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 church-members. Still, she would do her best at giving religious 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 stiff 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 dreadful book, and on the Day of Judgment she would have it all brought out upon her, – all which the child heard with a stony, sullen despair. Miss Asphyxia 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 pondered 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 he would be grown up and able to choose his own work and master. 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. Sweet-cakes 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 and Granny Watkins, they said they had n’t seen no sich child 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 his wages, – biggest part on ’em, – but he hed to git ’em to 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 XI.
THE CRISIS.
MATTERS between Miss Asphyxia and her little subject began to show evident signs of approaching some crisis, for which that valiant virgin was preparing herself with mind resolved. It was one of her educational tactics that children, at greater or less intervals, would require what she was wont to speak of as good whippings, as a sort of constitutional stimulus to start them in the ways of well-doing. As a school-teacher, she was often fond of rehearsing her experiences, – how she had her eye on Jim or Bob through weeks of growing carelessness or obstinacy or rebellion, suffering the measure of iniquity gradually to become full, until, in an awful hour, she pounced down on the culprit in the very blossom of his sin, and gave him such a lesson as he would remember, as she would assure him, the longest day he had to live.
The burning of rebellious thoughts in the little breast, of internal hatred and opposition, could not long go on without slight whiffs of external smoke, such as mark the course of subterranean fire. As the child grew more accustomed to Miss Asphyxia, while her hatred of her increased, somewhat of that native hardihood which had characterized her happier days returned; and she began to use all the subtlety and secretiveness which belonged to her feminine nature in contriving how not to do the will of her tyrant, and yet not to seem designedly to oppose. It really gave the child a new impulse in living to devise little plans for annoying Miss Asphyxia without being herself detected. In all her daily toils she made nice calculations how slow she could possibly be, how blundering and awkward, without really bringing on herself a punishment; and when an acute and capable child turns all its faculties in such a direction, the results may be very considerable.
Miss Asphyxia found many things going wrong in her establishment in most unaccountable ways. One morning her sensibilities were almost paralyzed, on opening her milk-room door, to find there, with creamy whiskers, the venerable Tom, her own model cat, – a beast who had grown up in the very sanctities of household decorum, and whom she was sure she had herself shut out of the house, with her usual punctuality, at nine o’clock the evening before. She could not dream that he had been enticed through Tina’s window, caressed on her bed, and finally sped stealthily on his mission of revenge, while the child returned to her pillow to gloat over her success.
Miss Asphyxia also, in more than one instance, in her rapid gyrations, knocked down and destroyed a valuable bit of pottery or earthen-ware, that somehow had contrived to be stationed exactly in the wind of her elbow or her hand. It was the more vexatious because she broke them herself. And the child assumed stupid innocence: “How could she know Miss Sphyxy was coming that way?” or, “She did n’t see her.” True, she caught many a hasty cuff and sharp rebuke; but, with true Indian spirit, she did not mind singeing her own fingers if she only tortured her enemy.
It would be an endless task to describe the many vexations that can be made to arise in the course of household experience when there is a shrewd little elf watching with sharpened faculties for every opportunity to inflict an annoyance or do a mischief. In childhood the passions move with a simplicity of action unknown to any other period of life, and a child’s hatred and a child’s revenge have an intensity of bitterness entirely unalloyed by moral considerations; and when a child is without an object of affection, and feels itself unloved, its whole vigor of being goes into the channels of hate.
Religious instruction, as imparted by Miss Asphyxia, had small influence in restraining the immediate force of passion. That “the law worketh wrath” is a maxim as old as the times of the Apostles. The image of a dreadful Judge – a great God, with ever-watchful eyes, that Miss Asphyxia told her about – roused that combative element in the child’s heart which says in the heart of the fool, “There is no God.” “After all,” thought the little sceptic, “how does she know? She never saw him.” Perhaps, after all, then, it might be only a fabrication of her tyrant to frighten her into submission. There was a dear Father that mamma used to tell her about; and perhaps he was the one after all. As for the bear story she had a private conversation with Sol, and was relieved by his confident assurance that there “had n’t been no bears seen round in them parts these ten year”; so that she was safe in that regard, even if she should call Miss Asphyxia a bald-head, which she perfectly longed to do, just to see what would come of it.
In like manner, though the story of Ananias and Sapphira, struck down dead for lying, had been told her in forcible and threatening tones, yet still the little sinner thought within herself that such things must have ceased in our times, as she had told more than one clever lie which neither Miss Asphyxia nor any one else had found out.
In fact, the child considered herself and Miss Asphyxia as in a state of warfare which suspends all moral rules. In the stories of little girls who were taken captives by goblins or giants or witches, she remembered many accounts of sagacious deceptions which they had practised on their captors. Her very blood tingled when she thought of the success of some of them, – how Hensel and Grettel had heated an oven red-hot, and persuaded the old witch to get into it by some cock-and-bull story of what she would find there; and how, the minute she got in, they shut up the oven door, and burnt her all up! Miss Asphyxia thought the child a vexatious, careless, troublesome little baggage, it is true; but if she could have looked into her heart and seen her imaginings, she would probably have thought her a little fiend.
