 | I. Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West |  |
1. I.
Pulls me irresistibly, and drags me
On to his grave.”
Thekla.
We are driving through the storm, always with bright
islands ahead, where the sunshine is showering through green
boughs, where the dew lies all day in the grass, and the birds
sing and sing, and are never tired of music. Sometimes
we drift against these spots of loveliness, and have, to quote
Thekla again, “two hours of heaven.” But alas, it is only
sometimes that we cross these glittering borders of Paradise,
for there are other islands to which we come often, islands of
hot creeping winds, and flat sands, wherein we may plant ourselves,
but never grow much: islands of barren rocks, against
which we find no homeliest vine climbing, though in search of
such we go up and down till the sun sets, and the day fades out,
on the wave that is very dark and very turbulent. It is therefore
needful that our voyaging be skillful as may be, and that
we watch for the good islands with everlasting vigilance. We
may not fail to see the dreary places, but we must have an eye
that the bright ones do not elude our sight; and so, though they
be few, they will satisfy our hearts. It is needful that we be
charitable, limiting as much as we can our distrusts to our own
natures. We may find enough there that we would shrink
from having the kindest eyes look in upon; in the living sea
we shall be at rest, if we are anxious only to discover beauty
and truth.
Some years ago, (I do n't much like to number them, for as
one after another leaves me, I see how the bloom of life has
precisely how long a time—in one of the towns of
the interior—in Randolph. Perhaps the name is altered now
in the geographies. I had grown up in the woods—had never
been from home before, except occasionally to go down to the
city for a day or two, and knew nothing of the conventional
usages even of such a quiet and unheard of place as Randolph.
Full of hope and sympathy, credulous and artless, I did not
know at the time, and it is well I did not, how wholly unprepared
I was to be placed in the midst of a family of the “double
refined.” I was ignorant enough then, to like nature, to suppose
the highest cultivation was only an enlarging of our
appreciation of nature—a conceit of which we are soon cured,
most of us.
It was at the close of one of the mildest of the September
days that I found myself in the village, the visitor of a family
there named Hamersly. I was dusty, tired, and a little home-sick.
Mrs. Hamersly, a widow of “sixty odd,” as she called
herself, I had never seen till that evening; with Matilda Hamersly,
a young lady of forty, or thereabouts, I had previously
some slight acquaintance: Til and Tilda they called her at
home, and these names pleased her much better than that they
gave her in baptism: they had a sort of little-girlish sound
that became her well, she seemed to think; and Frances, or
Frank, a young woman of nineteen, with whom I had been at
school, and knew well—that is, as well as I could know her,
separated from home influences. These three comprised the
family whose guest I was to be.
Frank laughed heartily on seeing me, ran out to meet me,
shook both my hands, and fairly dragged me into the house;
and when she had shown me into the best room, and given me
the best chair, she sat down herself on the carpet at my feet,
tossed back her heavy brown curls, and with her blue eyes full of
laughter and tears, looked in my face, saying only, “How glad
I am!” She never once thought that she was “not dressed”—
that is, that she had on a faded muslin, fitting close to the neck,
and having long sleeves; or that her little white feet were
stockingless, and thrust into slippers somewhat the worse for
gingham apron bore evidences of acquaintance with sundry
kitchen utensils, the names of which are not poetical; she
was unfeignedly glad, and quite unconscious of being unpresentable.
The house wherein my friends dwelt was old and small, containing
in truth only one decent apartment—it being but a
story and a half in height, and only large enough for a “square
room” and hall on the ground floor. Up stairs was a general
store room, a “spare room,” hardly large enough for a lady of
Lilliput, and a sleeping place for the young women. Mrs.
Hamersly, being sixty-odd, disposed herself on a sofa bedstead
in the parlor, at precisely half past nine, at which hour, every
night, by one means or another, the room was cleared of all
occupants. Two or three pots of common flowers adorned the
front window, and they were a great ornament and relief, for
the house stood immediately on the street, so that nothing
green was in sight except the little grass that grew between the
pavement stones. The furniture of this main room was scanty
and old, but was arranged, nevertheless, with some pretensions
to style and effect; I need not describe it—we have all seen
things that in vulgar parlance, “tried to be and could n't;” I
may mention, however, that amongst the furniture was a dilapidated
chair, which had been ornamental in its day, perhaps,
but that was a long time ago, and was “kept wisely for show;”
it was placed conspicuously of course, and its infirmity concealed
as much as might be by means of tidies and cushions,
but it was wholly unfit for use, and whoever attempted to sit in
it was led off by Tilda, with the whispered information that it
was a bad old chair, and played naughty tricks sometimes.
