But that Solomon is out of fashion I should quote him, here and now, to
the effect that there is a time for all things; but Solomon is obsolete,
and never, no, never, will I dare to quote a dead language, "for raisons
I have," as the exiles of Erin say. Yet, in spite of Solomon and Horace,
I may express my own less concise opinion, that even in hard times, and
dull times, and war times, there is yet a little time to laugh, a brief
hour to smile and love and pity, just as through this dreary easterly
storm, bringing clouds and rain, sobbing against casement and door with
the inarticulate wail of tempests, there comes now and then the soft
shine of a sun behind it all, a fleeting glitter, an evanescent aspect
of what has been.
But if I apologize for a story that is nowise tragic, nor fitted to "the
fashion of these times," possibly somebody will say at its end that I
should also have apologized for its subject, since it is as easy for an
author to treat his readers to high themes as vulgar ones, and velvet
can be thrown into a portrait as cheaply as calico; but of this apology
I wash my hands. I believe nothing in place or circumstance makes
romance. I have the same quick sympathy for Biddy's sorrows with Patrick
that I have for the Empress of France and her august, but rather grim
lord and master. I think words are often no harder to bear than "a blue
bating," and I have a reverence for poor old maids as great as for the
nine Muses. Commonplace people are only commonplace from character, and
no position affects that. So forgive me once more, patient reader, if I
offer to you no tragedy in high life, no sentimental history of fashion
and wealth, but only a little story about a woman who could not be a
heroine.
Miss Lucinda Jane Ann Manners was a lady of unknown age, who lived in a
place I call Dalton, in a State of these Disuniting States, which I
do not mention for good cause. I have already had so many unconscious
personalities visited on my devoted head that but for lucidity I should
never mention persons or places, inconvenient as it would be. However,
Miss Lucinda did live, and lived by the aid of "means," which, in the
vernacular, is money. Not a great deal, it is true,--five thousand
dollars at lawful interest, and a little wooden house, do not imply many
luxuries even to a single-woman; and it is also true that a little fine
sewing taken in helped Miss Manners to provide herself with a few
small indulgences otherwise beyond her reach. She had one or two
idiosyncrasies, as they are politely called, that were her delight.
Plenty of dish-towels were necessary to her peace of mind; without five
pair of scissors she could not be happy; and Tricopherous was essential
to her well-being: indeed, she often said she would rather give up
coffee than Tricopherous, for her hair was black and wiry and curly, and
caps she abhorred, so that of a winter's day her head presented the most
irrelevant and volatile aspect, each particular hair taking a twist on
its own responsibility, and improvising a wild halo about her unsaintly
face, unless subdued into propriety by the aforesaid fluid.
I said Miss Lucinda's face was unsaintly,--I mean unlike ancient saints
as depicted by contemporary artists: modern and private saints are after
another fashion. I met one yesterday, whose green eyes, great nose,
thick lips, and sallow wrinkles, under a bonnet of fifteen years'
standing, further clothed upon by a scant merino cloak and cat-skin
tippet, would have cut a sorry figure in the gallery of the Vatican or
the Louvre, and put the tranquil Madonna of San Sisto into a state of
stunning antithesis; but if Saint Agnes or Saint Catharine was half as
good as my saint, I am glad of it!
No, there was nothing sublime and dolorous about Miss Manners; her face
was round, cheery, and slightly puckered, with two little black eyes
sparking and shining under dark brows, a nose she unblushingly called
pug, and a big mouth with eminently white and regular teeth, which she
said were such a comfort, for they never ached, and never would to the
end of time. Add to this physiognomy a small and rather spare figure,
dressed in the cleanest of calicoes, always made in one style, and
rigidly scorning hoops,--without a symptom of a collar, in whose place
(or it may be over which) she wore a white cambric handkerchief, knotted
about her throat, and the two ends brought into subjection by means of
a little angular-headed gold pin, her sole ornament, and a relic of her
old father's days of widowhood, when buttons were precarious tenures. So
much for her aspect. Her character was even more quaint.
She was the daughter of a clergyman, one of the old school, the last
whose breeches and knee-buckles adorned the profession, who never
"outlived his usefulness," nor lost his godly simplicity. Parson Manners
held rule over an obscure and quiet village in the wilds of Vermont,
where hard-handed farmers wrestled with rocks and forests for their
daily bread, and looked forward to heaven as a land of green pastures
and still waters, where agriculture should be a pastime, and winter
impossible. Heavy freshets from the mountains that swelled their rushing
brooks into annual torrents, and snow-drifts that covered five-rail
fences a foot above the posts and blocked up the turnpike-road for
weeks, caused this congregation fully to appreciate Parson Manners's
favorite hymns,--
"There is a land of pure delight,"
and
"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand."
Indeed, one irreverent, but "pretty smart feller," who lived on the top
of a hill known as Drift Hill, where certain adventurous farmers dwelt
for the sake of its smooth sheep-pastures, was heard to say, after a
mighty sermon by Parson Manners about the seven-times heated furnaces
of judgment reserved for the wicked, that "Parson hadn't better try to
skeer Drift-Hillers with a hot place; 't wouldn't more 'n jest warm 'em
through down there, arter a real snappin' winter."