At last, one day, the smothered fire broke out. The child had had a half-hour of holiday, and had made herself happy in it by furbishing up her little bedroom. She had picked a peony, a yellow lily, and one or two blue irises, from the spot of flowers in the garden, and put them in a tin dipper on the table in her room, and ranged around them her broken bits of china, her red berries and fragments of glass, in various zigzags. The spirit of adornment thus roused within her, she remembered having seen her brother make pretty garlands of oak-leaves; and, running out to an oak hard by, she stripped off an apronful of the leaves, and, sitting down in the kitchen door, began her attempts to plait them into garlands. She grew good-natured and happy as she wrought, and was beginning to find herself in charity even with Miss Asphyxia, when down came that individual, broom in hand, looking vengeful as those old Greek Furies who used to haunt houses, testifying their wrath by violent sweeping.
“What under the canopy you up to now, making such a litter on my kitchen floor?” she said. “Can’t I leave you a minute ‘thout your gettin’ into some mischief, I want to know? Pick ’em up, every leaf of ’em, and carry ’em and throw ’em over the fence; and don’t you never let me find you bringing no such rubbish into my kitchen agin!”
In this unlucky moment she turned, and, looking into the little bedroom, whose door stood open, saw the arrangements there. “What!” she said; “you been getting down the tin cup to put your messes into? Take ’em all out!” she said, seizing the flowers with a grasp that crumpled them, and throwing them into the child’s apron. “Take ’em away, every one of ’em! You ‘d get everything out of place, from one end of the house to the other, if I did n’t watch you!” And forthwith she swept off the child’s treasures into her dust-pan.
In a moment all the smothered wrath of weeks blazed up in the little soul. She looked as if a fire had been kindled in her which reddened her cheeks and burned in her eyes; and, rushing blindly at Miss Asphyxia, she cried, “You are a wicked woman, a hateful old witch, and I hate you!”
“Hity-tity! I thought I should have to give you a lesson before long, and so I shall,” said Miss Asphyxia, seizing her with stern determination. “You ‘ve needed a good sound whipping for a long time, miss, and you are going to get it now. I ‘ll whip you so that you ‘ll remember it, I ‘ll promise you.”
And Miss Asphyxia kept her word, though the child, in the fury of despair, fought her with tooth and nail, and proved herself quite a dangerous little animal; but at length strength got the better in the fray, and, sobbing, though unsubdued, the little culprit was put to bed without her supper.
In those days the literal use of the rod in the education of children was considered as a direct Bible teaching. The wisest, the most loving parent felt bound to it in many cases, even though every stroke cut into his own heart. The laws of New England allowed masters to correct their apprentices, and teachers their pupils, – and even the public whipping-post was an institution of New England towns. It is not to be supposed, therefore, that Miss Asphyxia regarded herself otherwise than as thoroughly performing a most necessary duty. She was as ignorant of the blind agony of mingled shame, wrath, sense of degradation, and burning for revenge, which had been excited by her measures, as the icy east wind of Boston flats is of the stinging and shivering it causes in its course. Is it the wind’s fault if your nose is frozen? There is not much danger in these days that such measures will be the fashionable ones in the bringing up of children. But there is a class of coldly-conscientious, severe persons, who still, as a matter of duty and conscience, justify measures like these in education. They, at all events, are the ones who ought to be forbidden to use them, and whose use of them with children too often proves a soul-murder, – a dispensation of wrath and death. Such a person is commonly both obtuse in sensibility and unimaginative in temperament; but if his imagination could once be thoroughly enlightened to see the fiend-like passions, the terrific convulsions, which are roused in a child’s soul by the irritation and degradation of such correction, he would shrink back appalled. With sensitive children left in the hands of stolid and unsympathizing force, such convulsions and mental agonies often are the beginning of a sort of slow moral insanity which gradually destroys all that is good in the soul. Such was the danger now hanging over the hapless little one whom a dying mother had left to God. Is there no stirring among the angel wings on her behalf?
As the child lay sobbing in a little convulsed heap in her bed, a hard, horny hand put back the curtain of the window, and the child felt something thrown on the bed. It was Sol, who, on coming in to his supper, had heard from Miss Asphyxia the whole story, and who, as a matter of course, sympathized entirely with the child. He had contrived to slip a doughnut into his pocket, when his hostess was looking the other way. When the child rose up in the bed and showed her swelled and tear-stained face, Sol whispered: ‘There ‘s a doughnut I saved for ye. Darn her pictur’! Don’t dare say a word, ye know. She ‘ll hear me.”
“O Sol, can’t you get Harry to come here and see me?” said the child, in an earnest whisper.
“Yes, I ‘ll get him, if I have to go to thunder for ‘t,” said Sol. “You jest lie down now, there ‘s a good girl, and I ‘ll work it, – ye see if I don’t. To-morrow I ‘ll make her go off to the store, and I ‘ll get him down here, you see if I don’t. It ‘s a tarnal shame; that ‘ere critter ain’t got no more bowels than a file.”
The child, however, was comforted, and actually went to sleep hugging the doughnut. She felt as if she loved Sol, and said so to the doughnut many times, – although he had great horny fists, and eyes like oxen. With these, he had a heart in his bosom, and the child loved him.
CHAPTER XII.
THE LION’S MOUTH SHUT.
“NOW, where a plague is that boy?” said Old Crab, suddenly bearing down, as evil-disposed people are always apt to do, in a most unforeseen moment.