Beside this room and the kitchen, there were about the premises
three other places of which honorable mention was very
frequently made—the kitchen, the refectory, and the court.
The first was a small building of logs, standing some fifteen
feet in the rear of the principal edifice, and which had been
built probably long before the tavern on the corner of Maine
and Washington streets was thought of. It contained a small
pantry, on one side, and on the other a large fireplace, and besides
which hung a shelf containing a curious combination of well-worn
books, and yet another shelf, which held combs, brushes,
curling tongs, a pink paper box filled with Chinese powder, and
articles belonging to the toilet. A circular looking-glass hung
against the wall beside the first mentioned shelf, ingeniously
fixed in its place by means of a brass pin; and the shelf held,
beside the books, a razor, a box of buttons, a spool of cotton-thread,
a pair of scissors, and bits of tape and other strings,
and in a tin candlestick was part of a tallow candle. Beside the
desk was a chair, the original bottom of which had been supplied
by strips of hickory bark, woven very curiously. The
court was an open space between this and the porch leading into
the main building—a little plot of ground which might have
been with small care rendered pretty, but which in reality was
the receptacle of all the refuse of the house. The grass, if it
ever produced any, had been long trodden into the earth, the
water from the kitchen had been dashed down there till the
clay was blue, and planks, and bricks, and stones, served to
make a road across it. It had once been adorned with a common
rose bush and a lilac, but as they stood now, untrimmed
and sprawling, with muddy leaves, and limbs broken and hanging
down, and bits of rags and old paper, and other unseemly
things lodging among them, they were scarcely ornamental, to
say the least. Broken crockery, and all the various accumulations
of such humble housekeeping, lay in this place, denominated
the court, in eye-vexing confusion. Nor was it without
living inhabitants; not a slab nor a dry stone but was occupied;
for here dwelt, or rather came to take the air, six cats and
a small red-nosed and woolly dog, the former lean, and soiled
with soot from pots and kettles, and their ears either notched or
quite gone, from the worrying assaults of the dog, whose natural
snappishness was perhaps aggravated by his scanty feeding.
The refectory was a porch in the rear of the front house, inclosed
at the ends with various sorts of patchwork, and containing
a table and several chairs. Here, in summer, the family
meals were taken.
But to go back to the time of my sitting in the parlor, with
a fruit of subsequent observation. There was a good deal of
creaking of the boards overhead, which I took little notice of
at the time, so engaged were we with each other, when the
stairway door opened, and Mrs. Hamersly entered, leaning on
the arm of her daughter Tilda, both in “full dress.”
“And this is the darling young lady Frank has made us all
in love with,” said the elder of the ladies; “excuse me, my
dear, I am sixty odd,” and she lifted my hand to her lips, which
were white and cold, I thought, and kissed it.
I said, “Certainly, madam,” but whether she wished to be
excused for being sixty odd, or for not kissing my cheek, I was
not quite positive.
“This is my mamma,” said Tilda, in an affected tone, and
giving the old woman a hug, as though she had first met her
after years of separation; then, to me again, “You must love
my mamma, and mind every thing she says, like a good little
girl.”
Mrs. Hamersly, during this speech, seated herself next the
chair that was a chair, and Tilda left off patting my cheek and
smoothing my hair, to put the cushion under her mamma's
feet, the mamma again repeating to me that she was sixty-odd.
Not till she had adjusted her skirts to the widest breadth, and
once or twice slipt the gray curls that she wore through her
delicate fingers, did she observe that Frank was seated on the
carpet.
“Oh my child, my child!” she exclaimed, “do you desire to
kill me?” And she fanned herself violently with her embroidered
handkerchief.
“Mamma, do n't give way so,” drawled Tilda, helping to
fan, “Frank is bad as she can be.”
“Oh Tild, if it were not for you; do reprove her as she deserves:
you know I cannot.”
Then turning to me, she said, “The girl would shock me—so
thoughtless—and I am sixty-odd.”
Tilda administered the requisite reproof in a series of little
boxes upon the ear of Frank, saying, “To think! when you
know so well what is proper! to think, Oh, I can't express my
might have come in and found you in that improper position!
oh dear, dear! Not that I care for Ence; he is nobody; I
do n't care for him more than I care for an old stick of a weed
that grows in the court; but Ence is of the male sex, you know,
and propriety must be observed. Now, mamma, do n't take
on, and we children will all be so good.”