In this out-of-the-way nook was Lucinda Jane Ann born and bred. Her
mother was like her in many things,--just such a cheery, round-faced
little body, but with no more mind than found ample scope for itself in
superintending the affairs of house and farm, and vigorously "seeing to"
her husband and child. So, while Mrs. Manners baked, and washed, and
ironed, and sewed, and knit, and set the sweetest example of quiet
goodness and industry to all her flock, without knowing she _could_ set
an example, or be followed as one, the Parson amused himself, between
sermons of powerful doctrine and parochial duties of a more human
interest, with educating Lucinda, whose intellect was more like his
own than her mother's. A strange training it was for a young
girl,--mathematics, metaphysics, Latin, theology of the driest sort;
and after an utter failure at Greek and Hebrew, though she had toiled
patiently through seven books of the "Aeneid," Parson Manners mildly
sniffed at the inferiority of the female mind, and betook himself to
teaching her French, which she learned rapidly, and spoke with a pure
American accent, perhaps as pleasing to a Parisian ear as the hiss of
Piedmont or the gutturals of Switzerland. Moreover, the minister had
been brought up, himself, in the most scrupulous refinement of manner;
his mother was a widow, the last of an "old family," and her dainty,
delicate observances were inbred, as it were, in her only son. This sort
of elegance is perhaps the most delicate test of training and descent,
and all these things Lucinda was taught from the grateful recollection
of a son who never forgot his mother, through all the solitary labors
and studies of a long life. So it came to pass, that, after her mother
died, Lucinda grew more and more like her father, and, as she became a
woman, these rare refinements separated her more and more from those
about her, and made her necessarily solitary. As for marriage, the
possibility of such a thing never crossed her mind; there was not a man
in the parish who did not offend her sense of propriety and shock her
taste, whenever she met one; and though her warm, kind heart made her a
blessing to the poor and sick, her mother was yet bitterly regretted at
quiltings and tea-drinkings, where she had been so "sociable-like."
It is rather unfortunate for such a position as Lucinda's, that, as
Deacon Stowell one day remarked to her father, "Natur' will be Natur' as
much on Drift Hill as down to Bosting"; and when she began to feel that
"strong necessity of loving" that sooner or later assails every woman's
heart, there was nothing for it to overflow on, when her father had
taken his share. Now Lucinda loved the Parson most devoutly. Ever since
the time when she could just remember watching through the dusk his
white stockings, as they glimmered across the road to evening-meeting,
and looked like a supernatural pair of legs taking a walk on their own
responsibility, twilight concealing the black breeches and coat from
mortal view, Lucinda had regarded her father with a certain pleasing
awe. His long abstractions, his profound knowledge, his grave, benign
manners, and the thousand daily refinements of speech and act that
seemed to put him far above the sphere of his pastorate,--all these
things inspired as much reverence as affection; and when she wished with
all her heart and soul she had a sister or a brother to tend and
kiss and pet, it never once occurred to her that any of those tender
familiarities could be expended on her father: she would as soon have
thought of caressing any of the goodly angels whose stout legs, flowing
curls, and impossible draperies sprawled among the pictures in the big
Bible, and who excited her wonder as much by their garments as their
turkey-wings and brandishing arms. So she betook herself to pets, and
growing up to the old-maidenhood of thirty-five before her father fell
asleep, was by that time the centre of a little world of her own,--hens,
chickens, squirrels, cats, dogs, lambs, and sundry transient guests of
stranger kind; so that, when she left her old home, and removed to the
little house in Dalton that had been left her by her mother's aunt, and
had found her small property safely invested by means of an old friend
of her father's, Miss Manners made one more journey to Vermont to bring
in safety to their future dwelling a cat and three kittens, an old blind
crow, a yellow dog of the true cur breed, and a rooster with three hens,
"real creepers," as she often said, "none of your long-legged, screaming
creatures."
Lucinda missed her father, and mourned him as constantly and faithfully
as ever a daughter could; but her temperament was more cheerful and
buoyant than his, and when once she was quietly settled in her little
house, her garden and her pets gave her such full occupation that she
sometimes blamed herself for not feeling more lonely and unhappy. A
little longer life or a little more experience would have taught her
better: power to be happy is the last thing to regret. Besides, it would
have been hard to be cheerless in that sunny little house, with its
queer old furniture of three-legged tables, high-backed chairs, and
chintz curtains where red mandarins winked at blue pagodas on a
deep-yellow ground, and birds of insane ornithology pecked at insects
that never could have been hatched, or perched themselves on blossoms
totally unknown to any mortal flora. Old engravings of Bartolozzi, from
the stiff elegances of Angelica Kaufman and the mythologies of Reynolds,
adorned the shelf; and the carpet in the parlor was of veritable English
make, older than Lucinda herself, but as bright in its fading and as
firm in its usefulness as she. Up-stairs the tiny chambers were decked
with spotless white dimity, and rush-bottomed chairs stood in each
window, with a strip of the same old carpet by either bedside; and in
the kitchen the blue settle that had stood by the Vermont fireside now
defended this lesser hearth from the draught of the door, and held under
the seat thereof sundry ironing-sheets, the blanket belonging to them,
and good store of ticking and worsted holders. A half-gone set of
egg-shell china stood in the parlor-closet,--cups, and teapot, and
sugar-bowl, rimmed with brown and gold in a square pattern, and a shield
without blazon on the side; the quaint tea-caddy with its stopper stood
over against the pursy little cream-pot, and held up in its lumps of
sparkling sugar the oddest sugar-tongs, also a family relic;--beside
this, six small spoons, three large ones, and a little silver porringer
comprised all the "plate" belonging to Miss Manners, so that no fear of
burglars haunted her, and but for her pets she would have lived a life
of profound and monotonous tranquillity. But this was a vast exception;
in her life her pets were the great item now;--her cat had its own chair
in the parlor and kitchen; her dog, a rug and a basket never to be
meddled with by man or beast; her old crow, its special nest of flannel
and cotton, where it feebly croaked as soon as Miss Lucinda began to
spread the little table for her meals; and the three kittens had their
own playthings and their own saucer as punctiliously as if they had been
children. In fact, Miss Manners had a greater share of kindness
for beasts than for mankind. A strange compound of learning and
unworldliness, of queer simplicity, native penetration, and common
sense, she had read enough books to despise human nature as it develops
itself in history and theology, and she had not known enough people to
love it in its personal development. She had a general idea that all men
were liars, and that she must be on her guard against their propensity
to cheat and annoy a lonely and helpless woman; for, to tell the truth,
in her good father's over-anxiety to defend her from the snares of evil
men after his death, his teachings had given her opinion this bias, and
he had forgotten to tell her how kindly and how true he had found many
of his own parishioners, how few inclined to harm or pain him. So Miss
Lucinda made her entrance into life at Dalton, distrustful, but not
suspicious; and after a few attempts on the part of the women who
were her neighbors to be friendly or intimate, they gave her up as
impracticable: not because she was impolite or unkind: they did not
themselves know why they failed, though she could have told them; for,
old maid as she was, poor and plain and queer, she could not bring
herself to associate familiarly with people who put their teaspoons
into the sugar-bowl, helped themselves with their own knives and forks,
gathered up bits of uneaten butter and returned them to the plate for
next time, or replaced on the dish pieces of cake half eaten or cut with
the knives they had just introduced into their mouths. Miss Lucinda's
code of minor morals would have forbidden her to drink from the same cup
with a queen, and have considered a pitchfork as suitable as a knife to
eat with, nor would she have offered to a servant the least thing she
had touched with her own lips or her own implements of eating; and she
was too delicately bred to look on in comfort where such things were
practised. Of course these women were not ladies; and though many of
them had kind hearts and warm impulses of goodness, yet that did not
make up to her for their social misdemeanors, and she drew herself
more into her own little shell, and cared more for her garden and her
chickens, her cats and her dog, than for all the humanity of Dalton put
together.
