HOW THE BLACK DOG HAD HIS DAY.
"You've got the black dog on your shoulder, this morning; that's
what's the matter with you," said Wealthy.
This metaphorical black dog meant a bad humor. Eyebright had waked up
cross and irritable. What made her wake up cross I am not wise enough
to explain. The old-fashioned doctors would probably have ascribed it
to indigestion, the new-fashioned ones to nerves or malaria or a
"febrile tendency"; Deacon Bury, I think, would have called it
"Original Sin," and Wealthy, who did not mince matters, dubbed it an
attack of the Old Scratch, which nothing but a sound shaking could
cure. Very likely all these guesses were partly right and all partly
wrong. When our bodies get out of order, our souls are apt to become
disordered too, and at such times there always seem to be little imps
of evil lurking near, ready to seize the chance, rush in, fan the
small embers of discontent to a flame, make cross days crosser, and
turn bad beginnings into worse endings.
The morning's mischances had begun with Eyebright's being late to
breakfast;--a thing which always annoyed her father very much. Knowing
this, she made as much haste as possible, and ran downstairs with her
boots half buttoned, fastening her apron as she went. She was in too
great a hurry to look where she was going, and the result was that
presently she tripped and fell, bumping her head and tearing the skirt
of her frock half across. This was bad luck indeed, for Wealthy, she
knew, would make her darn it as a punishment, and that meant at least
an hour's hard work indoors on one of the loveliest days that ever
shone. She picked herself up and went into the sitting-room, pouting,
and by no means disposed to enjoy the lecture on punctuality, which
papa made haste to give, and which was rather longer and sharper than
it would otherwise have been, because Eyebright looked so very sulky
and obstinate while listening to it.
You will all be shocked at this account, but I am not sorry to show
Eyebright to you on one of her naughty days. All of us have such days
sometimes, and to represent her as possessing no faults would be to
put her at a distance from all of you; in fact, I should not like her
so well myself. She has been pretty good, so far, in this story; but
she was by no means perfect, for which let us be thankful; because a
perfect child would be an unnatural thing, whom none of us could quite
believe in or understand! Eyebright was a dear little girl, and for
all her occasional naughtiness, had plenty of lovable qualities about
her; and I am glad to say she was not often so naughty as on this day.
When a morning begins in this way, every thing seems to go wrong with
us, as if on purpose. It was so with Eyebright. Her mother, who was
very poorly, found fault with her breakfast. She wanted some hotter
tea, and a slice of toast a little browner and cut very thin. These
were simple requests, and on any other day Eyebright would have danced
off gleefully to fulfil them. To-day she was annoyed at having to go,
and moved slowly and reluctantly. She did not say that she felt
waiting on her mother to be a trouble, but her face, and the
expression of her shoulders, and her dull, dawdling movements said it
for her; and poor Mrs. Bright, who was not used to such unwillingness
on the part of her little daughter, felt it so much that she shed a
few tears over the second cup of tea after it was brought. This
dismayed Eyebright, but it also exasperated her. She would not take
any notice, but stood by in silence till her mother had finished, and
then, without a word, carried the tray downstairs. A sort of double
mood was upon her. Down below the anger was a feeling of keen remorse
for what she had done, and a voice inside seemed to say: "Oh dear, how
sorry I am going to be for this by and by!" But she would not let
herself be sorry then, and stifled the voice by saying, half aloud, as
she went along: "I don't care. It's too bad of mother. I wish she
wouldn't."
Wealthy met her at the stair-foot.
"How long you've been!" she said, taking the tray from her.
"I can't be any quicker when I have to keep going for more things,"
said Eyebright.
"Nobody said you could," retorted Wealthy, speaking crossly herself,
because Eyebright's tone was cross. "Mercy on me! How did you tear
your frock like that? You'll have to darn it yourself, you know;
that's the rule. Fetch your work-box as soon as you've done the cups
and saucers."
Eyebright almost replied "I won't," but she did not quite dare, and
walked, without speaking, into the sitting-room, where the table was
made ready for dish-washing, with a tub of hot water, towels, a bit of
soap, and a little mop. Since vacation began, Wealthy had allowed her
to wash the breakfast things on Mondays and Tuesdays, days on which
she herself was particularly busy.
Ordinarily, Eyebright was very proud to be trusted with this little
job. She worked carefully and nicely, and had proved herself capable,
but to-day her fingers seemed all thumbs. She set the cups away
without drying the bottoms, so that they made wet rings on the
shelves; she only half rinsed the teapot, left a bit of soap in its
spout, and ended by breaking a saucer. Wealthy scolded her, she
retorted, and then Wealthy made the speech, which I have quoted, about
the black dog.