Having said this, she sat down, pulled her skirts out either
side half way across the room, crossed her hands in a proper
way, and opened a conversation in a sort of high-flown oratorical
style, beginning with, “There has been a gwate quwantity
of doost floying to-day.”
Miss Matilda Hamersly was never for a moment free from
affectations. Sometimes she talked wisely and with style and
flourish; this was her method mostly with women and married
and very elderly men, but with marriageable gentlemen of any
age or condition, she talked babyishly, and affected to pout like
a little girl. It was decidedly unbecoming, in view of the gray
hairs and the deep lines below them. In dress, too, she assumed
great juvenility, wearing frocks of the same material and style
as her sister, who was twenty years younger. She would only
admit that she was older in a larger knowledge of the proprieties
of life.
I remember now, that I looked at them, mother and
daughter, sitting there together, as curiously as if they had
just come down from the moon. Mrs. Hamersly wore a gray
silk peculiarly shaded, I thought that night, but I afterwards
discovered that the shading was of only soiling, for she carried
always in her pocket pieces of burnt and greasy cake, which she
occasionally nibbled; she never ate at the table; “My dear,”
she would say, “I am sixty-odd: just give me a cup of tea on
my lap.”
All her ribbons, and she wore as many as could be any way
attached to her, were faded, dirty, or in strings; the lace of
her cap—and it was real lace—was as yellow as dust and
smoke and the sweat of years could make it. From her
waist an eye-glass dangled down, which she sometimes used,
because she thought it looked pretty—always at half past
scare away any visitors, for, merely from caprice, she would
not abide one after that hour.
When she had surveyed me with her glass, she closed her
eyes and leaned back in her chair. She never talked much, in
fact she never did anything, never even moved her chair from
one part of the room to another. She seemed to regard herself
as free of all duty and all responsibility, by limitation of the
law, or elevation above it. Her better life seemed to have
given way before an habitual indolence, till there appeared
scarcely any vitality about her; her face and hands were colorless,
and a fresh corpse, dressed in ribbons and flounces, would
have looked as life-like as she, after composing her skirts and
assuming her fixed smile—not unlike that which comes out
sometimes on the faces of the dead.
Matilda was an overgrown and plain looking old woman,
with a fair share of common sense, but without the discretion
to use it. Unfortunately she wished to appear something she
was not, and so assumed the style of a girl of sixteen, and varied
her conversation from an ambitious rhetoric and elocution
to the pouting and pettishness of a child: in the last making
herself irresistible. Her neck and shoulders she was obliged
to cover; it must have cost her a hard struggle, but when she
had formed the judicious resolution, she maligned everybody
who had not the same necessity; indeed she was quite shocked
that Frank and I could be so indelicate as to appear, especially
before gentlemen, with exposed necks and arms.
I said I was a little homesick on the night of my arrival,
and I am inclined to think, as I recall my visit now, that I was
more than a little so. How long the twilight was in deepening
into night! It seemed to me that the cadaverous white face
of the old woman would never lose any of its sharp outlines in
the shadows, that the great pink flowers in the skirt of Matilda's
dress would never become indistinct in the darkness;
that long and lonesome period betwixt day and night had
never till then seemed so long and so lonesome.
I had been accustomed at Clovernook to go out to a hill that
overlooked the village, a mile away, watching the clouds and
me or the book on my knees—and I could not help thinking
of the field which lay between that hill and the lights of
home, of the cows and the sheep that were sinking to rest
in the dewy grass—in spite of Miss Matilda's efforts to entertain
me.
“You are thinking,” she said, and for once she guessed my
thoughts, “of the cullover fields all sperinkled with caattle,
and of the burooks, and the berriers, and the belossoms—you
will find such gereat resthraint here!”
I said, “Oh no,” for I did not know what else to say, and
Matilda lifted up both hands and observed that “You have no
idea, I suppose of the maanner in which young ladies are expected
to conduct themselves in a place like Randolph.”
For a moment I forgot my dusty and uncomfortable traveling
dress in the music Frank was making with the tea-things—
for after the reprimand she had received, she betook herself to
the kitchen, and now sent me the pleasant tidings of her occupation.
“Tilda, my darling,” said the mamma, opening her eyes,
“restrain that creature, restrain her,” and thereupon Tilda
withdrew, and such parts of the conversation between the sisters
as came to my ears were not calculated to dispel the home-sickness
that had previously made me count the bows in Mrs.