Miss Manners held her flowers next dearest to her pets, and treated them
accordingly. Her garden was the most brilliant bit of ground possible.
It was big enough to hold one flourishing peach-tree, one Siberian crab,
and a solitary egg-plum; while under these fruitful boughs bloomed
moss-roses in profusion, of the dear old-fashioned kind, every deep pink
bud with its clinging garment of green breathing out the richest odor;
close by, the real white rose, which fashion has banished to country
towns, unfolded its cups of pearl flushed with yellow sunrise to the
heart; and by its side its damask sister waved long sprays of bloom
and perfume. Tulips, dark-purple and cream-color, burning scarlet and
deep-maroon, held their gay chalices up to catch the dew; hyacinths,
blue, white, and pink, hung heavy bells beneath them; spiced carnations
of rose and garnet crowded their bed in July and August, heart's-ease
fringed the walks, May honeysuckles clambered over the board-fence,
and monthly honeysuckles overgrew the porch at the back-door, making
perpetual fragrance from their moth-like horns of crimson and
ivory. Nothing inhabited those beds that was not sweet and fair and
old-fashioned. Gray-lavender-bushes sent up purple spikes in the middle
of the garden and were duly housed in winter, but these were the sole
tender plants admitted, and they pleaded their own cause in the breath
of the linen-press and the bureau-drawers that held Miss Lucinda's
clothes. Beyond the flowers, utility blossomed in a row of bean-poles,
a hedge of currant-bushes against the farther fence, carefully tended
cauliflowers, and onions enough to tell of their use as sparing as their
number; a few deep-red beets and golden carrots were all the vegetables
beside: Miss Lucinda never ate potatoes or pork.
Her housekeeping, but for her pets, would have been the proper
housewifery for a fairy. Out of her fruit she annually conserved
miracles of flavor and transparence,--great plums like those in
Aladdin's garden, of shining topaz,--peaches tinged with the odorous
bitter of their pits, and clear as amber,--crimson crabs floating in
their own ruby sirup, or transmuted into jelly crystal clear, yet
breaking with a grain,--and jelly from the acid currants to garnish her
dinner-table or refresh the fevered lips of a sick neighbor. It was a
study to visit her tiny pantry, where all these "lucent sirops" stood in
tempting array,--where spices, and sugar, and tea, in their small jars,
flanked the sweetmeats, and a jar of glass showed its store of whitest
honey, and another stood filled with crisp cakes. Here always a loaf
or two of home-made bread lay rolled in a snowy cloth, and another was
spread over a dish of butter; pies were not in favor here,--nor milk,
save for the cats; salt fish Miss Manners never could abide,--her
savory taste allowed only a bit of rich old cheese, or thin scraps of
hung beef, with her bread and butter; sauces and spices were few in her
repertory, but she cooked as only a lady can cook, and might have
asked Soyer himself to dinner. For, verily, after much meditation and
experience, I have divined that it takes as much sense and refinement
and talent to cook a dinner, wash and wipe a dish, make a bed as it
should be made, and dust a room as it should be dusted, as goes to the
writing of a novel or shining in high society.
But because Miss Lucinda Manners was reserved and "unsociable," as the
neighbors pronounced her, I did not, therefore, mean to imply that she
was inhuman. No neighbor of hers, local or Scriptural, fell ill, without
an immediate offer of aid from her: she made the best gruel known to
Dalton invalids, sent the ripest fruit and the sweetest flowers; and if
she could not watch with the sick, because it interfered with her duties
at home in an unpleasant and inconvenient way, she would sit with them
hour after hour in the day-time, and wait on all their caprices with the
patient tenderness of a mother. Children she always eyed with strange
wistfulness, as if she longed to kiss them, but didn't know how; yet no
child was ever invited across her threshold, for the yellow cur hated to
be played with, and children always torment kittens.
So Miss Lucinda wore on happily toward the farther side of the middle
Ages. One after another of her pets passed away and was replaced, the
yellow cur barked his last currish signal, the cat died and her kittens
came to various ends of time or casualty, the crow fell away to dust and
was too old to stuff, and the garden bloomed and faded ten times over,
before Miss Manners found herself to be forty-six years old, which she
heroically acknowledged one fine day to the census-taker. But it was not
this consciousness, nor its confession, that drew the dark brows so low
over Miss Lucinda's eyes that day; it was quite another trouble, and one
that wore heavily on her mind, as we shall proceed to explain. For Miss
Manners, being, like all the rest of her sex, quite unable to do without
some masculine help, had employed, for some seven years, an old man by
the name of Israel Slater, to do her "chores," as the vernacular hath
it. It is a mortifying thing, and one that strikes at the roots of
Women's Rights terribly sharp blows, but I must even own it, that one
might as well try to live without one's bread-and-butter as without the
aid of the dominant sex. When I see women split wood, unload coal-carts,
move wash-tubs, and roll barrels of flour and apples handily down
cellar-ways or up into carts, then I shall believe in the sublime
theories of the strong-minded sisters; but as long as I see before me
my own forlorn little hands, and sit down on the top stair to recover
breath, and try in vain to lift the water-pitcher at table, just so long
I shall be glad and thankful that there are men in the world, and that
half a dozen of them are my kindest and best friends. It was rather an
affliction to Miss Lucinda to feel this innate dependence, and at first
she resolved to employ only small boys, and never any one of them more
than a week or two. She had an unshaped theory that an old maid was a
match for a small boy, but that a man would cheat and domineer over her.
