May, 1855.
You wish to know more of Ben. I am glad of it. You shall be immediately
gratified.
He is a true Scot, tall and strong and sandy-haired, with quick gray
eyes, and a grave countenance, which relaxes only upon very great
provocation.
Before I came here, he was known simply as a most careful, industrious,
silent, saving machine, which cared not a jot for anybody in particular,
but never wanted any spur to its own mechanical duty. It was never known
to do a turn of work not legitimately its own, though mathematically
exact in its proper office. But after I came here with my sister, a
helpless cripple, we found out that the mathematical machine was a man,
with a soft, beating heart. He was called upon to lift me from the
carriage, and he did it as tenderly as a woman. He took me up as a
mother lifts her child from the cradle, and I reposed passively in his
strong arms, with a feeling of perfect security and ease.
From that day to this, Ben has been a most devoted friend to me. He
watches for opportunities to do me kindnesses, and takes from his own
sacred time to make me comforts. He has had me in his arms a hundred
times, and carries me from bed to couch like a baby. I positively blush
in writing this to you. You have known me to be a man for years, and
here I am in arms again!
Ben's decent, well-controlled self-satisfaction, which almost amounts
to dignity, is gone like a puff of smoke, at the word "Shanghai." Poor
fellow! He once had the hen-fever badly, and he don't like to recall his
sufferings.
The first I knew of it was by his starting and changing color one day,
when I was reading the news from China to Kate in the garden, he being
engaged in tying up a rose-bush close by. Kate saw his confusion, and
smiled. Ben, catching the expression of her face, looked inconceivably
sheepish. He dropped his ball of twine, and was about to go away, but
thinking better of it, he suddenly turned and said, with a grin and a
blush,--
"Ye'll be telling on me, Miss Kathleen! so I'se be aforehond wi' ye, and
let Mr. Charlie knaw the warst frae my ain confassion, if he will na
grudge me a quarter hour."
I signified my wish to hear, and with much difficulty and many questions
wrung from him his "confassion." Kate afterwards gave me her version,
and the facts were these:--
He persuaded Kate to let him buy a pair of Shanghais.
"But don't do it unless you are sure of its being worth while,"
Kate charged him; "because I can't afford to be making expensive
experiments."
Ben counted out upon his fingers the numberless advantages.
"First, the valie o' the eggs for sale, (mony ane had fetched a dollar,)
forbye the ecawnomy in size for cooking, one shell handing the meat o'
twa common eggs. Second, the size o' the chickens for table, each hen
the weight o' a turkey. Third, for speculation. Let the neebors buy, and
she could realize sixty dollar on the brood o' twal' chicks; for they
fetched ten dollar the pair, and could be had for nae less onywheres.
Every hen wad hae twa broods at the smallest."
Kate doubted, but handed over the money. The next day she was awaked
from a nap on the parlor sofa by a most unearthly music. There was one
bar of four notes, first and third accepted; bar second, a _crescendo_
on a long swelled note, then a _decrescendo_ equally long.
"Why," she cried, "is that our little bull-calf practising singing? I
shall let Barnum know about him. He'll make my fortune!"
Ben knocked at the door, presented a radiant grin, and invited
inspection of his Shanghais. Kate went with him to the cellar. There
stood two feathered bipeds on their tip-toes, with their giraffe necks
stretched up to my sister's swinging shelf where the cream and butter
were kept. It spoke well for the size of their craws certainly, that,
during the two minutes Ben was away, they had each devoured a "print" of
butter, about half a pound!
"Saw ye ever the like o' thae birds, Miss Kathleen?" began Ben, proudly.
"My butter, my butter!" cried Kate.
Ben ran to the rescue, and having removed everything to the high shelf,
he came back, saying,--
"It was na their faut. I tak shame for not minding that they are so gay
tall. But did ye ever see the like o' yon rooster?"
Indeed, she never had! The frightful monster, with its bob-tail and
boa-constrictor neck! But she said nothing.
Ben named them the Emperor and Empress. They were not to be allowed to
walk with common fowls, and he soon had a large, airy house made for
them. He watched these creatures with incessant devotion, and one
morning he was beside himself with delight, for, by a most hideous
roaring on the part of the Emperor, and a vigorous cackling, which
Ben, very descriptively, called "scraughing," by the Empress, it was
announced that she had laid an egg!
