 | CHAPTER X.
MISS ASPHYXIA'S SYSTEM. Oldtown folks |  |
10. CHAPTER X.
MISS ASPHYXIA'S SYSTEM.
WHEN Miss Asphyxia shut the door finally on little Tina,
the child began slowly to gather up her faculties from
the stunning, benumbing influence of the change which had come
over her life.
In former days her father had told her stories of little girls
that were carried off to giants' houses, and there maltreated and
dominated over in very dreadful ways; and Miss Asphyxia
presented herself to her as one of these giants. She was so
terribly strong, the child felt instinctively, in every limb, that
there was no getting away from her. Her eyes were so keen
and searching, her voice so sharp, all her movements so full of a
vigor that might be felt, that any chance of getting the better of
her by indirect ways seemed hopelessly small. If she should try
to run away to find Harry, she was quite sure that Miss Asphyxia
could make a long arm that would reach her before she had gone
far; and then what she would do to her was a matter that she
dared not think of. Even when she was not meaning to be cross
to her, but merely seized and swung her into a chair, she had
such a grip that it almost gave pain; and what would it be if she
seized her in wrath? No; there was evidently no escape; and,
as the thought came over the child, she began to cry, — first sobbing,
and then, as her agitation increased, screaming audibly.
Miss Asphyxia opened the door. “Stop that!” she said.
“What under the canopy ails ye?”
“I — want — Harry!” said the child.
“Well, you can't have Harry; and I won't have ye bawling.
Now shut up and go to sleep, or I 'll whip you!” And, with that,
Miss Asphyxia turned down the bedclothes with a resolute hand.
“I will be good, — I will stop,” said the child, in mortal terror,
compressing the sobs that seemed to tear her little frame.
Miss Asphyxia waited a moment, and then, going out, shut the
door, and went on making up the child's stuff gown outside.
“That 'ere 's goin' to be a regular limb,” she said; “but I
must begin as I 'm goin' to go on with her, and mebbe she 'll
amount to suthin' by and by. A child 's pretty much dead loss
the first three or four years; but after that they more 'n pay, if
they 're fetched up right.”
“Mebbe that 'ere child 's lonesome,” said Sol Peters, Miss
Asphyxia's hired man, who sat in the kitchen corner, putting in
a new hoe-handle.
“Lonesome!” said Miss Asphyxia, with a sniff of contempt.
“All sorts of young critters is,” said Sol, undismayed by this
sniff. “Puppies is. 'Member how our Spot yelped when I fust
got him? Kept me 'wake the biggest part of one night. And
kittens mews when ye take 'em from the cats. Ye see they 's
used to other critters; and it 's sort o' cold like, bein' alone is.”
“Well, she 'll have to get used to it, anyhow,” said Miss
Asphyxia. “I guess 't won't kill her. Ef a child has enough to
eat and drink, and plenty of clothes, and somebody to take care
of 'em, they ain't very bad off, if they be lonesome.”
Sol, though a big-fisted, hard-handed fellow, had still rather
a soft spot under his jacket in favor of all young, defenceless
animals, and the sound of the little girl's cry had gone right to
this spot. So he still revolved the subject, as he leisurely
turned and scraped with a bit of broken glass the hoe-handle that
he was elaborating. After a considerable pause, he shut up one
eye, looked along his hoe-handle at Miss Asphyxia, as if he
were taking aim, and remarked, “That 'ere boy 's a nice, stiddy
little chap; and mebbe, if he could come down here once and a
while after work-hours, 't would kind o' reconcile her.”
“I tell you what, Solomon Peters,” said Miss Asphyxia, “I 'd
jest as soon have the great red dragon in the Revelations a
comin' down on my house as a boy! Ef I don't work hard
enough now, I 'd like to know, without havin' a boy raound raisin'
gineral Cain. Don't tell me! I 'll find work enough to keep
that 'ere child from bein' lonesome. Lonesome! — there did n't
nobody think of no such things when I was little. I was jest put
when I was spoken to, and to take things as they come. O,
I 'll find her work enough to keep her mind occupied, I promise
ye.”