The fact was that there had been a silent conspiracy among Sol and Goody Smith and the hired men of Old Crab, to bring about a meeting between the children. Miss Asphyxia had been got to the country store and kept busy with various bargains which Sol had suggested, and Old Crab had been induced to go to mill, and then the boy had been sent by Goody Smith on an errand to Miss Asphyxia’s house. Of course he was not to find her at home, and was to stay and see his sister, and be sure and be back again by four o’clock.
“Where a plague is that lazy shote of a boy? he repeated.
“What, Harry?”
“Yes, Harry. Who do you suppose I mean? Harry, – where is he?”
“O, I sent him up to Sphyxy’s.”
“You sent him?” said Old Crab, with that kind of tone which sounds so much like a blow that one dodges one’s head involuntarily. “You sent him? What business you got interfering in the work?”
“Lordy massy, father, I jest wanted Sphyxy’s cards and some o’ that ‘ere fillin’ she promised to give me. He won’t be gone long.”
Old Crab stood at this disadvantage in his fits of ill-temper with his wife, that there was no form of evil language or abuse that he had not tried so many times on her that it was quite a matter of course for her to hear it. He had used up the English language, – made it, in fact, absolutely of no effect, – while his fund of ill-temper was, after all, but half expressed.
“You ‘ve begun with that ‘ere boy just as you allers did with all your own, gettin’ ’em to be a waitin’ round on you, – jest ’cause you ‘re a lazy good-for-nothin’. We ‘re so rich, I wonder you don’t hire a waiter for nothin’ but to stan’ behind your chair. I ‘ll teach him who his master is when he comes back.”
“Now, father, ‘t ain’t no fault o’ his’n. I sent him.”
“And I sot him to work in the fields, and I ‘d like to know if he ‘s goin’ to leave what I set him to do, and go round after your errands. Here ‘t is gettin’ to be ‘most five o’clock, and the critters want fodderin’, and that ‘ere boy a dancing ‘tendance on you. But he ain’t a doin’ that. He ‘s jest off a berryin’ or suthin’ with that trollopin’ sister o’ his’n, – jes’ what you bring on us, takin’ in trampers. That ‘ere gal, she pesters Sphyxy half to death.”
“Sphyxy ‘s pretty capable of takin’ care of herself,” said Goody Smith, still keeping busy with her knitting, but looking uneasily up the road, where the form of the boy might be expected to appear.
The outbreak that she had long feared of her husband’s evil nature was at hand. She knew it by as many signs as one foretells the approach of hurricanes or rain-storms. She knew it by the evil gleam in his small, gray eyes, – by the impatient pacing backward and forward in the veranda, like a caged wild animal. It made little matter to him what the occasion was: he had such a superfluity of evil temper to vent, that one thing for his purpose was about as good as another.
It grew later and later, and Old Crab went to the barn to attend to his cattle, and the poor little old woman knitted uneasily.
“What could ‘a’ kep’ him?” she thought. “He can’t ‘a’ run off.” There was a sudden gleam of mingled pleasure and pain in the old woman’s heart as this idea darted through her mind. “I should n’t wonder if he would, but I kind o’ hate to part with him”
At last she sees him coming along the road, and runs to meet him. “How could you be so late? He ‘s drefful mad with ye.”
“I did n’t know how late it was. Besides, all I could do, Tina would follow me, and I had to turn back and carry her home. Tina has bad times there. That woman is n’t kind to her.”
“No, dear, she ain’t noways kind,” said the old woman; “It ain’t Sphyxy’s way to be kind; but she ‘ll do middlin’ well by her, – anyway, she won’t let nobody hurt her but herself. It ‘s a hard world to live in; we have to take it as ‘t comes.”
“Well, anyway,” said the boy, “they must let us go to see each other. It is n’t right to keep us apart.”
“No, ‘t ain’t, dear; but lordy massy, what can ye do?”
There was a great steady tear in the boy’s large, blue eyes as he stopped at the porch, and he gave a sort of dreary shiver.
“Halleoah you there! you lazy little cuss,” said Old Crab, coming from the barn, “where you been idling all the afternoon?”
“I ‘ve been seeing my sister,” said the boy, steadily.
“Thought so. Where ‘s them cards and the fillin’ you was sent for?”
“There was n’t anybody at home to get them.”
“And why did n’t you come right back, you little varmint?”
“Because I wanted to see Tina. She ‘s my sister; and my mother told me to take care of her; and it ‘s wicked to keep us apart so.”
“Don’t you give me none of yer saace,” said Old Crab, seizing the boy by one ear, to which he gave a vicious wrench.
“Let me alone,” said the boy, flushing up with the sudden irriation of pain and the bitter sense of injustice.
“Let you alone? I guess I won’t; talking saace to me that ‘ere way. Guess I ‘ll show you who ‘s master. It ‘s time you was walked off down to the barn, sir, and find out who ‘s your master,” he said, as he seized the boy by the collar and drew him off.
“O Lord!” said the woman, running out and stretching her hands instinctively after them. “Father, do let the boy alone.”
She could not help this cry any more than a bird can help a shriek when she sees the hawk pouncing down on her nest, though she knew perfectly well that she might as well have shouted a petition in the angry face of the northeast wind.