Very slowly and unwillingly Eyebright sat down to darn her frock. It
was a long, jagged rent, requiring patience and careful slowness, and
neither good-will nor patience had Eyebright to bring to the task. Her
fingers twitched, she "pshawed," and "oh deared," ran the needle in
and out and in irregularly, jerked the thread, and finally gave a
fretful pull when she came to the end of the first needleful, which
tore a fresh hole in the stuff and puckered all she had darned, so
that it was not fit to be seen. Wealthy looked in just then, and was
scandalized at the condition of the work.
"You can just pick it out from the beginning," she said. "It's a
burning shame that a great girl like you shouldn't know how to do
better. But it's temper--that's what it is. Nothing in the world but
temper, Eyebright. You've been as cross as two sticks all day, Massy
knows for what, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself," whereon she
gave Eyebright a little shake.
The shake was like a match applied to gunpowder. Eyebright flamed into
open revolt.
"Wealthy Ann Judson!" she cried, angrily. "Let me alone. It's all your
fault if I am cross, you treat me so. I won't pick it out. I won't
darn it at all. And I shall just tell my father that you shook me; see
if I don't."
Wealthy's reply was a sound box on the ear. Eyebright's naughtiness
certainly deserved punishment, but it was hardly wise or right of
Wealthy to administer it, or to do it thus. She was far too angry to
think of that, however.
"That's what you want," said Wealthy, "and you'd be a better girl if
you got it oftener." Then she marched out of the room, leaving
Eyebright in a fury.
"I won't bear it! I won't bear it!" she exclaimed, bursting into
tears. "Everybody is cruel, cruel! I'll run away! I'll not stay in
this house another minute--not another minute," and, catching up her
sun-bonnet, she darted through the hall and was out of the gate and
down the street in a flash. Wealthy was in the kitchen, her father was
out, no one saw her go. Rosy and Tom Bury, who were swinging on their
gate, called to her as she passed, but their gay voices jarred on her
ear, and she paid no attention to the call.
Tunxet village was built upon a sloping hill whose top was crowned
with woods. To reach these woods, Eyebright had only to climb two
stone walls and cross a field and a pasture, and as they seemed just
then the most desirable refuge possible, she made haste to do so. She
had always had a peculiar feeling for woods, a feeling made up of
terror and attraction. They were associated in her mind with fairies
and with robbers, with lost children, redbreasts, Robin Hood and his
merry men; and she was by turns eager and shy at the idea of exploring
their depths, according to which of these images happened to be
uppermost in her ideas. To-day she thought neither of Robin Hood nor
the fairies. The wood was only a place where she could hide away and
cry and be unseen, and she plunged in without a thought of fear.
In and in she went, over stones and beds of moss, and regiments of
tall brakes, which bowed and rose as she forced her way past their
stems, and saluted her with wafts of woodsy fragrance, half bitter,
half sweet, but altogether pleasant. There was something soothing in
the shade and cool quiet of the place. It fell like dew on her hot
mood, and presently her anger changed to grief, she knew not why. Her
eyes filled with tears. She sat down on a stone all brown with soft
mosses, and began to cry, softly at first, then loudly and more loud,
not taking any pains to cry quietly, but with hard sobs and great
gulps which echoed back in an odd way from the wood. It seemed a
relief at first to make as much noise as she liked with her crying,
and to know that there was no one to hear or be annoyed. It was
pleasant, too, to be able to talk out loud as well as to cry.
"They are _so_ unkind to me," she wailed, "so very unkind. Wealthy
never slapped me before. She has no right to slap me. I'll never kiss
Wealthy again,--never. O-h, she was so unkind"--
"O-h!" echoed back the wood in a hollow tone. Eyebright jumped.
"It's like a voice," she thought. "I'll go somewhere else. It isn't
nice just here. I don't like it."
So she went back a little way to the edge of the forest, where the
trees were less thick, and between their stems she could see the
village below. Here she felt safer than she had been when in the thick
wood. She threw herself down in a comfortable hollow at the foot of an
oak, and, half sitting, half lying, began to think over her wrongs.
"I guess if I was dead they'd be sorry," she reflected. "They'd hunt
and hunt for me, and not know where I was. And at last they'd come up
here, and find me dead, with a tear on my cheek, and then they'd know
how badly they had made me feel, and their hearts would nearly break.
I don't believe father would ever smile again. He'd be like the king
in the 'Second Reader':--
'But waves went o'er his son's bright hair,
He never smiled again.'
Only, I'm a daughter, and it would be leaves and not waves! Mother,
she'd cry and cry, and as for that old Wealthy"--but Eyebright felt it
difficult to imagine what Wealthy would do under these circumstances.
