MISS EMILY
Miss Roxy Toothache was seated by the window of the little keeping-room
where Miss Emily Sewell sat on every-day occasions. Around her were the
insignia of her power and sway. Her big tailor's goose was heating
between Miss Emily's bright brass fire-irons; her great pin-cushion was
by her side, bristling with pins of all sizes, and with broken needles
thriftily made into pins by heads of red sealing-wax, and with needles
threaded with all varieties of cotton, silk, and linen; her scissors
hung martially by her side; her black bombazette work-apron was on; and
the expression of her iron features was that of deep responsibility, for
she was making the minister a new Sunday vest!
The good soul looks not a day older than when we left her, ten years
ago. Like the gray, weather-beaten rocks of her native shore, her strong
features had an unchangeable identity beyond that of anything fair and
blooming. There was of course no chance for a gray streak in her stiff,
uncompromising mohair frisette, which still pushed up her cap-border
bristlingly as of old, and the clear, high winds and bracing atmosphere
of that rough coast kept her in an admirable state of preservation.
Miss Emily had now and then a white hair among her soft, pretty brown
ones, and looked a little thinner; but the round, bright spot of bloom
on each cheek was there just as of yore,--and just as of yore she was
thinking of her brother, and filling her little head with endless
calculations to keep him looking fresh and respectable, and his
housekeeping comfortable and easy, on very limited means. She was now
officiously and anxiously attending on Miss Roxy, who was in the midst
of the responsible operation which should conduce greatly to this end.
"Does that twist work well?" she said, nervously; "because I believe
I've got some other upstairs in my India box."
Miss Roxy surveyed the article; bit a fragment off, as if she meant to
taste it; threaded a needle and made a few cabalistical stitches; and
then pronounced, _ex cathedra_, that it would do. Miss Emily gave a sigh
of relief. After buttons and tapes and linings, and various other items
had been also discussed, the conversation began to flow into general
channels.
"Did you know Moses Pennel had got home from Umbagog?" said Miss Roxy.
"Yes. Captain Kittridge told brother so this morning. I wonder he
doesn't call over to see us."
"Your brother took a sight of interest in that boy," said Miss Roxy. "I
was saying to Ruey, this morning, that if Moses Pennel ever did turn out
well, he ought to have a large share of the credit."
"Brother always did feel a peculiar interest in him; it was such a
strange providence that seemed to cast in his lot among us," said Miss
Emily.
"As sure as you live, there he is a-coming to the front door," said Miss
Roxy.
"Dear me," said Miss Emily, "and here I have on this old faded chintz.
Just so sure as one puts on any old rag, and thinks nobody will come,
company is sure to call."
"Law, I'm sure I shouldn't think of calling him company," said Miss
Roxy.
A rap at the door put an end to this conversation, and very soon Miss
Emily introduced our hero into the little sitting-room, in the midst of
a perfect stream of apologies relating to her old dress and the
littered condition of the sitting-room, for Miss Emily held to the
doctrine of those who consider any sign of human occupation and
existence in a room as being disorder--however reputable and respectable
be the cause of it.
"Well, really," she said, after she had seated Moses by the fire, "how
time does pass, to be sure; it don't seem more than yesterday since you
used to come with your Latin books, and now here you are a grown man! I
must run and tell Mr. Sewell. He will be so glad to see you."
Mr. Sewell soon appeared from his study in morning-gown and slippers,
and seemed heartily responsive to the proposition which Moses soon made
to him to have some private conversation with him in his study.
"I declare," said Miss Emily, as soon as the study-door had closed upon
her brother and Moses, "what a handsome young man he is! and what a
beautiful way he has with him!--so deferential! A great many young men
nowadays seem to think nothing of their minister; but he comes to seek
advice. Very proper. It isn't every young man that appreciates the
privilege of having elderly friends. I declare, what a beautiful couple
he and Mara Lincoln would make! Don't Providence seem in a peculiar way
to have designed them for each other?"
"I hope not," said Miss Roxy, with her grimmest expression.
"You don't! Why not?"
"I never liked him," said Miss Roxy, who had possessed herself of her
great heavy goose, and was now thumping and squeaking it emphatically on
the press-board. "She's a thousand times too good for Moses
Pennel,"--thump. "I ne'er had no faith in him,"--thump. "He's dreffle
unstiddy,"--thump. "He's handsome, but he knows it,"--thump. "He won't
never love nobody so much as he does himself,"--thump, _fortissimo con
spirito_.
"Well, really now, Miss Roxy, you mustn't always remember the sins of
his youth. Boys must sow their wild oats. He was unsteady for a while,
but now everybody says he's doing well; and as to his knowing he's
handsome, and all that, I don't see as he does. See how polite and
deferential he was to us all, this morning; and he spoke so handsomely
to you."