“Take off your jacket,” said Old Crab, as soon as he had helped himself to a long cart-whip which stood there.
The boy belonged to that class of amiable, good-natured children who are not easily irritated or often provoked, but who, when moved by a great injustice or cruelty, are thrown into convulsions of passion. The smallest and most insignificant animal, in moments of utter despair, when every fibre of its being is made vital with the energy of desperate resistance, often has a force which will make the strongest and boldest stand at bay. The boy retreated a pace or two, braced his back against the manger, while his whole form trembled and appeared to dilate, and it seemed as if blue streams of light glared from his eyes like sparks struck from burning steel.
“Strike me if you dare, you wicked, dreadful man,” he shouted. “Don’t you know that God sees you? God is my Father, and my mother is gone to God; and if you hurt me He ‘ll punish you. You know I have n’t done anything wrong, and God knows it. Now strike me if you dare.”
The sight of any human being in a singular and abnormal state has something appalling about it; and at this moment the child really appeared to Old Crab like something supernatural. He stood a moment looking at him, and then his eyes suddenly seemed fixed on something above and beyond him, for he gazed with a strange, frightened expression; and at last, pushing with his hands, called out, “Go along; get away, get away! I hain’t touched him,” and, turning, fled out of the barn.
He did not go to the house again, but to the village tavern, and, entering the bar-room with a sort of distraught air, called for a dram, and passed the evening in a cowering state of quiet in the corner, which was remarked on by many as singular.
The boy came back into the house.
“Massy to us, child,” said the old woman, “I thought he ‘d half killed ye.”
“No, he has n’t touched me. God would n’t let him,” said the boy.
“Well, I declare for ‘t; he must have sent the angels that shut the lion’s mouth when Daniel was in the den,” said the woman. “I would n’t ‘a’ had him struck ye, not for ten dollars.”
The moon was now rising, large, white, and silvery, yet with a sort of tremulous, rosy flush, as it came up in the girdle of a burning autumn horizon. The boy stood a moment looking at it. His eyes were still dilated with that unnatural light, and his little breast heaving with waves of passion not yet tranquillized.
“Which way did he go?” said the woman.
“Up the road,” said the boy.
“To the tavern,” said the woman. “He ‘s been there before this afternoon. At any rate, then, he ‘ll let us alone awhile. There comes the men home to supper. Come in; I ‘ve got a turnover I made a purpose for ye.”
“No, I must bid you good by, now,” said the boy. “I can’t stay here any longer.”
“Why, where be ye going?”
“Going to look for a better place, where I can take care of Tina,” said the boy.
“Ye ain’t a going to leave me?” said the old woman. “Yet I can’t want ye to stay. I can’t have nothin’ nor nobody.”
“I ‘ll come back one of these days,” said the boy cheerfully, – “come and see you.”
“Stay and get your supper, anyhow,” pleaded the old woman. “I hate ter have ye go, drefful bad.”
“I don’t want any supper,” said the child; “but if you ‘ll give me a little basket of things, – I want ’em for Tina.”
The old soul ran to her buttery, and crammed a small splint basket with turnovers, doughnuts, and ample slices of rye bread and butter, and the boy took it and trudged off, just as the hired men were coming home.
“Hulloah, bub!” shouted they, “where ye goin’?”
“Going to seek my fortune,” said the boy cheerfully.
“Jest the way they all go,” said the old woman.
“Where do you suppose the young un ‘ll fetch up?” said one of the men to the other.
“No business of mine, – can’t fetch up wus than he has ben a doin’.”
“Old Crab a cuttin’ up one of his shines, I s’pose?” said the other, interrogatively.
“Should n’t wonder; ’bout time, – ben to the tavern this afternoon, I reckon.”
The boy walked along the rough stony road towards Miss Asphyxia’s farm. It was a warm, mellow evening in October. The air had only a pleasant coolness. Everything was tender and bright. A clump of hickory-trees on a rocky eminence before him stood like pillars of glowing gold in the twilight; one by one little stars looked out, winking and twinkling at the lonely child, as it seemed to him, with a friendly, encouraging ray, like his mother’s eyes.
That afternoon he had spent trying to comfort his little sister, and put into her soul some of the childlike yet sedate patience with which he embraced his own lot, and the good hopes which he felt of being able some time to provide for her when he grew bigger. But he found nothing but feverish impatience, which all his eloquence could scarcely keep within bounds. He had, however, arranged with her that he should come evenings after she had gone to bed, and talk to her at the window of her bedroom, that she should not be so lonesome nights. The perfectly demoniac violence which Old Crab had shown this night had determined him not to stay with him any longer. He would take his sister, and they would wander off, a long, long way, till they came to better people, and then he would try again to get work, and ask some good woman to be kind to Tina. Such, in substance, was the plan that occurred to the child; and accordingly that night, after little Tina had laid her head on her lonely pillow, she heard a whispered call at her window. The large, bright eyes opened very wide as she sat up in bed and looked towards the window, where Harry’s face appeared.
“It ‘s me Tina, – I ‘ve come back, – be very still. I ‘m going to stay in the barn till everybody ‘s asleep, and then I ‘ll come and wake you, and you get out of the window and come with me.”
“To be sure I will, Harry. Let me come now, and sleep with you in the barn.”
