"Oh, you laugh, Ruth," Cousin Mehitable remarked, more forcibly than
ever, "but you ought to understand that I've taken charge of you. We are
all that are left of the family now, and I'm the head of it. You are a
foolish thing anyway, and let everybody impose on your good-nature. You
need somebody to look after you. If I'd had you in charge, you'd never
have got tangled up in that foolish engagement. I'm glad you had the
sense to break it."
I felt as if she had given me a blow in the face, but I could not
answer.
"Don't blush like that," Cousin Mehitable commanded. "It's all over, and
you know I always said you were a fool to marry a country lawyer."
"Father was a country lawyer," I retorted.
"Fudge! Cousin Horace was a judge and a man whose writings had given him
a wide reputation. Don't outrage his memory by calling him a rustic. For
my part I never had any patience with him for burying himself in the
country like a clodhopper."
"You forget that Mother's health"--I began; but with Cousin Mehitable
one is never sure of being allowed to complete a sentence.
"Oh, yes," she interrupted, "of course I forgot. Well, if there could be
an excuse, Aunt Martha would serve for excusing anything. I beg your
pardon, Ruth. But now all that is past and gone, and fortunately the
family is still well enough remembered in Boston for you to take up life
there with very little trouble. That's what I had in mind ten years ago,
when I insisted on your coming out."
"People who saw me then will hardly remember me."
"The folks that knew your father and mother," she went on serenely, "are
of course old people like me; but they will help you to know the younger
generation. Besides, those you know will not have forgotten you. A
Privet is not so easily forgotten, and you were an uncommonly pretty
bud, Ruth. What a fool you were not to marry Hugh Colet! You always were
a fool."
Cousin Mehitable generally tempers a compliment in this manner, and it
prevents me from being too much elated by her praise.
She was interrupted here by the necessity of going to prepare for
supper. Miss Charlotte did not come over to-day, so we were alone
together. No sooner were we seated at the supper-table than she returned
to the attack.
"When you live in Boston," she said, "I shall"--
"Suppose I should not live in Boston?" I interrupted.
"But you will. What else should you do?"
"I might go on living here."
"Living here!" she cried out explosively. "You don't call this living,
do you? How long is it since you heard any music, or saw a picture, or
went to the theatre, or had any society?"
I was forced to confess that music and painting and acting were all
entirely lacking in Tuskamuck; but I remarked that I had all the books
that attracted me, and I protested against her saying I hadn't any
society.
"Oh, you see human beings now and then," Cousin Mehitable observed
coolly; "and I dare say they are very worthy creatures. But you know
yourself they are not society. You haven't forgotten the year I brought
you out."
I have not forgotten it, of course; and I cannot deny that when I think
of that winter in Boston, the year I was nineteen, I do feel a little
mournful sometimes. It was all so delightful, and it is all so far away
now. I hardly heard what Cousin Mehitable said next. I was thinking how
enchanting a home in Boston would be, and how completely alone as for
family I am. Cousin Mehitable is the only near relative I have in the
world, and why should I not be with her? It would be delightful. Perhaps
I may manage to get in a week or two in town now and then; but I cannot
go away for long. There would be nobody to start the reading-room, or
keep up the Shakespeare Club; and what would become of Kathie and Peggy
Cole, or of all that dreadful Spearin tribe? I dare say I am too proud
of my consequence, and that if I went away somebody would be found to
look after things. Still I know I am useful here; and it seems to me I
am really needed. Besides, I love the place and the people, and I think
my friends love me.
March 23. Cousin Mehitable went home to-day. Easter is at hand, and she
has a bonnet from Paris,--"a perfect dream of a bonnet," she said with
the enthusiasm of a girl, "dove-colored velvet, and violets, and steel
beads, and two or three white ostrich tips; a bonnet an angel couldn't
resist, Ruth!"--and this bonnet must form part of the church service on
Easter. The connection between Paris bonnets and the proper observance
of the day is not clear in my mind; but when I said something of this
sort to Cousin Mehitable she rebuked me with great gravity.
"Ruth, there is nothing in worse form than making jokes about sacred
subjects."
"Your bonnet isn't sacred," I retorted, for I cannot resist sometimes
the temptation to tease her; "or at least it can't be till it's been to
church on Easter."
"You know what I mean," was her answer. "When you live with me I shall
insist upon your speaking respectfully of the church."
"I wasn't speaking of the church," I persisted, laughing at the gravity
with which she always takes up its defense; "I was speaking of your
bonnet, your Paris bonnet, your Easter bonnet, your ecclesiastical,
frivolous, giddy, girlish bonnet."
