 | CHAPTER XXXV. The Morgesons |  |
35. CHAPTER XXXV.
Temperance staid to the house-cleaning. It was lucky, she
could not help saying, as house-cleaning must always be after
a funeral, that it should have happened at the regular cleaning-time.
She went back to her own house as soon as it was
over. Father drove to Milford as usual; Arthur resumed his
school, and aunt Merce, who had at first busied herself in
looking over her wardrobe, and selecting from it what she
thought could be dyed, folded it away. She passed hours in
mother's room from which father had fled, crying over her
Bible, looking in her boxes and drawers to feed her sorrow
with the sight of the familiar things, alternating those periods
with her old occupation of looking out of the windows. In
regard to myself and Veronica, she evinced a distress at the
responsibility which, she feared, must rest upon her. Veronica,
dark and silent, played such heart-piercing strains, that father
could not bear to hear her; so when she played, for he dared
not ask her to desist, he went away. To me she had scarcely
spoken, since the funeral. She wore the same dress each day
—one of black silk—and a small black mantle, pinned across
her bosom. Soon the doors began to open and shut after their
old fashion, and people came and went as of old on errands of
begging or borrowing.
At the table, we felt a sense of haste; instead of lingering,
as was our wont, we separated soon, with an indifferent air, as
if we were called by business, not sent away by sorrow. But
if our eyes fell on a certain chair, empty against the wall, a
cutting pang was felt, which was not all concealed; for there
were sudden breaks in our common-place talk, which diverged
into wandering channels, and betrayed a tension of feeling.
Several weeks passed, through which I endured an aching,
aimless melancholy. My thoughts continually drifted into the
vacuum in our atmosphere, and returned to impress me with a
disbelief in the enjoyment, or necessity, of keeping myself employed
with the keys of an instrument, which, let me strike
ever so cunningly, it was certain I could never obtain mastery
over.
One day I went to walk by the shore, for the first time since
my return. When I set my foot on the ground, the intolerable
light of the brilliant day blazed through me; I was luminously
dark, for it blinded me. Picking my way over the beach,
left bare by the tide, with my eyes fixed downwards till I could
see, I reached the point between our house and the light-house
and turned towards the sea, inhaling its cool freshness. I
climbed out to a flat, low rock, on the point; it was dry in the
sun, and the weeds hanging from its sides were black and
crisp. I put my long, woolen shawl on it, and stretched myself
along its edge. Little pools meshed from the sea by the
numberless rocks round me, engrossed my attention. How
white and pellucid was the shallow near me—no shadow but the
shadow of my face bending over it—nothing to ripple its surface,
but my imperceptible breath! By and by a bunch of
knotted-wrack floated in from the outside, and lodged in a crevice;
a minute creature with fringed feet darted from it, and
swam across it. After the knotted-wrack came the fragment
of a green and silky substance, delicate enough to have been
the remnant of a web, woven in the palace of Circe. “There
must be a current,” I thought, “which sends them here.”
And I watched the inlet, for other waifs; but nothing more
came. Eye-like bubbles rose from among the fronds of the
knotted-wrack, and sailing on uncertain voyages broke one by
one, and were wrecked to nothingness. The last vanished;
the pool showed me the motionless shadow of my face again,
on which I pondered, till I suddenly became aware of a slow,
internal oscillation, which increased till I felt in a strange tumult.
I put my hand in the pool, and troubled its surface.
“Hail, Cassandra! Hail!”
I sprang up the highest rock on the point, and looked out
seawards, to catch a glimpse of the flying Spirit who had
touched me. My soul was brought in poise, and quickened
with the beauty before me! The wide, shimmering plain of
sea—its aerial blue, stretching beyond the limits of my vision
in one direction, upbearing transverse, cloud-like islands in
another, varied and shadowed by shore and sky—mingled its
essence with mine.
The wind was coming; under the far horizon the mass of
waters began to undulate. Dark, spear-like clouds rose above
it, and menaced the east. The speedy wind tossed and teazed
the sea nearer and nearer, till I was surrounded by a gulf of
milky green foam. As the tide rolled in I retreated, stepping
back from rock to rock, round which the waves curled and
hissed, baffled in their attempt to climb over me. I stopped
on the verge of the tide-mark: the sea was seeking me, and I
must wait. It gave tongue as its lips touched my feet, roaring
in the caves, falling on the level beaches with a mad, boundless
joy!
“Have then at life!” my senses cried to it. “We will
possess its longing silence, rifle its waiting beauty. We will
rise up naked in its light and warmth, and cry, `Come, for we
dissolve.' Its roar, its fury, its madness—we will have—all.”
