ma liked books, Thella; we used to take such comfort reading together,
but Mandy says it makes me lazy—p’raps it does. Mandy is a wonderful
manager, Thella.”
“Very wonderful! She can make everybody else work while she gossips with
the neighbors,” answered Thella indignantly.
“Sho, sho! Daughter you mustn’t talk that way! She’s your ma—no, she’s
your stepma, you know. We must make the best of it,” he iterated weakly.
Thella made no reply, though her heart burned hotly; what could she say
to this crushed spirit that would not add to his trouble?
Before she let him go in she said hesitatingly; “Pa, I am going away;
she is cross to you on my account, and—and—oh, pa, I do want to go to
school; there’s so much that I want to know!” she said breathlessly.
He stood as though stunned: “What shall I do without you?” he cried
despairingly.
Thella trembled with excitement; her heart was torn between the desire
to go and the longing to remain; how could she leave her poor,
heartbroken old father? but—she honestly believed that _she_—Thella
never called her anything else if she could avoid it—would be less
unkind to pa, if she were gone. Thella knew very well that a rancorous
jealousy added force to her misuse of him; and—oh, she could not go on
in this way; empty day dreams no longer sufficed her bright
intelligence; she hungered and thirsted for knowledge; he had a vague
understanding of higher and better things than met her everyday sight.
She could no longer keep her eyes earthward; even when she cast them
down for one instant, all things spoke to her of that higher life, and
filled her with unutterable longing. Something of this she tried to tell
pa between her sobs.
He let his hand wander gently over her crown of hair, as he said,
“Yes—yes, daughter; I know how you feel. I used to have just such
thoughts, and ma—your ma—used to make me feel as though I could see
right up into God’s heart, and I knew—I _knew_—that I could live well
enough to reach Him, sometime, I should if ma hadn’t have died; but
now—I just have to make the best of it,” he finished despondently.
“But pa, hadn’t you ought to try now—for ma’s sake?”
“How can I? I never have time even to think. No, no, daughter, I must
just make the best of it,” he reiterated wearily.
She had no words of comfort that had not in them a sound of mockery, so
she said nothing beyond thanking him for his consent, and as she kissed
him lovingly, she patted his withered cheek with her toil-roughened
palms: “Poor pa! Poor pa! I love you dearly,” she said.
A tear stole down his furrowed face and wet her hands; he tremblingly
murmured, “God bless my daughter!”
The next morning Mrs. Armitage screamed in vain to Thella:
“Drat her, I’ll take a strap to her, if she’s bigger’n the side of a
house.”
When at last she threw open the door of the poor, bare little chamber,
she found it empty. For once words failed her—she sat down on the stairs
gasping.
Pa wisely kept out of her way. She missed her servant, but poor pa went
about more silent than ever; it seemed that in one short month he grew
visibly gray and bent; he worked on hopelessly through heat and cold.
The only smile that ever crossed his face was when he received a thick
letter from the village postmaster; he would hide it away in his inside
pocket with trembling hands for fear Mandy would see it; a little spot
of color coming into his thin old cheeks at the thought; at nightfall he
would wander down the lane where he used to walk with Thella, and just
to make believe that she would come to meet him, he would crook his
little finger and whistle shrilly. Oh, the comfort those letters were to
him; after reading them over and over again, he would hide them away in
a hollow log.
Thella always wrote to him that she was well and happy; she told him
nothing of the hard labor and bitter disappointments she met; her
situation had been assured to her before she left home, but there were
many things that were hard to bear; not the least of which was a
terrible homesickness. Then, too, when she came to go to school, she
found that others of the same age were far in advance of her in their
studies, and consequently looked down upon her. Patient effort at last
brought success; by this time her homesick feeling had worn away; she
still longed to see her father, but had ever the hope before her of a
home in which “pa” should have the warmest corner in winter and the
brightest window when he wished it.
Later on she wrote that she was teaching; pa whispered it softly to
himself: “My Thella is a schoolmam!” Such innocent pride as pa took in
the fact.
After four years she wrote to him that she was married.
“Married! My little girl, married!” His old face puckered up queerly; he
did not know whether to laugh or cry. She wrote that she was very happy.
After that the burden of every letter was, “Pa, do come and see me.”
Sitting by the fire one evening, late in the fall, pa said, “Mandy, I am
going to Adairville to-morrow.”
