HOP-O'-MY-THUMB.
"Listen to me," said Judith.
"Yes, Ju!"
The orphans were together in the room that had been their father's,
the room in which for some days he had lain with the blinds down, the
atmosphere heavy with the perfume of flowers, and that indescribable,
unmistakable scent of death. Often, every day, almost every hour, had
Judith stolen into the room while he lay there, to wonder with
infinite reverence and admiration at the purity and dignity of the
dead face. It was that of the dear, dear father, but sublimed beyond
her imagination. All the old vacillation was gone, the expression of
distress and discouragement had passed away, and in their place had
come a fixity and a calm, such as one sees in the busts of the ancient
Roman Cæsars, but with a superadded ethereality, if such a word can be
used, that a piece of pagan statuary never reached. Marvellous, past
finding out, it is that death, which takes from man the spiritual
element, should give to the mere clay a look of angelic spirituality,
yet so it is--so it was with the dead Peter Trevisa; and Judith, with
eyes filling as fast as dried, stood, her hands folded, looking into
his face, felt that she had never loved, never admired him half enough
when he was alive. Life had been the simmer in which all the scum of
trivialities, of infirmities, of sordidness had come to and shown
itself on the surface. Now Death had cleared these all away, and in
the peaceful face of the dead was seen the _real_ man, the nobility,
sanctity, delicacy that formed the texture of his soul, and which had
impressed the very clay wrapped about that volatile essence.
As long as the dear father's body lay in the house Judith had not
realized her utter desolation. But now the funeral was over, and she
had returned with her brother to the parsonage, to draw up the
blinds, and let the light once more enter, and search out, and
revivify the dead rooms.
She was very pale, with reddened eyes, and looking more fragile and
transparent than ever she did before, worn and exhausted by tearful,
wakeful nights, and by days of alternating gusts of sorrow and busy
preparation for the funeral, of painful recollections of joyous days
that were past, and of doubtful searchings into a future that was full
of cloud.
Her black frock served to enhance her pallor, and to make her look
thinner, smaller than when in white or in color.
She had taken her place in her father's high-backed leather chair,
studded thick with brass nails, the leather dulled and fretted by
constant use, but the nail-heads burnished by the same treatment.
Her brother was in the same chair with her; both his arms were round
her neck, and his head was on her shoulder. She had her right arm
about his waist, her left was bowed, the elbow leaning on the chair
arm, her hand folded inward, and her weary head rested on its back.
The fine weather broken in upon by the gale had returned; the sun
shone in unhindered at the window, and blazed on the children's hair;
the brass nails, polished by friction, twinkled as little suns, but
were naught in lustre to the gorgeous red of the hair of the twins,
for the first were but brass, and the other of living gold.
Two more lonely beings could hardly be discovered on the face of the
earth--at all events in the peninsula of Cornwall--but the sense of
this loneliness was summed in the heart of Judith, and was there
articulate; Jamie was but dimly conscious of discomfort and
bereavement. She knew what her father's death entailed on her, or knew
in part, and conjectured more. Had she been left absolutely alone in
the world her condition would have been less difficult than it was
actually, encumbered with her helpless brother. Swimming alone in the
tossing sea, she might have struck out with confidence that she could
keep her head above water, but it was quite otherwise when clinging to
her was a poor, half-witted boy, incapable of doing anything to save
himself, and all whose movements tended only to embarrass her. Not
that she regretted for an instant having to care for Jamie, for she
loved him with sisterly and motherly love combined, intensified in
force by fusion; if to her a future seemed inconceivable without
Jamie, a future without him would be one without ambition, pleasure,
or interest.
The twin brother was very like her, with the same beautiful and
abundant hair, delicate in build, and with the same refined face, but
without the flashes of alternating mood that lightened and darkened
her face. His had a searching, bewildered, distressed expression on
it--the only expression it ever bore except when he was out of temper,
and then it mirrored on its surface his inward ill-humor. His was an
appealing face, a face that told of a spirit infantile, innocent, and
ignorant, that would never grow stronger, but which could deteriorate
by loss of innocence--the only charge of which it was capable. The boy
had no inherent naughtiness in him, but was constantly falling into
mischief through thoughtlessness, and he was difficult to manage
because incapable of reasoning.
What every one saw--that he never would be other than what he
was--Judith would not admit. She acknowledged his inaptitude at his
books, his frivolity, his restlessness, but believed that these were
infirmities to be overcome, and that when overcome the boy would be as
other boys are.
Now these children--they were aged eighteen, but Jamie looked four
years younger--sat in their father's chair, clinging to each other,
all in all to one another, for they had no one else to love and who
loved them.
"Listen to me, Jamie."
"Yes, Ju, I be----"
"Don't say 'I be'--say 'I am.'"
"Yes, Ju."
"Jamie, dear!" she drew her arm tighter about him; her heart was
bounding, and every beat caused her pain. "Jamie, dear, you know that,
now dear papa is gone, and you will never see him in this world again,
that----"
"Yes, Ju."
"That I have to look to you, my brother, to stand up for me like a
man, to think and do for me as well as for yourself--a brave, stout,
industrious fellow."
"Yes, Ju."
"I am a girl, and you will soon be a man, and must work for both of
us. You must earn the money, and I will spend it frugally as we both
require it. Then we shall be happy again, and dear papa in Paradise
will be glad and smile on us. You will make an effort, will you not,
Jamie? Hitherto you have been able to run about and play and squander
your time, but now serious days have come upon us, and you must fix
your mind on work and determine--Jamie--mind, screw your heart to a
strong determination to put away childish things and be a man, and a
strength and a comfort to me."
He put up his lips to kiss her cheek, but could not reach it, as her
head was leaning on her hand away from him.