Sol did not in the least doubt that, for Miss Asphyxia's reputation
in the region was perfectly established. She was spoken of
with applause under such titles as “a staver,” “a pealer,” “a
roarer to work”; and Sol himself had an awful sense of responsibility
to her in this regard. He had arrived at something of a
late era in single life, and had sometimes been sportively jogged
by his associates, at the village store, as to his opportunity of
becoming master of Miss Asphyxia's person and property by
matrimonial overtures; to all which he summarily responded
by declaring that “a hoss might as soon go a courtin' to the hosswhip
as he court Miss Sphyxy.” As to Miss Asphyxia, when
rallied on the same subject, she expressed her views of the matrimonial
estate in a sentence more terse and vigorous than elegant,
— that “she knew t' much to put her nose into hot swill.”
Queen Elizabeth might have expressed her mind in a more
courtly way, but certainly with no more decision.
The little head and heart in the next room were full of the
rudiments of thoughts, desires, feelings, imaginations, and passions
which either had never lived in Miss Asphyxia's nature, or
had died so long ago that not a trace or memory of them was
left. If she had had even the dawnings of certain traits and
properties, she might have doubted of her ability to bring up a
child; but she had not.
Yet Miss Asphyxia's faults in this respect were not so widely
different from the practice of the hard, rustic inhabitants of Needmore
as to have prevented her getting employment as a district-school
teacher for several terms, when she was about twenty
years of age. She was held to be a “smart,” economical teacher,
inasmuch as she was able to hold the winter term, and thrash the
very biggest boys, and, while she did the duty of a man, received
only the wages of a woman, — a recommendation in female qualification
which has not ceased to be available in our modern days.
Gradually, by incredible industries, by a faculty of pinching,
laid up money till she had actually come to be the possessor of a
small but neat house, and a farm and dairy in excellent condition;
and she regarded herself, therefore, and was regarded by others,
as a model for imitation. Did she have the least doubt that she
was eminently fitted to bring up a girl? I trow not.
Miss Asphyxia, in her early childhood, had been taken to raise
in the same manner that she had taken this child. She had been
trained to early rising, and constant, hard, unintermitted work,
without thought of respite or amusement. During certain seasons
of the year she had been sent to the district school, where,
always energetic in whatever she took in hand, she always stood
at the head of the school in the few arts of scholarship in those
days taught. She could write a good, round hand; she could
cipher with quickness and adroitness; she had learned by heart
all the rules of Murray's Grammar, notwithstanding the fact
that, from the habits of early childhood, she habitually set at
naught every one of them in her daily conversation, — always
strengthening all her denials with those good, hearty double
negatives which help out French and Italian sentences, and are
unjustly denied to the purists in genteel English. How much
of the droll quaintness of Yankee dialect comes from the stumbling
of human nature into these racy mistakes will never be
known.
Perhaps my readers may have turned over a great, flat stone
some time in their rural rambles, and found under it little clovers
and tufts of grass pressed to earth, flat, white, and bloodless, but
still growing, stretching, creeping towards the edges, where their
plant instinct tells them there is light and deliverance. The
kind of life that the little Tina led, under the care of Miss As
phyxia, resembled that of these poor clovers. It was all shut
down and repressed, but growing still. She was roused at the
first glimmer of early dawn, dressing herself in the dark, and,
coming out, set the table for breakfast. From that time through
the day, one task followed another in immediate succession, with
the sense of the ever-driving Miss Asphyxia behind her.
Once, in the course of her labors, she let fall a saucer, while
of her mischance, and expose herself to the awful consequences
of her anger, was more than her childish courage was equal to;
and, with a quick adroitness, she slipped the broken fragments in
a crevice between the kitchen doorstep and the house, and endeavored
to look as if nothing had occurred. Alas! she had not
counted on Miss Asphyxia's unsleeping vigilance of hearing.