“I should like to know if you are possessed, you’ll do no such thing!
What do you want to go there for?”
“I want to see Thella; it’s a long time since I seen her!”
deprecatingly.
“Well, you won’t go trapezing after her; she run away, and you’ll not
follow her.”
“She’s my child, you hadn’t ought to be so hard, Mandy,” quavered the
old man.
“Well, you’ll not go, I tell you! you ain’t goin’ to spend no money
running after that trollope!” answered she.
Pa sighed, but said no more; he had submitted to her rule so long that
the thought of opposition did not occur to him; his shoulder seemed to
bend as if beneath a heavy load; his gray head drooped lower and lower;
a heavy tear or two followed the deep furrows down his cheek.
The next morning he seemed scarcely able to stir, and though her wrath
enveloped him all day he seemed not to mind; he appeared like one in a
dream.
When chore-time came again, she said sharply, “Ain’t you goin’ to get
them cows to-night? you act as though your wits was wool-gatherin’—or
like a tarnal fool!”
“Mandy, I’ve always did the best I could!” he said quaveringly, as he
turned away.
“It’s poor enough, the Lord knows,” snapped she.
When pa reached the entrance to the lane he stood lost in thought for
several minutes—he had forgotten all about the cows—suddenly he
straightened up: “I’ve a good mind to do it! I vum, I will!” he laughed
outright—a cracked, cackling laugh, that had a pitiful sound; his weak,
watery eyes began to glisten; this time instead of whistling once, he
whistled twice shrilly.
“Daughter, I’m coming; your old pa’s coming!” he cried gleefully.
He sat down on the hollow log where he kept his letters; he took them
out, handling them over fondly; from the last one received he drew out a
bill; he spelled the letter out laboriously:
“DEAR PA: Here is a little money to get you a suit of new clothes; and
in my next letter I will send you enough for your fare, for, dear pa, I
must see you.”
He laid the letter on his knee, smoothing it caressingly.
“Yes, daughter, so you shall; I couldn’t never wait ’till I got another
letter; so I will go just as far as this money’ll carry me and I’ll walk
the rest of the way. Lord! What’ll Mandy say?”
Poor pa did not know as much about traveling as do some children, so he
had very little idea of his undertaking.
Two weeks later Thella was one afternoon sitting in her pleasant room.
The postman had just passed, which set her to wondering why she did not
hear from pa; she ever had the dread before her that his burden would
become greater than he could bear, and that she would see him no more. A
servant came hurriedly into the room:
“Mrs. Webster, there is an old man at the door who insists upon seeing
you; I think he is crazy, he acts so queer.”
“Where is he?” asked Thella, rising.
“At the front door, where he has no business to be, of course! Oh, he
said tell you that his name is Armitage——”
“Oh, it is pa—it’s pa!” cried Thella, wildly oblivious that she had
nearly thrown the astonished girl over.
She seized the toilworn hands of the forlorn-looking old man; she threw
her arms around his sunburned neck, and hugged him ecstatically; she
fairly dragged him into the room, so great was her excited joy; she
pulled forward the easiest chair, and playfully pushed him into it; she
patted his hands, and kissed his snowy, straggling hair; she had no
words to express her joy, grief, and surprise, except to say over and
over again, “Poor pa! Poor pa! Oh, I am so glad to see you!”
He looked at her with dim old eyes, his shaking hand held in hers; “Is
this pretty lady my little daughter?” he asked with a happy laugh.
“Oh, you awful flatterer,” cried Thella gayly.
Pa leaned back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction: “This chair is
awful comfortable,” he closed his eyes wearily.
“You are tired, pa, and I do not let you rest!” she said with quick
compunction.
“Yes, I am tired; it was a long walk. Mandy wouldn’t let me come, so I
ran away; I wouldn’t quarrel with her, so I had to make the best of it.”
“Walk! Did you walk?”
“’Most a hundred miles; it took me a long spell, but I’m glad I come.
When I shut my eyes it seems as though I’m talking to your ma; your
voice sounds just as hers did.”
The next morning when Thella went to call him to breakfast, he lay
babbling of the green lane and Thella, his little girl; occasionally
crying out piteously, “Don’t be so hard, Mandy; she’s only a little
girl!” Then again, tears would course down his worn cheeks: “Oh, if ma
had only lived!” Another time: “Yes, daughter; it is hard to bear, but
we must make the best of it.”
