 | III.
THE LITTLE HOUSEWIFE AND HER FRIENDS. Coupon bonds, and other stories |  |
3. III.
THE LITTLE HOUSEWIFE AND HER FRIENDS.
Clinton, out of doors, was at the same time thinking
how he should wring drops of repentance out of the old
man's heart.
It was beginning to snow. He was glad of that, for
two reasons: in the first place, he was eager to commence
work on the pond, and assume authority under Phil; and,
in the next place, he longed for an occasion to show his
independence of the old folks.
“I won't be home till long after they 're abed to-night,”
he muttered to himself; “and I 'll be off in the
morning before they 're up. I 'll take a pie in my hand,
and go to dinner with Phil, and they sha' n't see me for
three days, if I can help it. Glory! how it snows!”
Another thought struck him. He was in business now;
why not get married, and have a home of his own? “That
would kill the old folks!” he chuckled. “I 'll let 'em see
whether I 'm a boy, to be forever dictated to!” But
whom should he marry? Emma Welford, of course; he
would not deign to look at anybody else now he was “in
had been in love with her from the day when he helped
untangle her fragrant veil from a blissful rosebush, and
she gave him a look that had rankled with a sweet pang
in his heart ever since. He would have proposed to her
before now, if he could have shown that he had any means
of supporting a family. “I wonder what salary Phil will
give me”; and he proceeded to count a very large brood
of chickens, without waiting for the important process of
incubation.
He went to see Emma that very evening; shook and
stamped off the snow in the entry, and held her dear
little hand in his until she withdrew it, saying, for an
excuse, “Why, how damp you are, Clinton!”
Then he went in, and sat down, and cracked jokes, and
played with the children, and was altogether so kind-hearted
and lively, that any one who had seen him an
hour before, seeing him again now, would have conjectured
there must be two Clintons, — one stamped in the mint
of the morning, the other cast in the dark mould of
night. Were you ever in your life, my experienced friend,
aware of such a phenomenon? And do you, sweet miss (I
am looking straight into your eyes at this moment), do
you imagine that, when you shall have given your hand
to the brave John or Thomas, whose brightness beams
upon you now on set evenings of the week, and he shall
have taken you to his home, — do you, I say, imagine it
possible that he may there introduce you, in some unhappy
hour, to his counterpart, the dark John or Thomas, whose
existence you have never yet suspected? And you, blithe
lover, do you know that you invariably leave one self behind
you, and that, perhaps, your real self, when you go
to meet your Mary? Well, and perhaps she puts her real
self carefully away out of your sight too.
Of course, Emma's folks liked Clinton, and were always
delighted to have him come in. And here I must say a
word about the family, which consisted of, first, old Uncle
Jim, her grandfather, — the same Cousin Jim, by the way,
who once came so near marrying Clinton's grandmother.
He had not broken his heart over that unhappy affair, but
had transferred it, in a tolerably sound and healthy condition,
to another young woman, whom he had married, and
with whom he had lived happily upwards of forty years.
It was the loss greater than all other losses when this
aged companion went from them. “But, bless you, sir!”
he used to say, “she left the gate open, and I 've seen the
light through it ever since.” A still darker sorrow he
had known: a promising young man had won their
daughter, their only child. He seemed to have but one
fault, yet that one fault had broken her heart, and sent
him early to a drunkard's grave. All this and much more
(for no life is free from trials) the cheerful spirit of the
man survived; and now he lived here with his orphaned
grandchildren, their best friend and companion, and still
himself a child of threescore years and ten.
Emma was the little housewife and matron, and a
charming little matron she was. “Her very mother's self
over again,” Uncle Jim would sometimes murmur aloud,
watching her with eyes brimful of tears and blessings, as
she moved about the house. Not that she was the perfect
pattern of neatness and order which we sometimes read
about in good books; how could she be, with four younger
brothers and sisters to look after, besides the housework?
She believed that little ones were to be amused and made
happy; and how was that possible unless they were sometimes
allowed to litter the floor with their playthings?
“I can't be always following them up, and tormenting
them about such trifles,” she said to Mrs. Jones, a good
looking in to see how the little family of orphans were
getting along, had exclaimed, “Why, Emma! how can you
stand it?”
