The boy sat watching her awhile, feeling soothed by the calm, soft sunshine, and listening to the thousand sweet lullaby-notes which Nature is humming to herself, while about her great world-housework, in a calm October morning. The locusts and katydids grated a drowsy, continuous note to each other from every tree and bush; and from a neighboring thicket a lively-minded catbird was giving original variations and imitations of all sorts of bird voices and warbling; while from behind the tangled thicket which fringed its banks came the prattle of a hidden river, whose bright brown waters were gossiping, in a pleasant, constant chatter, with the many-colored stones on the bottom; and when the light breezes wandered hither and thither, as your idle breezes always will be doing, they made little tides and swishes of sound among the pine-trees, like the rising and falling of sunny waters on the sea-shore.
Altogether, it was not long before Harry’s upright watch over his sister subsided into a droop upon one elbow, and finally the little curly head went suddenly down on to his sister’s shoulder; and then they were fast asleep, – as nice a little pair of babes in the wood as ever the robins could cover up. They did not awake till it was almost noon. The sun was shining warm and cloudless, and every bit of dew had long been dried; and Tina, in refreshed spirits, proposed that they should explore the wonders of the pasture-lot, – especially that they should find out where the river was whose waters they heard gurgling behind the leafy wall of wild vines.
“We can leave our basket here in our little house, Hensel. See, I set it in here, way, way in among the pine-trees; and that ‘s my little green closet.”
So the children began picking their way through the thicket guided by the sound of the water.
“O Tina!” said the boy; “look there, over your head!”
The object pointed out was a bough of a wild grape-vine heavily laden with ripe purple grapes.
“O, wild grapes!” said Tina. “Harry, do get them!”
Harry soon pulled the bough down within reach, and the children began helping themselves.
“I ‘m going to take an apronful up to the tree, and put into our closet,” said Tina; “and we shall have a nice store there.”
“But, Tina, we can’t live there on the rock,” said the boy; “we must walk on and get to Oldtown some time.”
“O well, we have the whole long, long day for it,” said the girl, “and we may as well have a good time now; so, when I ‘ve put up these grapes, we ‘ll see where the river is.”
A little scrambling and tearing through vines soon brought the children down to the banks of a broad, rather shallow river, whose waters were of that lustrous yellow-brown which makes every stone gleam up from the bottom in mellow colors, like the tints through the varnish of an old picture. The banks were a rampart of shrubbery and trees hung with drapery of wild vines, now in the brilliancy of autumnal coloring. It is not wonderful that exclamations of delight and wonder burst from both children. An old hemlock that hung slantwise over the water opposite was garlanded and interwoven, through all its dusky foliage, with wreaths and pendants of the Virginia creeper, now burning in the brilliant carmine and scarlet hues of autumn. Great, soft, powdery clumps of golden-rod projected their heads from the closely interwoven thicket, and leaned lovingly over the stream, while the royal purple of tall asters was displayed in bending plumage at their side. Here and there, a swamp-maple seemed all one crimson flame; while greener shrubbery and trees, yet untouched by frosts, rose up around it, as if purposely to give background and relief to so much color. The rippling surface of the waters, as they dashed here and there over the stones, gave back colored flashes from the red, yellow, crimson, purple, and green of the banks; while ever and anon little bright leaves came sailing down the stream, all moist and brilliant, like so many floating gems. The children clapped their hands, and began, with sticks, fishing them towards the shore. “These are our little boats,” they said. So they were, – fairy boats, coming from the land of nowhere, and going on to oblivion, shining and fanciful, like the little ones that played with them.
“I declare,” said Tina, “I mean to take off my shoes and stockings, and wade out to that little island where those pretty white stones are. You go with me.”
“Well, Tina, wait till I can hold you.”
And soon both the little pairs of white feet were slipping and spattering among the pebbles at the bottom. On the way Tina made many efforts to entrap the bright rings of sunlight on the bottom, regardless of the logic with which Harry undertook to prove to her that it was nothing but the light, and that she could not catch it; and when they came to the little white gravelly bank, they sat down and looked around them with great content.
“We ‘re on a desolate island, are n’t we, Hensel?” said Tina. “I like desolate islands,” she added, looking around her, with the air of one who had had a wide experience of the article. “The banks here are so high, and the bushes so thick, that Miss Asphyxia could not find us if she were to try. We ‘ll make our home here.”
“Well, I think , Tina, darling, that it won’t do for us to stay here very long,” said Harry. “We must try to get to some place where I can find something to do, and some good, kind woman to take care of you.”
“O Harry, what ‘s the use of thinking of that, – it ‘s so bright and pleasant, and it ‘s so long since I ‘ve had you to play with! Do let ‘s have one good, pleasant day alone among the flowers! See how beautiful everything is!” she added, “and it ‘s so warm and quiet and still, and all the birds and squirrels and butterflies are having such a good time. I don’t want anything better than to play about out in the woods with you.”
“But where shall we sleep nights, Tina?”
“O, it was so pleasant last night, and the moon shone so bright, I would not be afraid to cuddle down under a bush with you, Harry.”
“Ah, Tina! You don’t know what may come. The moon don’t shine all night, and there may be cold and wind and rain, and then where would we be? Come, darling, let ‘s go on; we can walk in the fields by the river, and so get down to the place Sol told us about.”
So at last the little fanciful body was persuaded to wade back from her desolate island, and to set out once more on her pilgrimage. But even an older head than hers might have been turned by the delights of that glorious October day, and gone off into a vague trance of bliss, in which the only good of life seemed to be in luxurious lounging and dreamy enjoyment of the passing hour. Nature in New England is, for the most part, a sharp, determined matron, of the Miss Asphyxia school. She is shrewd, keen, relentless, energetic. She runs through the seasons a merciless express-train, on which you may jump if you can, at her hours, but which knocks you down remorselessly if you come in her way, and leaves you hopelessly behind if you are late. Only for a few brief weeks in the autumn does this grim, belligerent female condescend to be charming; but when she does set about it, the veriest Circe of enchanted isles could not do it better. Airs more dreamy, more hazy, more full of purple light and lustre, never lay over Cyprus or Capri than those which each October overshadow the granite rocks and prickly chestnuts of New England. The trees seem to run no longer sap, but some strange liquid glow; the colors of the flowers flame up, from the cold, pallid delicacy of spring, into royal tints wrought of the very fire of the sun and the hues of evening clouds. The humblest weed, which we trod under our foot unnoticed in summer, changes with the first frost into some colored marvel, and lifts itself up into a study for a painter, – just as the touch of death or adversity often strikes out in a rough nature traits of nobleness and delicacy before wholly undreamed of.