Hamersly's cap, and the panes of glass in the window, and twice
to change my position, ostensibly to examine the portrait of a
young man, which, veiled with green gauze, hung in a very
bad light. I need not repeat their words: enough that Frank
had kept in mind the appetite that was likely to succeed a day
of stage-coach travelling, and was preparing with a liberal
hand.
“Do you suppose she is a bear, starved for a month?” said
Matilda.
“There is Clarence, too: he has not been home to-night you
know,” urged Frank.
“Ence—I 'll warrant you would not forget Ence—he knows
our tea-time, and we do n't keep tavern;” and I thought Matilda
seemed to be removing some of the tea furniture. The
by the light of the moon, entered, and having politely
saluted Mrs. Hamersly, who did not open her eyes, passed
back to where the young women were engaged about the
supper.
“Just an hour and a half too late,” exclaimed Matilda, very
haughtily, I thought.
“I am very sorry,” replied the young man; “Mr. Kipp detained
me in the office.”
“How impertinent,” said the lady, coming into the room
where I was: “Just to think, you know, of the airs which
that fellow assumes—a mere boy pretending to be a man, you
know.”
Here she explained that he was nothing nor nobody but a
printer's boy, that his name was Clarence Howard, and that
he was engaged in the office of her particular friend, Josephus
Kipp, the publisher of the Illuminator; that for the sake of
accommodating said friend, Mr. Josephus Kipp, and also for
that they were lone women—the mamma sixty odd—they had
consented to furnish him with breakfast and tea; but the boy
was beginning to take such advantages of their kindness as
would render some assumption of dignity, on her part, necessary;
for Frank had no maaner, and mamma was sixty-odd.
Here she went into a senseless medley that I need not repeat,
composed mostly of ahs and ohs, and dear-mes, with an intermixture
of lamentations over the frailty of womankind, herself
excepted.
Frank, who had been singing during the early part of her
preparations, ceased, and after a little low-voiced talk with the
young man, appeared, and invited me to drink the tea she had
made for me, but the smile she wore could not conceal the redness
of her eyes.
She wisely limited her invitation to tea, for the table afforded
nothing beside, except three or four mouldy crackers, which
tasted of tallow, and a little preserved quince, which seemed to
have been made a year or two. The little appetite I might
have had for such fare was reduced to nothing, when I saw the
supperless Clarence seated at the desk before-mentioned, reading,
with candles.
I could not help looking at him, nor could Frank, as it
seemed; at any rate she did look at him, though of what
nature her interest was I was not at the time quite certain.
He was good looking, yet it was not for that that he interested
me, I think. His dress was poor, meaner than that of
many common laborers, but the effect of a peculiar beauty he
had seemed little impaired by it. I cannot describe him; for if I
said he had great black melancholy eyes, with a bright spot in
either pale cheek, and brown wavy hair; that he was slight,
and had the sweetest smile and smallest hands I ever saw, you
could not make a correct picture. It may be that the interest
and belief of his beauty were in part owing to the circumstances.
I had never seen a handsome youth making a supper of mouldy
crackers before, and I am not ashamed to say that I felt some
tenderness for him when he divided the last one between the
dog that sat at his feet, looking beseechingly into his face, and
the big gray cat that sprang to his shoulder and locked his long
sleek tail about his neck.
Very poor and very proud were the Hamerslys, and they
preferred stinting their meals to using their hands much.
Miss Matilda gave lessons in drawing for two hours in the
day, and Frank was maid of all work. As for Mrs. Hamersly,
she might as well have been a wooden machine in petticoats
as what she was; in the morning she was dressed and at
night she was undressed, and two or three times in the day her
chair was moved from one place to another, and sometimes
her snuff-box required filling, and her pocket to be replenished
with the burnt pound-cake, which Frank possessed an art of
making and baking always in the same style—heavy and
deeply, darkly brown. Aside from these things she had no
needs that I ever knew of.
During my tea drinking, and I lingered over it somewhat in
order to facilitate an acquaintance with Clarence, Matilda appeared
once or twice at the door, as though matters required
her inspection. At length she informed me that a gentleman
was in the parlor and very impatient to see me; of course I
Mr. Josephus Kipp, publisher of The Illuminator—a rotund
little personage, wearing a white waistcoat, and having a
face of pretty much the same color; a little flaxen hair on
the back of his head, which was bald in front; blue eyes, with
streaks beneath them bluer than they; no teeth, and hands
and feet inordinately large.