Etiquette required Kate to call and admire this promise of royal
offspring, and she was surprised into genuine admiration when she saw
the prodigy. Her nose had to lower its scornful turn, her lips to relax
their skeptical twist. It was an egg indeed! Ben was nobly justified in
his purchase. His step was light that day. Kate heard him singing, over
and over again, a verse from an old song which he had brought with him
from the land o' cakes:--
"I hae a hen wi' a happity leg,
(Lass, gin ye loe me, tell me noo,)
And ilka day she lays me an egg
(And I canna come ilka day to woo!)"
Wooing any lass would, just now, have been quite as secondary an affair
with the singer as in the song,--a something _par parenthèse_.
But, alas! Ben's face was more dubious the next day, and before the week
was over it was yard-long. The Empress, after that one great effort,
laid no more eggs, but duly began her second duty, sitting. There was no
doubt that she meant to have but one chick,--out of rivalry, perhaps,
with the Pynchon hen. It was gratifying, perhaps, to have her so
aristocratic, but it was not exactly profitable as a speculation.
"Ben," said Kate, dryly, "I don't know that that egg was wonderfully
large, as it contained the whole brood!"
Poor Ben! That was not all. The clumsy, heavy Empress stepped upon her
egg, and broke it in the second week of its existence; but, faithful to
its memory, she refused to forego the duties of maternity, and would
persist in staying on her nest. As the season advanced, Ben lost hope
of the second brood he had counted upon. In short, his Empress had
the legitimate "hen-fever," and it carried her off, though Ben tried
numberless remedies in common use for vulgar fowls, such as pumping upon
her, whirling her by one leg, tying red flannel to her tail, and so
forth. Of course such indignities were fatal to royalty, and Ben gave up
all hopes of a pure race of Shanghais.
The Emperor was then set at liberty, and for one short half-hour
strutted like a giant-hero among the astounded hens. But no sooner did
the former old cock--who had game blood in him, repute said--return from
a distant excursion into the cornfields with his especial favorites
about him, and behold the mighty majesty of the monster, than his
pride and ire blazed up. He put his head low, ruffled out his long
neck-feathers, his eyes winked and snapped fire with rage, he set out
his wings, took a short run, and, throwing up his spurs with fury,
struck the stupid, staring Emperor a blow under the ear which laid him
low. Alas for royalty, opposed to force of will!
"And you had to pocket the loss, Kate?" I said.
"It was my gain," she replied. "Ben had always been dictatorial before;
but after that, I had only to smile to remind him of his fallibility,
and I have been mistress here ever since."
So far had I written when your welcome letter arrived. Kate found me
this morning sighing over it, pen in hand, ready to reply. She put on
her imperious look, and said she forbade my writing, if I grew
gloomy over it. She feared my letters were only the outpourings of a
disappointed spirit. Indulgence in grief she considered weak, foolish,
unprincipled, and egotistical.
"I can't help being egotistical," I replied, "when I see no one, and am
shut up in the 'little world of me,' as closely as mouse in trap. And
with myself for a subject, what can my letters be but melancholy?"
"Anybody can write amusing letters, if they choose," said Kate, reckless
both of fact and grammar.
"Unless I make fun of you, what else have I to laugh at?"
"Well, do! Make fun of me to your heart's content! Who cares?"
"You promise to laugh with us, and not be offended?"
"I promise not to be offended. My laughing depends upon your wit."
"There is no mirth left in me, Kate. I am convinced that I ought to say
with Jacques, ''Tis good to be sad, and say nothing.'"
"Then I shall answer as Rosalind did,--'Why, then, 'tis good to be a
post!' No, no, Charlie, do be merry. Or if you cannot, just now, at
least encourage 'a most humorous sadness,' and that will he the first
step to real mirth."
"I shall never be merry again, Lina, till you let me recall Mr. ----.
That care weighs me down, and I truly believe retards my recovery."
"Hush, Charlie!" she said, imperiously.
"Now, dear Kate, do not be obstinate. My position is too cruel. With the
alleviation of knowing your happiness secure, I could bear my lot. But
now it is intolerable, utterly!"
She was silent.
"You must give me that consolation."
"To say I would ever leave you, Charlie, while you are so helpless,
would be to tell a lie, for I could not do it. Mr. ---- is a civil
engineer. He is always travelling about. I should have no settled home
to take you to. How can you suppose I would abandon you? Do you think I
could find any happiness after doing it? Let us be silent about this."
"I will not, Kate. I am sure, that, besides being a selfish, it would
be a foolish thing to submit to you in this matter. I shall linger,
perhaps, until your youth is gone, and then have the pang, far worse
than any other I could suffer, of leaving you quite alone in the world.
Do listen to reason!"