"I don't want none of his politeness," said Miss Roxy, inexorably; "and
as to Mara Lincoln, she might have better than him any day. Miss Badger
was a-tellin' Captain Brown, Sunday noon, that she was very much admired
in Boston."
"So she was," said Miss Emily, bridling. "I never reveal secrets, or I
might tell something,--but there has been a young man,--but I promised
not to speak of it, and I sha'n't."
"If you mean Mr. Adams," said Miss Roxy, "you needn't worry about
keepin' that secret, 'cause that ar was all talked over atween meetin's
a-Sunday noon; for Mis' Kittridge she used to know his aunt Jerushy, her
that married Solomon Peters, and Mis' Captain Badger she says that he
has a very good property, and is a professor in the Old South church in
Boston."
"Dear me," said Miss Emily, "how things do get about!"
"People will talk, there ain't no use trying to help it," said Miss
Roxy; "but it's strongly borne in on my mind that it ain't Adams, nor 't
ain't Moses Pennel that's to marry her. I've had peculiar exercises of
mind about that ar child,--well I have;" and Miss Roxy pulled a large
spotted bandanna handkerchief out of her pocket, and blew her nose like
a trumpet, and then wiped the withered corners of her eyes, which were
humid as some old Orr's Island rock wet with sea-spray.
Miss Emily had a secret love of romancing. It was one of the
recreations of her quiet, monotonous life to build air-castles, which
she furnished regardless of expense, and in which she set up at
housekeeping her various friends and acquaintances, and she had always
been bent on weaving a romance on the history of Mara and Moses Pennel.
The good little body had done her best to second Mr. Sewell's attempts
toward the education of the children. It was little busy Miss Emily who
persuaded honest Zephaniah and Mary Pennel that talents such as Mara's
ought to be cultivated, and that ended in sending her to Miss Plucher's
school in Portland. There her artistic faculties were trained into
creating funereal monuments out of chenille embroidery, fully equal to
Miss Emily's own; also to painting landscapes, in which the ground and
all the trees were one unvarying tint of blue-green; and also to
creating flowers of a new and particular construction, which, as Sally
Kittridge remarked, were pretty, but did not look like anything in
heaven or earth. Mara had obediently and patiently done all these
things; and solaced herself with copying flowers and birds and
landscapes as near as possible like nature, as a recreation from these
more dignified toils.
Miss Emily also had been the means of getting Mara invited to Boston,
where she saw some really polished society, and gained as much knowledge
of the forms of artificial life as a nature so wholly and strongly
individual could obtain. So little Miss Emily regarded Mara as her
godchild, and was intent on finishing her up into a romance in real
life, of which a handsome young man, who had been washed ashore in a
shipwreck, should be the hero.
What would she have said could she have heard the conversation that was
passing in her brother's study? Little could she dream that the mystery,
about which she had timidly nibbled for years, was now about to be
unrolled;--but it was even so. But, upon what she does not see, good
reader, you and I, following invisibly on tiptoe, will make our
observations.
When Moses was first ushered into Mr. Sewell's study, and found himself
quite alone, with the door shut, his heart beat so that he fancied the
good man must hear it. He knew well what he wanted and meant to say, but
he found in himself all that shrinking and nervous repugnance which
always attends the proposing of any decisive question.
"I thought it proper," he began, "that I should call and express my
sense of obligation to you, sir, for all the kindness you showed me when
a boy. I'm afraid in those thoughtless days I did not seem to appreciate
it so much as I do now."
As Moses said this, the color rose in his cheeks, and his fine eyes grew
moist with a sort of subdued feeling that made his face for the moment
more than usually beautiful.
Mr. Sewell looked at him with an expression of peculiar interest, which
seemed to have something almost of pain in it, and answered with a
degree of feeling more than he commonly showed,--
"It has been a pleasure to me to do anything I could for you, my young
friend. I only wish it could have been more. I congratulate you on your
present prospects in life. You have perfect health; you have energy and
enterprise; you are courageous and self-reliant, and, I trust, your
habits are pure and virtuous. It only remains that you add to all this
that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom."
Moses bowed his head respectfully, and then sat silent a moment, as if
he were looking through some cloud where he vainly tried to discover
objects.
Mr. Sewell continued, gravely,--
"You have the greatest reason to bless the kind Providence which has
cast your lot in such a family, in such a community. I have had some
means in my youth of comparing other parts of the country with our New
England, and it is my opinion that a young man could not ask a better
introduction into life than the wholesome nurture of a Christian family
in our favored land."