He probably ate, and drank, and slept, and bought a new
coat when his old one wore out, but he appeared the most utterly
devoid of character of all persons it was ever my fortune
to meet, reflecting the opinions of whomever he conversed with
as a certain lizard does the color of the substance over which
it crawls.
“Well, Miss Matilda,” he said, after some common-place
observation to me—“Well, Miss Matilda!”
“Mr. Kipp, well, ah well.”
And Miss Matilda adjusted her skirts and bent forward her
head to an attitude of the most devoted attention.
“Well, Miss Matilda.”
“Ah, yes, well, Mr. Kipp.”
“Well, Miss Matilda, it's been a very warm day—yes, it's
been a very warm day, Miss Matilda—it has so, yes, it has.”
“Yes, Mr. Kipp, it's been a warm day.”
“Yes, a very warm day, Miss Matilda.”
“Yes, Mr. Kipp.”
“Mrs. Hamersly, I was saying to your daughter that it's
been a warm day.”
“Yes,” replied the lady, without opening her eyes.
“But Mrs. Hamersly, it's been a very warm day.”
“Tilda, speak for me, dear—be so good as to remember,
Mr. Kipp, that I am sixty-odd.”
And she took snuff, to refresh herself after so unusual an
exertion.
“I am very thoughtless, Miss Matilda,” said Mr. Kipp,
touched with remorse at having shocked by a too familiar approach
the sensibility and dignity of the venerable and distinguished
lady. “Really, I am very thoughtless.”
“Ah no, Mr. Kipp, you are too severe upon yourself—you
she is sixty odd, and she feels so much, you know.”
“But Miss Matilda, I am so thoughtless.”
“No, Mr. Kipp, I'll just get behind the door and cry if you
say that again—now I just will.”
“No, Miss Matilda, I ain't thoughtless—no, I ain't.”
Mr. Kipp not only liked to agree with everybody he conversed
with, but with himself too; and generally when he said
a thing once he repeated it, to assure himself that he agreed
with himself.
“The change we may shortly expect in the weather will be
a great shock to your mother,” he said presently.
“No, Mr. Kipp, I think it will do her good—the warm
weather is so elevating!”
“Yes, Miss Matilda, it will do her good—yes, it will so, it
will do her good. But I am afraid of that shock I gave her,
Miss Matilda, I am afraid of that.”
“Now Mr. Kipp, you bad, naughty person—I'll just be as
unhappy now as I can.” And putting her handkerchief before
her eyes, she affected to execute her purpose.
Here Mr. Kipp asked me if I knew the reason of Miss Matilda's
proposing to get behind the door.
I said no, and he informed me that there was a great attraction
there. Whereupon I remembered the portrait of the gentleman
I had noticed early in the evening.
“Now, Mr. Kipp, it's too bad!” exclaimed Miss Matilda,
affecting to strike him with her hand, and hiding some make-believe
blushes for a moment, and then explaining to me that
the original of the picture was only a friend.
“Miss Matilda, they are coming in—every day they are
coming in—subscribers, you know. The Illuminator is going
to be a great paper—yes, it's going to drive ahead. And I tell
you Miss Matilda, we are going to throw cold water on some
of the scamps that object to the new bridge—for that will be
the making of our town.”
“Mr. Kipp, I do n't like to say, you know—being a woman!
you know what I think, you know—it seems so out of place,
and I do n't know hardly—my mamma knows a great many
bring rough fellows, you know, into town, and corrupt our
society—especially the female portion of it; for my own part,
ah, oh!”—Here her voice was lost in the rustling of her
skirts, and what Miss Matilda thought on this momentous subject
will probably never be known.
“And so your mother thinks, Miss Matilda, the proposed
bridge will do more harm than good?”
“My mamma, you know, is decided—she is a woman, you
know, Mr. Kipp, of a great deal of, of a great deal, you know—
and, and when you see her, Mr. Kipp, you know her most
secret sentiments: she is opposed to the bridge.”
“Yes. Well, Miss Matilda, so am I. If them fellows gets
it, they will have to fight hard against me and the Illuminator.
Yes, Miss Matilda, they will have to fight hard.”
At this point I lost some of the profound discussion, so important
to the village—for through the window, against which
I sat, I could see Frank and Clarence walking across and across
the plank that bridged the blue mud—the youth appearing
wofully dispirited; and though the girl seemed trying to comfort
him, she evidently succeeded but ill.
“I wish I was dead,” I heard him say repeatedly; “there is
nothing for me to live for.”