The children traveled onward along the winding course of the river, through a prairie-land of wild-flowers. The whole tribe of asters – white, lilac, pale blue, and royal purple – were rolling in perfect billows of blossoms around them, and the sprays of golden-rod often rose above their heads, as they crackled their way through the many-colored thickets. The children were both endowed with an organization exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and the flowers seemed to intoxicate them with their variety and brilliancy. They kept gathering from right to left without any other object than the possession of a newer and fairer spray, till their little arms were full; and then they would lay them down to select from the mass the choicest, which awhile after would be again thrown by for newer and fairer treasures. Their motion through the bushes often disturbed clouds of yellow butterflies, which had been hanging on the fringes of the tall purple asters, and which rose toying with each other, and fluttering in ethereal dances against the blue sky, looking like whirls and eddies of air-flowers. One of the most brilliant incidents in the many-colored pictures of October days is given by these fluttering caprices of the butterflies. Never in any other part of the season are these airy tribes so many and so brilliant. There are, in particular, whole armies of small, bright yellow ones, which seem born for no other purpose than to make effective and brilliant contrasts with those royal-purple tints of asters, and they hang upon them as if drawn to them by some law of affinity in their contrasting colors.
Tina was peculiarly enchanted with the fanciful fellowship of these butterflies. They realized exactly her ideal of existence, and she pointed them out to Harry as proof positive that her own notion of living on sunshine and flowers was not a bad one. She was quite sure that they could sleep out all night if the butterflies could, and seemed not to doubt that they would fancy her as a bedfellow.
Towards sundown, when the children were somewhat weary of wandering, and had consumed most of the provisions in their basket, they came suddenly on a little tent pitched in the field, at the door of which sat an old Indian woman weaving baskets. Two or three red-skinned children, of about the same age as our wanderers, were tumbling and kicking about on the ground, in high frolic, with about as many young puppies, who were scratching, rolling, and biting, with their human companions, in admirable spirits. There was a fire before the door, over which a pot was swung from a frame of crossed sticks, the odor of which steamed up, suggestive of good cheer.
The old Indian woman received the children with a broad, hearty grin, while Harry inquired of her how far it was to Oldtown. The old squaw gave it as her opinion, in very Indian English, that it was “muchee walkee” for little white boy, and that he had best stay with her that night and go on to-morrow.
“There, Harry,” said Tina, “now you see just how it is. This is a nice little house for us to sleep in, and oh! I see such pretty baskets in it.”
The old woman drew out a stock of her wares, from which she selected a small, gayly-painted one, which she gave to the children; in short, it was very soon arranged that they were to stop to supper and spend the night with her. The little Indians gathered around them and surveyed them with grins of delight; and the puppies, being in that state of ceaseless effervescence of animal spirits which marks the indiscreet era of puppyhood, soon had the whole little circle in a state of uproarious laughter.
By and by, the old woman poured the contents of the pot into a wooden trough, and disclosed a smoking mess of the Indian dish denominated succotash, – to wit, a soup of corn and beans, with a generous allowance of salt pork. Offering a large, clean clam-shell to each of the children, she invited them to help themselves.
Whether it was the exhilarating effect of a whole day spent on foot in the open air, or whether it was owing to the absolute perfection of the cookery, we cannot pretend to say, but certain it is that the children thought they had never tasted anything better; and Tina’s spirits became so very airy and effervescent, that she laughed perpetually, – a state which set the young barbarians to laughing for sympathy; and this caused all the puppies to bark at once, which made more fun; so that, on the whole, a jollier supper company could nowhere be found.
After sundown, when the whole party had sufficiently fatigued themselves with play and laughing, the old woman spread a skin inside the tent, where Tina lay down contentedly between Harry and one of the puppies, which she insisted upon having as her own particular bedfellow. Harry kneeled down to his prayers outside the tent, which being observed by the Indian woman, she clasped her hands, and seemed to listen with great devotion; and when he had finished, she said, “Me praying Indian; me much love Jesus.”
The words were said with a tender gleam over the rough, hard, swarthy features; and the child felt comforted by them as he nestled down to his repose.
“Harry,” said Tina, decisively, “let ‘s we live here. I like to play with the puppies, and the old woman is good to us.”
“We ‘ll see, Tina,” said wise little Harry.
CHAPTER XV.
THE OLD MANOR-HOUSE.
ALAS! the next morning dawned wet and rainy. The wind flapped the tent-cover, and the rain put out the fire; and, what was worse, a cross, surly Indian man came home, who beat the poor old woman, and scattered the children and puppies, like partridges, into the bushes.
The poor old squaw took it all patiently, and seemed only intent on protecting the children from injuries and inconveniences on which she calculated as part of her daily lot. She beckoned them to her, and pointed across a field. “Go dat way. White folks dere be good to you.” And she insisted on giving them the painted basket and some coarse corn bread.
They set off through the fields; but the wind was chilly and piercing, and the bushes and grass were wet, and Tina was in a doleful state. “O Harry, I wish we had a house to live in! Where do you suppose all the butterflies are staying that we saw yesterday? I ‘d like to go where they stay.”
“Never mind, Tina; by and by we ‘ll come to a house.”
They passed a spot where evidently some Indians had been camping, for there were the remains of a fire; and Harry picked up some dry brush and refuse sticks around, and kindled it up bright for Tina to warm and dry herself. They sat there awhile and fed the fire, till they began to feel quite warm. In one of Harry’s excursions for sticks, he came back and reported a house in sight.
Sure enough, concealed from view behind a pine thicket was a large, stately mansion, the approach to which was through an avenue of majestic trees. The path to this was all grown over with high grass, and a wilderness of ornamental shrubbery seemed to have twined and matted itself together in a wild labyrinth of utter desertion and neglect. The children made their way up the avenue through dripping grass, and bushes that reached almost to their shoulders, and that drizzled water upon their partially dried garments in a way that made Tina shiver. “I ‘m so cold!” she said, pitifully. “The folks must let us come in to dry us.”
They at last stood before the front door, in a sort of porch which overshadowed it, and which rested on Corinthian pillars of some architectural pretension. The knocker was a black serpent with its tail in its mouth. Tina shuddered with some vague, inward dread, as Harry, rising on tiptoe, struck several loud blows upon it, and then waited to see who would appear.
The wind now rose, and tossed and swung the branches of the great trees in the avenue with a creaking, groaning sound. The shrubbery had grown around the house in a dense and tangled mass, that produced, in the dismal stormy weather, a sense of oppression and darkness. Huge lilacs had climbed above the chamber windows, and clumps of syringas billowed outward from the house in dense cascades; while roses and various kinds of more tender shrubbery, which had been deprived of light and air by their more hardy neighbors, filled up the space below with bare, dead branches, through which the wind sighed dolefully.
“Harry, do knock again,” said Tina, when they had waited some time.
“It ‘s no use,” said the boy; “I don’t think anybody lives here.”
“Perhaps, if we go round to the back of the house, we shall find somebody,” said Tina; “it ‘s storming worse and worse.” And the little girl plunged resolutely into the thicket of dead shrubbery, and began tearing her way through.