Experience sadly put to flight these notions for a succession of boys in
this cabinet-ministry for the first three years of her stay in Dalton
would have driven her into a Presbyterian convent, had there been one at
hand. Boy Number One caught the yellow cur out of bounds one day, and
shaved his plumy tail to a bare stick, and Miss Lucinda fairly shed
tears of grief and rage when Pink appeared at the door with the denuded
appendage tucked between his little legs, and his funny yellow eyes
casting sidelong looks of apprehension at his mistress. Boy Number One
was despatched directly. Number Two did pretty well for a month, but his
integrity and his appetite conflicted, and Miss Lucinda found him one
moonlight night perched in her plum-tree devouring the half-ripe fruit.
She shook him down with as little ceremony as if he had been an
apple; and though he lay at Death's door for a week with resulting
cholera-morbus, she relented not. So the experiment went on, till a list
of casualties that numbered in it fatal accidents to three kittens,
two hens and a rooster, and at last Pink himself, who was pent into a
decline by repeated drenchings from the watering-pot, put an end to her
forbearance, and she instituted in her viziership the old man who had
now kept his office so long,--a queer, withered, slow, humorous old
creature, who did "chores" for some six or seven other households, and
got a living by sundry "jobs" of wood-sawing, hoeing corn, and other
like works of labor, if not of skill. Israel was a great comfort to Miss
Lucinda: he was efficient counsel in the maladies of all her pets, had
a sovereign cure for the gapes in chickens, and could stop a cat's fit
with the greatest ease; he kept the tiny garden in perfect order,
and was very honest, and Miss Manners favored him accordingly. She
compounded liniment for his rheumatism, herb-sirup for his colds,
presented him with a set of flannel shirts, and knit him a comforter; so
that Israel expressed himself strongly in favor of "Miss Lucindy," and
she said to herself he really was "quite good for a man."
But just now, in her forty-seventh year, Miss Lucinda had come to grief,
and all on account of Israel and his attempts to please her. About six
months before this census-taking era, the old man had stepped into Miss
Manners's kitchen with an unusual radiance on his wrinkles and in his
eyes, and began without his usual morning greeting,--
"I've got so'thin' for you naow, Miss Lucindy. You're a master-hand for
pets, but I'll bet a red cent you ha'n't an idee what I've got for ye
naow!"
"I'm sure I can't tell, Israel," said she; "you'll have to let me see
it."
"Well," said he, lifting up his coat and looking carefully behind him
as he sat down on the settle, lest a stray kitten or chicken should
preoccupy the bench, "you see I was down to Orrin's abaout a week back,
and he hed a litter o' pigs,--eleven on 'em. Well, he couldn't raise
the hull on 'em,--'t a'n't good to raise more 'n nine,--an' so he said,
ef I'd 'a' had a place o' my own, I could 'a' had one on 'em, but, as't
was, he guessed he'd hev to send one to market for a roaster. I went
daown to the barn to see 'em, an' there was one, the cutest little
critter I ever sot eyes on, and I've seen more 'n four pigs in my
day,--'t was a little black-spotted one, as spry as an ant, and the
dreffullest knowin' look out of its eyes! I fellowshipped it right
off, and I said, says I, 'Orrin, ef you'll let me hev that 'ere
little spotted feller, I'll git a place for him, for I do take to him
consarnedly.' So he said I could, and I fetched him hum, and Miss Slater
and me we kinder fed him up for a few days back, till he got sorter
wonted, and I'm a-goin' to fetch him to you."
"But, Israel, I haven't any place to put him in."
"Well, that a'n't nothin' to hender. I'll jest fetch out them old boards
out of the wood-shed, and knock up a little sty right off, daown by the
end o' the shed, and you ken keep your swill that I've hed before, and
it'll come handy."
"But pigs are so dirty!"
"I don't know as they be; they ha'n't no great conveniences for washin'
ginerally; but I never heerd as they was dirtier 'n other critters,
where they run wild. An' beside, that a'n't goin' to hender, nuther; I
calculate to make it one o' the chores to take keer of him; 't won't
cost no more to you; and I ha'n't no great opportunities to do things
for folks that 's allers a-doin' for me; so't you needn't be afeard,
Miss Lucindy: I love to."
Miss Lucinda's heart got the better of her judgment. A nature that could
feel so tenderly for its inferiors in the scale could not be deaf to the
tiny voices of humanity, when they reached her solitude; and she thanked
Israel for the pig so heartily that the old man's face brightened still
more, and his voice softened from its cracked harshness, as he said,
clicking up and down the latch of the back-door,--
"Well, I'm sure you're as welcome as you are obleeged, and I'll knock up
that 'ere pen right off; he sha'n't pester ye any,--that's a fact."
Strange to say,--yet perhaps it might have been expected from her
proclivities,--Miss Lucinda took an astonishing fancy to the pig. Very
few people know how intelligent an animal a pig is; but when one is
regarded merely as pork and hams, one's intellect is apt to fall into
neglect: a moral sentiment which applies out of Pigdom. This creature
would not have passed muster at a county fair; no Suffolk blood
compacted and rounded him; he belonged to the "racers," and skipped
about his pen with the alacrity of a large flea, wiggling his curly tail
as expressively as a dog's, and "all but speakin'," as Israel said. He
was always glad to see Miss Lucinda, and established a firm friendship
with her dog Fun, a pretty, sentimental, German spaniel. Besides, he
kept tolerably clean by dint of Israel's care, and thrust his long
nose between the rails of his pen for grass, or fruit, or carrot- and
beet-tops, with a knowing look out of his deep-set eyes that was never
to be resisted by the soft-hearted spinster. Indeed, Miss Lucinda
enjoyed the possession of one pet who could not tyrannize over her.