“Oh no, Clarence, that is wrong. One of these days it will
rain porridge, and then, if your dish is right side up, how pleasant
it will be!”
“Nobody cares for me,” he replied, “and I do n't care for
myself any more.”
“Well, I do n't know as any body cares for me,” said the
girl, and her laughter indicated that it gave her small trouble
if they did not.
“Just look at these rags!” he said—and turning toward her,
he surveyed himself from head to foot, as if in contempt.
“And what of it?” she asked; “you will get more some way.
I have only one dress beside this; but may be the two will
last me as long as I shall live to want them, and if they do n't,
why I shall get more, no doubt of it.” And she laughed again
more heartily than before.
The young man removed his hat, which was of straw, though
it was quite past the season for straw hats, and pressed his
small hand against his forehead.
“Are you dizzy, Clarence?” she asked.
“No,” he answered; and replacing the hat on his head, and
drawing it over his brows, he locked his hands behind him, and
crossed and recrossed the plank which formed his little promenade,
with a hurried and irregular step, while the girl seated
herself on the edge of the porch, and leaned her head on her
hand, musingly.
There was a long silence, but at last the youth paused before
her abruptly, and said, in a voice low and almost tremulous,
for he seemed naturally enough to suppose himself the subject
of her thoughts, “What are you thinking about, Frank?”
“Oh, I was n't thinking at all, I was half a sleep;” and
shaking back her curls, she arose, and went into the house.
He looked after her for a moment, and opening a side gate,
disappeared.
I only perceived that he was restless and unhappy—only knew
that she did not and could not understand him—but I was disquieted
when I saw them go their separate ways—he alone
into the night, to wrestle with an ambitious and embittered
soul, and she to careless sleep.
I was recalled by an unusual rustling of Miss Matilda's
skirts, together with an unusual prudishness of manner and
affectation of tone.
“Mr. Kipp,” she said at last, “I have been wanting to ask
you something, so much!”
“Yes, well, Miss Matilda, you want to ask me something—
yes, well, Miss Matilda, a great many ask me questions, a great
many that want advice, Miss Matilda, and a great many that
do n't want advice. The Illuminator, Miss Matilda, the Illuminator—I
tell you, Miss Matilda, you must write an article
for it. I think dialogue would be best; an article of about
three columns and a quarter in length.
“I think I should prefer the essay,” said Miss Matilda.
“Yes, the essay—that's what I meant—that would do—yes,
yes, one of your essays.”
“But, Mr. Kipp.”
“Well, Miss Matilda, I'm at your service, and I'm just as
much at the service of every one. Yes, Miss Matilda, yes, I'm
a serviceable man.”
Mr. Kipp could generally express a wonderful deal of nothing
with astonishing volubility; he had now said something positive,
which came near wounding Miss Matilda.
“If you are at the service of every one, Mr. Kipp, I shall not—
Oh, I do n't know, but I 'll not feel the same, you know.”
“At the service of others, through the Illuminator, and at
your service, through the Illuminator, too. I met Judge Morton
in the street this morning—you know Judge Morton—he is a
man of immense property. Well, I met him this morning,
right the next block to my office, and says he, `Good morning,
Kipp;' and says I, `Good morning, Judge;' and says he, `It's a
fair day, Kipp;' and I says, `Yes, Judge, it's a fair day;' and
then, says he, `Kipp,' says he, `when you established the Illuminator,
there were no buildings about here like these'—and he
pointed in particular to Metcalf's new house; and Metcalf—
Senator Metcalf, you know—well, he came to the door while we
stood there, and says he, `Good morning, Kipp;' and says I,
`Good morning, Metcalf;' and after standing a minute, he went
in. He wears blue trowsers generally, but to-day he had on
black. Well, he went in.
“After Morton and I had talked sometime about national
affairs, says he, `Kipp,' and says I, `Morton,' (I always omit
the judge in conversing with him, we 're so familiar;) `Well,'
says he, `Kipp, here 's a little notice of me that I want you to
put in the Illuminator as editorial.' And says I, `Morton, at
your service.' Just what I said to you, Miss Matilda. And he
says to me, says he, `Come and dine with me, Kipp,' says he;
`we have always pork and beans, or less'—and he went along
down street.”
“Quite a little adventure, was n't it?” said Matilda.
“Yes, Miss Matilda, Judge Morton is a man that lives here
right amongst us, and he makes himself so agreeable and so
notorious; and we all know him, Miss Matilda, that's the
point. Yes, Miss Matilda, decidedly an adventure.”