"What are you fidgeting at, my dear?" she asked, without stirring,
feeling his body restless under her arm.
"A nail is coming out," he answered.
It was so; whilst she had been speaking to him he was working at one
of the brass studs, and had loosened its bite in the chair.
"Oh, Jamie! you are making work by thus drawing out a nail. Can you
not help me a little, and reduce the amount one has to think of and
do? You have not been attending to what I said, and I was so much in
earnest." She spoke in a tone of discouragement, and the tone, more
than the words, impressed the susceptible heart of the boy. He began
to cry.
"You are cross."
"I am not cross, my pet; I am never cross with you, I love you too
dearly; but you try my patience sometimes, and just now I am
overstrained--and then I did want to make you understand."
"Now papa's dead I'll do no more lessons, shall I?" asked Jamie,
coaxingly.
"You must, indeed, and with me instead of papa."
"Not _rosa_, _rosæ_?"
"Yes, _rosa_, _rosæ_."
Then he sulked.
"I don't love you a bit. It is not fair. Papa is dead, so I ought not
to have any more lessons. I hate _rosa_, _rosæ_!" He kicked the legs
of the chair peevishly with his heels. As his sister said nothing,
seemed to be inattentive--for she was weary and dispirited--he slapped
her cheek by raising his hand over his head.
"What, Jamie, strike me, your only friend?"
Then he threw his arms round her again, and kissed her. "I'll love
you; only, Ju, say I am not to do _rosa_, _rosæ_!"
"How long have you been working at the first declension in the Latin
grammar, Jamie?"
He tried for an instant to think, gave up the effort, laid his head on
her shoulder, and said:
"I don't know and don't care. Say I am not to do _rosa_, _rosæ_!"
"What! not if papa wished it?"
"I hate the Latin grammar!"
For a while both remained silent. Judith felt the tension to which her
mind and nerves had been subjected, and lapsed momentarily into a
condition of something like unconsciousness, in which she was dimly
sensible of a certain satisfaction rising out of the pause in thought
and effort. The boy lay quiet, with his head on her shoulder, for a
while, then withdrew his arms, folded his hands on his lap, and began
to make a noise by compressing the air between the palms.
"There's a finch out there going 'chink! chink!' and listen, Ju, I can
make 'chink! chink!' too."
Judith recovered herself from her distraction, and said:
"Never mind the finch now. Think of what I say. We shall have to leave
this house."
"Why?"
"Of course we must, sooner or later, and the sooner the better. It is
no more ours."
"Yes, it is ours. I have my rabbits here."
"Now that papa is dead it is no longer ours."
"It's a wicked shame."
"Not at all, Jamie. This house was given to papa for his life only;
now it will go to a new rector, and Aunt Dunes[B] is going to fetch us
away to another house."
[B] Dunes is the short for Dionysia.
"When?"
"To-day."
"I won't go," said the boy. "I swear I won't."
"Hush, hush, Jamie! Don't use such expressions. I do not know where
you have picked them up. We must go."
"And my rabbits, are they to go too?"
"The rabbits? We'll see about them. Aunt----"
"I hate Aunt Dunes!"
"You really must not call her that; if she hears you she will be very
angry. And consider, she has been taking a great deal of trouble about
us."
"I don't care."
"My dear, she is dear papa's sister."
"Why didn't papa get a nicer sister--like you?"
"Because he had to take what God gave him."
The boy pouted, and began to kick his heels against the chair-legs
once more.
"Jamie, we must leave this house to-day. Aunt is coming to take us
both away."
"I won't go."
"But, Jamie, I am going, and the cook is going, and so is Jane."
"Are cook and Jane coming with us?"
"No, dear."
"Why not?"
"We shall not want them. We cannot afford to keep them any more, to
pay their wages; and then we shall not go into a house of our own. You
must come with me, and be a joy and rest to me, dear Jamie."
She turned her head over, and leaned it on his head. The sun glowed in
their mingled hair--all of one tinge and lustre. It sparkled in the
tears on her cheek.
"Ju, may I have these buttons?"
"What buttons?"
"Look!"
He shook himself free from his sister, slid his feet to the ground,
went to a bureau, and brought to his sister a large open basket that
had been standing on the top of the bureau. It had been turned out of
a closet by Aunt Dionysia, and contained an accumulation of those most
profitless of collected remnants--odd buttons, coat buttons, brass,
smoked mother-of-pearl, shirt buttons, steel clasps--buttons of all
kinds, the gathering together made during twenty-five years. Why the
basket, after having been turned out of a lumber closet, had been left
in the room of death, or why, if turned out elsewhere, it had been
brought there, is more than even the novelist can tell. Suffice it
that there it was, and by whom put there could not be said.
"Oh! what a store of pretty buttons!" exclaimed the boy. "Do look,
Ju, these great big ones are just like those on Cheap Jack's red
waistcoat. Here is a brass one with a horse on it. Do see! Oh, Ju,
please get your needle and thread and sew this one on to my black
dress."
Judith sighed. It was in vain for her to impress the realities of the
situation on his wandering mind.
"Hark!" she exclaimed. "There is Aunt Dunes. I hear her voice--how
loud she speaks! She has come to fetch us away."
"Where is she going to take us to?"
"I do not know, Jamie."
"She will take us into the forest and lose us, like as did
Hop-o'-my-Thumb's father."
"There are no forests here--hardly any trees."
"She will leave us in the forest and run away."
"Nonsense, Jamie!"
"I am sure she will. She doesn't like us. She wants to get rid of us.
I don't care. May I have the basket of buttons?"
"Yes, Jamie."
"Then I'll be Hop-o'-my-Thumb."