“No, Tina, that would n’t do; lie still. They ‘d see us. Wait till everybody ‘s asleep. You just lie down and go to sleep. I ‘ll get in at your window and waken you when it ‘s time.”
At this moment the door of the child’s room was opened; the boy’s face was gone in an instant from the window. The child’s heart was beating like a trip-hammer; there was a tingling in her ears; but she kept her little eyes tightly shut.
“O, here ‘s that brown towel I gin her to hem,’ said Miss Asphyxia peacefully. “She ‘s done her stent this arternoon. That ‘ere whipping did some good.”
“You ‘ll never whip me again,” thought the defiant little heart under the bedclothes.
* * * *
Old Crab came home that night thoroughly drunk, – a thing that did not very often occur in his experience. He commonly took only just enough to keep himself in a hyena’s state of temper, but not enough to dull the edge of his cautious, grasping, money-saving faculties. But to-night he had had a experience that had frightened him, and driven him to deeper excess as a refuge from thought.
When the boy, upon whom he was meaning to wreak his diabolic passions, so suddenly turned upon him in the electric fury of enkindled passion, there was a sort of jar or vibration of the nervous element in the man’s nature, that brought about a result not uncommon to men of his habits. As he was looking in a sort of stunned, stupid wonder at the boy, where he stood braced against the manger, he afterwards declared that he saw suddenly in the dark space above it, hovering in the air, the exact figure and form of the dead woman whom they had buried in the graveyard only a few weeks before. “Her eyes was looking right at me, like live coals,” he said; “and she had up her hand as if she ‘d ‘a’ struck me; and I grew all over cold as a stone.”
“What do you suppose ‘t was?” said his auditor.
“How should I know,” said Old Crab. “But there I was; and that very night the young ‘un ran off. I would n’t have tried to get him back, not for my right hand, I tell you. Tell you what,” he added, rolling a quid of tobacco reflectively in his mouth, “I don’t like dead folks. Ef dead folks ‘ll let me alone I ‘ll let them alone. That ‘ere fair, ain’t it?”
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EMPTY BIRD’S NEST.
THE next morning showed as brilliant a getting up of gold and purple as ever belonged to the toilet of a morning. There was to be seen from Miss Asphyxia’s bedroom window a brave sight, if there had been any eyes to enjoy it, – a range of rocky cliffs with little pin-feathers of black pine upon them, and behind them the sky all aflame with bars of massy light, – orange and crimson and burning gold, – and long, bright rays, darting hither and thither, touched now the window of a farm-house, which seemed to kindle and flash back a morning salutation; now they hit a tall scarlet maple, and now they pierced between clumps of pine, making their black edges flame with gold; and over all, in the brightening sky, stood the morning star, like a great, tremulous tear of light, just ready to fall on a darkened world.
Not a bit of all this saw Miss Asphyxia, though she had looked straight out at it. Her eyes and the eyes of the cow, who, with her horned front, was serenely gazing out of the barn window on the same prospect, were equally unreceptive.
She looked at all this solemn pomp of gold and purple, and the mysterious star, and only said: “Good day for killin’ the hog, and I must be up gettin’ on the brass kettle. I should like to know why Sol ain’t been a stirrin’ an hour ago. I ‘d really like to know how long folks would sleep ef I ‘d let ’em.”
Here an indistinct vision came into Miss Asphyxia’s mind of what the world would be without her to keep it in order. She called aloud to her prime minster, who slept in the loft above, “Sol! Sol! You awake?”
“Guess I be,” said Sol; and a thundering sound of cowhide boots on the stairs announced that Sol’s matutinal toilet was complete.
“We ‘re late this morning,” said Miss Asphyxia, in a tone of virtuous indignation.
“Never knowed the time when we wa’ n’t late,” said Sol, composedly.
“You thump on that ‘ere child’s door, and tell her to be lively,” said Miss Asphyxia.
“Yaas ‘m I will,” said Sol, while secretly he was indulging in a long and low chuckle, for Sol had been party to the fact that the nest of that young bird had been for many hours forsaken. He had instructed the boy what road to take, and bade him “walk spry and he would be out of the parish of Needmore afore daybreak. Walk on, then, and follow the road along the river,” said Sol, “and it ‘ll bring you to Oldtown, where our folks be. You can’t miss your victuals and drink any day in Oldtown, call at what house you may; and ef you ‘s to get into Deacon Badger’s, why, your fortin ‘s made. The Deacon he ‘s a soft-spoken man to everybody, – white folks, niggers, and Indians, – and Ma’am Badger keeps regular poor-man’s tavern, and won’t turn even a dog away that behaves himself. Ye could n’t light on wus than ye have lit on, – for Old Crab’s possessed of a devil, everybody knows; and as for Miss Asphyxia, she ‘s one of the kind of sperits that goes walkin’ through dry places seekin’ rest and findin’ none. Lordy massy, an old gal like her ain’t nobody to bring up a child. It takes a woman that ‘s got juice in her to do that. Why, that ‘ere crittur ‘s drier ‘n a two-year-old mullen-stalk. There ain’t no sap ris in her these ‘ere thirty years. She means well; but, lordy, you might jest as well give young turkey chicks to the old gobbler, and let hem stram off in the mowin’ grass with ’em, as give a delicate little gal like your sister to her to raise; so you jest go long and keep up your courage, like a brave boy as ye be, and you ‘ll come to somethin’ by daylight”; – and Sol added to these remarks a minced pie, with a rye crust of a peculiarly solid texture, adapted to resist any of the incidents of time and travel, which pie had been set out as part of his own last night’s supper.