Pink's place was more than filled by Fun, who was so oppressively
affectionate that he never could leave his mistress alone. If she lay
down on her bed, he leaped up and unlatched the door, and stretched
himself on the white counterpane beside her with a grunt of
satisfaction; if she sat down to knit or sew, he laid his head and
shoulders across her lap, or curled himself up on her knees; if she was
cooking, he whined and coaxed round her till she hardly knew whether she
fried or broiled her steak; and if she turned him out and buttoned the
door, his cries were so pitiful she could never be resolute enough to
keep him in exile five minutes,--for it was a prominent article in her
creed, that animals have feelings that are easily wounded, and are of
"like passions" with men, only incapable of expression.
Indeed, Miss Lucinda considered it the duty of human beings to atone to
animals for the Lord's injustice in making them dumb and four-legged.
She would have been rather startled at such an enunciation of her
practice, but she was devoted to it as a practice: she would give her
own chair to the cat and sit on the settle herself; get up at midnight,
if a mew or a bark called her, though the thermometer was below zero;
The tenderloin of her steak or the liver of her chicken was saved for a
pining kitten or an ancient and toothless cat; and no disease or wound
daunted her faithful nursing, or disgusted her devoted tenderness. It
was rather hard on humanity, and rather reversive of Providence, that
all this care and pains should be lavished on cats and dogs, while
little morsels of flesh and blood, ragged, hungry, and immortal,
wandered up and down the streets. Perhaps that they were immortal
was their defence from Miss Lucinda; one might have hoped that her
"other-worldliness" accepted that fact as enough to outweigh present
pangs, if she had not openly declared, to Israel Slater's immense
amusement and astonishment, that _she_ believed creatures had
souls,--little ones perhaps, but souls after all, and she did expect to
see Pink again some time or other.
"Well, I hope he's got his tail feathered out ag'in," said Israel,
dryly. "I do'no' but what hair'd grow as well as feathers in a
sperctooal state, and I never see a pictur' of an angel but what hed
consider'ble many feathers."
Miss Lucinda looked rather confounded. But humanity had one little
revenge on her in the shape of her cat, a beautiful Maltese, with great
yellow eyes, fur as soft as velvet, and silvery paws as lovely to look
at as they were thistly to touch. Toby certainly pleaded hard for Miss
Lucinda's theory of a soul; but his was no good one: some tricksy and
malign little spirit had lent him his share of intellect, and he used it
to the entire subjugation of Miss Lucinda. When he was hungry, he was as
well-mannered and as amiable as a good child,--he would coax, and purr,
and lick her fingers with his pretty red tongue, like a "perfect love";
but when he had his fill, and needed no more, then came Miss Lucinda's
time of torment. If she attempted to caress him, he bit and scratched
like a young tiger, he sprang at her from the floor and fastened on her
arm with real fury; if he cried at the window and was not directly let
in, as soon as he had achieved entrance his first manoeuvre was to
dash at her ankles and bite them, if he could, as punishment for her
tardiness. This skirmishing was his favorite mode of attack; if he was
turned out of the closet, or off the pillow up-stairs, he retreated
under the bed and made frantic sallies at her feet, till the poor woman
got actually nervous, and if he was in the room made a flying leap as
far as she could to her bed, to escape those keen claws. Indeed,
old Israel found her more than once sitting in the middle of the
kitchen-floor with Toby crouched for a spring under the table, his
poor mistress afraid to move, for fear of her unlucky ankles. And this
literally cat-ridden woman was hazed about and ruled over by her feline
tyrant to that extent that he occupied the easiest chair, the softest
cushion, the middle of the bed, and the front of the fire, not only
undisturbed, but caressed. This is a veritable history, beloved reader,
and I offer it as a warning and an example: if you will be an old maid,
or if you can't help it, take to petting children, or donkeys, or even a
respectable cow, but beware of domestic tyranny in any shape but man's!
No wonder Miss Lucinda took kindly to the pig, who had a house of his
own, and a servant, as it were, to the avoidance of all trouble on her
part,--the pig who capered for joy when she or Fun approached, and had
so much expression in his physiognomy that one almost expected to see
him smile. Many a sympathizing conference Miss Lucinda held with Israel
over the perfections of Piggy, as he leaned against the sty and looked
over at his favorite after this last chore was accomplished.
"I say for 't," exclaimed the old man, one day, "I b'lieve that cre'tur'
knows enough to be professor in a college. Why, he talks! he re'lly
doos: a leetle through his nose, maybe, but no more 'n Dr. Colton allers
does,--'n' I declare he appears to have abaout as much sense. I never
see the equal of him. I thought he'd 'a larfed right out yesterday, when
I gin him that mess o' corn: he got up onto his forelegs on the trough,
an' he winked them knowin' eyes o' his'n, an' waggled his tail, an' then
he set off an' capered round till he come bunt up ag'inst the boards. I
tell _you_,--that sorter sobered him; he gin a growlin' grunt, an' shook
his ears, an' looked sideways at me, and then he put to and eet up that
corn as sober as a judge. I swan! he doos beat the Dutch!"
But there was one calculation forgotten both by Miss Lucinda and Israel:
the pig would grow,--and in consequence, as I said before, Miss Lucinda
came to grief; for when the census-taker tinkled her sharp little
door-bell, it called her from a laborious occupation at the sty,--no
more and no less than trying to nail up a board that Piggy had torn down
in struggling to get out of his durance. He had grown so large that Miss
Lucinda was afraid of him; his long legs and their vivacious motion
added to the shrewd intelligence of his eyes, and his nose seemed as
formidable to this poor little woman as the tusk of a rhinoceros: but
what should she do with him? One might as well have proposed to her to
kill and cut up Israel as to consign Piggy to the "fate of race." She
could not turn him into the street to starve, for she loved him; and the
old maid suffered from a constancy that might have made some good man
happy, but only embarrassed her with the pig. She could not keep him
forever,--that was evident; she knew enough to be aware that time
would increase his disabilities as a pet, and he was an expensive one
now,--for the corn-swallowing capacities of a pig, one of the "racer"
breed, are almost incredible, and nothing about Miss Lucinda wanted for
food even to fatness. Besides, he was getting too big for his pen, and
so "cute" an animal could not be debarred from all out-door pleasures,
and tantalized by the sight of a green and growing garden before his
eyes continually, without making an effort to partake of its delights.