There was a door on the side of the house, much like that in front; and there were spacious back buildings, which, joining the house, stretched far away in the shrubbery. Harry tried this side door. It was firmly locked. The children then began regularly trying every door that presented itself to their view. At last one, after considerable effort, gave way before their united exertions, and opened to them a shelter from the storm, which was now driving harder and harder. It was a place that had evidently been used for the storing of wood, for there was then quite a pile of fuel systematically arranged against the wall. An ancient axe, perfectly red with rust, was also hanging there.
“Well, we ‘re in at last,” said Tina, “but wet through. What a storm it is!”
“Perhaps we can get to some better place in the house,” said Harry; “here is wood, and we might make a fire and dry our clothes, and wait here till the storm is over.”
He accordingly pushed against a door at the farther end of the wood-shed, and it opened before him into a large old kitchen. There was the ample fireplace of olden times, extending quite across one side, garnished with a crane having various hooks and other paraphernalia for the convenience of culinary operations.
“There, now,” said Harry, “is a fireplace, and here is wood. Now we can dry ourselves. Just you wait here, and I ‘ll go back and bring a brand from our fire, if the rain has n’t put it all out.” And Harry turned, and hastily made the best of his way out of the house, to secure his treasure before it should be too late.
Tina now resolved to explore some of the other rooms. She opened a door which seemed to lead into a large dining-hall. A heavy dining-table of dark wood stood in the middle of this room; and a large, old-fashioned carved sideboard filled up an arched recess. Heavy mahogany chairs with stuffed leathern bottoms stood against the wall, but the brass nails with which they had been finished were green with rust. The windows of this room were so matted over with cobwebs, and so darkened by the dense shrubbery outside, as to give the apartment a most weird and forlorn appearance. One of the panes of the window had been broken, perhaps by the striking of the shrubbery against it; and the rain and snow beating in there had ruined the chair that stood below, for the seat of it was all discolored with mould.
Tina shivered as she looked at this dreary room, and the tapping of her own little heels seemed to her like something ghostly; so she hastened to open another door. This led to a small apartment, which had evidently been a lady’s boudoir. The walls were hung with tapestry of a dark-green ground on which flowers and fruits and birds were represented in colors that yet remained brilliant, not withstanding the dilapidated air of some portions of it. There was a fireplace in this room, and the mantel was choicely carved, of white Italian marble, and upon it were sundry flasks and vases of Venetian glass, of quaint and strange shapes, which the child eyed with awe-struck curiosity. By the side of the fireplace was a broad lounge or sofa, with a pile of cushions, covered with a rich but faded brocade, of a pattern evidently made to carry out the same design with the tapestry on the wall.
A harpischord occupied another side of the room, and upon it were piled music-books and manuscript music yellow with age. There was a sort of Oriental guitar or lute suspended from the wall, of which one of the strings, being broken, vibrated with air of the door when the child made her way into the room, and continued quivering in a way that seemed to her nervous and ghostly. Still she was a resolute and enterprising little body; and though her heart was beating at a terrible rate, she felt a sort of mixture of gratified curiosity and exultation in her discovery.
“I wish Harry would come back,” she said to herself. “We might make a fire in this pretty little room, and it would be quite snug, and we could wait here till the folks come home.” How glad she was when the sound of his voice and footsteps broke the terrible loneliness! She ran out to him, exclaiming, “O Harry, we won’t make a fire in this great, doleful old kitchen. I ‘ve found such a nice little room full of pretty things! Let me bring in some wood”; – and, running to the wood-pile, she filled her arms.
“It was all I could do to find a brand with a bit of fire on it,” said Harry. “There was only the least spark left, but I put it under my jacket and blew and blew, and now we have quite a bright spot in it,” he said, showing with exultation a black brand with a round, fiery eye in it, which had much the appearance of a knowing old goblin winking at the children.
The desolate boudoir was soon a scene of much animation, and the marble hearth was strewn with chips and splinters.
“Let me blow, Harry,” said Tina, “while you go and look for some more of this brushwood. I saw a heap in that wood-house. I ‘ll tend the fire while you are gone. See,” she said triumphantly to him, when he returned, dragging in a heavy pole of brushwood, “we ‘ll soon have such a fire!” – and she stooped down over the hearth, laying the burnt ends of sticks together, and blowing till her cheeks were so aflame with zeal and exertion that she looked like a little live coal herself. “Now for it!” she said, as she broke bit after bit of the brushwood. “See now it ‘s beginning to burn, – hear it crackle! Now put on more and more.”
Very soon, in fact, the brushwood crackled and roared in a wide sheet of flame up the old chimney; and being now reinforced with stout sticks of wood, the fire took a solid and settled and companionable form, – the brightest, most hopeful companion a mortal could ask for in a chill, stormy day in autumn.
“Now, Harry,” said Tina, “let ‘s dry our clothes, and then we will see what we can do in our house.”
“But is it really ours?” said thoughtful Harry. “Who knows who it may belong to?”
“Do you think,” said Tina, apprehensively, “that any giant lives here that has gone out and will come home again? Father used to tell us a story like that.”
“There are n’t really giants now-a-days, Tina,” said Harry; “those are only stories. I don’t think that it looks as if anybody had lived here for a great while. Things don’t look as if anybody lived here, or was expecting to come back.”
“Then we may as well live here as anybody,” said Tina, “and I will keep house for you. I will roast some apples for our dinner, – I saw ever so many out here on the tree. Roast apples with our corn bread will be so good! And then we can sleep tonight on this great, wide sofa, – can’t we? Here, let me sweep up the chips we have made, and make our little house look nice.”
“It must be a long time since any one has lived here,” said Harry, looking up at the cobwebbed window, against which the shrubbery was dashing and beating in the fury of the storm, “and there can’t be the least harm in our staying here till the storm is over.”
“Such a strange, pretty room this is!” said Tina, “and so many strange, pretty things in it! Do you know, Harry, I was almost afraid to be here while you were gone; but this bright, warm fire makes such a difference. Fire is company, is n’t it?”
When the little one had dried her clothes, she began, with a restless, butterfly sort of motion, to investigate more closely the various objects of the apartment. She opened the harpsichord, and struck a few notes, which sounded rather discordantly, as an instrument which chill and solitude had smitten with a lasting hoarseness.
“O, horrid! This is n’t pretty,” she said. “I wonder who ever played on it? But, O Harry! come and look here! I thought this was another room in here, with a fire in it,” she said, as she lifted a curtain which hung over a recess. “Look! it ‘s only looking-glass in a door. Where does it go to? Let ‘s see.” And with eager curiosity she turned the knob, and the door opened, disclosing only a sort of inner closet, which had been evidently employed for a writing-cabinet, as a writing-table stood there, and book-cases filled with books.
What most attracted the attention of the children was a picture, which was hung exactly opposite the door, so that it met the children face to face. It was the image of a young girl, dressed in white, with long, black, curling hair falling down over her neck and shoulders. The dark eyes had an expression both searching and melancholy; and it was painted in that peculiar manner, which produces such weird effects on the beholder, in which the eyes seem to be fixed upon the spectator, and to follow him on whichever side he stands.