"Oh, you may think it too young for me," she said eagerly, forgetting
the church in her excitement, "but it isn't really. It's as modest and
appropriate as anything you ever saw; and so becoming and _chic_!"
"Oh, I can always trust your taste, Cousin Mehitable," I told her, "but
you know you're a worldly old thing. You'd insist upon having your
angelic robes fitted by a fashionable tailor."
Again she looked grave and shocked in a flash.
"How can you, Ruth! You are a worse heathen than ever. But then there is
no church in Tuskamuck, so I suppose it is not to be wondered at. That's
another reason for taking you away from this wilderness."
"There are two churches, as you know very well," I said.
"Nonsense! They're only meeting-houses,--conventicles. However, when you
come to Boston to live, we will see."
"I told you last night that I shouldn't give up Tuskamuck."
"I know you did, but I didn't mind that. You must give it up."
She went away insisting upon this, and refusing to accept any other
decision. I did so far yield as to promise provisionally that I would go
abroad with her this summer. I need to see the world with a broader view
again, and I shall enjoy it. To think of the picture galleries fills me
with joy already. I should be willing to cross the Atlantic just to see
once more the enchanting tailor of Moroni's in the National Gallery. It
is odd, it comes into my mind at this moment that he looks something
like Tom Webbe, or Tom looks something like him. Very likely it is all
nonsense. Yes; I will go for the summer--to leave here altogether--no,
that is not to be thought of.
March 24. The whole town is excited over an accident up at the lake this
morning. A man and his son were drowned by breaking through the ice.
They had been up to some of the logging camps, and it is said they were
not sober. They were Brownrigs, and part of the family in the little red
house. The mother and the daughter are left. I hope it is not heartless
to hate to think of them. I have no doubt that they suffer like others;
only it is not likely folk of this sort are as sensitive as we are. It
is a mercy that they are not.
March 25. The Brownrig family seems just now to be forced upon my
attention, and that in no pleasant way.
Aunt Naomi came in this forenoon, and seated herself with an air of
mysterious importance. She looked at me with her keen eyes, penetrating
and humorous even when she is most serious, and seemed to be examining
me to discover what I was thinking. It was evident at once that she had
news. This is generally true, for she seems always to have something to
tell. Her mind gathers news as salt gathers moisture, and her greatest
pleasure is to impart what she has heard. She has generally with me the
air of being a little uncertain how I may receive her tidings. Like all
persons of strong mind and a sense of humor, she is by nature in
sympathy with the habit of looking at life frankly and dispassionately,
and I believe that secretly and only half consciously she envies me my
mental freedom. Sometimes I have suspected her of leading me on to say
things which she would have felt it wrong to say herself because they
are unorthodox, but which she has too much common sense not to
sympathize with. She is convinced, though, that such freedom of thought
as mine is wrong, and she nobly deprives herself of the pleasure of
being frank in her thoughts when this would involve any reflection upon
the theological conventions which are her rule of life. She gratifies a
lively mind by feeding it on scraps of gossip and commenting on them in
her pungent way; she is never unkind in her thought, I am sure, but she
does sometimes say sharp things. Like Lady Teazle, however, she abuses
people out of pure good nature. I looked at her this morning as she sat
swinging her foot and munching--there is no other word for it!--her
green barège veil, and I wondered, as I have often wondered before, how
a woman really so clever could be content to pass so much of her time in
the gathering and circulating of mere trivialities. I suppose that it is
because there is so little in the village to appeal to the intellectual
side of her, and her mind must be occupied. She might be a brilliant
woman in a wider sphere. Now she seems something like a beaver in
captivity, building dams of hairbrushes and boots on a carpeted floor.
I confess, too, that I wondered, as I looked at her, if she represented
my future. I thought of Cousin Mehitable's doleful predictions of what I
should come to if I stay in Tuskamuck, and I tried to decide whether I
should come in time to be like Aunt Naomi, a general carrier of news
from house to house, an old maid aunt to the whole village, with no real
kindred, and with no interests wider than those of village gossip. I
cannot believe it, but I suppose at my age she would not have believed
it of herself.
"We're really getting to be quite like a city," Aunt Naomi said, with a
grimness which showed me there was something important behind this
enigmatic remark.
"Are we?" I responded. "I confess I don't see how."
"Humph!" she sniffed. "There's wickedness here that isn't generally
looked for outside of the city."
"Oh, wickedness!" I said. "There is plenty of that everywhere, I
suppose; but I never have thought we have more than our share of it."
She wagged her foot more violently, and had what might have seemed a
considerable lunch on her green veil before she spoke again--though it
is wicked for me to make fun of her. Then she took a fresh start.