“O, I stand it very well!” laughed Emma. “If I
believed that immaculate housekeeping was the great end
and aim of a woman's life, as some people seem to think, I
suppose I should be troubled in my mind. But I tried,
and I found I could n't have perfect order and merry
children in the house at the same time; and I must say
I prefer the merry children.”
So it is to be feared we should have found many things
out of place in Emma's little domain had we visited it
with good Mrs. Jones; but two little things we should
always have found in place, namely, a cheerful countenance
and a loving heart.
Emma was “so glad” Clinton had come in; he always
made such fun for the children; “though you must n't be
so funny as you are sometimes, you know,” she whispered,
“because it 's Sunday.”
“It 's after sundown, and gran'pa always lets us play
then, if 't is Sunday; don't you, gran'pa?” young Tommy
appealed.
“We keep Saturday nights, or pretend to,” said the old
man. “Dear me!” he went on, with tender seriousness,
“what 's more interesting, what is there prettier, than the
sight of children at play? I believe Heaven itself is pleased
at it.”
“There! he said we might,” cried Tommy. “Come,
Clint, make a wheelbarrow of me, and let Sissy ride, as
we did the other night.”
So Clint made a wheelbarrow of him, using his legs for
handles, and running him on his hands, which worked
quite well in place of a wheel; and Lucy and Jimmy set
about the room, crying, “Po-ta-toes! Anybody want to
buy a bag of po-ta-toes!” Sissy thought it the funniest
thing in the world to be a bag of potatoes, and to have
somebody buy her; and, of course, everybody laughed.
Tommy himself laughed so that he broke down, and had to
be taken to the blacksmith's shop to be mended. Grandfather's
knees were the shop, and grandfather's arm was
the handle of the bellows; and Clint blew and hammered,
and hammered and blew, imitating with his lips the
wheeze of the blast, until Tommy declared, amid convulsions
of laughter, that he was “tickled to death,” and
begged not to be mended any more.
“Well, I 'll just put your tire on,” said Clint; but
Tommy said he did n't wear tires, — Jimmy and Sissy
did, — he was a big boy, and had outgrown them;
which blunder of his created great merriment among
the older ones, for Clint meant the tire of the imaginary
wheel.
Clint was peddling potatoes again when a second caller
came in. This was no other than the Ice Company's
foreman, Phil Kermer. The arrival of no other person
could have created a livelier interest in the little circle
just then. Emma blushed as she had not blushed when
Clinton came; and the younger children, with whom Phil
also was a great favorite, rushed to meet him.
“The old woman is picking her geese! the old woman
is picking her geese!” said Lucy and Jimmy, as he shook
the feathery snow from his garments, while the wheelbarrow
jumped up and ran away on its handles to the
entry, greatly to the disappointment of the bag of potatoes.
“I wanted you to thell me to him,” lisped the little
commodity, regarding the new-comer as a customer.
“Well, I 'll buy you,” said Phil, entering into the joke
when it was explained to him. “What are you, — Irish
potatoes?” tossing the bag up lightly on his shoulder.
“No, I 'm thweet potatoeth,” said the bag. At which
unconsciously apt reply (for was n't she sweet, though?)
everybody was delighted.
“Now, I 'll put you in the cellar,” said Phil, setting her
up in the corner behind his chair. “Which will you be,
— boiled or roasted?”
“Woathted, with thalt on me; but the watth (rats)
will nibble me here!” And out ran sweet potatoes, flying
about the room, and keeping up her play till that season
so dreaded by fun-loving children arrived, — bedtime.
“Not a word!” said Emma; and the gentle authority
she exercised over the little pouters was beautiful to
behold. “Come, I have let you sit up a good deal longer
than usual to-night, to see the company; and now you
must n't complain. If you do, I shall have to send you
off to bed the first thing, the next time they come. Why,
Sissy! I need n't hang your clothes upon the hook to-night,
need I? I can hang them on your lip!”
That funny notion set Sissy to laughing, so that she
quite forgot the grievance of having to go to bed.