“What a pretty lady! But she looks at us so!” said Tina, covering her eyes. “I almost thought it was a real woman.”
“Whichever way we move, she looks after us,” said Harry.
“She looks as if she would speak to us,” said Tina; “she surely wants to say something.”
“It is something very sad, then,” said the boy, studying the picture attentively. “She was not sad as mother was,” said he with a delicate, spiritual instinct reading the impression of the face. “Mother used to look very, very sad, but in a different way, – a better way, I think.”
“Of course it is n’t in the least like mother,” said Tina. “Mother had soft, bright hair, – not black, like this; and her eyes were blue, like yours, Harry.”
“I don’t mean her hair or her eyes,” said Harry; “but when mother was sad, she always used to pray. I don’t think this one looks as if she would pray,” said the boy, rather under his breath.
There was, in fact, a lurking sparkle of haughty determination in the depths of the mournful eyes, and a firm curve to the lines of the mouth, an arching of the neck, and a proud carriage of the head, that confirmed the boy’s strictures, and indicated that, whatever sorrows might have crushed the poor heart that beat beneath that fair form, they were borne in her own strength, with no uplooking for aid.
Tina longed to open the drawers of the cabinet beneath the picture, but Harry held her hand. “Tina, dear, what would mother say?” he said, reprovingly. “This is n’t our house. Whoever owns it would n’t think it was wrong for us to stay here in such a storm, but we certainly ought not to touch their things.”
“But we may go through the house, and see all the rooms,” said Tina, who had a genuine feminine passion for rummaging, and whose curiosity was piqued to the extreme point by the discoveries already made. “I shall be afraid to sleep here tonight, unless I know all that is in the house.”
So the children went, hand in hand, through the various apartments. The house was one of those stately manors which, before the Revolutionary war, the titled aristocracy of England delighted to reproduce on the virgin soil of America. Even to this modern time, some of the old provincial towns in New England preserve one or two of these monuments of the pride and pomp of old colonial days, when America was one of the antechambers of the English throne and aristocracy.
The histories of these old houses, if searched into, present many romantic incidents, in which truth may seem wilder than fiction. In the breaking of the ties between the mother country and America, many of these stately establishments were suddenly broken up, and the property, being subject to governmental claims yet undecided, lay a long time unoccupied; the real claimants being in England, and their possessions going through all the processes of deterioration and decay incident to property in the hands of agents at a distance from the real owners. The moss of legend and tradition grew upon these deserted houses. Life in New England, in those days, had not the thousand stimulants to the love of excitement which are to be found in the throng and rush of modern society, and there was a great deal more of story-telling and romancing in real life than exists now; and the simple villagers by their firesides delighted to plunge into the fathomless abyss of incident that came from the histories of grand, unknown people across the water, who had established this incidental connection with their neighborhood. They exaggerated the records of the pomp and wealth that had environed them. They had thrilling legends of romantic and often tragic incidents, of which such houses had been the theatres. More than one of them had its well-attested ghosts, which, at all proper hours, had been veritably seen to go through all those aimless ghostly perambulations and performances which, according to village legends, diversify the leisure of the spiritual state.
The house into which the children’s wandering fortune had led them was one whose legends and history formed the topic of many an excited hour of my childhood, as crooned over to me by different story-telling gossips; and it had, in its structure and arrangements, the evident impress of days nevermore to be reproduced in New England. Large and lofty apartments, some of them still hung with tapestry, and some adorned with arches and columns, were closed in from air and light by strong shutters, although a dusky glimmer came through the heart-shaped holes cut in them. Some of these apartments were quite dismantled and bare. In others the furniture was piled together in confusion, as if for the purpose of removal. One or two chambers were still thoroughly furnished, and bore the marks of having been, at some recent period, occupied; for there were mattresses and pillows and piles of bedclothing on the great, stately bedsteads.
“We might sleep in one of these rooms,” said Harry.
“O, no, no!” said the child, clinging to him; “I should be afraid. That great, dreadful-looking, dark bed! And who knows what might be behind the curtains! Let me sleep in the bright little room, where we can see all around us. I should be afraid that lady in the closet would walk about these rooms in the night.”
“Perhaps she did once,” said Harry. “But come, let us go down. The wind blows and howls so about these lonesome rooms, it makes me afraid.”
“How it rumbles down the chimneys!” said Tina; “and how it squeals just as if somebody was hurting it. It ‘s a terrible storm, is n’t it?”
“Yes, it ‘s well we are in a house at any rate,” said Harry; “but let ‘s go down and bring in wood, and I ‘ll get some apples and pears off the trees out by the back door.”
And so the two poor little swallows chittered as they built their small, innocent nest in the deserted house, as ignorant of the great Before and After, as if they had had wings and feathers, and round, bright bird-eyes, instead of curly, golden heads. Harry brought in a quantity of fruit in Tina’s little checked apron, and, like two squirrels, they stored it under the old brocade sofa.
“Now ever so much wood in the hall here,” said Tina, with the providence of a little housewife; “because when the dark night comes we shall be afraid to go into the wood-house.”
Harry felt very large and very provident, and quite like a householder, as he brought armful after armful and laid it outside the door, while Tina arranged some apples to roast on the marble hearth. “If we only could get something to eat every day, we might live here always,” she said.
And so that evening, when the night shadows came down darkly on the house, though the storm without thundered and beat and groaned amid the branches of the old trees, and rumbled and shook the chimneys of the solitary manor-house, there was one nook that presented as bright and warm a picture as two fair child-faces, with a background of strange antique furniture and surroundings, could furnish. The fire had burned down into great splendid glowing coals, in which the children, seated before it on the tapestried hearth-rug, saw all sorts of strange faces. Tina had insisted on keeping open the door of the cabinet where the beautiful lady was, because, she said, she must be lonesome in that dark closet by herself.
“I wish she would only smile,” she said, as the sharp spires of flame from a new stick of wood which she had just laid on, dancing up, made the face seem to become living and tremulous as if with emotion. “See, Hensel, she looks as if she were going to speak to us.”
And hours later the fire still burned in the little boudoir; but the two pretty child-faces lay cheek to cheek in the wide, motherly arms of the sofa, and the shadowy lady seemed to watch over them silently from her lovely recess.
CHAPTER XVI.
SAM LAWSON’S DISCOVERIES.
THE evening was closing in sharp and frosty, with a lowering of wind and cloud that rendered fire-light doubly dear and welcome, as we all drew our chairs round the great, glowing fire in my grandmother’s kitchen. I had my little block of wood, which served as a footstool, far in the cavernous depths of one end of the fireplace, close by Black Cæsar, who was busy making me a popgun, while my grandmother sat at the other end in her rocking-chair, rattling her knitting-needles. Uncle Fly had just frisked in, and was perched, as was his wont, on the very tip of his chair, where he sat fussily warming and rubbing his hands, much as a meditative blue-bottle performs the same operations with his fore feet.