Her thoughts drifted another way.
"I might go into a convent instead. That would be better, I guess. I'd
be a novice first, with a white veil and a cross and a rosary, and I'd
look so sweet and holy that all the other children,--no, there
wouldn't be any other children,--never mind!--I'd be lovely, anyhow.
But I'd be a Protestant always! I wouldn't want to be a Catholic and
have to kiss the Pope's old toe all the time! Then by and by I should
take that awful black veil. Then I could never come out any more--not
ever! And I should kneel in the chapel all the time as motionless as a
marble figure. That would be beautiful." Eyebright had never been able
to sit still for half an hour together in her life, but that made no
difference in her enjoyment of this idea. "The abbess will be
beautiful, too, but stern and unrelenting, and she'll say 'Daughters'
when she speaks to us nuns, and we shall say 'Holy Mother' when we
speak to her. It'll be real nice. We shan't have to do any darning,
but just embroidery in our cells and wax flowers. Wealthy'll want to
come in and see me, I know, but I shall just tell the porter that I
don't want her, not ever. 'She's a heretic,' I shall say to the
porter, and he'll lock the door the minute he sees her coming. Then
she'll be mad! The Abbess and _Mere Genefride_"--Eyebright had just
read for the fourth time Mrs. Sherwood's exciting novel called "The
Nun," so her imaginary convent was modelled exactly after the one
there described--"the abbess and _Mere Genefride_ will always be
spying about and listening in the passage to hear what we say, when we
sit in our cells embroidering and telling secrets, but me and my
Pauline--no, I won't call her Pauline--Rosalba--sister Rosalba--that
shall be her name--we'll speak so low that she can't hear a word. Then
we shall suspect that something strange is taking place down in the
cellar,--I mean the dungeons,--and we'll steal down and listen when
the abbess and the bishop and all of them are trying the sister, who
has a bible tied on her leg!" Here Eyebright gave an enormous yawn.
"And--if--the--mob--does come--Wealthy--will be sure to--sure to--"
But of what we shall never know, for at this precise moment Eyebright
fell asleep.
[Illustration: ASLEEP IN THE WOODS.]
She must have slept a long time, for when she waked the sun had
changed his place in the sky, and was shining on the western side of
the village houses. Had some good angel passed by, lifted the "black
dog" from her shoulder, and swept from her mind all its foolish and
angry thoughts, while she dreamed there under the trees? For behold!
matters and things now looked differently to her, and, instead of
blaming other people and thinking hard things of them, she began to
blame herself.
"How naughty I was," she thought, "to be so cross with poor mamma,
just because she wanted another cup of tea! Oh dear, and I made her
cry! I know it was me--just because I looked so cross. How horrid I
always am! And I was cross to papa, too, and put my lip out at him.
How could I do so? What made me? Wealthy hadn't any business to slap
me, though--
"But then I was pretty ugly to Wealthy," she went on, her conscience
telling her the truth at last, as consciences will, if allowed. "I
just tried to provoke her--and I called her Wealthy Ann Judson! That
always makes her mad. She never slapped me before not since I was a
little mite of a girl. Oh, dear! And only yesterday she washed all
Genevieve's dolly things--her blue muslin, and her overskirt, and
all--and she said she didn't mind trouble when it was for my doll.
She's very good to me sometimes. Almost always she's good. Oh, I
oughtn't to have spoken so to Wealthy--I oughtn't--I oughtn't!" And
Eyebright began to cry afresh; not angry tears this time, but bright,
healthful drops of repentance, which cleansed and refreshed her soul.
"I'll go right home now and tell her I am sorry," she said, impetuously;
and, jumping from her seat, she ran straight down the hill and across
the field, eager to make her confession and to be forgiven. Eyebright's
fits of temper, big and little, usually ended in this way. She had none
of that dislike of asking pardon with which some persons are afflicted.
To her it was a relief--a thing to be met and gone through with for the
sake of the cheer, the blue-sky-in-the-heart, which lay on the other
side of it, and the peace which was sure to follow, when once the
"forgive me" was spoken.
In at the kitchen door she dashed. Wealthy, who was ironing, with a
worried frown on her brow, started and exclaimed at the sight of
Eyebright, and sat suddenly down on a chair. Before she could speak,
Eyebright's arms were round her neck.
"I was real horrid and wicked this morning," she cried. "Please
forgive me, Wealthy. I won't be so naughty again--not ever. Oh, don't,
don't!" for, to her dismay, Wealthy, the grim, broke down and began to
cry. This was really dreadful. Eyebright stared a moment; then her own
eyes filled, and she cried, too.