“Come, then,” said Emma, and she led the three younger
ones (Lucy was going to sit up a little longer) to their
grandpapa's knee, around which they knelt, and with
sweetly composed faces and little hands folded repeated
the Lord's Prayer in unison, very reverently; Sissy's
lisped syllables, “Lead uth not into temptathon,” chiming
in so softly and so suggestively (dear child! what did she
know of temptation?) that Phil Kermer (who did know
something of it, and knew, too, that there was need enough
of his making that prayer) felt his eyes, as he listened,
suddenly grow dim with an unaccountable and very extraordinary
that prayer to advantage; but somehow the scene did not
touch him in the same way.
Then the old grandfather, in accents affectingly tremulous
with the earnestness of his love, gave the little ones
his blessing; then they kissed everybody good night, and
Emma went to see them safely tucked up in bed.
Presently a rap was heard on the stove-pipe which went up
from the sitting-room into the chamber above. “Mithter
Phil! Mithter Phil!” called Sissy, “when you going to
woatht and eat me?” Then the ringing laugh that followed!
— did ever silver bells equal its music?
“What should we do without the children?” said
Uncle Jim. “What would the old folks do without you,
Clinton?” he added, thinking immediately of his aged
friends in the other house. “It 's fortunate you have
such a loving disposition. You 're their sunbeam, I 'm
sure.”
Clint looked a trifle disconcerted at this. “It 's being a
sunbeam under difficulties, where they are,” he said.
“Well, I suppose it may be. Poor Jane! she was such
a bright girl when — I — I 'm sincerely sorry for them,”
said the old man, with emotion. He had never treasured
up resentment against them for the wrong they had done
him, and consequently had never felt a thrill of triumph,
nor anything else but pity, for the cloud that darkened
their lives.
“It would be easy enough to be a sunbeam in this
house,” thought Clint; and he drew an enchanting picture
of himself marrying into the family, having such fun with
the young ones every night, and receiving a call from Phil
as often as that gentleman would have the condescension
to come in. With Emma for a wife and Phil for a friend,
he believed he would be the most fortunate and enviable
him for that fancy.
Where was there another man like Phil? Strong, self-reliant,
magnetic, kindly, with broad and genial manners,
and a smile that broke like sunrise through the cloud of
his ruddy-brown beard, you would have set him down at
once as a powerful and attractive person with the young of
both sexes.
Clint thought they were intimate friends, whereas the
relation he bore to Phil was that of a faithful spaniel to
an indulgent master. Phil liked him, of course, as good
masters like their dogs. The one walked, gravely complacent,
his own road, while the other followed and played
about him. Clint opened his heart and confided everything
to Phil, but Phil kept his own counsel. Clint had
even, on one or two occasions, whispered to him his secret
hopes with regard to Emma Welford, — a confession which
Phil had received with a very curious smile.
While they were waiting for Emma to return to the
room, Clint longed to walk up to his friend and give him
a hint of his present matrimonial purpose; but something
in Phil's face or manner prevented him. This evening, in
fact, the hound happened to be in the master's way, and
so received cold looks in place of the expected encouragement.
Emma stayed out of the room as long as she decently
could, dreading to return to it for reasons which may as well
be told. She was afraid of Phil Kermer, — afraid, because
he was at once the dearest man to her in all the world, and
the most dangerous. He had won her heart almost before
she knew it; and only when he came to speak to her of
marriage had she awakened to the peril of her position.
Her father had died a drunkard, and her mother, on her
dying bed, had made her promise that she would never
wrought in her own family by that one fatal habit of self-indulgence,
it seeemed hardly necessary that such a promise
should be exacted from her; but now she was glad she
had given it, for it seemed her only safety. She might, in
some joy-intoxicated moment, forget the two untimely
graves in the churchyard, and their silent warning; but
that sacred pledge she could never forget, — it would prove
a barrier against temptation when everything else had failed.
Phil Kermer did not merely take a little wine for the
stomach's sake, nor was he, on the other hand, a drunkard
any more than her father had been at his age; but that he
took, now and then, something stronger than wine, and
took a trifle too much, could not be denied. He had at
first laughed at Emma for asking him to forego the practice;
and when he found how serious she was in requiring
it of him, he was vexed. He thought it absurd and injurious
for any person to suppose that he, Phil Kermer,
was capable of ever becoming a sot, and for her to think
so was especially grievous. They had quarrelled on that
theme when last they parted, and he had kept away from
her as long as he could. She had been made very miserable
by his absence, and now she was at once overjoyed
and alarmed to see him again.