"What are you knitting?" she asked.
"What started in January to be some mittens for the Turner boy. He
brings our milk, and he never seems to have mittens enough."
"I don't wonder much," was her comment. "His mother has so many babies
that she can't be expected to take care of them."
"Poor Mrs. Turner," I said. "I should think the poor thing would be
discouraged. I am ashamed that I don't do more for her."
"I don't see that you are called upon to take care of all the poor in
the town; but if you could stop her increasing her family it'd be the
best thing you could do."
When Aunt Naomi makes a remark like this, I feel it is discreet to
change the subject.
"I hope that now the weather is getting milder," I observed, "you are
not so cold in prayer-meetings."
She was not diverted, even by this chance to dwell on her pet grievance,
but went her own way.
"I suppose you'll feel now you've got to look out for that Brownrig
girl, too," she said.
"That Brownrig girl?" I repeated.
I tried not to show it, but the blood rushed to my heart and made me
faint. I realized something terrible was coming, though I had nothing to
go upon but the old gossip about Tom and the fact that I had seen him
come from the red house.
"Her sin has found her out," returned Aunt Naomi with indignant
emphasis. "For my part, I don't see what such creatures are allowed to
live for. Think what kind of a mother she will make. They'd better take
her and her baby and drown 'em along with her father and brother."
"Aunt Naomi!" was all I could say.
"Well, I suppose you think I'm not very charitable, but it does make me
mad to see that sort of trash"--
"I don't know what you are talking about," I interrupted. "Has the
Brownrig girl a child?"
"No; but she's going to have. Her mother's gone off and left her, and
she's down sick with pneumonia besides."
"Her mother has gone off?"
"Yes; and it'd be good riddance, if there was anybody to take care of
the girl."
It is useless to ask Aunt Naomi how she knows all that goes on in the
town. She collects news from the air, I believe. I reflected that she is
not always right, and I hoped now she might be mistaken.
"But somebody must be with her if she's down with pneumonia," I said.
"Yes; that old Bagley woman's there. The Overseers of the Poor sent her,
but she's about twice as bad as nobody, I should think. If I was sick,
and she came round, I know I'd ask her to go away, and let me die in
peace."
It was evident enough that Aunt Naomi was a good deal stirred up, but I
did not dare to ask her why. If there is anything worse behind this
scandal, I had rather not know it. We were fortunately interrupted, and
Aunt Naomi went soon, so I heard no more. I was sick with the
loathsomeness of having Tom Webbe connected in my thought with that
wretched girl, and I do hope that it is only my foolishness. He cannot
have fallen to such depths.
March 27. I have heard no more from the Brownrigs, and I must hope
things were somehow not as Aunt Naomi thought. To-day I learned that she
is shut up with a cold. I must go in to-morrow and see her. Miss
Charlotte is a great comfort. The dear old soul begins really to look
better, and the thinness about her lips is yielding to good feeding. She
tells me stories of the old people of the town whom I can just remember,
and she is full of reverence for both Father and Mother. Of course I
never talk theology with her, but I am surprised sometimes to find that
under the shell of her orthodoxy is a good deal of liberalism. I suppose
any kindly mortal who accepted the old creeds made allowances for those
nearest and dearest, and human nature will always make allowances for
itself. I should think that an imaginative belief in a creed, a belief
that realized the cruelty of theology, must either drive one mad or make
one disbelieve from simple horror. Nobody but a savage could worship a
relentless god and not become insane from the horror of being in the
clutch of an implacable power.
March 28. I have had a most painful visit from Deacon Webbe. He came in
looking so gray and old that it shocked me to see him. He shook hands as
if he did not know what he was doing, and then sat down in a dazed way,
slowly twirling his hat and fixing his eyes on it as if he were blind. I
tried to say something, but only stumbled on in little commonplaces
about the weather, to which he paid so little attention that it was
evident he had no idea what I was saying. In a minute or two I was
reduced to silence. One cannot go on saying mechanical nothings in the
face of suffering, and it was impossible not to see that Deacon Webbe
was in grievous pain.
"Deacon Webbe," I said at last, when I could not bear the silence any
longer, "what is the matter?"
He raised his eyes to mine with a look of pitiful helplessness.
"I've no right to come to you, Miss Ruth," he said in his slow way, "but
there's nobody else, and you always were Tom's friend."
"Tom?" I repeated. "What has happened?"
"It isn't a thing to talk to a woman about," he went on, "and you'll
have to excuse me, Miss Ruth. I'm sure you will. It's that Brownrig
girl."