“So,” said my grandmother to my grandfather, in reproachful tones, “you ‘ve gone and shut the calf up from its mother.”
“To be sure,” said my grandfather; “that was foreordained and freely predetermined.”
“Well, I say it ‘s a shame,” sputtered my grandmother, – “poor creturs!”
It was a part of the farming ordinance, when the calf was fated to be killed, to separate it for a day from its mother, a proceeding which never failed to excite the indignation of my grandmother, which she expressed always with as much life and freshness as if she had never heard of such a matter before in her life. She was not, to be sure, precisely aware what was to be done about it; but in a general way she considered calf-killing as an abominable cruelty, and the parting of calf and cow for a day beforehand as an aggravation. My grandfather was fond of meeting her with a sly use of some of the Calvinistic theological terms which abounded in her favorite writers. The most considerate of husbands often enjoy any quiet method of giving a sly tweak to some cherished peculiarity of their yokefellows; and there was the least suggestion of a smile hovering over my grandfather’s face, – which smile, in your quiet man, means two things, – first, that he is going to have his own way in spite of all you can say, and, secondly, that he is quietly amused by your opposition.
“I say it ‘s a shame,” quoth my grandmother, “and I always shall. Hear that poor cow low! She feels as bad as I should.”
“Mother,” said Aunt Lois, in an impatient tone, “I wonder that you can’t learn to let things go on as they must. What would you have? We must have fresh meat sometimes, and you eat as much as any of us.”
“I don’t care, it ‘s too bad,” said my grandmother, “and I always shall think so. If I had things my way, folks should n’t eat creatures at all.”
“You ‘d be a Brahmin,” said my grandfather.
“No, I should n’t be a Brahmin, either; but I know an old cow’s feelings, and I would n’t torment her just to save myself a little trouble.”
The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Sam Lawson, who came in with a long, lugubrious face, and an air of solemn, mysterious importance, which usually was the herald of some communication.
“Well, Sam,” said my grandfather, “how are you?”
“Middlin’, Deacon,” said Sam, mournfully, – “only middlin’.”
“Sit down, sit down,” said my grandfather, “and tell us the news.”
“Wal, I guess I will. How kind o’ revivin’ and cheerful it does look here,” said Sam, seating himself in his usual attitude, with his hands over the fire. “Lordy massy, it ‘s so different to our house! Hepsy hain’t spoke a railly decent word to me since the gineral trainin’. You know, Deacon, Monday, a week ago, was gineral trainin’ day over to Hopkinton, and Hepsy, she was set in the idee that I should take her and the young uns to muster. ‘All right, Hepsy,’ says I, ‘ef I can borrow a hoss.’ Wal, I walked and walked clean up to Captain Brown’s to borrow a hoss, and I could n’t get none, and I walked clean down to Bill Peter’s, and I could n’t get none. Finally, Ned Parker, he lent me his’n. Wal, to be sure, his hoss has got the spring-halt, that kind o’ twitches up the waggin, and don’t look so genteel as some; but, lordy massy, ‘t was all I could get. But Hepsy, she blamed me all the same. And then she was at me cause she had n’t got no gloves. Wal, I had n’t no gret o’ change in my pocket, and I wanted to keep it for gingerbread and sich for the young uns, so I thought I ‘d jest borrow a pair for her, and say nothin’; and I went over and asked Mis’ Captain Brown, and over to Mis’ Dana’s, and round to two or three places; and finally Lady Lothrop, she said she ‘d give me a old pair o’ hern. And I brought ’em to Hepsy; and do you believe, she throwed ’em right smack in my face. ‘S’pose I ‘m going to wear such an old dirty pair as that?’ says she. Wal, arter all, we sot out, and Hepsy, she got clear beat out; and when Hepsy does get beat out she has spells, and she goes on awful, and they last day arter day. Hepsy’s spells is jest like these ‘ere northeast storms, – they never do railly clear off, but kind o’ wear out, as ‘t were, – and this ‘ere seems to be about one of her longest. She was at me this mornin’ fust thing ‘fore I was out o’ bed, cryin’ and goin’ on, and castin’ on it up at me the men she might ‘a hed if she had n’t ‘a’ hed me, and the things they ‘d ‘a’ done for her, jest as if ‘t was my fault. ‘Lordy massy, Hepsy,’ says I, ‘I ain’t to blame. I wish with all my heart you hed ‘a’ hed any on ’em you ‘d ruther.’ You see I wa’ n’t meanin’ no ‘fence, you know, but just a bein’ kind o’ sympathizin’ like, and she flew at me ‘t oncet. Massy to us! Why, you ‘d ‘a’ thought all them old Sodom and Gomorrah sinners biled down wa’ n’t nothin’ to me. She did talk ridiculous. I tried to reason with her. Says I, ‘Hepsy, see here now. Here you be in a good bed, in your own house, and your kindlin’s all split to make your fire, – and I split every one on ’em after twelve o’clock last night, – and you a goin’ on at this ‘ere rate. Hepsy,’ says I, ‘it ‘s awful.’ But lordy massy, how that ‘ere woman can talk! She begun agin, and I could n’t get in a word edgeways nor crossways nor noways; and so I jest got up and went round to the tavern, and there I met Bill Moss and Jake Marshall, and we had some crackers and cheese and a little suthin hot with it, and it kind o’ ‘curred to me, as Hepsy was in one o’ her spells, it would be a good time to go kind o’ Indianing round the country a spell till she kind o’ come to, ye know. And so I thought I ‘d jest go t’ other side o’ Hopkinton and see Granny Walkers, – her that was housekeeper to Lady Frankland, ye know, – and see if I could n’t rake out the pertickelars of that ‘ere Dench house. That ‘ere house has been a lyin’ on my mind considerable, along back.”
My ears began to prick up with great liveliness and animation at this sound; and, deserting Cæsar, I went over and stood by Sam, and surveyed him with fixed attention, wondering in the mean time how a house could lie on his mind.
“Well,” said my grandfather, “what did you hear?”
“Wal, I did n’t get over to her house; but when I ‘d walked a pretty good piece I came across Widdah Peter’s son, Sol Peters, – you know him, Mis’ Badger, he lives over in Needmore with a great, spankin’ old gal they call Miss Asphyxy Smith. You ‘ve heard of Miss Sphyxy, hain’t you, Mis’ Badger?”
“Certainly I have,” said my grandmother.
“Miss Asphyxia Smith is a smart, industrious woman,” said Aunt Lois; “it is n’t worth while to talk so about her. The world would be better off,” she continued, eyeing Sam with an air of didactic severity, “if there were more people in it that keep to their own business, like Miss Sphyxy.”
“Wal, spuz so,” said Sam Lawson, with an innocent and virtuous droop, not in the slightest degree recognizing the hint; “but now, you see, I ‘m coming to a pint. Sol, he asked me if anybody over to Oldtown had seen or heard anything of a couple of children that had run away from Needmore. There was a boy and a gal about nine or ten or under, that had been put out by the parish. The boy was livin’ with Old Crab Smith, and the gal with Miss Sphyxy.”