So, when Miss Lucinda indued herself with her brown linen sack and
sun-bonnet to go and weed her carrot-patch, she was arrested on the way
by a loud grunting and scrambling in Piggy's quarter, and found to her
distress that he had contrived to knock off the upper board from his
pen. She had no hammer at hand; so she seized a large stone that lay
near by and pounded at the board till the twice-tinkling bell recalled
her to the house, and as soon as she had made confession to the
census-taker she went back,--alas, too late! Piggy had redoubled his
efforts, another board had yielded, and he was free! What a thing
freedom is! how objectionable in practice, how splendid in theory! More
people than Miss Lucinda have been put to their wits' end when "Hoggie"
burst his bonds and became rampant instead of couchant. But he enjoyed
it; he made the tour of the garden on a delightful canter, brandishing
his tail with an air of defiance that daunted his mistress at once, and
regarding her with his small bright eyes as if he would before long
taste her and see if she was as crisp as she looked. She retreated
forthwith to the shed and caught up a broom with which she courageously
charged upon Piggy, and was routed entirely; for, being no way alarmed
by her demonstration, the creature capered directly at her, knocked her
down, knocked the broom out of her hand, and capered away again to the
young carrot-patch.
"Oh, dear!" said Miss Manners, gathering herself up from the
ground,--"if there only was a man here!"
Suddenly she betook herself to her heels,--for the animal looked at her,
and stopped eating: that was enough to drive Miss Lucinda off the field.
And now, quite desperate, she rushed through the house and out of the
front-door, actually in search of a man! Just down the street she saw
one. Had she been composed, she might have noticed the threadbare
cleanliness of his dress, the odd cap that crowned his iron-gray locks,
and the peculiar manner of his walk; for our little old maid had
stumbled upon no less a person than Monsieur Jean Leclerc, the
dancing-master of Dalton. Not that this accomplishment was much in
vogue in the embryo city; but still there were a few who liked to fit
themselves for firemen's balls and sleighing-party frolics, and quite a
large class of children were learning betimes such graces as children in
New England receive more easily than their elders. Monsieur Leclerc had
just enough scholars to keep his coat threadbare and restrict him to
necessities; but he lived, and was independent. All this Miss Lucinda
was ignorant of; she only saw a man, and, with the instinct of the sex
in trouble or danger, she appealed to him at once.
"Oh, Sir! won't you step in and help me? My pig has got out, and I can't
catch him, and he is ruining my garden!"
"Madame, I shall!" replied the Frenchman, bowing low, and assuming the
first position.
So Monsieur Leclerc followed Miss Manners, and supplied himself with a
mop that was hanging in the shed as his best weapon. Dire was the battle
between the pig and the Frenchman. They skipped past each other and back
again as if they were practising for a cotillon. Piggy had four legs,
which gave him a certain advantage; but the Frenchman had most brain,
and in the long run brain gets the better of legs. A weary dance they
led each other, but after a while the pet was hemmed in a corner, and
Miss Lucinda had run for a rope to tie him, when, just as she returned,
the beast made a desperate charge, upset his opponent, and giving a leap
in the wrong direction, to his manifest astonishment, landed in his own
sty! Miss Lucinda's courage rose; she forgot her prostrate friend in
need, and, running to the pen, caught up hammer and nail-box on her way,
and, with unusual energy, nailed up the bars stronger than ever, and
then bethought herself to thank the stranger. But there he lay quite
still and pale.
"Dear me!" said Miss Manners, "I hope you haven't hurt yourself, Sir?"
"I have fear that I am hurt, Madame," said he, trying to smile. "I
cannot to move but it pains me."
"Where is it? Is it your leg or your arm? Try and move one at a time,"
said Miss Lucinda, promptly.
The left leg was helpless, it could not answer to the effort, and the
stranger lay back on the ground pale with the pain. Miss Lucinda took
her lavender-bottle out of her pocket and softly bathed his head and
face; then she took off her sack and folded it up under his head, and
put the lavender beside him. She was good at an emergency, and she
showed it.
"You must lie quite still," said she; "you must not try to move till I
come back with help, or your leg will be hurt more."
With that she went away, and presently returned with two strong men
and the long shutter of a shop-window. To this extempore litter she
carefully moved the Frenchman, and then her neighbors lifted him and
carried him into the parlor, where Miss Lucinda's chintz lounge was
already spread with a tight-pinned sheet to receive the poor man, and
while her helpers put him to bed she put on her bonnet and ran for the
doctor.
Doctor Colton did his best for his patient, but pronounced it an
impossibility to remove him till the bone should be joined firmly, as a
thorough cure was all-essential to his professional prospects. And now,
indeed, Miss Lucinda had her hands full. A nurse could not be afforded,
but Monsieur Leclerc was added to the list of old Israel's "chores," and
what other nursing he needed Miss Lucinda was glad to do; for her kind
heart was full of self-reproaches to think it was her pig that had
knocked down the poor man, and her mop-handle that had twisted itself
across and under his leg, and aided, if not caused, its breakage. So
Israel came in four or five times a day to do what he could, and Miss
Lucinda played nurse at other times to the best of her ability. Such
flavorous gruels and porridges as she concocted! such _tisanes_ after
her guest's instructions! such dainty soups, and sweetbreads, and
cutlets, served with such neatness! After his experience of a
second-rate boarding-house, Monsieur Leclerc thought himself in a
gastronomic paradise. Moreover, these tiny meals were garnished with
flowers, which his French taste for color and decoration appreciated:
two or three stems of lilies-of-the-valley in their folded green leaves,
cool and fragrant; a moss-rosebud and a spire of purple-gray lavender
bound together with ribbon-grass; or three carnations set in glittering
myrtle-sprays, the last acquisition of the garden.
