All began at once on the subject of help, and were as suddenly quenched by the reappearance of Temperance, with fresh waffles, and a dish of apple-fritters.
"Do eat these if you can, ladies; the apples are only russets, and they are kinder dead for flavoring. I see you don"t eat a mite; I expected you could not; it"s poor trash." And she pa.s.sed the cake along, everybody taking a piece of each kind.
After drinking a good many cups of tea, and praising it, their asceticism gave way to its social effect, and they began to gossip, ridiculing their neighbors, and occasionally launching innuendoes against their absent lords. It is well known that when women meet together they do not discuss their rights, but take them, in revealing the little weaknesses and peculiarities of their husbands. The worst wife-driver would be confounded at the air of easy superiority a.s.sumed on these occasions by the meekest and most unsuspicious of her s.e.x.
Insinuations of So and So"s not being any better than she should be pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth, with a glance at me; and I heard the proverb of "Little pitchers," when mother rose suddenly from the table, and led the way to the parlor.
"Where is Veronica?" asked Temperance, who was piling the debris of the feast. "She has been in mischief, I"ll warrant; find her, Ca.s.sandra."
She was upstairs putting away her b.u.t.terfly, in the leaves of her little Bible. She came down with me, and Temperance coaxed her to eat her supper, by vowing that she should be sick abed, unless she liked her fritters and waffles. I thought of my mice, while making a desultory meal standing, and went to look at them; they were gone.
Wondering if Temperance had thrown the creatures away, I remembered that I had been foolish enough to tell Veronica, and rushed back to her. When she saw me, she raised a saucer to her face, pretending to drink from it.
"Verry, where are the mice?"
"Are they gone?"
"Tell me."
"What will you do if I don"t?"
"I know," and I flew upstairs, tore the poor b.u.t.terfly from between the leaves of the Bible, crushed it in my hand, and brought it down to her. She did not cry when she saw it, but choked a little, and turned away her head.
It was now dark, and hearing a bustle in the entry I looked out, and saw several staid men slowly rubbing their feet on the door-mat; the husbands had come to escort their wives home, and by nine o"clock they all went. Veronica and I stayed by the door after they had gone.
"Look at Mrs. Dexter," she said; "I put the mice in her workbag."
I burst into a laugh, which she joined in presently.
"I am sorry about the b.u.t.terfly, Verry." And I attempted to take her hand, but she pushed me away, and marched off whistling.
A few days after this, sitting near the window at twilight, intent upon a picture in a book of travels, of a Hindoo swinging from a high pole with hooks in his flesh, and trying to imagine how much it hurt him, my attention was arrested by a mention of my name in a conversation held between mother and Mr. Park, one of the neighbors.
He occasionally spent an evening at our house, pa.s.sing it in polemical discussion, revising the prayers and exhortations which he made at conference meetings. The good man was a little vain of having the formulas of his creed at his tongue"s end. She sometimes lot these thread of his discourse, but argued also as if to convince herself that she could rightly distinguish between Truth and Illusion, but never discussed religious topics with father. Like all the Morgesons, he was Orthodox, accepting what had been provided by others for his spiritual accommodation. He thought it well that existing Inst.i.tutions should not be disturbed. "Something worse might be established instead." His turn of mind, in short, was not Evangelical.
"Are the Hindoos in earnest, mother?" and I thrust the picture before her. She warned me off.
"Do you think, Mr. Park, that Ca.s.sandra can understand the law of transgression?"
An acute perception that it was in my power to escape a moral penalty, by willful ignorance, was revealed to me, that I could continue the privilege of sinning with impunity. His answer was complicated, and he quoted several pa.s.sages from the Scriptures. Presently he began to sing, and I grew lonesome; the life within me seemed a black cave.
"_Our nature"s totally depraved-- The heart a sink of sin; Without a change we can"t be saved, Ye must be born again_."
Temperance opened the door. "Is Veronica going to bed to-night?" she asked.
CHAPTER V.