“Well, I pity the child that Miss Sphyxy Smith has taken to bring up, I must say,” said my grandmother. “What business have old maids a taking children to bring up, I want to know. Why, it is n’t every hen that ‘s fit to bring up chickens. How came the children there, anyway?”
“Wal, you see, there come a woman along to Crab Smith with these ‘ere children. Sol says they ‘re really putty children, – putty-behaved as ever he see. The woman, she was took down and died there. And so Old Crab, he took the boy; and Miss Sphyxy, she took the gal.”
“Too bad,” said my grandmother; “poor motherless babes, and nobody but Crab and Sphyxy Smith to do for ’em! Somebody ought to see about it.”
“Wal, ye see, Sol, he said that Miss Sphyxy was as hard as a grindstone on this gal, and they kep’ the boy and gal apart, and would n’t let ’em see nor speak to each other; and Sol says he never did pity any poor, lonesome little critter as he did that ‘ere little gal. She used to lie abed nights, and sob and cry fit to break her little heart.”
“I should like to go and talk to that woman!” said my grandmother, vengefully. “I wonder folks can be so mean! I wonder what such folks think of themselves, and where they expect to go to!”
“Wal, you see,” continued Sam, “the young un was spicy; and when Miss Sphyxy was down on her too hard, the child, she fit her, – you know a rat ‘ll bite, a hen will peck, and a worm will turn, – and finally it come to a fight between ’em; and Miss Sphyxy, she gin her an awful whippin’. ‘Lordy massy, Sol,’ says I, when Sol was a tellin’ me, ‘you need n’t say nothin’ about it. That ‘ere gal’s got arms like a windmill; she ‘s a regular brown thrasher, she is, only she ain’t got no music in her; and ef she undertook to thrash me, she ‘d make out.'”
“Well, what became of the children?” said my grandmother.
“Wal, you see, they run off together; fact is, Sol says he helped ’em off, and told ’em to come over to Oldtown. He says he told ’em to inquire for Deacon Badger’s.”
“I believe so,” said Aunt Lois severely. “Every man, woman, and child that wants taking care of is sent straight to our house.”
“And good reason they should, Lois,” said my grandmother, who was wide awake. “I declare people ought to be out looking for them. ‘Liakim, you are always flying about; why don’t you look ’em up?”
Uncle Fly jumped up with alacrity. “To be sure, they ought to be looked after,” he said, running to the window. “They ought to be looked after right off; they must be attended to.” And Uncle Fly seemed to have an indefinite intention of pitching straight through the window in pursuit.
Sam Lawson eyed him with a serene gravity. He felt the importance of being possessed of all the information the subject in question admitted of, which he was determined to develop in an easy and leisurely manner, without any undue hurry or heat. “Mr. Sheril,” he said, “the fust thing you ‘ll hev to find out is where they be. It ‘s no use tearin’ round gen ‘lly. Where be they? – that ‘s the question.”
“To be sure, to be sure,” said Uncle Fly. “Well, what you got to say about that?”
“Wal, you jest set down now, and be kind o’ composed. I ‘m a comin’ to that ‘ere pint in time,” said Sam. “That ‘ere ‘s jest what I says to Sol. ‘Sol,’ says I, ‘where be they?’ And Sol, he says to me, ‘I dunno. They might ‘a’ gone with the Indians,’ says Sol, ‘or they might ‘a’ got lost in the Oldtown woods’; – and jest as we was a talkin’, we see old Obscue a comin’ along. He was out on a tramp over to Hopkinton, Obscue was, and we asked him about ’em. Wal, Obscue, he says that a gal and boy like what we talked of had slep’ in his wife’s hut not long sence. You know Obscue’s wife; she makes baskets, and goes round sellin’ on ’em. I could n’t fairly get out o’ Obscue what day ‘t was, nor which way they went arter; but it was clear that them was the ones.”
“Then,” said Uncle Fly, “they must be somewhere. They may have lost their way in the Oldtown woods, and wandered up an down. There ought to be a party started out to look for ’em to-morrow morning.”
“Now look here, Mr. Sheril,” said Sam, “I think we ‘d better kind o’ concentrate our idees on some one pint afore we start out, and I ‘ll tell you what I ‘m a thinkin’ of. You know I was a tellin’ you that I ‘d seen smoke coming out o’ the chimbly of the Dench house. Now I jest thought them poor little robins might have jest got in there. You know it stormed like vengeance last week, and the little critters might have took shelter in that ‘ere lonesome old house.”
“Poor babes!” said my grandmother “‘Liakim, you go up there and see.”
“Well, I tell you,” said Uncle Eliakim, “I ‘ll be up bright and early with my old horse and wagon, and go over to the Dench house and see about it.”
“Wal, now,” said Sam, “if you would n’t mind, I ‘ll just ride over with you. I wanted to kind o’ go over that ‘ere house. I ‘ve had it on my mind a good while.”
“Is that the haunted house?’ said I, in a whisper.
“Wal, it ‘s the one they call haunted, but ‘t ain’t best to be ‘fraid of nothin’,” said Sam, surveying me paternally, and winking very obviously with one eye at Uncle Eliakim; quite forgetting the long roll of terrible suggestions he had made on the same subject a few evenings before.
“But you told about the man in a long red cloak, and the boy they threw in a well, and a woman in white.”
“Lordy, massy, what ears young ones has!” said Sam, throwing up his hands pathetically. “I never thought as you was round, Horace; but you must n’t never mind nothin’ about it. There ain’t really no such thing as ghosts.”
“I want to go over and see the house,” said I.
“Well, well, you shall,” said Uncle Fly; “but you must wake up bright and early. I shall be off by six o’clock.”
“Well, now, mother,” said Aunt Lois, “I just want to know if you are going to make our house an asylum for all the trampers and all the stray children in the neighboring parishes? Have we got to keep these children, or are we going to send ’em back where they belong?”
“Send ’em back to Old Crab Smith and Miss Sphyxy?” said my grandmother. “I ‘d like to see myself doing that.”
“Well, then, are we going to maintain ’em?” said Aunt Lois; “because I want to know definitely what this is coming to.”
“We ‘ll see,” said my grandmother. “It ‘s our business to do good as we have opportunity. We must n’t reap the corners of our fields, nor beat off all our olive-berries, but leave ’em for the poor, the fatherless, and the widow, Scripture says.”
“Well, I guess our olive-berries are pretty well beaten off now, and our fields reaped, corners and all,” said Lois; “and I don’t see why we needs must intermeddle with children that the selectmen in Needmore have put out.”
Now Aunt Lois was a first-rate belligerent power in our family circle, and in many cases carried all before her; but my grandmother always bore her down on questions like these, and it was agreed, nem. con., that the expedition to look up the wanderers should take place the next morning.
