The next September we moved. Our new house was large and handsome. On
the south side there was nothing between it and the sea, except a few
feet of sand. No tree or shrub intercepted the view. To the eastward a
promontory of rocks jutted into the sea, serving as a pier against
the wash of the tide, and adding a picturesqueness to the curve of the
beach. On the north side flourished an orchard, which was planted by
Grandfather Locke. Looking over the tree-tops from the upper north
windows, one would have had no suspicion of being in the neighborhood
of the sea. From these windows, in winter, we saw the nimbus of the
Northern Light. The darkness of our sky, the stillness of the night,
mysteriously reflected the perpetual condition of its own solitary
world. In summer ragged white clouds rose above the horizon, as if
they had been torn from the sky of an underworld, to sail up the
blue heaven, languish away, or turn livid with thunder, and roll off
seaward. Between the orchard and the house a lawn sloped easterly to
the border of a brook, which straggled behind the outhouses into a
meadow, and finally lost itself among the rocks on the shore. Up by
the lawn a willow hung over it, and its outer bank was fringed by
the tangled wild-grape, sweet-briar, and alder bushes. The premises,
except on the seaside, were enclosed by a high wall of rough granite.
No houses were near us, on either side of the shore; up the north road
they were scattered at intervals.
Mother said I must be considered a young lady, and should have my own
room. Veronica was to have one opposite, divided from it by a wide
passage. This passage extended beyond the angle of the stairway, and
was cut off by a glass door. A wall ran across the lower end of the
passage; half the house was beyond its other side, so that when the
door was fastened, Veronica and myself were in a cul-de-sac.
The establishment was put on a larger footing. Mrs. Hepsey Curtis was
installed mistress of the kitchen. Temperance declared that she could
not stand it; that she wasn't a nigger; that she must go, but she had
no home, and no friends--nothing but a wood lot, which was left her
by her father the miller. As the trees thereon grew, promising to make
timber, its value increased; at present her income was limited to the
profit from the annual sale of a cord or two of wood. So she staid on,
in spite of Hepsey. There were also two men for the garden and stable.
A boy was always attached to the house; not the same boy, but a Boy
dynasty, for as soon as one went another came, who ate a great deal--a
crime in Hepsey's eyes--and whose general duty was to carry armfuls of
wood, pails of milk, or swill, and to shut doors.
We had many visitors. Though father had no time to devote to guests,
he was continually inviting people for us to entertain, and his
invitations were taken as a matter of course, and finally for granted.
A rich Morgeson was a new feature in the family annals, and distant
relations improved the advantage offered them by coming to spend the
summer with us, because their own houses were too hot, or the winter,
because they were too cold! Infirm old ladies, who were not related to
us, but who had nowhere else to visit, came. As his business extended,
our visiting list extended. The captains of his ships whose homes were
elsewhere brought their wives to be inconsolable with us after their
departure on their voyages. We had ministers often, who always quarter
at the best houses, and chance visitors to dinner and supper, who made
our house a way-station. There was but small opportunity to cultivate
family affinities; they were forever disturbed. Somebody was always
sitting in the laps of our Lares and Penates. Another class of
visitors deserving notice were those who preferred to occupy the
kitchen and back chambers, humbly proud and bashfully arrogant people,
who kept their hats and bonnets by them, and small bundles, to delude
themselves and us with the idea that they "had not come to stay, and
had no occasion for any attention." These people criticised us
with insinuating severity, and proposed amendments with unrelenting
affability. To this class Veronica was most attracted--it repelled me;
consequently she was petted, and I was amiably sneered at.
This period of our family life has left small impression of dramatic
interest. There was no development of the sentiments, no betrayal of
the fluctuations of the passions which must have existed. There was
no accident to reveal, no coincidence to surprise us. Hidden among
the Powers That Be, which rule New England, lurks the Deity of the
Illicit. This Deity never obtained sovereignty in the atmosphere
where the Morgesons lived. Instead of the impression which my
after-experience suggests to me to seek, I recall arrivals and
departures, an eternal smell of cookery, a perpetual changing of beds,
and the small talk of vacant minds.
Despite the rigors of Hepsey in the kitchen, and the careful
supervision of Temperance, there was little systematic housekeeping.
Mother had severe turns of planning, and making rules, falling upon
us in whirlwinds of reform, shortly allowing the band of habit to snap
back, and we resumed our former condition. She had no assistance from
father in her ideas of change. It was enough for him to know that he
had built a good house to shelter us, and to order the best that could
be bought for us to eat and to wear. He liked, when he went where
there were fine shops, to buy and bring home handsome shawls, bonnets,
and dresses, wholly unsuited in general to the style and taste of each
of us, but much handsomer than were needful for Surrey. They answered,
however, as patterns for the plainer materials of our neighbors. He
also bought books for us, recommended by their covers, or the opinion
of the bookseller. His failing was to buy an immense quantity of
everything he fancied.
"I shall never have to buy this thing again," he would say; "let us
have enough."
Veronica and I grew up ignorant of practical or economical ways. We
never saw money, never went shopping. Mother was indifferent in regard
to much of the business of ordinary life which children are taught to
understand. Father and mother both stopped at the same point with us,
but for a different reason; father, because he saw nothing beyond the
material, and mother, because her spiritual insight was confused and
perplexing. But whatever a household may be, the Destinies spin the
web to their will, put of the threads which drop hither and thither,
floating in its atmosphere, white, black, or gray.
From the time we moved, however, we were a stirring, cheerful family,
independent of each other, but spite of our desultory tastes, mutual
habits were formed. When the want of society was felt, we sought the
dining-room, sure of meeting others with the same want. This room was
large and central, connecting with the halls, kitchen, and mother's
room. It was a caravansary where people dropped in and out on
their way to some other place. Our most public moments were during
meal-time. It was known that father was at home at breakfast and
supper, and could be consulted. As he was away at our noonday dinner,
generally we were the least disturbed then, and it was a lawless,
irregular, and unceremonious affair. Mother establisher her arm-chair
here, and a stand for her workbasket. Hepsey and Temperance were at
hand, the men came for orders, and it was convenient for the boy to
transmit the local intelligence it was his vocation to collect. The
windows commanded a view of the sea, the best in the house. This
prospect served mother for exercise. Her eyes roved over it when she
wanted a little out-of-doors life. If she desired more variety, which
was seldom, she went to the kitchen. After we moved she grew averse
to leaving the house, except to go to church. She never quitted the
dining-room after our supper till bedtime, because father rarely came
from Milford, where he went on bank days, and indeed almost every
other day, till late, and she liked to be by him while he ate his
supper and smoked a cigar. All except Veronica frequented this room;
but she was not missed or inquired for. She liked the parlor, because
the piano was there. As soon as father had bought it she astonished us
by a persistent fingering of the keys, which produced a feeble melody.
She soon played all the airs she had heard. When I saw what she could
do, I refused to take music lessons, for while I was trying to
learn "The White Cockade," she pushed me away, played it, and made
variations upon it. I pounded the keys with my fist, by way of a
farewell, and told her she should have the piano for her own.