“But, Mr. Kipp—you know—I—you know—in short, Mr.
Kipp, you never said a wiser thehing.”
It is difficult to represent with letters Miss Matilda's elegant
and peculiar pronunciation, and so for the most part it is left
to the reader's imagination.
“Yes, Miss Matilda, yes, I agree with you, I never said a
wiser thing.”
“Oh no, Mr. Kipp, I made a borroad assertion—you have said
things that manifested more depth of feeling, more metaphysical
perspicacity, you know.”
“Well, yes, Miss Matilda, you are right—I have said some
smart things, and yet not so smart either as they were radical.
I met Governor Latham at the Springs last summer. Miss
Matilda, did you go to the Springs? Well, Miss Matilda,
there were a good many there; and as I was saying, I met
Governor Latham there—a little imaginative looking man he
is, and he wore a white waistcoat at the Springs. `Well'—says
he to me one day—we had just finished a segar—I do n't know
whether we had been talking about the Illuminator or not,
but says he to me, `Kipp,' and says I, `Latham;' and says he,
`Kipp,' says he, `you 're a rascally radical!' And I laughed,
and Latham laughed.”
He paused, to enjoy his elevation, and then said, “Miss Matilda!”
“Yes, Mr. Kipp!”
“There were a good many at the Springs.”
There was another season of fidgeting—a good deal of
affected embarrassment on the part of the lady—when she said,
“You know Mr. Kipp, I said, I said—oh, it 's so awkward, you
know, for a woman to approach a delicate matter; one you
know, that—that—but I have an affection, Mr. Kipp, that
mamma thinks requires medical treatment.”
“An affection of the heart?”
And Mr. Kipp laughed; he had no doubt that he had said a
witty thing.
“No, Mr. Kipp,” said Matilda, affecting innocent unconsciousness—“Mamma
thinks it is not the heart.”
“I wish, Miss Matilda, it was the heart, and that its affection
was for me!”
“Oh, you bad man!” she exclaimed. And this time she
really went behind the door, and pouted for a time, letting us
see her all the while. The movement did not become Miss
Matilda Hamersly very well.
She was at length brought forth by the repentant Mr. Kipp,
pulling away from his hand much as I have seen a calf drawing
back from the farmer who would have put it into a stable:
but she presently wiped her eyes and smiled again, saying, “I
believe I will just ask you as if you were my brother—we are
so unprotected, and have no one to ask things, you know.”
“Do, Miss Matilda.”
“And you won't think anything?”
“If I do, Miss Matilda, may I be shot.”
“Just pretend you are my brother, you know. I do n't
know what 's right for me to do. I wish mamma would
tell me.”
“You do n't know, Tilda; well, I do n't believe you do.”
“Well, Mr. Kipp, if I was to say anything, and if it was to
be wrong—knowing how lonely and unprotected we are—would
you think anything?”
“No, Tilda—'pon my soul, I never think anything.” And
the editor of the Illuminator hitched his chair a whole width
of carpet nearer to the diffident and excessively proper young
woman.
“Well then, you are my brother, you know”—here she
looked at him beseechingly, and as though she hesitated yet.
“Anything, Tilda, I 'll be anything.”
“Well then, do you—how foolish—how awkward!”—
“Yes, Tilda, it is.”
“Do you, Mr. Kipp?”
“Call me Josephus, Tilda.”
“How foolish I am—all in a tremor—just feel!”
And she extended her hand to Josephus, who, having given
another hitch, retained it.
“Now I am just going to be as bold as other girls—may n't
I be, Mr.—Josephus—and you won't think anything?”
Mr. Kipp seemed to answer by a pressure of the hand, for
he said nothing.
“Do you know folks in Henry-street? Tell me true now.”
“Why yes, Tilda, I know a good many there—I have six
subscribers in that street. I met one of them as I was coming
here to-night—Rev. Dr. Chandler, it was—and he said, `How
are you Kipp?' and I said `How are you?' and he passed
up street, and I came here.”
“Do you know a family there of the name of Brown?
Now you know you promised not to think anything.”
“Brown, that was commissioner of the peace? Yes, I published
a didactic piece on the canal basin from his pen a week
or two ago. Yes, Tilda, I published a poem from him. An
epic, it was.”
“Well Josephus—brother, do you know Mrs. Brown?”
“Yes, Tilda—not to say well, however—I have met her
under peculiar circumstances, and I know her as well as I know
Governor Latham's wife—that is to say, I consider myself
well acquainted.”
“Is she well?”