The matter being thus arranged, Sam settled back with a jocular freedom of manner, surveying the fire, and flopping his hands over it, smiling to himself in a manner that made it evident that he had a further reserve of something on his mind to communicate. “This ‘ere Miss Sphyxy Smith’s a rich old gal, and ‘mazin’ smart to work,” he began. “Tell you, she holds all she gets. Old Sol, he told me a story ’bout her that was a pretty good un.”
“What was it?” said my grandmother.
“Wal, ye see, you ‘member old Parson Jeduthen Kendall, that lives up in Stonytown: he lost his wife a year ago last Thanksgiving, and he thought ‘t was about time he hed another; so he comes down and consults our Parson Lothrop. Says he, ‘I want a good, smart, neat, economical woman, with a good property. I don’t care nothin’ about her bein’ handsome. In fact, I ain’t particular about anything else,’ says he. Wal, Parson Lothrop, says he, ‘I think, if that ‘s the case, I know jest the woman to suit ye. She owns a clear, handsome property, and she ‘s neat and economical; but she ‘s no beauty.’ ‘O, beauty is nothin’ to me,’ says Parson Kendall; and so he took the direction. Wal, one day he hitched up his old one-hoss shay, and kind o’ brushed up, and started off a courtin’. Wal, the parson he come to the house, and he was tickled to pieces with the looks o’ things outside, ’cause the house is all well shingled and painted, and there ain’t a picket loose nor a nail wantin’ nowhere. ‘This ‘ere ‘s the woman for me,’ says Parson Kendall. So he goes up and raps hard on the front door with his whip-handle. Wal, you see, Miss Sphyxy, she was jest goin’ out to help get in her hay. She had on a pair o’ clompin’ cowhide boots, and a pitchfork in her hand, just goin’ out when she heard the rap. So she come jest as she was to the front door. Now you know Parson Kendall’s a little midget of a man; but he stood there on the step kind o’ smilin’ and genteel, lickin’ his lips and lookin’ so agreeable! Wal, the front door kind o’ stuck, – front doors gen’ally do, ye know, ’cause they ain’t opened very often, – and Miss Sphyxy, she had to pull and haul and put to all her strength, and finally it come open with a bang, and she ‘peared to the parson, pitchfork and all, sort o’ frownin’ like.
“‘What do you want?’ says she; for you see Miss Sphyxy ain’t no ways tender to the men.
“‘I want to see Miss Asphyxia Smith,’ says he, very civil; thinking she was the hired gal.
“‘I ‘m Miss Asphyxia Smith,’ says she. ‘What do you want o’ me?’
“Parson Kendall, he jest took one good look on her, from top to toe. ‘Nothin’,’ says he, and turned right round and went down the steps like lightnin’.
“The way she banged that ‘ere door, Sol said, was lively. He jumped into his shay, and I tell you his old hoss was waked up for once. The way that ‘ere old shay spun and bounced was a sight. And when he come to Oldtown, Parson Lothrop was walkin’ out in his wig and cocked hat and ruffles, as serene as a pictur, and he took off his hat to him as handsome as a gentleman could; but Parson Kendall, he driv right by and never bowed. He was awful riled, Parson Kendall was; but he could n’t say nothin’, ’cause he ‘d got all he asked for. But the story got out, and Sol and the men heard it, and you ‘d a thought they ‘d never be done laughin’ about it. Sol says, if he was to be hung for it the next minute, he never can help laughin’ when he thinks how kind o’ scared little Parson Kendall looked when Miss Asphyxia ‘peared to him on the doorstep.”
“Well, well, well,” said Uncle Eliakim, “If we are going to Dench house to-morrow morning, you must all be up early for I mean to be off by daylight; and we ‘d better all go to bed.” With which remark he fluttered out of the kitchen.
“‘Liakim ‘ll be along here by ten o’clock to-morrow,” said my grandfather, quietly. “I don’t suppose he ‘s promised more than forty people to do something for them to-morrow morning.”
“Yes,” said Aunt Lois, “and the linch-pins of the wagon are probably lost, and the tire of the wheels sprung; but he ‘ll be up before daylight, and maybe get along some time in the forenoon.”
CHAPTER XVII.
THE VISIT TO THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
MY story now approaches a point in which I am soon to meet and begin to feel the force of a train of circumstances which ruled and shaped my whole life. That I had been hitherto a somewhat exceptional child may perhaps have been made apparent in the incidents I have narrated. I was not, in fact, in the least like what an average healthy boy ought to be. My brother Bill was exactly that, and nothing more. He was a good, growing, well-limbed, comfortably disposed animal, reasonably docile, and capable, under fair government, of being made to go exactly in any paths his elders chose to mark out for him.
It had been settled, the night after my father’s funeral, that my Uncle Jacob was to have him for a farm-boy, to work in the summer on the farm, and to pick up his education as he might at the district school in the winter season; and thus my mother was relieved of the burden of his support, and Aunt Lois of his superfluous activity in our home department. To me the loss was a small one; for except a very slight sympathy of souls in the matter of fish-hooks and popguns, there was scarcely a single feeling that we had in common. I had a perfect passion for books, and he had a solid and well-pronounced horror of them, which seems to belong to the nature of a growing boy. I could read, as by a kind of preternatural instinct, as soon as I could walk; and reading was with me at ten years a devouring passion. No matter what the book was that was left in my vicinity, I read it as by an irresistible fascination. To be sure, I preferred stories, history, and lively narrative, where such material was to be had; but the passion for reading was like hunger, – it must be fed, and, in the absence of palatable food, preyed upon what it could find. So it came to pass that theological tracts, treatises on agriculture, old sermons, – anything, in short, that could be raked out of the barrels and boxes in my grandfather’s garret, – would hold me absorbed in some shady nook of the house when I ought to have been out playing as a proper boy should. I did not, of course, understand the half of what I read, and miscalled the words to myself in a way that would have been laughable had anybody heard me but the strange, unknown sounds stimulated vague and dreamy images in my mind, which were continually seething, changing, and interweaving, like fog-wreaths by moonlight, and formed a phantasmagoria in which I took a quaint and solemn delight.
But there was one peculiarity of my childhood which I have hesitated with an odd sort of reluctance to speak of, and yet which so powerfully influenced and determined my life, and that of all with whom I was connected, that it must find some place here. I was, as I said, dreamy and imaginative, with a mind full of vague yearnings. But beside that, through an extreme delicacy of nervous organization; my childish steps were surrounded by a species of vision or apparition so clear and distinct that I often found great difficulty in discriminating between the forms of real life and these shifting shapes, that had every appearance of reality, except that they dissolved at the touch. All my favorite haunts had their particular shapes and forms, which it afforded me infinite amusement to watch in their varying movements.