"Mr. Sewell," said Moses, raising his head, and suddenly looking him
straight in the eyes, "do you know anything of my family?"
The question was so point-blank and sudden, that for a moment Mr. Sewell
made a sort of motion as if he dodged a pistol-shot, and then his face
assumed an expression of grave thoughtfulness, while Moses drew a long
breath. It was out,--the question had been asked.
"My son," replied Mr. Sewell, "it has always been my intention, when you
had arrived at years of discretion, to make you acquainted with all that
I know or suspect in regard to your life. I trust that when I tell you
all I do know, you will see that I have acted for the best in the
matter. It has been my study and my prayer to do so."
Mr. Sewell then rose, and unlocking the cabinet, of which we have before
made mention, in his apartment, drew forth a very yellow and time-worn
package of papers, which he untied. From these he selected one which
enveloped an old-fashioned miniature case.
"I am going to show you," he said, "what only you and my God know that I
possess. I have not looked at it now for ten years, but I have no doubt
that it is the likeness of your mother."
Moses took it in his hand, and for a few moments there came a mist over
his eyes,--he could not see clearly. He walked to the window as if
needing a clearer light.
What he saw was a painting of a beautiful young girl, with large
melancholy eyes, and a clustering abundance of black, curly hair. The
face was of a beautiful, clear oval, with that warm brunette tint in
which the Italian painters delight. The black eyebrows were strongly
and clearly defined, and there was in the face an indescribable
expression of childish innocence and shyness, mingled with a kind of
confiding frankness, that gave the picture the charm which sometimes
fixes itself in faces for which we involuntarily make a history. She was
represented as simply attired in a white muslin, made low in the neck,
and the hands and arms were singularly beautiful. The picture, as Moses
looked at it, seemed to stand smiling at him with a childish grace,--a
tender, ignorant innocence which affected him deeply.
"My young friend," said Mr. Sewell, "I have written all that I know of
the original of this picture, and the reasons I have for thinking her
your mother.
"You will find it all in this paper, which, if I had been providentially
removed, was to have been given you in your twenty-first year. You will
see in the delicate nature of the narrative that it could not properly
have been imparted to you till you had arrived at years of
understanding. I trust when you know all that you will be satisfied with
the course I have pursued. You will read it at your leisure, and after
reading I shall be happy to see you again."
Moses took the package, and after exchanging salutations with Mr.
Sewell, hastily left the house and sought his boat.
When one has suddenly come into possession of a letter or paper in which
is known to be hidden the solution of some long-pondered secret, of the
decision of fate with regard to some long-cherished desire, who has not
been conscious of a sort of pain,--an unwillingness at once to know what
is therein? We turn the letter again and again, we lay it by and return
to it, and defer from moment to moment the opening of it. So Moses did
not sit down in the first retired spot to ponder the paper. He put it
in the breast pocket of his coat, and then, taking up his oars, rowed
across the bay. He did not land at the house, but passed around the
south point of the Island, and rowed up the other side to seek a
solitary retreat in the rocks, which had always been a favorite with him
in his early days.
The shores of the Island, as we have said, are a precipitous wall of
rock, whose long, ribbed ledges extend far out into the sea. At high
tide these ledges are covered with the smooth blue sea quite up to the
precipitous shore. There was a place, however, where the rocky shore
shelved over, forming between two ledges a sort of grotto, whose smooth
floor of shells and many-colored pebbles was never wet by the rising
tide. It had been the delight of Moses when a boy, to come here and
watch the gradual rise of the tide till the grotto was entirely cut off
from all approach, and then to look out in a sort of hermit-like
security over the open ocean that stretched before him. Many an hour he
had sat there and dreamed of all the possible fortunes that might be
found for him when he should launch away into that blue smiling
futurity.
It was now about half-tide, and Moses left his boat and made his way
over the ledge of rocks toward his retreat. They were all shaggy and
slippery with yellow seaweeds, with here and there among them wide
crystal pools, where purple and lilac and green mosses unfolded their
delicate threads, and thousands of curious little shell-fish were
tranquilly pursuing their quiet life. The rocks where the pellucid water
lay were in some places crusted with barnacles, which were opening and
shutting the little white scaly doors of their tiny houses, and drawing
in and out those delicate pink plumes which seem to be their nerves of
enjoyment. Moses and Mara had rambled and played here many hours of
their childhood, amusing themselves with catching crabs and young
lobsters and various little fish for these rocky aquariums, and then
studying at their leisure their various ways. Now he had come hither a
man, to learn the secret of his life.
Moses stretched himself down on the clean pebbly shore of the grotto,
and drew forth Mr. Sewell's letter.