"What a fool I be!" said Wealthy, dashing the drops from her eyes.
"There, Eyebright, there! Hush, dear; we won't say any more about it."
And she kissed Eyebright, for perhaps the tenth time in her life.
Kisses were rare things, indeed, with Wealthy.
"Where have you been?" she asked presently. "It's four o'clock and
after. Did you know that? Have you had any dinner?"
"No, but I don't want any, Wealthy. I've been in the woods on top of
the hill. I ran away and sat there, and I guess I fell asleep," said
Eyebright, hanging her head.
"Well, your pa didn't come home to dinner, for a wonder; I reckon he
was kept to the mill; so we hadn't much cooked. I took your ma's up to
her; but I never let on that I didn't know where you was, for fear of
worrying her. She has worried a good lot any way. Here, let me brush
your hair a little, and then you'd better run upstairs and make her
mind easy. I'll have something for you to eat when you come down."
Eyebright's heart smote her afresh when she saw her mother's pale,
anxious face.
"You've been out so long," she said. "I asked Wealthy, and she said
she guessed you were playing somewhere, and didn't know how the time
went. I was afraid you felt sick, and she was keeping it from me. It
is so bad to have things kept from me; nothing annoys me so much. And
you didn't look well at breakfast. Are you sick, Eyebright?"
"No, mamma, not a bit. But I have been naughty--very naughty indeed,
mamma; and I ran away."
Then she climbed up on the bed beside her mother, and told the story
of the morning, keeping nothing back--all her hard feelings and anger
at everybody, and her thoughts about dying, and about becoming a nun.
Her mother held her hand very tight indeed when she reached this last
part of the confession. The idea of the wood, also, was terrible to
the poor lady. She declared that she shouldn't sleep a wink all night
for thinking about it.
"It wasn't a dangerous wood at all," explained Eyebright. "There
wasn't any thing there that could hurt me. Really there wasn't, mamma.
Nothing but trees, and stones, and ferns, and old tumbled-down trunks
covered with tiny-weeny mosses,--all green and brown and red, and some
perfectly white,--so pretty. I wish I had brought you some, mamma."
"Woods are never safe," declared Mrs. Bright, "what with snakes, and
tramps, and wildcats, and getting lost, and other dreadful things, I
hardly take up a paper without seeing something or other bad in it
which has happened in a wood. You must never go there alone again,
Eyebright. Promise me that you won't."
Eyebright promised. She petted and comforted her mother, kissing her
over and over again, as if to make up for the anxiety she had caused
her, and for the cross words and looks of the morning. The sad thing
is, that no one ever does make up. All the sweet words and kind acts
of a lifetime cannot undo the fact that once--one bad day far away
behind us--we were unkind and gave pain to some one whom we love. Even
their forgiveness cannot undo it. How I wish we could remember this
always before we say the words which we afterward are so sorry for,
and thus save our memories from the burden of a sad load of regret and
repentance!
When Eyebright went downstairs, she found a white napkin, her favorite
mug filled with milk, a plateful of bread and butter and cold lamb,
and a large pickled peach, awaiting her on the kitchen table. Wealthy
hovered about as she took her seat, and seemed to have a disposition
to pat Eyebright's shoulder a good deal, and to stroke her hair.
Wealthy, too, had undergone the repentance which follows wrath. Her
morning, I imagine, had been even more unpleasant than Eyebright's,
for she had spent it over a hot ironing table, and had not had the
refreshment of running away into the woods.
"It's so queer," said Eyebright, with her mouth full of bread and
butter. "I didn't know I was hungry a bit, but I am as hungry as can
be. Every thing tastes so good, Wealthy."
"That's right," replied Wealthy, who was a little upset, and tearful
still. "A good appetite's a good thing,--next best to a good
conscience, I think."
Eyebright's spirits were mounting as rapidly as quicksilver. Bessie
Mather appeared at the gate as she finished her last mouthful, and,
giving Wealthy a great hug, Eyebright ran out to meet her, with a
lightness and gayety of heart which surprised even herself. The blue
sky seemed bluer than ever before, the grass greener, the sunshine was
like yellow gold. Every little thing that happened made her laugh. It
was as though a black cloud had been rolled away from between her and
the light.
"I wonder what makes me so particularly happy to-night," she thought,
as she sat on the steps waiting for papa, after Bessie was gone. "It's
queer that I should, when I've been so naughty--and all."
But it was not queer, though Eyebright felt it so. The world never
looks so fair and bright as to eyes newly washed by tears of sorrow
for faults forgiven; and hearts which are emptied of unkind feelings
grow light at once, as if happiness were the rule of the world and not
the exception.