It was a whole month later, and pa was lying back in an invalid chair,
his head propped with soft cushions, his old face looking very placid.
“What a sight of nice books you have, daughter; it would be a pleasure
to stay here all my life!”
“That’s just what you are going to do, pa.” “Oh, I can’t! You know how
Mandy will scold, but I’m goin’ to take all the comfort I can, while I
do stay.”
Thella leaned over him, smoothing his thin, gray hair as though he were
a child, a wistful tenderness in her tone:
“Mandy’ll never scold you again, pa.”
Pa sat upright, a fitful color coming into his thin cheeks: “What do you
mean? Has—something—” stammered he, nervously.
“There, pa, don’t fret; yes, Mandy is—dead;” caressing the hand she held
tenderly. “She took a severe cold, and was sick only three or four
days.” A tear coursed down his cheek:
“Poor Mandy! Perhaps she didn’t mean to be so hard; we mustn’t judge for
others, must we, now?” he questioned tremulously.
He sat silent for a long time, at last he said, “You’ve everything nice
here, and the best man that ever lived; you’ve learned so many things—I
don’t ’spose you would care to walk in the old lane where my _little_
girl and I used to walk; but I should like to see it once more, and then
I’d be content to stay with you the rest of my days.”
Thella gave his hand a loving little pat: “Just hurry up and get well,
and we will go and make believe that it is old times once more.”
It was months before pa was able to go, but at last they walked down the
lane in the sweet June twilight; as of old, “bob-white” whistled to his
shy brown mate; and the gray rabbit lifted his long ears inquiringly,
exactly as in the past; the yellow buttercups laughed up amid the short,
sweet grass just the same, and yet Thella felt a depressing sadness, and
pa sighed sorrowfully: “One kind of gets used to things, Thella—no need
to hurry home now, is there? It makes me sorry and lonesome.” Thella
pressed his arm sympathetically, and they silently walked up the lane,
past the cows, ruminatively chewing their cud; past the flock of
chickens, with their many bickerings, as they sought their roost; past
the silent house and into the street, closing the gate softly and
reverently behind them, even as they closed the door of the past life.
A TALE OF TWO PICTURES.
It is a question open to discussion whether it is a blessing to be born
with a highly sensitive organization, an artistic taste—and poverty.
The reverse was the opinion of Philip Aultman. Life seemed a failure,
every venture foredoomed; and this sunny June morning, when all nature
seemed to give the lie to evil prognostications, he sat in his room with
the curtains of his soul pulled down, brooding over his misfortunes, not
once considering that he was in fault. A maple grew just outside the
window, and a little branch tapped on the uplifted sash coaxingly; the
soft wind whispered through its branches, and entering lifted his curly
brown locks shyly; a bluebird tilted its bright head, and swelled its
throat in song of enticement; he lifted his face from the melancholy
arch of his arms, and said as if in answer to the appeal: “I _will_ go
out, this is of no use! Anything is better than staying within brooding
over my trouble!”
As he wandered about the sweet wind seemed to blow away much of his
despondency, although he still smarted with indignation against fate.
Yet—what is fate? The evil we bring upon ourselves. We clasp our hands
above our heads, prostrate ourselves with our foreheads in the dust, and
say with the devout Oriental: “Kismet!” Thus we are absolved from all
blame.
Philip had been poor all his life; not miserably indigent, though many
things which go to make life comfortable were lacking. He had inherited
a taste for art from his father; hard work had been the rule of his
life, and as a result he was a very creditable artist, though not by any
means entering into the soul of the work. It is one thing to paint a
fair picture, to write an acceptable story; it is quite another thing to
put your very self into your work, and endow it with a subtle life which
is past all explaining.
When he was twenty-five he inherited money—worse for him; he thought
that henceforward life held no need for exertion; as though food and
raiment constitute all for which we should exert ourselves. He fancied
that happiness lay in two things; going to sleep, and letting the
enervating wind of pleasure drift him whithersoever it would; or getting
astride of the billow of self-will, to ride over everything. He did not
find his mistake until slice by slice his inheritance had been cut away
from him, and he looked with astonished gaze upon those who, under the
guise of friendship, had fastened themselves upon him in his prosperity,
and now stared at him with unseeing eyes. He looked upon it as the worst
misfortune which could have befallen him. He was no more shortsighted
than the majority of persons; because a certain condition brings present
discomfort, we rebel against it as being to our great detriment; most
frequently we rebel without reason. The loss was a blessing to him,
against which he railed, beat, and bruised himself.