I turned and walked swiftly homeward, treading the ridges of
white sand, the black drifts of sea weed, as if they had been a
smooth floor.
Aunt Merce was in the door.
“We are going to have the long May storm. The gulls are
flying round the light-house,” she said. “How high the tide
is! You must want your dinner. I wish you would see to
Fanny; she is lording it over us all.”
“Yes, yes, I will do it; you may depend on me. I will
reign, and serve also.”
“Oh Cassandra, can you give up yourself?”
“I must, I suppose. Confound the spray, it is flying against
the windows.”
“Come in; your hair is wet, and your shawl is wringing.
Now for a cold.”
“I never shall have any more colds, aunt Merce; never
mean to have anything to myself—entirely, you know.”
“You do me good, you dear girl; I love you;” and she began
to cry. “There's nothing but cold ham and boiled rice for
your dinner.”
“What time is it?”
“Near three.”
I opened the door of the dining-room; the table was laid,
and I walked round it, on a tour of inspection.
“I thought you might as well have your dinner, all at
once,” said Fanny, by the window, with her feet tucked up on
the rounds of her chair. “Here it is.”
“I perceive. Who arranged it?”
“Me and Paddy Margaret.”
“How many table-cloths have we?”
“Plenty. I thought as you didn't seem to care about any
regular hour for dinner, and made us all wait, I needn't be particular;
besides, I am not the waiter, you know.”
She had set on the dishes used in the kitchen. I pulled off cloth
and all—the dishes crashed, of course—and sat down on the
floor, picking out the remains for my repast.
“What will Mr. Morgeson say?” she asked, turning very red.
“Shall you clear away this rubbish by the time he comes
home?”
“Why I must, musn't I?”
“I hope so. Where's Veronica?”
“She has been gone since twelve; Sam carried her to Temperance's
house.”
I continued my meal. Fanny brought a chair for me, which
I did not take. I scarcely tasted what I ate. A wall had risen
up suddenly before me, which divided me from my dreams;
I was inside of it, on a prosaic domain I must henceforth be
confined to. The unthought of result of mother's death—disorganization,
began to show itself. The individuality which
had kept the weakness and faults of our family life in abeyance,
must have been powerful; and I had never recognized
it! I attempted to analyze this influence, so strong, yet so invisibly
produced. I thought of her mildness, her dreamy
habits, her indifference, and her incapacity of comprehending
natures unlike her own. Would endowment of character explain
it—that faculty which we could not change, give, or take?
Character was a mysterious, and indestructible fact, and a fact
that I had had little respect for. Upon what a false basis I had
gone—a basis of extremes. I had seen men as trees walking;
that was my experience.
“You'll choke yourself with that dry bread,” exclaimed
Fanny, really concerned at my abstraction.
“Where is my trunk? Did you unlock it?”
“I took from it what you needed, at the time; but it is not
unpacked, and it is in the upper hall closet.”
She was picking up the broken delf meekly.
“Did you see a small bag I brought? And where's my
satchel? Good heavens! What has made me put off that
letter so? For I have thought of it, and yet I have kept it
back.”
“It is safe, in your own closet, Miss Cassandra; and the
box is there.”
“Aunt Merce,” I called, “will you have nothing to eat?”
She laughed hysterically, when she saw what I had done.
“Where is Hepsey, aunt Merce?”
“She goes to bed after dinner, you know, for an hour or two.”
“She must go from here.”
“Oh!” they both chorused, “what for?”
“She is too old.”
“She has money, and a good house,” said aunt Merce, “if
she must go. I wonder how Mary stood it so long.”
“Turn 'em off,” said Fanny, “when they grow useless.”
Aunt Merce reddened, and looked hurt.
“I shall keep you: look sharp now after your own disinterestedness.”
I wanted to go to my room, as I thought it time to arrange
my trunks and boxes; besides, I needed rest—the sad luxury
of re-action. But word was brought to the house, that Arthur
had disappeared, in company with two boys, notorious for mischief.
His teacher was afraid they might have put out to sea,
in a crazy sail-boat. We were in a state of alarm till dark,
when father came home, bringing him, having found him on
the way to Milford. Veronica had not returned. It stormed
violently, and father was vexed because a horse must be sent
through the storm for her. At last I obtained the asylum of
my room, in an irritable frame of mind, convinced that such
would be my condition each day. Composure came with putting
my drawers and shelves in order. The box with Desmond's
flowers I threw into the fire, without opening it, ribbon
and all, for I could not endure the sight of them. I unfolded
the dresses I had worn on the occasions of my meeting him—
even the collars and ribbons I had adorned myself with, were
conned with jealous, greedy eyes; in looking at them all other
remembrances connected with my visit vanished. The handkerchief
scented with violets, which I found in the pocket of
the dress I had worn, when I met him at Mrs. Hepburn's,
made me childish. I was holding it when Veronica entered,
bringing with her an atmosphere of dampness.