“As to that, Tilda, I can't be positive. The last time I met
Brown, says I, `How are you, and how is Mrs. Brown?' and
says he, `Thank you, Kipp;' and I do n't remember, as to her
health, what he said.”
“Do you ever visit in the family, or, I mean, have you lately?”
“No, I have n't—yes, I have too—yes, I was there—I can't
say the day.”
“How many children have they? Now you must n't think
anything queer.”
“They have six, or seven, or eight; I can't say precisely.”
At this point of the conversation Matilda covered up her
face, and after two or threee unsuccessful essays, actually
inquired how old was the youngest.
It might be a year old, or it might be six months, or it might
be three—the Illuminator could not enlighten her more nearly.
“I cannot say more now,” said Matilda. “Perhaps I had
best consult a female friend. I 'll ask my mamma, and do just
what she says. I have had some doubts about the propriety
of something that it seems necessary for me to do. Do n't ask
me to explain.”
Mrs. Hamersly here took a long survey of the clock through
her glass, and Mr. Kipp arose to go—Miss Matilda saying,
“Now do n't teaze me, and do n't think anything;” and he
replying, as he pressed her hand to his heart, that he would n't
tease her, and would n't think anything; and that he would
teaze her and would think something.
And so they parted—Matilda saying, from the door, that she
was afraid she had done something wrong; she had talked so,
she did n't know how; and that she believed she would cry
herself to death.
The sensation induced by the editor's departure over, both
parties recurred to my friend Frank.
“Frank! Where is my child?” exclaimed Mrs. Hamersly,
as if for the first time aware that the girl was not present.
“Oh, heavenly Father!” ejaculated Matilda, “I quite lost
sight of her in my agitation on that—that theme that no woman
of delicacy could approach without a shock to her modesty”—
and she foundered out of the room, saying, “do n't give way,
mamma; she cannot be keeping company with that dreadful
Ence—she cannot so have forgotten propriety—and after such
examples! Saints and angels help us!”
“I'll tell Mr. Kipp, see if I do n't, and that ungrateful boy
shall be punished—and he has been like a father to him, and I
have been like a sister—I 'll tell Mr. Kipp how ungrateful the
wretch is.”
Frank was presently discovered, fast asleep in the kitchen,
but Matilda had become so alarmed by the terrible apprehension
that she was talking with the wretch, Clarence, that it was
a long while before she could be quieted. Young girls were so
reckless and improper—she was astonished that all the gentlemen
were not disgusted—it was shocking—it was too bad to
talk about. She knew a young lady, one that was called
respectable, too, that had been seen in the street, so it was
reported, wearing a low-necked dress—she could n't hardly
believe it, and yet she knew several persons, whose veracity
she could not doubt, who had told her they had seen this certain
person in the street, without a bit of a thing on her
neck.
A great many scandals she repeated, telling me over and
over that such things were very repulsive to her, and that she
often wished she could live in some cave, away in a desert or
a wilderness, where she could be secure from the vile gossip
that now so much afflicted her.
When Frank had been asleep an hour, she was wide awake,
and talking, apparently with the greatest zest, about the improprieties
of which she had known various persons to be guilty;
and when Frank had been asleep two hours, she was talking
with still greater animation than before. Midnight came and
went, and she seemed as fresh and earnest as ever. At last she
asked me if I had thought anything of what she said to Mr.
Kipp. She was afraid she had overstepped the bounds of
propriety. She was alarmed, when she thought of it. She
would tell me all about it, and ask my advice. So, sometime
between the hours of twelve and two, I came to the knowledge
of Matilda's peculiar difficulty.
Did I think it would be proper and prudent for her, a
maiden lady as she was, to call in the doctor, for advice in
reference to her own ailments, when he passed by on his visit
to Mrs. Brown, whose babe she was sure could not be more
than two months old! This most difficult and profoundly
cogitated question she propounded in a whisper.
Of course I saw no impropriety in seeing her physician, if
ill; but all at once the lady remembered I was a country
girl, and of course did not and could not know what rigid
scrutiny must accompany every action of woman in a place
like Randolph.
It must have been near daylight when I felt myself being
lifted into the “litter of close-curtained sleep,” and the sounds
of “propriety,” “female delicacy,” “virgin modesty,” and the
like, gradually growing more indistinct.
At the end of ten days, my acquaintance with Clarence had
ripened but little. I had met him every day at breakfast and
tea; but though we sometimes exchanged glances of recognition,
Matilda's presence completely interdicted any conversation.
| I. Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West | |