The next September we moved. Our new house was large and handsome. On the south side there was nothing between it and the sea, except a few feet of sand. No tree or shrub intercepted the view. To the eastward a promontory of rocks jutted into the sea, serving as a pier against the wash of the tide, and adding a picturesqueness to the curve of the beach. On the north side flourished an orchard, which was planted by Grandfather Locke. Looking over the tree-tops from the upper north windows, one would have had no suspicion of being in the neighborhood of the sea. From these windows, in winter, we saw the nimbus of the Northern Light. The darkness of our sky, the stillness of the night, mysteriously reflected the perpetual condition of its own solitary world. In summer ragged white clouds rose above the horizon, as if they had been torn from the sky of an underworld, to sail up the blue heaven, languish away, or turn livid with thunder, and roll off seaward. Between the orchard and the house a lawn sloped easterly to the border of a brook, which straggled behind the outhouses into a meadow, and finally lost itself among the rocks on the sh.o.r.e. Up by the lawn a willow hung over it, and its outer bank was fringed by the tangled wild-grape, sweet-briar, and alder bushes. The premises, except on the seaside, were enclosed by a high wall of rough granite.
No houses were near us, on either side of the sh.o.r.e; up the north road they were scattered at intervals.
Mother said I must be considered a young lady, and should have my own room. Veronica was to have one opposite, divided from it by a wide pa.s.sage. This pa.s.sage extended beyond the angle of the stairway, and was cut off by a gla.s.s door. A wall ran across the lower end of the pa.s.sage; half the house was beyond its other side, so that when the door was fastened, Veronica and myself were in a cul-de-sac.
The establishment was put on a larger footing. Mrs. Hepsey Curtis was installed mistress of the kitchen. Temperance declared that she could not stand it; that she wasn"t a n.i.g.g.e.r; that she must go, but she had no home, and no friends--nothing but a wood lot, which was left her by her father the miller. As the trees thereon grew, promising to make timber, its value increased; at present her income was limited to the profit from the annual sale of a cord or two of wood. So she staid on, in spite of Hepsey. There were also two men for the garden and stable.
A boy was always attached to the house; not the same boy, but a Boy dynasty, for as soon as one went another came, who ate a great deal--a crime in Hepsey"s eyes--and whose general duty was to carry armfuls of wood, pails of milk, or swill, and to shut doors.
We had many visitors. Though father had no time to devote to guests, he was continually inviting people for us to entertain, and his invitations were taken as a matter of course, and finally for granted.
A rich Morgeson was a new feature in the family annals, and distant relations improved the advantage offered them by coming to spend the summer with us, because their own houses were too hot, or the winter, because they were too cold! Infirm old ladies, who were not related to us, but who had nowhere else to visit, came. As his business extended, our visiting list extended. The captains of his ships whose homes were elsewhere brought their wives to be inconsolable with us after their departure on their voyages. We had ministers often, who always quarter at the best houses, and chance visitors to dinner and supper, who made our house a way-station. There was but small opportunity to cultivate family affinities; they were forever disturbed. Somebody was always sitting in the laps of our Lares and Penates. Another cla.s.s of visitors deserving notice were those who preferred to occupy the kitchen and back chambers, humbly proud and bashfully arrogant people, who kept their hats and bonnets by them, and small bundles, to delude themselves and us with the idea that they "had not come to stay, and had no occasion for any attention." These people criticised us with insinuating severity, and proposed amendments with unrelenting affability. To this cla.s.s Veronica was most attracted--it repelled me; consequently she was petted, and I was amiably sneered at.
This period of our family life has left small impression of dramatic interest. There was no development of the sentiments, no betrayal of the fluctuations of the pa.s.sions which must have existed. There was no accident to reveal, no coincidence to surprise us. Hidden among the Powers That Be, which rule New England, lurks the Deity of the Illicit. This Deity never obtained sovereignty in the atmosphere where the Morgesons lived. Instead of the impression which my after-experience suggests to me to seek, I recall arrivals and departures, an eternal smell of cookery, a perpetual changing of beds, and the small talk of vacant minds.
Despite the rigors of Hepsey in the kitchen, and the careful supervision of Temperance, there was little systematic housekeeping.