Particularly at night, after I had gone to bed and the candle was removed from my room, the whole atmosphere around my bed seemed like that which Raphael has shadowed forth around his Madonna San Sisto, – a palpitating crowd of faces and forms changing in dim and gliding quietude. I have often wondered whether any personal experience similar to mine suggested to the artist this living background to his picture. For the most part, these phantasms were agreeable to me, and filled me with a dreamy delight. Sometimes distinct scenes or visions would rise before my mind, in which I seemed to look far beyond the walls of the house, and to see things passing wherein were several actors. I remember one of these, which I saw very often, representing a venerable old white-headed man playing on a violin. He was always accompanied by a tall, majestic woman, dressed in a strange, outlandish costume, in which I particularly remarked a high fur cap of a peculiar form. As he played, the woman appeared to dance in time to the music. Another scene which frequently presented itself to my eyes was that of a green meadow by the side of a lake of very calm water. From a grove on one side of the lake would issue a miniature form of a woman clothed in white, with a wide golden girdle around her waist, and long, black hair hanging down to her middle, which she constantly smoothed down with both her hands with a gentle, rhythmical movement, as she approached me. At a certain point of approach, she always turned her back, and began a rapid retreat into the grove; and invariably as she turned there appeared behind her the image of a little misshapen dwarf, who pattered after her with ridiculous movements which always made me laugh. Night after night, during a certain year of my life, this pantomime never failed to follow the extinguishment of the candle, and it was to me a never-failing source of delight. One thing was peculiar about these forms, – they appeared to cause a vibration of the great central nerves of the body, as when a harp-string is struck. So I could feel in myself the jar of the dwarf’s pattering feet, the soft, rhythmic movement of the little woman stroking down her long hair, the vibrations of the violin, and the steps of the dancing old woman. Nobody knew of this still and hidden world of pleasure which was thus nightly open to me. My mother used often to wonder, when, hours after she put me to bed, she would find me lying perfectly quiet, with my eyes widely and calmly open. Once or twice I undertook to tell her what I saw, but was hushed up with, “Nonsense, child! there has n’t been anybody in the room; you should n’t talk so.”
The one thing that was held above all things sacred and inviolable in a child’s education in those old Puritan days was to form habits of truth. Every statement received an immediate and unceremonious sifting, and anything that looked in the least like a departure from actual verity was met with prompt and stringent discouragement. When my mother repeated before Aunt Lois some of my strange sayings, she was met with the downright declaration: “That child will be an awful liar, Susy, if you don’t keep a strict lookout on him. Don’t you let him tell you any stories like that.”
So I early learned silence; but my own confidence in the reality of my secondary world was not a whit diminished. Like Galileo, who said, “It does move, nevertheless,” so I, when I once had the candle out at night, snapped my fingers mentally at Aunt Lois, and enjoyed my vision.
One peculiarity of these appearances was that certain of them seemed like a sort of genii loci, – shapes belonging to certain places. The apparition of the fairy woman with the golden girdle only appeared in a certain room where I slept one year, and which had across one of its corners a sort of closet called a buffet. From this buffet the vision took its rise, and when my parents moved to another house it never appeared again.
A similar event in my shadow-world had marked our coming to my grandmother’s to live. The old violin-player and his wife had for a long time been my nightly entertainers; but the first night after we were established in the apartment given up to our use by Aunt Lois, I saw them enter as they usually did, seeming to come right through the wall of the room. They, however, surveyed the apartment with a sort of confused, discontented movement, and seemed to talk to each other with their backs to me; finally I heard the old woman say, “We can’t stay here,” and immediately I saw them passing through the wall of the house. I saw after them as clearly as if the wall had dissolved and given my eyes the vision of all out of doors. They went to my grandfather’s wood-pile and looked irresolutely round; finally they mounted on the pile, and seemed to sink gradually through it and disappear, and I never saw them afterwards.
But another of the companions of my solitude was more constant to me. This was the form of a young boy of about my own age, who for a year past had frequently come to me at night, and seemed to look lovingly upon me, and with whom I used to have a sort of social communion, without words, in a manner which seemed to me far more perfect than human language. I thought to him, and in return I received silent demonstrations of sympathy and fellowship from him. I called him Harvey, and used, as I lay looking in his face, mentally to tell him many things about the books I read, the games I played, and the childish joys and griefs I had; and in return he seemed to express affection and sympathy by a strange communication, as lovers sometimes talk to each other by distant glances.
Attendant on all these exceptional experiences, perhaps resulting from them, was a peculiar manner of viewing the human beings by whom I was surrounded. It is common now-a-days to speak of the sphere or emanation that surrounds a person. To my childish mind there was a vivid perception of something of this nature with regard to every one whom I approached. There were people for whom I had a violent and instinctive aversion, whose presence in the room gave me a pain so positive that it seemed almost physical, and others, again, to whom I was strongly attracted, and whose presence near me filled me with agreeable sensations, of which I could give no very definite account. For this reason, I suppose, the judgments which different people formed concerning me varied extremely. Miss Mehitable, for example, by whom I was strongly attracted, thought me one of the most amiable of boys; while my poor Aunt Lois was certain I was one of the most trying children that ever were born.
My poor mother! I surely loved her, and yet her deficient vital force, her continual sadness and discouragement, acted on my nerves as a constant weight and distress, against which I blindly and instinctively struggled; while Aunt Lois’s very footstep on the stair seemed to rouse every nerve of combativeness in my little body into a state of bristling tension. I remember that when I was about six or sever years old I had the scarlet-fever, and Aunt Lois, who was a most rampant and energetic sick-nurse, undertook to watch with me; but my cries and resistance were so terrible that I was thought to be going deranged. Finally the matter was adjusted by Sam Lawson’s offering to take the place, upon which I became perfectly tranquil, and resigned myself into his hands with the greatest composure and decorum. Sam was to me, during my childhood, a guide, philosopher, and friend. The lazy, easy, indefinite atmosphere of being that surrounded him was to me like the haze of Indian summer over a landscape, and I delighted to bask in it. Nothing about him was any more fixed than the wavering shadows of clouds; he was a boundless world of narrative and dreamy suggestion, tending to no point and having no end, and in it I delighted. Sam, besides, had a partiality for all those haunts in which I took pleasure. Near our house was the old town burying-ground, where reposed the bones of generations of Indian sachems, elders, pastors, and teachers, converted from the wild forests, who, Christianized and churched, died in the faith, and were gathered into Christian burial. On its green hillocks I loved to sit and watch and dream long after sundown or moonrise, and fancy I saw bands of wavering shapes, and hope that some one out of the crowd might have a smile of recognition or spiritual word for me.
My mother and grandmother and Aunt Lois were horror-stricken by such propensities, indicating neither more nor less than indefinite coughs and colds, with early death in the rear; and however much in the way a little boy always seemed in those times in the active paths of his elders, yet it was still esteemed a primary duty to keep him in the world. “Horace, what do you go and sit in the graveyard for?” would my grandmother say. “I should think you ‘d be ‘fraid something would ‘pear to you.”
“I want something to appear, grandmother.”