“Violet! I like it. There is not one blooming yet, Temperance
snake-grass,” holding up a bunch of drooping, pale blossoms.
“Oh, Verry, can you forgive me? I did not forget these,
but I felt the strangest disinclination to look them up.” And
I gave her the jewel box and letter.
She seized them, and opened the box first.
“Child-Verry.”
“I never was a child, you know; but I am always trying to
find my childhood.”
She took a necklace from the box, composed of a single
string of small, beautiful pearls, from which hung an egg-shaped
amethyst, of pure violet. She fastened the necklace
round her throat.
“It is as lucent as the moon,” she said, looking down at the
amethyst, which shed a watery light; “I wish you had given it
to me before.”
Breaking the seal of the letter, with a twist of her mouth at
the coat-of-arms impressed upon it, she shook out the closely-written
pages, and saying, “There is a volume,” began reading.
“It is very good,” she observed at the end of the first page,
“a regular composition,” and went on with an air of increasing
interest. “How does he look?” she asked, stopping again.
“As if he longed to see you.”
Her eyes went in quest of him so far, that I thought they
must be startled by a sudden vision.
“How did you find his family?”
“Not like him much.”
“I knew that; he would not have loved me so suddenly,
had I not been wholly unlike any women he had known.”
“His character is individual.”
“I should know that from his influence upon you.”
She looked at me wistfully, smoothed my hair with her cool
hand, and resumed the letter.
“He thinks he will not come to Surrey with you; asks me
to tell him my wishes,” she repeated rapidly, translating from
the original. “What do I think of our future? How shall
we propose any change? Will Cassandra describe her visit?
Will she tell me that he thinks of going abroad?”
She dropped the letter. “What pivot is he swinging on?
What is he uncertain about?”
“There must be more to read.”
She turned another page.
“If I go to Switzerland, (I think of going on account of
family affairs) when shall I return? My family, of course, expected
rather prefers selecting a wife for me, than that I should do it.
But, as you shall never come to Belem, her plans or wishes
need make no difference to us. If Cassandra would be to us
what she might, how things would clear! Don't you think,
my love, that there should be the greatest sympathy between
sisters?”
I laughed.
Verry said she did not like his letter much after all. He
evidently thought her incapable of understanding ordinary
matters. It was as well, though; it made their love idyllic.
“Let us speak of matters nearer home.”
“Let us go to my room, the storm is so loud this side of
the house.”
“No; you must stay till the walls tremble. Have you seen,
Verry, any work for me to do here?”
“Everything is changed. I have tried to be as steady as
when mother was here, but I cannot; I whirl with a vague
idea of liberty. Did she keep the family conscience? Now
that she is gone, I feel responsible no more.”
“An idea of responsibility has come to me—what plain people
call Duty.”
“I do not feel it,” she cried mournfully. “I must yield to
you then. You can be good.”
“I must act so; but help me, Verry, I have contrary desires.”
“What do they find to feed on? What are they? Have
you your evil spirit?”
“Yes; a devil named Temperament.”
“Now you teach me, Cassandra.”
“Not I. Go, and write Ben. Make excuses for my negligence
towards you, about his letter. Tell him to come. I
shall write Alice and Helen, this evening. We have been
shut off from the world by the gate of death; but we must
come back.”
“One thing you may be sure of—though I shall be no help,
I shall never annoy you. I know that my instincts are fine
only in a self-centering direction; yours are different. I shall
trust them. Since you have spoken, I perceive the shadows
you have raised, and must encounter. I retreat before them,
admiring your discernment, placing confidence in your powers.
You convince, if you do not win me. Who can guess how your
every plan and hope of well-doing may be thwarted? I need
say no more?”
“Nothing more.”
She left the room. There would be no antagonism between
us; but there would be pain—on one side. The distance
which had kept us apart was shortened, but not annihilated.
What could I expect? The silent and serene currents which
flow from souls like Veronica's, and Ben's, whose genius is
not of the heart, refuse to enter a nature so turbulent as mine.
But my destiny must be changed by such! It was taken for
granted that my own spirit should not rule me. And with what
reward? Any, but that of sympathy. But I muttered:
My far-off doubtful purpose, as a mother
Conjectures of the features of her child
Ere it is born.'”
The house trembled in the fury of the storm. The waves
were hoarse with their vain bawling, and the wind shrieked at
every crevice of chimney, door, and window. No answering
excitement in me now! I had grown older.
| CHAPTER XXXV. The Morgesons | |