Just at this point I take up his history.
He wandered about the woods all day, sometimes throwing himself on the
grass to look up into the immeasurable depths of the ether; again, idly
throwing pebbles into the flashing water; but during all that sweet,
restful afternoon his soul was awakening from its lethargy; thoughts
which seemed to him a glimpse of the divine, surprised his hitherto
dormant intellectuality; he began to realize that life held
possibilities of which he had never caught a glimpse.
Evil is but good gone astray; it is the oscillation of the pendulum;
Philip had reached the adverse limit, and the pendulum of its own
momentum was returning to the center of gravity. As deadly nausea is the
precursor of a cleansed stomach, so he felt a thorough disgust with all
the world, which meant to him—as it does to every one of us—the people
with whom he was in daily association; he indignantly compared them to a
flock of geese—all gabble and greed. It is a hard truth, that if we will
submit to be plucked we can soon find all the worst characteristics of
the worst people. He thought savagely that he desired never to see one
of them again.
He took a small memorandum book from his pocket, and setting down a few
figures ran them over rapidly; he laughed harshly, a sound that held the
threat of a sob: “Six hundred dollars! Well, that is a great showing
from fifty thousand! No wonder the elegant Mabel DeVere gave me the cold
shoulder; she and her kind have no use for a man without money; then
there was that little dancer—she had no further use for the goose after
it was thoroughly plucked, as she took pains to tell me; she was at
least honest. They are all alike, a treacherous, tricky lot!” he
muttered to himself, with moody brow; but he remembered with a pang of
shame that his loving, patient, helpful mother had been like none of
those with whom he had associated, and his shame was that he had sought
such company; it had been of his own choosing; what better was he, that
he should fling at them? He was looking at himself in a new light.
He tried not to think about it, it made him restless and ashamed; but
such thoughts once aroused will not be quieted; when the light is once
admitted the germ of higher growth will strengthen rapidly.
“How sweet it would be to live like this,” he said thoughtfully. A
sudden smile lighted the gloom of his face; “Why not? I have my outfit,
and money enough to procure food and shelter whenever I desire it. It is
not so very much that a person needs after all; it is what he fancies
that he needs, and is much better without, that takes the money—and what
his friends require,” he added with a rueful grimace.
In consequence of this determination, he took a small gripsack, together
with his artist’s materials, and tossed the key of his room to his
landlady, saying nonchalantly, “Take care of my things; I’ll be back
sometime!”
No person can live near to nature’s heart, can share in her moods, and
drink of her healing waters, and not grow purer in heart, and stronger
spiritually. Philip began to lose the sense of discord, and to
understand, with a feeling of humility, that he had been in fault; it
was well for him to live with himself for awhile, that he might learn
what kind of a man he had really been.
Toward the close of a cloudless July day he came up a long, grassy,
country lane, to a squat looking farmhouse; he had come across country
many miles, and had found a strange charm in the solitude. He was tired
and hungry, and hailed a sight of the house with pleasure. The whole
place had a wild and deserted look; a few late roses hung their heavy
heads from the unpruned bushes; creepers ran riot over a long, low porch
extending around three sides of the house giving it the appearance of a
mother hen protecting her brood.
As he assayed to open the rickety gate the tangled morning-glorys seemed
to hold it closed against him as though in warning. A vision of supper
and a bed with cool, sweet-scented sheets had possessed his mind; but as
the gate creaked on its one rusty hinge and he felt the desolation of
the place, a chill went over him and the comforting vision disappeared.