Miss Lucinda enjoyed nursing thoroughly, and a kindlier patient no woman
ever had. Her bright needle flew faster than ever through the cold linen
and flaccid cambric of the shirts and cravats she fashioned, while he
told her, in his odd idioms, stories of his life in France, and the
curious customs both of society and _cuisinerie_, with which last he
showed a surprising acquaintance. Truth to tell, when Monsieur Leclerc
said he had been a member of the Duc de Montmorenci's household,
he withheld the other half of this truth,--that he had been his
_valet-de-chambre_: but it was an hereditary service, and seemed to him
as different a thing from common servitude as a peer's office in the
bedchamber differs from a lackey's. Indeed, Monsieur Leclerc was a
gentleman in his own way,--not of blood, but of breeding; and while he
had faithfully served the "aristocrats," as his father had done before
him, he did not limit that service to their prosperity, but in their
greatest need descended to menial offices, and forgot that he could
dance and ride and fence almost as well as his young master. But a
bullet from a barricade put an end to his duty there, and he hated
utterly the democratic rule that had overturned for him both past
and future, so he escaped, and came to America, the grand resort of
refugees, where he had labored, as he best knew how, for his own
support, and kept to himself his disgust at the manners and customs of
the barbarians. Now, for the first time, he was at home and happy. Miss
Lucinda's delicate fashions suited him exactly; he adored her taste for
the beautiful, which she was unconscious of; he enjoyed her cookery, and
though he groaned within himself at the amount of debt he was incurring,
yet he took courage from her kindness to believe she would not be a hard
creditor, and, being naturally cheerful, put aside his anxieties and
amused himself as well as her with his stories, his quavering songs, his
recipes for _pot-au-feu_, _tísane_, and _pâtés_, at once economical and
savory. Never had a leg of lamb or a piece of roast beef gone so far
in her domestic experience, a chicken seemed almost to outlive its
usefulness in its various forms of reappearance, and the salads he
devised were as wonderful as the omelets he superintended, or the gay
dances he played on his beloved violin, as soon as he could sit up
enough to manage it. Moreover,--I should say _mostover_, if the word
were admissible,--Monsieur Leclerc lifted a great weight before long
from Miss Lucinda's mind. He began by subduing Fun to his proper place
by a mild determination that completely won the dog's heart. "Women and
spaniels," the world knows, "like kicking"; and though kicks were no
part of the good man's Rareyfaction of Fun, he certainly used a certain
amount of coercion, and the dog's lawful owner admired the skill of the
teacher and enjoyed the better manners of the pupil thoroughly; she
could do twice as much sewing now, and never were her nights disturbed
by a bark, for the dog crouched by his new friend's bed in the parlor
and lay quiet there. Toby was next undertaken, and proved less amenable
to discipline; he stood in some slight awe of the man who tried to teach
him, but still continued to sally out at Miss Lucinda's feet, to spring
at her caressing hand when he felt ill-humored, and to claw Fun's
patient nose and his approaching paws when his misplaced sentimentality
led him to caress the cat; but after a while a few well-timed slaps
administered with vigor cured Toby of his worst tricks, though every
blow made Miss Lucinda wince, and almost shook her good opinion of
Monsieur Leclerc: for in these long weeks he had wrought out a good
opinion of himself in her mind, much to her own surprise; she could not
have believed a man could be so polite, so gentle, so patient, and above
all so capable of ruling without tyranny. Miss Lucinda was puzzled.
One day, as Monsieur Leclerc was getting better, just able to go about
on crutches, Israel came into the kitchen, and Miss Manners went out to
see him. She left the door open, and along with the odor of a pot of
raspberry-jam scalding over the fire, sending its steams of leaf-
and insect-fragrance through the little house, there came in also the
following conversation.
"Israel," said Miss Lucinda, in a hesitating and rather forlorn tone, "I
have been thinking,--I don't know what to do with Piggy. He is quite too
big for me to keep. I'm afraid of him, if he gets out; and he eats up
the garden."
"Well, that _is_ a consider'ble swaller for a pig, Miss Lucindy; but
I b'lieve you're abaout right abaout keepin' on him. He _is_ too
big,--that's a fact; but he's so like a human cre'tur', I'd jest
abaout as lieves slarter Orrin. I declare, I don't know no more 'n a
taown-haouse goose what to do with him!"
"If I gave him away, I suppose he would be fatted and killed, of
course?"
"I guess he'd be killed, likely; but as for fattenin' on him, I'd jest
as soon undertake to fatten a salt codfish. He's one o' the racers, an'
they're as holler as hogsheads: you can fill 'em up to their noses, ef
you're a mind to spend your corn, and they'll caper it all off their
bones in twenty-four haours. I b'lieve, ef they was tied neck an' heels
an' stuffed, they'd wiggle thin betwixt feedin'-times. Why, Orrin, he
raised nine on 'em, and every darned critter's as poor as Job's turkey,
to-day: they a'n't no good. I'd as lieves ha' had nine chestnut
rails,--an' a little lieveser, 'cause they don't eat nothin'."
"You don't know of any poor person who'd like to have a pig, do you?"
said Miss Lucinda, wistfully.
"Well, the poorer they was, the quicker they'd eat him up, I guess,--ef
they could eat such a razor-back."
"Oh, I don't like to think of his being eaten! I wish he could be got
rid of some other way. Don't you think he might be killed in his sleep,
Israel?"
This was a little too much for Israel. An irresistible flicker of
laughter twitched his wrinkles and bubbled in his throat.
"I think it's likely 'twould wake him up," said he, demurely. "Killin's
killin', and a cre'tur' can't sleep over it 's though 't was the
stomach-ache. I guess he'd kick some, ef he _was_ asleep,--and screech
some, too!"
"Dear me!" said Miss Lucinda, horrified at the idea. "I wish he could
be sent out to run in the woods. Are there any good woods near here,
Israel?"
"I don't know but what he'd as lieves be slartered to once as to starve,
an' be hunted down out in the lots. Besides, there a'n't nobody as I
knows of would like a hog to be a-rootin' round amongst their turnips
and young wheat."
"Well, what I shall do with him I don't know!" despairingly exclaimed
Miss Lucinda. "He was such a dear little thing when you brought him,
Israel! Do you remember how pink his pretty little nose was,--just like
a rosebud,--and how bright his eyes looked, and his cunning legs? And
now he's grown so big and fierce! But I can't help liking him, either."