She was down stairs in a trice.
“What have you been breaking?”
“Nothing, ma'am,” was the trembling response.
“Don't tell me! I heard something fall.”
“I think it must have been the tongs,” said the little girl, —
not over-wise or ingenious in her subterfuge.
“Tongs! likely story,” said Miss Asphyxia, keenly running
her eye over the cups and saucers.
“One, two, — here 's one of the saucers gone. What have
you done with it?”
The child, now desperate with fear, saw no refuge but in persistent
denial, till Miss Asphyxia, seizing her, threatened immediate
whipping if she did not at once confess.
“I dropped a saucer,” at last said the frightened child.
“You did, you little slut?” said Miss Asphyxia, administering
a box on her ear. “Where is it? what have you done with the
pieces?”
“I dropped them down by the doorstep,” said the sobbing
culprit.
Miss Asphyxia soon fished them up, and held them up in awful
judgment. “You 've been telling me a lie, — a naughty, wicked
lie,” she said. “I 'll soon cure you of lying. I 'll scour your
mouth out for you.” And forthwith, taking a rag with some soap
and sand, she grasped the child's head under her arm, and rubbed
the harsh mixture through her mouth with a vengeful energy.
“There, now, see if you 'll tell me another lie,” said she, pushing
her from her. “Don't you know where liars go to, you
naughty, wicked girl? `All liars shall have their part in the
lake that burns with fire and brimstone,' — that 's what the Bible
says; and you may thank me for keeping you from going there.
get another lie out of your mouth as long as you live.”
There was a burning sense of shame — a smothered fury of
resentment — in the child's breast, and, as she took the basket,
she felt as if she would have liked to do some mischief to Miss
Asphyxia. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” she said to
herself when she got into the cellar, and fairly out of hearing. “I
hate you, and when I get to be a woman, I 'll pay you for all this.”
Miss Asphyxia, however, went on her way, in the testimony
of a good conscience. She felt that she had been equal to the
emergency, and had met a crisis in the most thorough and effectual
manner.
The teachers of district schools in those days often displayed
a singular ingenuity in the invention of punishments by which
the different vices of childhood should be repressed; and Miss
Asphyxia's housewifely confidence in soap and sand as a means
of purification had suggested to her this expedient in her school-teaching
days. “You can break any child o' lying, right off
short,” she was wont to say. “Jest scour their mouths out with
soap and sand. They never want to try it more 'n once or twice,
I tell you.”
The intervals which the child had for play were, in Miss Asphyxia's
calendar, few and far between. Sometimes, when she
had some domestic responsibility on her mind which made the
watching of the child a burden to her, she would say to her,
“You may go and play till I call you,” or, “You may play for
half an hour; but you must n't go out of the yard.”
Then the child, alone, companionless, without playthings,
sought to appropriate to herself some little treasures and possessions
for the instituting of that fairy world of imagination which
belongs to childhood. She sighed for a doll that had once belonged
to her in the days when she had a mother, but which
Miss Asphyxia had contemptuously tossed aside in making up
her bundle.
Left thus to her own resources, the child yet showed the unquenchable
love of beauty, and the power of creating and gilding
an imaginary little world, which is the birthright of childhood.
things, — a broken teapot handle, a fragment of colored glass,
part of a goblet that had once belonged to Miss Asphyxia's treasures,
one or two smooth pebbles, and some red berries from a
wild rose-bush. These were the darlings, the dear delights of
her heart, — hoarded in secret places, gazed on by stealth, taken
out and arranged and re-arranged, during the brief half-hours,
or hours, when Miss Asphyxia allowed her to play. To these
treasures the kindly Sol added another; for one day, when Miss
Asphyxia was not looking, he drew from his vest-pocket a couple
of milkweed pods, and said, “Them 's putty, — mebbe ye 'd like
'em; hide 'em up, though, or she 'll sweep 'em into the fire.”
No gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls ever made bright eyes
open wider than did the exploring the contents of these pods.
It was silk and silver, fairy-spun glass, — something so bright
and soft that it really seemed dear to her; and she took the
shining silk fringes out and caressed them against her cheek,
and wrapped them in a little bit of paper, and put them in her
bosom. They felt so soft and downy, — they were so shining
and bright, — and they were her own, — Sol had given them to
her. She meditated upon them as possessions of mysterious
beauty and unknown value. Unfortunately, one day Miss Asphyxia
discovered her gazing upon this treasure by stealth during
her working hours.
“What have you got there?” she said. “Bring it to me.”
The child reluctantly placed her treasure in the great bony
claw.
“Why, that 's milkweed silk,” said Miss Asphyxia. “'T ain't
good for nothin'. What you doing with that?”
“I like it because it 's pretty.”
“Fiddlestick!” said Miss Asphyxia, giving it a contemptuous
toss. “I can't have you making litter with such stuff round the
house. Throw it in the fire.”
To do Miss Asphyxia justice, she would never have issued
this order if she had had the remotest conception how dear this
apparent trash was to the hopeless little heart.
The child hesitated, and held her treasure firmly. Her breast
eyes.
“Throw it in the fire,” said Miss Asphyxia, stamping her foot,
as she thought she saw risings of insubordination.
The child threw it in, and saw her dear, beautiful treasure
slowly consumed, with a swelling and indignant heart. She was
now sure that Miss Asphyxia hated her, and only sought occasion
to torment her.
Miss Asphyxia did not hate the child, nor did she love her.
She regarded her exactly as she did her broom and her rolling-pin
and her spinning-wheel, — as an implement or instrument
which she was to fashion to her uses. She had a general idea,
too, of certain duties to her as a human being, which she expressed
by the phrase, “doing right by her,” — that is, to feed
and clothe and teach her. In fact, Miss Asphyxia believed fully
in the golden rule of doing as she would be done by; but if a
lioness should do to a young lamb exactly as she would be
done by, it might be all the worse for the lamb.
The little mind and heart were awakened to a perfect burning
conflict of fear, shame, anger, and a desire for revenge, which
now overflowed with strange, bitter waters that hitherto ignorantly
happy valley of child-life. She had never had any sense
of moral or religious obligation, any more than a butterfly or a
canary-bird. She had, it is true, said her little prayers every
night; but, as she said to herself, she had always said them to
mother or Harry, and now there was nobody to say them to.
Every night she thought of this when she lay down in her joyless,
lonesome bed; but the kindly fatigue which hard work
brings soon weighed down her eyes, and she slept soundly all
night, and found herself hungry at breakfast-time the next morning.
On Sunday Miss Asphyxia rested from her labors, — a strange
rest for a soul that had nothing to do in the spiritual world.
Miss Asphyxia was past middle life, and, as she said, had
never experienced religion, — a point which she regarded with
some bitterness, since, as she was wont to say, she had always
been as honest in her dealings and kept Sunday as strict as most
instruction to the child; and accordingly the first Sunday she was
dressed in her best frock, and set up in a chair to be kept still
while the wagon was getting ready to “go to meetin',” and
Miss Asphyxia tried to put into her head the catechism made by
that dear, friendly old lover of children, Dr. Watts.
But somehow the first question, benignly as it is worded, had
a grim and threatening sound as it came from the jaws of Miss
Asphyxia, somewhat thus: “Stop playing with your frock, and
look right at me, now. `Can you tell me, dear child, who made
you?'”
Now the little one had often heard this point explained, but
she felt small disposition to give up her knowledge at this demand;
so she only looked at Miss Asphyxia in sulky silence.
“Say, now, after me,” said Miss Asphyxia, “`The great God
that made heaven and earth.'”
The child repeated the words, in that mumbling, sulky manner
which children use when they are saying what does not
please them.