A hollow, uncanny reverberation was the only answer to his rapping. He
turned the knob, which yielded readily to his touch, but the door swung
slowly on its rusty hinges; stiffly like a person old and tortured with
the rheumatism. He stood undecided, peering in among the shadows of a
long, dimly lighted hall, which extended the whole length of the house,
the doors opening primly on either side along its entire length; plainly
no foot had disturbed the dust on this floor for many a day. As he
stepped within a cloud arose as though in protest; he opened the first
door on the right, and was surprised to find the room furnished; the
low-browed ceiling seemed to frown ominously; the sides were paneled in
dark wood, being alternately the head of an animal and a flower,
exquisite in design and workmanship; but the dark mahogany color added
to the somber effect. A square old-fashioned bedstead stood at the far
corner of the room, its tall spindling posts rising high toward the
ceiling like uplifted hands; on one of these hung a man’s hat. Phil
fancied that he could see the kind of a man who had worn it; an athletic
fellow, not over nice in his dress, judging by its battered look. The
clothing on the bed was pulled awry, as though the occupants had
hurriedly stepped out, without time to arrange the room; an easy-chair
was drawn up before the great, yawning fireplace, in which a few charred
sticks lay across the old-fashioned, brass andirons. On the mantle stood
a brass candlestick, with a half-burned candle in the socket; a pair of
snuffers on a tray at its side; a turkey wing, bound with velvet, lay on
another tray in the corner of the fireplace; just above it hung a pair
of old-fashioned bellows; a short, squat shovel, and a pair of
grotesquely, long legged tongs stood near; the two looking like a lank
old man, and his fat, little wife. Taken altogether, it had a quaint,
old-fashioned look, which told pathetically of mouldering forms, and
days long since dead.
All other rooms in the house were entirely destitute of furniture. He
soon kindled a fire, and from a little stream which purled through the
garden he filled his tin pot and presently it was singing drowsily.
Hunger made a sauce piquant to his crackers cheese, and fragrant tea;
better relished than all the costly dinners eaten when stomach and
morals both were overburdened.
The sun was setting in the west amid a glory of gilded clouds; the wind
blew faintly across the level meadow and pasture land; no sound
disturbed the silence; the tinkle of a cowbell, the crowing of a cock,
seemed but to accentuate the peace.
Phil brought the chair out upon the porch, and sat leaning lazily back,
dreamily regarding his surroundings. How much sweeter this than the
restless, unsatisfying life which he had led! In some occult manner the
quaint old-fashioned house and the peaceful scene brought his mother
before his mind; the saddened quiet, the tinge of sweet loneliness,
seemed like a reflection of her life. A wave of regret swept over him
that he had not been a better son. He remembered that she had saved and
denied herself many comforts that he might receive a fine education, and
study art under the most favorable circumstances. He blushed with shame
to think how ungrateful he had been, and felt glad that the money had
not fallen to him while she yet lived, for he knew that his reckless
course would have grieved her sorely. Heretofore he had consoled himself
with the thought that there were others much worse than he; he began to
understand that comparison did not in the least palliate the offense; he
felt a greater twinge of shame as he thought of some of his past
actions, that thus he had wronged her memory, her teachings, and his
higher self.
He drifted from regretful thought into slumber.
It had grown dark; the wind had arisen with the going down of the sun,
and the loose boards were rattling noisily; the vines were swaying to
and fro, but the stars blinked in the darkened vault in a quizzical
manner as he started up in affright. He thought that he felt a hand upon
his shoulder, and that he beheld the shadowy outline of a form within
the room.
He stood up and shook himself vigorously: “I must have been dreaming;
this wind is uncomfortably cold,” he said, with a shiver.
He went in, and lighted the candle; he built a fire which leaped and
flared up the broad-mouthed fireplace, throwing jolly, fantastic shadows
over the great room, much more suggestive of the play of elfins than the
gloomy walking of ghosts. He sat drowsily looking into the coals; the
fire had burned low, and the room was in half shadow, with a fitful
lighting up now and then; a cold wind struck him, and he seemed impelled
by some unseen force to look toward the bed; the battered hat appeared
to be rising of its own volition above the tall post, and the face of a
man fitted itself beneath it; a cruel face; the white brow beetling over
deep set, piercing eyes; the jaw massive and square; the lips thin, a
mere line across the resolute face; the whole countenance imbued with a
strange fierce beauty; a man who would allow nothing to stand in the way
of his will. Phil started up with a gasp of terror; he felt suffocated.
“Great God! Is this place haunted, or have I a bad case of nightmare?”
he exclaimed aloud.
He could have sworn that he heard a laugh, shrill and blood curdling;
but perhaps it was but the wind among the gnarled apple trees—our
imagination plays us strange tricks, and the furnishings and appearance
of a room have disastrous effect upon our nerves at times.