"He's a cute critter, that's sartain; but he does too much rootin' to
have a pink nose now, I expect;--there's consider'ble on't, so I guess
it looks as well to have it gray. But I don't know no more 'n you do
what to do abaout it."
"If I could only get rid of him without knowing what became of him!"
exclaimed Miss Lucinda, squeezing her forefinger with great earnestness,
and looking both puzzled and pained.
"If Mees Lucinda would pairmit?" said a voice behind her.
She turned round to see Monsieur Leclerc on his crutches, just in the
parlor-door.
"I shall, Mees, myself dispose of Piggee, if it please. I can. I shall
have no sound; he shall to go away like a silent snow, to trouble you no
more, never!"
"Oh, Sir! if you could! But I don't see how!"
"If Mees was to see, it would not be to save her pain. I shall have him
to go by _magique_ to fiery land."
Fairy-land, probably! But Miss Lucinda did not perceive the _équivoque_.
"Nor yet shall I trouble Meester Israyel. I shall have the aid of myself
and one good friend that I have; and some night when you rise of the
morning, he shall not be there."
Miss Lucinda breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"I am greatly obliged,--I shall be, I mean," said she.
"Well, I'm glad enough to wash my hands on't," said Israel. "I shall
hanker arter the critter some, but he's a-gettin' too big to be handy;
'n' it's one comfort abaout critters, you ken get rid on 'em somehaow
when they're more plague than profit. But folks has got to be let alone,
excep' the Lord takes 'em; an' He don't allers see fit."
What added point and weight to these final remarks of old Israel was
the well-known fact that he suffered at home from the most pecking and
worrying of wives, and had been heard to say in some moment of unusual
frankness that he "didn't see how't could be sinful to wish Miss Slater
was in heaven, for she'd be lots better off, and other folks too!"
Miss Lucinda never knew what befell her pig one fine September night;
she did not even guess that a visit paid to Monsieur by one of his
pupils, a farmer's daughter just out of Dalton, had anything to do with
this _enlèvement_; she was sound asleep in her bed up-stairs, when
her guest shod his crutches with old gloves, and limped out to the
garden-gate by dawn, where he and the farmer tolled the animal out of
his sty and far down the street by tempting red apples, and then Farmer
Steele took possession of him, and he was seen no more. No, the first
thing Miss Lucinda knew of her riddance was when Israel put his head
into the back-door that same morning, some four hours afterward, and
said, with a significant nod,--
"He's gone!"
After all his other chores were done, Israel had a conference with
Monsieur Leclerc, and the two sallied into the garden, and in an hour
had dismantled the low dwelling, cleared away the wreck, levelled and
smoothed its site, and Monsieur, having previously provided himself with
an Isabella-grape-vine, planted it on this forsaken spot, and trained
it carefully against the end of the shed: strange to say, though it was
against all precedent to transplant a grape in September, it lived and
flourished. Miss Lucinda's gratitude to Monsieur Leclerc was altogether
disproportioned, as he thought, to his slight service. He could not
understand fully her devotion to her pets, but he respected it, and
aided it whenever he could, though he never surmised the motive that
adorned Miss Lucinda's table with such delicate superabundance after
the late departure, and laid bundles of lavender-flowers in his tiny
portmanteau till the very leather seemed to gather fragrance.
Before long, Monsieur Leclerc was well enough to resume his classes,
and return to his boarding-house; but the latter was filled, and only
offered a prospect of vacancy in some three weeks after his application;
so he returned home somewhat dejected, and as he sat by the little
parlor-fire after tea, he said to his hostess, in a reluctant tone,--
"Mees Lucinda, you have been of the kindest to the poor alien. I have it
in my mind to relieve you of this care very rapidly, but it is not in
the Fates that I do. I have gone to my house of lodgings, and they
cannot to give me a chamber as yet I have fear that I must yet rely me
on your goodness for some time more, if you can to entertain me so much
more of time?"
"Why, I shall like to, Sir," replied the kindly, simple-hearted old
maid. "I'm sure you are not a mite of trouble, and I never can forget
what you did for my pig."
A smile flitted across the Frenchman's thin, dark face, and he watched
her glittering needles a few minutes in silence before he spoke again.
"But I have other things to say of the most unpleasant to me, Mees
Lucinda. I have a great debt for the goodness and care you to me have
lavished. To the angels of the good God we must submit to be debtors,
but there are also of mortal obligations. I have lodged in your mansion
for more of ten weeks, and to you I pay yet no silver, but it is that I
have it not at present--I must ask of your goodness to wait."
The old maid's shining black eyes grew soft as she looked at him.
"Why!" said she, "I don't think you owe me much of anything, Mr.
Leclerc. I never knew things last as they have since you came. I really
think you brought a blessing. I wish you would please to think you don't
owe me anything."
The Frenchman's great brown eyes shone with suspicious dew.
"I cannot to forget that I owe to you far more than any silver of man
repays; but I should not think to forget that I also owe to you silver,
or I should not be worthy of a man's name. No, Mees! I have two hands
and legs. I will not let a woman most solitary spend for me her good
self."
"Well," said Miss Lucinda, "if you will be uneasy till you pay me, I
would rather have another kind of pay than money. I should like to know
how to dance. I never did learn, when I was a girl, and I think it would
be good exercise."
Miss Lucinda supported this pious fiction through with a simplicity that
quite deceived the Frenchman. He did not think it so incongruous as it
was. He had seen women of sixty, rouged, and jewelled, and furbelowed,
foot it deftly in the halls of the Faubourg St. Germain in his earliest
youth; and this cheery, healthy woman, with lingering blooms on either
cheek, and uncapped head of curly black hair but slightly strewn with
silver, seemed quite as fit a subject for the accomplishment. Besides,
he was poor,--and this offered so easy a way of paying the debt he had
so dreaded! Well said Solomon,--"The destruction of the poor is their
poverty!" For whose moral sense, delicate sensitivenesses, generous
longings, will not sometimes give way to the stringent need of food and
clothing, the gall of indebtedness, and the sinking consciousness of an
empty purse and threatening possibilities?
Monsieur Leclerc's face brightened.
"Ah! with what grand pleasure shall I teach you the dance!"