Every thing in this world is of use, even a black thing crawling over
the nape of one's neck! Grim unknown, I shall make of thee--a simile!
I think, ma'am, you will allow that if an incident such as I have
described had befallen yourself, and you had a proper and ladylike
horror of earwigs (however motherly and fond of their offspring,) and
also of early hornets, and indeed of all unknown things of the insect
tribe with black heads and two great horns, or feelers or forceps,
just by your ear--I think, ma'am, you will allow that you would find
it difficult to settle back to your former placidity of mood and
innocent stitch-work. You would feel a something that grated on your
nerves--and cr'd--cr'd "all over you like," as the children say. And
the worst is, that you would be ashamed to say it. You would feel
obliged to look pleased and join in the conversation, and not fidget
too much, nor always be shaking your flounces, and looking into a dark
corner of your apron. Thus it is with many other things in life
besides black insects. One has a secret care--an abstraction--a
something between the memory and the feeling, of a dark crawling cr,
which one has never dared to analyse. So I sate by my mother, trying
to smile and talk as in the old time,--but longing to move about and
look around, and escape to my own solitude, and take the clothes off
my mind, and see what it was that had so troubled and terrified
me--for trouble and terror were upon me. And my mother, who was always
(heaven bless her!) inquisitive enough in all that concerned her
darling Anachronism, was especially inquisitive that evening. She made
me say where I had been, and what I had done, and how I had spent my
time,--and Fanny Trevanion, (whom she had seen, by the way, three or
four times, and whom she thought the prettiest person in the
world)--oh, she must know exactly what I thought of Fanny Trevanion!
And all this while my father seemed in thought; and so, with my arm
over my mother's chair, and my hand in hers--I answered my mother's
questions, sometimes by a stammer, sometimes by a violent effort at
volubility, when, at some interrogatory that went tingling right to my
heart, I turned uneasily, and there were my father's eyes fixed on
mine. Fixed, as they had been--when, and none knew why, I pined and
languished, and my father said "he must go to school." Fixed, with
quiet watchful tenderness. Ah no!--his thought had not been on the
great work--he had been deep in the pages of that less worthy one for
which he had yet more an author's paternal care. I met those eyes, and
yearned to throw myself on his heart--and tell him all. Tell him what?
Ma'am, I no more knew what to tell him, than I know what that black
thing was which has so worried me all this blessed evening!
"Pisistratus," said my father softly, "I fear you have forgotten the
saffron bag."
"No, indeed, sir," said I smiling.
"He," resumed my father--"he who wears the saffron bag has more
cheerful, settled spirits than you seem to have, my poor boy."
"My dear Austin, his spirits are very good, I think," said my mother
anxiously.
My father shook his head--then he took two or three turns about the
room.
"Shall I ring for candles, sir, it is getting dark: you will wish to
read?"
"No, Pisistratus, it is you who shall read, and this hour of twilight
best suits the book I am about to open to you."
So saying, he drew a chair between me and my mother, and seated
himself gravely, looking down a long time in silence--then turning his
eyes to each of us alternately.
"My dear wife," said he at length, almost solemnly, "I am going to
speak of myself as I was before I knew you."
Even in the twilight I saw that my mother's countenance changed.
"You have respected my secrets, Katherine, tenderly--honestly. Now the
time is come when I can tell them to you and to our son."