When, therefore, he was exhorted to rap on the little girl’s door, he gave sundry noisy, gleeful thumps, – pounding with both fists, and alternating with a rhythmical kick of the cowhide boots, calling out in stentorian tones: “Come, little un, – time you ‘s up. Miss Sphyxy’s comin’ down on ye. Better be lively! Bless me, how the gal sleeps!”
“Don’t take the door off the hinges,” said Miss Asphyxia, sweeping down stairs. “Let me come; I ‘ll wake her, I guess!” and with a dipper of cold water in her hand, Miss Asphyxia burst into the little room. “What! – what! – where!” she said, looking under the bed, and over and around with a dazed expression. “What ‘s this mean? Do tell if the child ‘s really for once got up of herself afore I called her. Sol, see if she ‘s out pickin’ up chips!”
Sol opened the door and gazed out with well-affected stolidity at the wood-pile, which, garnished with a goodly show of large chips, was now being touched up and brightened by the first rays of the morning sun.
“Ain’t here,” he said.
“Ain’t here? Why, where can she be then? There ain’t nobody swallowed her, I s’pose; and if anybody ‘s run off with her in the night, I guess they ‘d bring her back by daylight.”
“She must ‘a’ run off,” said Sol.
“Run! Where could she ‘a’ run to?”
“Mebbe she ‘s gone to her brother ‘s.”
“I bet you,” said Miss Asphyxia, “it ‘s that ‘ere boy that ‘s the bottom of it all. You may always know that there ‘s a boy at the bottom, when there ‘s any deviltry up. He was here yesterday, – now wa’ n’t he?”
“Wal, I reckon he was,” said Sol. “But, massy, Miss Sphyxy, ef the pigs is to be killed to-day, we can’t stan’ a talkin’ about what you nor me can’t help. Ef the child ‘s gone, why she ‘s somewhere in the Lord’s world, and it ‘s likely she ‘ll keep, – she won’t melt away like the manna in the wilderness; and when the pigs is killed, and the pork salted down and got out o’ the way, it ‘ll be time enough to think o’ lookin’ on her up. She wa’ n’t no gret actual use, – and with kettles o’ hot water round, it ‘s jest as well not to have a child under yer feet. Ef she got scalded, why, there ‘s your time a taking care on her, and mebbe a doctor to pay; so it ‘s jest as well that things be as they be. I call it kind o’ providential,” said Sol, giving a hoist to his breeches by means of a tug at his suspenders, which gesture was his usual indication that he was girding up the loins of his mind for an immediate piece of work; and, turning forthwith, he brought in a mighty armful of wood, with massive back-log and fore-stick, well grizzled and bearded with the moss that showed that they were but yesterday living children of the forest.
The fire soon leaped and crackled and roared, being well fed with choice split hickory sticks of last year, of which Sol kept ample store; and very soon the big brass kettle was swung over, upon the old iron crane, and the sacrificial water was beginning to simmer briskly, while Miss Asphyxia prepared breakfast, not only for herself and Sol, but for Primus King, a vigorous old negro, famed as a sort of high-priest in all manner of butchering operations for miles around. Primus lived in the debatable land between Oldtown and Needmore, and so was at the call of all who needed an extra hand in both parishes.
The appearance of Primus at the gate in his butcher’s frock, knife in hand, in fact put an end, in Miss Asphyxia’s mind, to all thoughts apart from the present eventful crisis; and she hastened to place upon the table the steaming sausages which, with her usual despatch, had been put down for their morning meal. A mighty pitcher of cider flanked this savory dish, to which Primus rolled delighted eyes at the moment of sitting down. The time had not yet dawned, in those simple, old New England days, when the black skin of the African was held to disqualify him from a seat at the social board with the men whom he joined in daily labor. The strength of the arm, and the skill of the hand, and the willingness of the mind of the workman, in those days, were his passport to equal social rights; and old Primus took rank, in the butchering season, as in fact a sort of leader and commander. His word was law upon all steps and stages of those operations which should transform the plethoric, obese inhabitants of the sty into barrels of pink-hued salt-pork or savory hams and tenderloins and spareribs, or immense messes of sausage-meat.
Concerning all these matters, Primus was an oracle. His fervid Ethiopian nature glowed with a broad and visible delight, his black face waxed luminous with the oil of gladness, while he dwelt on the savory subject, whereon, sitting at breakfast, he dilated with an unctuous satisfaction that soothed the raven down of darkness in Miss Asphyxia’s perturbed mind, till something bearing a distant analogy to a smile played over her rugged features.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DAY IN FAIRY-LAND.
OUR little travellers, meanwhile, had had a prosperous journey along the rocky road between Needmore and Oldtown, in which Sol had planted their feet. There was a great, round-orbed, sober-eyed October moon in the sky, that made everything as light as day; and the children were alive in every nerve with the keen interest of their escape.
