, and Lois in
her turn confided to Veronica her own compositions. Essays
were her forte. We met her at Susan Morgeson's, and, as I
never saw her without her having on some article given her by
Veronica, this occasion was no exception. She wore an exquisitely
embroidered purple silk apron, over a dull blue dress.
I saw Verry's grimace when her eyes fell on it, and could not
help saying, “I hope Lois's essays are better than her taste in
dress.”
“She is an idiot in colors; but she admires what I wear so
much, that she fancies the same must become her.”
“As they become you?”
“I make a study of dress; I am such an anomaly I must.
It may be wicked, but what can I do? I must look agreeable.”
The dress she wore was an India stuff, of linen, with a
stripes through it; each stripe had a cinnamon-colored edge.
There was no ornament about her, except a band of violet-colored
ribbon round her head. When tea was brought in, she
asked me in a whisper, whether it was tea or coffee, in the
cup which was given her.
“Why, Cass,” said Helen, “are you making a wonderment
because she does not know? It is strange that you have not
known that she drinks neither.”
`What does she drink?”
`Is it eccentric to drink milk?” Verry asked, swallowing
the tea with an accustomed air. “I think this must be coffee,
it stings my mouth so.”
“It is green tea,” said Helen; “don't drink it, Verry.”
“Green tea,” she said in a dreamy voice. “We drank
green tea years ago, in our old house; and I did not know it!
Cassandra, do you remember that I drank four cups once, when
mother had company? I laughed all night, and Temperance
cried.”
“I remember you well in those days.”
“Give me your cup,” said Helen.
“No.”
She contributed her share towards entertaining, and invariably
received the most attention. My indifference was called
pride, and her reserve was called dignity, and dignity was
more popular than pride.
Before Helen went, Ben wrote me that he was going to India.
It was a favorite journey with the Belemites. By the
time the letter reached me he should be gone. Would I bear
him in remembrance? He would not forget me, and promised
me an Indian idol. In eighteen months he expected to be at
home again; sooner perhaps. P.S. Would I give his true regards
to my sister? N.B. The property would be divided
according to his grandfather's will, before his return, and he
wanted to be out of the way for sundry reasons, which he
hoped to tell me some day. I read the letter to Helen and
Veronica. Helen laughed, and said `Unstable as water;' but
Veronica looked displeased; she closed her eyes as if to recal
him to mind, and asked Helen abruptly if she did not like him.
“Yes; but I doubt him. With all his strength of character
he has a capacity for failure.”
“I consider him a relation,” I said.
“I do not own him,” said Veronica.
“At all events, he is not an affectionate one,” Helen remarked.
“You have not heard from him in a year.”
“But I knew that I should hear.”
“We shall see him,” said Veronica.
I was dull and sad after I had received his letter; without
reason, of course, so I ascribed my dullness to some personal
reflections which I made at the time. It might be because I
had never regained my good looks. There was a dimness on
my youth; was it going? But what did it matter? Still I
pitied myself; for every woman desires to embalm in the
memory of a lover those inexplicable physiognomical phases
which are so fleeting, and I was no exception to my race.
I grew careless then. Helen's influence went, when she
went. Those observances, so vital to Veronica, and so charming
in her, I became utterly neglectful of. It was as true as
it was deplorable, but it appeared as if my moral sense was
incapable of stimulation.
For all this, I was at times possessed with a mad longing for
a new world, which should contain no element of the old, least
of all a reminiscence of what my experience had made me.
| CHAPTER XXV. The Morgesons | |