With nervous hands she smoothed her hair and arranged
her collar, after hugging the little ones in bed, and finally
went down stairs. Lucy and Uncle Jim soon retired, and
left her alone with the visitors. There was an awkward
silence of some moments, during which she read in Phil's
face two things, — that he had come, full of passion and
persuasion, to convince her that she, not he, was wrong;
and that he was quietly waiting for Clint to go. She at
once determined that Clint should not go, little thinking
what he himself had come for.
A damp had fallen upon the boy's spirits, which he
vainly endeavored to shake off. At length, he went to
the door and looked out at the snow-storm. On his
return, Emma moved to make room for him on the sofa
beside her.
“I tell you, this will make lively work for us to-morrow;
won't it, Phil?” said he.
Phil merely wagged his beard with a slow, lazy nod, and
neither smiled nor spoke. This reserve was killing to
poor Clint, but Emma came to his rescue.
“What have you to do with the snow?” she asked, to
call him out, although she had already heard him brag
that he was “in the ice” this year, along with Phil.
That set him going again. They had the conversation all
to themselves, however, Mr. Kermer only now and then
giving a word or a nod when appealed to, as he sat placidly
pulling his beard, and waiting for Clint to go.
At last a confused glimmering of the truth broke upon
the young man's mind. It was when she reproved them
for what they had been doing that afternoon, namely,
boring the ice.
“You should n't bore on Sundays,” she said.
“Nor on Sunday evenings, either,” Phil added, so dryly
that nobody could tell just what he meant by the joke.
Clint, however, took the application home to himself,
and felt terribly cut up by it. He began to explain to
her that boring on the Sabbath was sometimes a deed of
necessity, but quite broke down before he had ended, and
wound up with, “Well, I guess I had better be going.”
“No, don't go yet,” said Emma, so smilingly that he
felt soothed and flattered, and remained. Phil gave his
beard a harder pull than usual, but kept an imperturbable
countenance.
Still Clint could not feel easy; and although Emma
her manners and brilliancy to her looks, and she did her
best to entertain him, it was not long before he whispered
to her, with a dark glance at Phil, that he really ought to
go. But she shook her head, with a look in the same direction,
as much as to say, “Don't mind him,” and whispered
back, “Stay a little longer, — to please me.”
Phil pretended to be looking over an album of photographs,
but saw and heard everything. He no longer believed
that the objection she had made to his habit of
drinking was her real motive for slighting him, but became
suddenly fired with jealousy of the boy. Full of ire,
which, however, he had the tact not to betray, he quietly
closed the book, stroked his beard again, suppressed a
yawn, and lazily got up.
“Well, good evening,” he said, and, of course, noticed
that she did not urge him to stay.
Clint made a feeble motion to accompany him, vacillated,
and finally remained.
Emma rose immediately, said, “Must you go, Mr.
Kermer?” and stood by the entry door, waiting for him
to put on his coat. He paused as he buttoned it, and
looked down at her; she looked up at him, her cheeks
flushed, her feet and hands like ice, her lips forcing a
smile.
“Is this our good-by?” he said, in a low tone, penetrating
her with an indescribable look.
“It is good night, not good by, — at least I hope so,”
she said. “I should be sorry to lose your friendship.”
“Indeed!” He took her cold little hand, but dropped
it again, smiled in his turn gloomily and bitterly, and
said, “Good by.”
He gave her a long, searching, farewell glance, and went
out into the storm.
She watched him from the door till his form vanished in
the dim, white, falling cloud of snow. There were melting
flakes on her eyelashes when she went back into the room,
and she seemed quite chilled. Her spirits had forsaken
her, and she had only vacant looks and the very ghost of
a smile for poor Clint, whom we will now leave to his
wooing.
| III.
THE LITTLE HOUSEWIFE AND HER FRIENDS. Coupon bonds, and other stories | |