 | CHAPTER I. The Morgesons |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
“That child,” said my aunt Mercy, looking at me with indigo-colored
eyes, “is possessed.”
When my aunt said this I was climbing a chest of drawers,
by its knobs, in order to reach the book shelves above it,
where my favorite work, “The Northern Regions,” was kept,
together with “Baxter's Saints' Rest,” and other volumes of
that sort, which belonged to my mother; and those which my
father bought for his own reading, which I liked the best,
though I only caught a glimpse of their meaning by strenuous
study. To this day Sheridan's Comedies, Sterne's Sentimental
Journey, and Captain Cook's Voyages are so mixed up in my
remembrance, that I am still uncertain whether it was Sterne
who ate baked dog with Maria, or Sheridan who wept over a
dead ass in the Sandwich Islands.
After I had made a dash at, and captured my book, I seated
myself with difficulty on the edge of the chest of drawers, and
was soon lost in an Esquimaux hut. Presently, in crossing my
feet, my shoes, which were large and heavy, dropped on the
painted floor with a loud noise. I looked up at my aunt; her
regards were still fixed upon me, but they did not interfere
with her occupation of knitting; neither did they interrupt her
habit of chewing. She generally had something in her mouth,
—cloves, flagroot, or grains of rice; if these articles were not
at hand, she chewed a small chip. She was now masticating
rice; I knew it by the motion of her jaws—the grains slipped
between her teeth.
“Aunt Merce, poor Hepburn chewed his shoes, when he
was in Davis' Straits.”
“Mary, look at the holes in that child's stockings.”
Mother raised her eyes from “The Boston Recorder,”
and the article she had been absorbed in—the proceedings of
an Ecclesiastical Council, which had discussed (she read aloud
to Aunt Merce) the conduct of Brother Thaddeus Turner, pastor
of the Congregational Church of Hyena. Brother Thaddeus
had spoken lightly of the difference between Sprinkling
and Immersion, and had even called Hyena's Baptist minister,
“Brother.” He was contumacious at first, was Brother Thaddeus,
but Brother Boanerges from Andover finally floored him.
“Cassandra,” said Mother, “come here.”
I obeyed with reluctance, making a show of turning down a
leaf.
“Child,” she continued, and her eyes wandered over me
dreamily, till they dropped on my stockings; “why will you
waste so much time on unprofitable stories?”
“Mother, I hate good stories, all but the Shepherd of
Salisbury Plain; I like that, because it makes me hungry to
read about the roasted potatoes the shepherd had for breakfast
and supper. Would it make me thankful if you only gave
me potatoes without salt?”
“Not unless your heart is right before God.”
“`The Lord my Shepherd is,'” sang Aunt Meree.
I put my hands over my ears, and looked defiantly round
the room. Its walls are no longer standing, and the hands
of its builders have crumbled to dust. I can describe it, as
it looked then; how it was for years afterwards I cannot remember.
Some mental accident stimulated the purblind
memory of childhood, and impressed its picture on my memory.
We were in mother's winter room. She was seated in a
low, chintz-covered chair; Aunt Merce sat by the window, in
a straight-backed, one-sided chair, that rocked querulously, and
was likewise covered with chintz, of a red and yellow pattern.
Before the lower half of the windows were curtains of
red serge, which she rattled apart on their brass rods, whenever
she heard a footstep, or the creak of a wheel in the road
below. The walls were hung with white paper, through which
ran thread-like stripes of green. A square of green and chocolate-colored
English carpet covered the middle of the floor,
and a row of straw-colored wooden chairs stood around it, on
the bare, lead-colored boards. A huge bed, with a chintz top,
mahogany table in another. The side of the room
where the fire place was set was paneled in wood. The fire
had burned down in the shining Franklin stove, and the
broken brands were standing upright. The charred oak back
log still smouldered, for its sap hissed and bubbled at each
end. There was a smell of cold ashes and faded smoke in the
room.
Aunt Merce was rummaging her pocket for flagroot; Mother
had resumed her paper.
“May I put on, for a little while, my new slippers?” I
asked, longing to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the
room.
“Yes,” answered mother, “but it is near night; you must
come in soon, it will be supper time.”
I bounded away, found my slippers, which had been bought
the week before in Milford, the shire town, eight miles from
our village, and was walking down stairs on tip-toe, holding up
my linsey-woolsey frock, when I saw the door of my great-grandfather's
room ajar. I pushed it open and went in. A
very old man, his head bound with a red silk handkerchief,
was bolstered up in bed. His wife, grandmother-in-law, sat by
the fire reading a great Bible.
“Marm Tamor, will you please show me Ruth and Boaz?”
She complied by turning over the leaves till she came to the
picture.
“Did Ruth love Boaz much?”
“Oh, oh,” groaned the old man, “what is the imp doing
here? Drive her away. S'cat.”
I skipped out by a side door, down the alley which was
paved with blue pebbles, swung the high gate open, and
walked up and down the gravel walk which bordered the road-side,
admiring my slippers, and wishing that some acquaintance
with poor shoes could see me. I thought then that I would
climb one of the high gate posts, which had a flat top, and take
the position of the little girl in “The Shawl Dance.” (Vide
Miss Leslie.) I had no sooner taken it than aunt Merce appeared
at the door. She gave a shriek at the sight of me,
which tempted me to jump towards her with extended arms. I
was seized by my skirts, and carried into the house where my
supper was administered to me. Shortly afterwards she put me
to bed, heard me say the Lord's Prayer, and mixed some medicine,
which she compelled me to take, saying, over and over
again, “one swallow more.” Spring had come, and my blood
she told me a Revolutionary story about her grandfather,
who, when the British man-of-war, “Nimrod,” lay in
Milford Harbor, rowed off to the ship bare-headed, in his uniform,
but unarmed, to challenge the officers, because the
crew had set the town on fire. Before their reply I fell
asleep.
| CHAPTER I. The Morgesons | |