“Tina Percival,” said Miss Asphyxia, in warlike tones, “do
you speak out plain, or I 'll box yer ears.”
Thus warned, the child uttered her confession of faith audibly
enough.
Miss Asphyxia was peculiarly harsh and emphatic on the answer
which described the omnipresence of the Supreme Being,
and her harsh voice, croaking, “If I tell a lie, He sees me, — if I
speak an idle or wicked word, He hears me,” seemed to the child
to have a ghastly triumph in it to confirm the idea that Miss Asphyxia's
awful tyranny was thoroughly backed up by that of a
Being far more mighty, and from whom there was no possible
escape. Miss Asphyxia enforced this truth with a coarse and
homely eloquence, that there was no getting away from God, —
that He could see in the night just as plain as in the daytime, —
see her in the yard, see her in the barn, see her under the bed,
see her down cellar; and that whenever she did anything wrong
He would write it down in a dreadful book, and on the Day of
Judgment she would have it all brought out upon her, — all which
illustrated what became of naughty children by such legends as
the story of the two she-bears which came out of a wood and
tare forty-and-two children who mocked at old Elisha, till the rebellious
auditor quaked in her little shoes, and wondered if the
bears would get Harry, and if Harry, after all, would not find
some way to get round the bears and come to her help.
At meeting she at last saw Harry, seated, however, in a distant
part of the house; but her heart was ready to jump out of her
breast to go to him; and when the services were over she contrived
to elude Miss Asphyxia, and, passing through the throng,
seized his hand just as he was going out, and whispered, “O
Harry, Harry, I do want to see you so much! Why don't you
come to see me?”
“They would n't let me, Tina,” said Harry, drawing his sister
into a little recess made between the church and the horse-block,
— an old-fashioned structure that used to exist for the accommodation
of those who came to church on horseback. “They won't
let me come. I wanted to come, — I wanted to see you so much!”
“O Harry, I don't like her, — she is cross to me. Do take
me away, — do, Harry! Let 's run away together.”
“Where could we go, Tina?”
“O, somewhere, — no matter where. I hate her. I won't stay
with her. Say, Harry, I sleep in a little room by the kitchen;
come to my window some night and take me away.”
“Well, perhaps I will.”
“Here you are, you little minx,” said Miss Asphyxia. “What
you up to now? Come, the waggin 's waiting,” — and, with a look
of severe suspicion directed to Harry, she seized the child and
conveyed her to the wagon, and was soon driving off with all
speed homeward.
That evening the boy pondered long and soberly. He had
worked well and steadily during the week, and felt no disposition
to complain of his lot on that account, being, as we
have said, of a faithful and patient nature, and accepting what
the friendly hired men told him, — that work was good for little
boys, that it would make him grow strong, and that by and by
But this separation from his little sister, and her evident
unhappiness, distressed him; he felt that she belonged to him,
and that he must care for her, and so, when he came home, he
again followed Goody Smith to the retirement of her milk-room.
The poor woman had found a perfect summer of delight in her
old age in having around her the gentle-mannered, sweet-spoken,
good boy, who had thus marvellously fallen to her lot; and boundless
was the loving-kindness with which she treated him. Sweetcakes
were slipped into his hands at all odd intervals, choice morsels
set away for his consumption in secret places of the buttery,
and many an adroit lie told to Old Crab to secure for him extra
indulgences, or prevent the imposition of extra tasks; and many
a little lie did she recommend to him, at which the boy's honest
nature and Christian education inclined him greatly to wonder.
That a grown-up, good old woman should tell lies, and advise
little boys to tell them, was one of those facts of human experience
which he turned over in his mind with wonder, — thinking
it over with that quiet questioning which children practise who
have nobody of whom they dare make many inquiries. But to-day
he was determined to have something done about Tina, and
so he began, “Please, won't you ask him to let me go and see
Tina to-night? It 's Sunday, and there is n't any work to do.”