“We are going just as Hensel and Grettel did,” said the little girl. “You are Hensel, and I am Grettel, and Miss Asphyxia is the old witch. I wish only we could have burnt her up in her old oven before we came away!”
“Now Tina, you must n’t wish such things really,” said the boy, somewhat shocked at such very extreme measures. “You see, what happens in stories would n’t do really to happen.”
“O, but Harry, you don’t know how I hate – how I h-ate – Miss Sphyxy! I hate her – most as much as I love you!”
“But Tina, mother always told us it was wicked to hate anybody. We must love our enemies.”
“You don’t love Old Crab Smith, do you?”
“No, I don’t; but I try not to hate him,” said the boy. “I won’t think anything about him.”
“I can’t help thinking,” said Tina; “and when I think, I am so angry! I feel such a burning in here!” she said, striking her little breast; “it ‘s just like fire!”
“Then don’t think about her at all,” said the boy; “it is n’t pleasant to feel that way. Think about the whippoorwills singing in the woods over there, – how plain they say it, don’t they? – and the frogs, all singing, with their little, round, yellow eyes looking up out of the water; and the moon looking down on us so pleasantly! she seems just like mother!”
“O Harry, I ‘m so glad,” said the girl, suddenly throwing herself on his neck and hugging him, – “I ‘m so glad we ‘re together again! Was n’t it wicked to keep us apart, – we poor children?”
“Yes, Tina, I am glad,” said the boy, with a steady, quiet, inward sort of light in his eyes; “but, baby, we can’t stop to say so much, because we must walk fast and get way, way, way off before daylight; and you know Miss Sphyxy always gets up early, – don’t she?”
“O dear, yes! She always poked me out of bed before it was light, – hateful old thing! Let ‘s run as fast as we can, and get away!”
And with that she sprang forward, with a brisk and onward race, over the pebbly road, down a long hill, laughing as she went, and catching now at a branch of sweetbrier that overhung the road, and now at the tags of sweet-fern, both laden and hoary with heavy autumnal dews, till finally, her little foot tripping over a stone, she fell and grazed her arm sadly. Her brother lifted her up, and wiped the tears from her great, soft eyes with her blue check apron, and talked to her in that grandfatherly way that older children take such delight in when they feel the care of younger ones.
“Now, Tina, darling, you should n’t run so wild. We ‘d better go pretty fast steadily, than run and fall down. But I ‘ll kiss the place, as mother used to.”
“I don’t mind it, Hensel, – I don’t mind it,” she said, controlling the quivering of her little resolute mouth. “That scratch came for liberty; but this,” she said, showing a long welt on her other arm, – “this was slavery. She struck me there with her great ugly stick. O, I never can forgive her!”
“Don’t let ‘s talk any more, baby; let ‘s hurry on. She never shall get you again; I ‘ll fight for you till I die, first!”
“You ‘d kill ’em all, would n’t you? You would have knocked her down, would n’t you?” said Tina, kindling up with that inconsiderate exultation in the powers of an elder brother which belongs to childhood. “I knew you would get me away from here, Harry, – I knew you would.”
“But now,” said Harry, “you just keep hold of my hand, and let ‘s run together, and I ‘ll hold you up. We must run fast, after all, because maybe they will harness up the wagon when daylight comes, and come out to look for us.”
“Well, if it ‘s only Sol comes,” said the little girl, “I sha’ n’t care; for he would only carry us on farther.”
“Ay, but you may be sure Miss Asphyxia would come herself.”
The suggestion seemed too probable, and the two little pairs of heels seemed winged by it as they flew along, their long shadows dancing before them on the moonlit road, like spiritual conductors. They made such good headway that the hour which we have already recorded, when Miss Asphyxia’s slumbers were broken, found the pair of tiny pilgrims five miles away on the road to Oldtown.
“Now, Tina,” said the boy, as he stopped to watch the long bars of crimson and gold that seemed to be drawing back and opening in the eastern sky, where the sun was flaring upward an expectant blaze of glory, “only look there! Is n’t it so wonderful? It ‘s worth being out here only to see it. There! there! there! the sun is coming! Look! Only see that bright-eyed maple – it seems all on fire! – now that yellow chestnut, and that old pine-tree! O, see, see those red leaves! They are like the story papa used to tell of the trees that bore rubies and emeralds. Are n’t they beautiful?”
“Set me on the fence, so as I can see,” said Tina. “O Harry, it ‘s beautiful! And to think that we can see it together!”
Just at this moment they caught the distant sound of wheels.
“Hurry, Tina! Let me lift you over the fence,” said the boy; “they are coming!”
How the little hearts beat, as both children jumped down into a thicket of sweet-fern, heavy and wet with morning dew! The lot was one of those confused jungles which one often sees hedging the course of rivers in New England. Groups of pine and hemhock grew here and there, intermixed with low patches of swampy land, which were waving with late wild-flowers and molding swamp-grasses. The children tore their way through goldenrods, asters, and cat-tails to a little elevated spot where a great, flat rock was surrounded by a hedge of white-pine. This was precisely the shelter they wanted; for the pines grew so thickly around it as completely to screen it from sight from the road, while it was open to the warm beams of the morning sun.
“Cuddle down here, Tina,” said Harry, in a whispering voice, as if he feared the driver in the rattling farm-wagon might hear them.