Mother had severe turns of planning, and making rules, falling upon us in whirlwinds of reform, shortly allowing the band of habit to snap back, and we resumed our former condition. She had no a.s.sistance from father in her ideas of change. It was enough for him to know that he had built a good house to shelter us, and to order the best that could be bought for us to eat and to wear. He liked, when he went where there were fine shops, to buy and bring home handsome shawls, bonnets, and dresses, wholly unsuited in general to the style and taste of each of us, but much handsomer than were needful for Surrey. They answered, however, as patterns for the plainer materials of our neighbors. He also bought books for us, recommended by their covers, or the opinion of the bookseller. His failing was to buy an immense quant.i.ty of everything he fancied.
"I shall never have to buy this thing again," he would say; "let us have enough."
Veronica and I grew up ignorant of practical or economical ways. We never saw money, never went shopping. Mother was indifferent in regard to much of the business of ordinary life which children are taught to understand. Father and mother both stopped at the same point with us, but for a different reason; father, because he saw nothing beyond the material, and mother, because her spiritual insight was confused and perplexing. But whatever a household may be, the Destinies spin the web to their will, put of the threads which drop hither and thither, floating in its atmosphere, white, black, or gray.
From the time we moved, however, we were a stirring, cheerful family, independent of each other, but spite of our desultory tastes, mutual habits were formed. When the want of society was felt, we sought the dining-room, sure of meeting others with the same want. This room was large and central, connecting with the halls, kitchen, and mother"s room. It was a caravansary where people dropped in and out on their way to some other place. Our most public moments were during meal-time. It was known that father was at home at breakfast and supper, and could be consulted. As he was away at our noonday dinner, generally we were the least disturbed then, and it was a lawless, irregular, and unceremonious affair. Mother establisher her arm-chair here, and a stand for her workbasket. Hepsey and Temperance were at hand, the men came for orders, and it was convenient for the boy to transmit the local intelligence it was his vocation to collect. The windows commanded a view of the sea, the best in the house. This prospect served mother for exercise. Her eyes roved over it when she wanted a little out-of-doors life. If she desired more variety, which was seldom, she went to the kitchen. After we moved she grew averse to leaving the house, except to go to church. She never quitted the dining-room after our supper till bedtime, because father rarely came from Milford, where he went on bank days, and indeed almost every other day, till late, and she liked to be by him while he ate his supper and smoked a cigar. All except Veronica frequented this room; but she was not missed or inquired for. She liked the parlor, because the piano was there. As soon as father had bought it she astonished us by a persistent fingering of the keys, which produced a feeble melody.
She soon played all the airs she had heard. When I saw what she could do, I refused to take music lessons, for while I was trying to learn "The White c.o.c.kade," she pushed me away, played it, and made variations upon it. I pounded the keys with my fist, by way of a farewell, and told her she should have the piano for her own.
CHAPTER VI.
One winter morning before daylight, Veronica came to my room, and asked me if I had heard any walking about the house during the night.
She had, and was going to inquire about it. She soon returned with, "You have a brother. Temperance says my nose is broken. He will be like you, I suppose, and have everything he asks for. I don"t care for him; but," crying out with pa.s.sion, "get up. Mother wants to see _you_, I know."
I dressed quickly, and went downstairs with a feeling of indignation that such an event should have happened without my knowledge.
There was an unwonted hush. A bright fire was burning on the dining-room hearth, the lamps were still lighted, and father was by the fire, smoking in a meditative manner. He put out his hand, which I did not take, and said, "Do you like his name--Arthur?"
"Yes," I mumbled, as I pa.s.sed him, and went to the kitchen, where Hepsey and Temperance were superintending the steeping of certain aromatic herbs, which stood round the fire in silver porringers and earthen pitchers.
"Another Morgeson"s come," said Temperance. "There"s enough of them, such as they are--not but what they are good enough," correcting herself hastily.
"Go into your mother"s room, softly," said Hepsey, rubbing her fingers against her thumb--her habit when she was in a tranquil frame of mind.
"_You_ are mighty glad, Hepsey," said Temperance.
"Locke Morgeson ought to have a son," she replied, "to leave his money to."
"I vow," answered Temperance, "girls are thought nothing of in this "ligous section; they may go to the poor house, as long as the sons have plenty."