“Lordy massy, child, he 's crabbeder Sundays than any other
day, he has so much time to graowl round. He drinks more
cider; and Sunday night it 's always as much as a body's life 's
worth to go near him. I don't want you to get him sot agin ye.
He got sot agin Obed; and no critter knows why, except mebbe
'cause he was some comfort to me. And ye oughter seen how
he used that 'ere boy. Why, I 've stood here in the milk-room
and heerd that 'ere boy's screeches clear from the stun pastur'.
Finally the men, they said they could n't stan' it, nor they
would n't.”
“Who was Obed?” said Harry, fearfully.
“Lordy massy! wal, I forgot ye did n't know Obed. He was
the baby, ye see. He was born the eighteenth of April, just
about nine o'clock in the evening, and Aunt Jerusha Periwinkle
in all their nussing. Held up his head jest as lively, and sucked
his thumb, he did, — jest the patientest, best baby ye ever did see,
— and growed beautiful. And he was gettin' to be a real beautiful
young man when he went off.”
“Went off?” said Harry.
“Yes, he went off to sea, jest for nothin' but 'cause his father
aggravated him so.”
“What was the matter? what did he do it for?”
“Wal, Obed, he was allers round helpin' me, — he 'd turn the
cheeses for me, and draw the water, and was always on hand
when I wanted a turn. And he took up agin him, and said we
was both lazy, and that I kept him round waitin' on me; and he
was allers a throwin' it up at me that I thought more of Obed
than I did of him; and one day flesh and blood could n't stan'
it no longer. I got clear beat out, and says I, `Well, father, why
should n't I? Obed 's allers a tryin' to help me and make my
work easy to me, and thinkin' what he can do for me; and he 's
the greatest comfort of my life, and it ain't no sin if I do think
more on him than I do of other folks.' Wal, that very day he
went and picked a quarrel with him, and told him he was going
to give him a stand-up thrashing. And Obed, says he, `No,
father, that you sha' n't. I 'm sixteen year old, and I 've made
up my mind you sha' n't thrash me no more.' And with that he
says to him, `Get along out of my house, you lazy dog,' says he;
`you 've been eatin' of my bread too long,' says he. `Well, father,
I will,' says Obed. And he walks up to me and kisses me, and
says he, `Never mind, mother, I 'm going to come home one of
these days and bring money enough to take care of you in your
old age; and you shall have a house of your own, and sha' n't
have to work; and you shall sit in your satin gown and drink
your tea with white sugar every day, and you sha' n't be no man's
slave. You see if I don't.' With that he turned and was off,
and I hain't never seen him since.”
“How long 's he been gone?”
“Wal, it 's four years come next April. I 've hed one or
two letters from him, and he 's ris' to be mate. And he sent
me round by sendin on em to Ebal Parker; else he 'd a took
'em, ye see. I could n't have nothin' decent to wear to meetin',
nor my little caddy o' green tea, if it had n't been for Obed. He
won't read Obed's letters, nor hear a word about him, and keeps
a castin' it up at me that I think so much of Obed that I don't
love him none.”
“I should n't think you would,” said the boy, innocently.
“Wal, folks seems to think that you must love 'em through
thick and thin, and I try ter. I 've allers kep' his clothes
mended, and his stockings darned up, and two or three good pair
ahead, and done for him jest the best I know how; but as to
lovin' folks when they 's so kind o' as he is, I don't reelly know
how ter. Expect, ef he was to be killed, I should feel putty
bad, too, — kind o' used to havin' on him round.”
This conversation was interrupted by the voice of Crab, in the
following pleasing style of remark: “What the devil be you a
doin' with that boy, — keepin' him from his work there? It 's
time to be to the barn seein' to the critters. Here, you young
scamp, go out and cut some feed for the old mare. Suppose I
keep you round jest to eat up the victuals and be round under
folks' feet?”
| CHAPTER X.
MISS ASPHYXIA'S SYSTEM. Oldtown folks | |