“O, what a nice little house the trees make here!” said Tina. “We are as snug here and as warm as can be; and only see what a nice white-and-green carpet there is all over the rock!”
The rock, to be sure, was all frothed over with a delicate white foam of moss, which, later in the day, would have crackled and broken in brittle powder under their footsteps, but which now, saturated by the heavy night-dews, only bent under them, a soft, elastic carpet.
Their fears were soon allayed when, peeping like scared partridges from their cover, they saw a farm-wagon go rattling by from the opposite direction to that in which Miss Asphyxia lived.
“O, it ‘s nobody for us; it comes the other way,” said the boy.
It was, in fact, Primus King, going on his early way to preside over the solemnities of pig killing.
“Then, Hensel, we are free,” said the little girl; “nobody will catch us now. They could no more find us in this lot than they could find a little, little tiny pin the hay-mow.”
“No, indeed, Tina; we are safe now,” said the boy.
“Why don’t you call me Grettel? We will play be Hensel and Grettel; and who knows what luck will come to us?”
“Well, Grettel, then,” said the boy, obediently. “You sit now, and spread out your frock in the sun to dry, while I get out some breakfast for you. Old Aunty Smith has filled my basket with all sorts of good things.”
“And nice old Sol, – he gave us his pie,” said Tina. “I love Sol, though he is a funny-looking man. You ought to see Sol’s hand, it ‘s so big! And his feet, – why one of his shoes would make a good boat for me! But he ‘s a queer old dear, though, and I love him.”
“What shall we eat first?” said the boy, – “the bread and butter, or the cookies, or the doughnuts, or the pie?”
“Let ‘s try a little of all of them,” said young madam.
“You know, Tina,” said the boy, in a slow, considerate way, “that we must take care of this, because we don’t know when we ‘ll get anymore. There ‘s got to be a dinner and a supper got out of this at any rate.”
“O, well, Hensel, you do just as you please with it, then; only let ‘s begin with Sol’s pie and some of that nice cheese, for I am so hungry! And then, when we have had our breakfast, I mean to lie down in the sun, and have a nap on this pretty white moss. O Harry, how pretty this moss is! There are bright little red things in it, as bright as mother’s scarlet cloak. But, O Harry, look, quick! don’t say a word! There ‘s a squirrel! How bright his little eyes are! Let ‘s give him some of our breakfast.”
Harry broke off a crumb of cake and threw it to the little striped-backed stranger.
“Why, he ‘s gone like a wind, said the girl. “Come back, little fellow; we sha’ n’t hurt you.”
“O, hush, Tina, he ‘s coming! I see his bright eyes. He ‘s watching that bit of cake.”
“There, he ‘s got it and is off!” said Tina, with a shriek of delight. “See him race up that tree with it!”
“He ‘s going to take it home to his wife.”
“His wife!” said Tina, laughing so hard at Harry’s wit that she was obliged to lay down her pie. “Has he got a wife?”
“Why, of course he has,” said Harry, with superior wisdom.
“I ‘m your wife, ain’t I?” said Tina, contentedly.
“No. You ‘re my little sister, and I take care of you,” said the boy. “But people can’t have their sisters for wives; the Bible says so.”
“Well, I can be just like your wife; and I ‘ll mend your clothes and knit your stockings when I get bigger.”
To which practical view of matrimonial duties Harry gave a grave assent.
Not a striped-backed squirrel, or a bobolink, or a cat-bird, in the whole pasture-lot, had better spirits than our two little travelers. They were free; they were together; the sun was shining and birds were singing; and as for the future, it was with them as with the birds. The boy, to be sure, had a share of forethought and care, and deemed himself a grown man acting with most serious responsibility for his light-headed little sister; but even in him this was only a half-awakening from the dream-land of childhood.
When they had finished their breakfast, he bethought him of his morning prayers, and made Tina kneel down beside him while he repeated psalm and hymn and prayer, in which she joined with a very proper degree of attention. When he had finished, she said, “Do you know, Hensel, I have n’t said my prayers a single once since I ‘ve been at Miss Asphyxia’s?”
“Why, Tina!”
“Well, you see, there was n’t anybody to say them to, now mother is gone; and you were not there.”
“But you say them to God, Tina.”
“O, he ‘s so far off, and I ‘m so little, I can’t say them to him. I must say them to somebody I can see. Harry, where is mother gone?”
“She is gone to heaven, Tina.”
“Where is heaven?”
“It ‘s up in the sky, Tina,” said the boy, looking up into the deep, cloudless blue of an October sky, which, to say the truth, is about as celestial a thing as a mortal child can look into; and as he looked, his great blue eyes grew large and serious with thoughts of his mother’s last wonderful words.
“If it ‘s up in the sky, why did they dig down into the ground, and put her in that hole?” said the little sceptic.
“It is her soul that went up. Her body is planted like a beautiful flower. She will come up by and by; and we shall see her again, if we are good children.”
Tina lay back on the white moss, with only a fringy bough of white-pine between her and the deep, eternal, blue, where the thinnest films of white clouds were slowly sailing to and fro. Her spiritual musings grew, to say the truth, rather confused. She was now very tired with her night tramp; and the long fringes fell over her great, dark eyes, as a flower shuts itself, and she was soon asleep.