Jim was gone; but I was left. I could have spared him better if I could
only have got rid of myself.
However, for that afternoon the blessed pain took such good care of me
that I lay upon my bed still and stunned, and could only somewhat dimly
perceive, not how unhappy I was, but how unhappy I was going to be. It
quieted Mrs. Johnson, too. She had seen me suffering from headache
before, and knew that I could never talk much while it lasted. Her
curiosity was at once satisfied and gratified by hearing what Jim had
left me at liberty to tell her,--the news of his partnership in the
firm. The engagement was not to be announced in form till the next week;
though I, as the common friend of both parties, had been made an
exceptional confidante; and Jim, afraid of betraying himself, had not
trusted himself to take leave of his aunt, but left his love for her,
and his apologies for outstaying his time so far in the meadow as to
leave himself none for the farm-house.
Thus I had a reprieve. When towards midnight my head grew easier, I was
worn out and slept; so that it was not till the birds began to rehearse
for their concert at sunrise the next morning, that I came to myself and
looked things in the face in the clear light of the awful dawn.
If you can imagine a very heavy weight let somewhat gradually, but
irresistibly, down upon young and tender shoulders, then gently lifted
again, little by little, by a sympathizing and unlooked-for helper, and
lastly tossed by him unexpectedly into the air, only to fall back with
redoubled weight, and crush the frame that was but bowed before, you can
form some idea of what had just happened to me. My mother's death, our
embarrassments, my loneliness, the hard and to me uncongenial work I had
to do, all came upon me together more heavily than at any time since the
first fortnight that I spent at Greenville.
But that was not all. Disappointment is hardly the right word to use;
for I can truly say that I never made any calculations for the future
upon Jim's attentions to me. They were offered so honestly and
respectfully that I instinctively felt I could accept them with perfect
propriety, and perhaps could scarcely with propriety refuse. I had never
once asked myself what they meant, nor whither they tended. But yet I
was used to them now, and had learned to prize them far more than I
knew; and they must be given up. My heart-strings had unconsciously
grown to him, and ought to be torn away. And I think that, beyond grief,
beyond the prospect of lonely toil and poverty henceforth, beyond all
the rest, was the horror of an idea which came upon me, that I had lost
the control of my own mind,--that my peace had passed out of my keeping
into the power of another, who, though friendly to me, neither would nor
could preserve it for me,--that I was doomed to be henceforward the prey
of feelings which I must try to conceal, and perhaps could not for any
length of time, which lowered me in my own eyes, and would do so in
those of others if they were seen by them, which were wrong, and which I
could not help.
These thoughts struck and stung me like so many hornets. Crying,
"Mother! mother!" I sprang from my bed, and fell on my knees beside it.
I did not suppose it would do much good for me to pray; but I said over
and over, if only to stop myself from thinking, "O God, help me! God
have mercy on me!" as fast as I could, till the town clock struck five,
and I knew that I must begin to dress, and compose myself, if I would
appear as usual at six o'clock at the breakfast-table.
My French grammar, was, as usual, set up beside my looking-glass. As
usual, I examined myself aloud in one of the exercises, while I went
through my toilet. If I did make some mistakes it was no matter. I made
so much haste, that I had time before breakfast to correct some of the
compositions which I had brought with me from school. The rest, as I
often did when hurried, I turned over while I tried to eat my bread and
milk. This did not encourage conversation. During the meal, I was only
asked how my head was, and answered only that it was better. I had taken
care not to shed a tear, so that my eyes were not swollen; and as I had
eaten nothing since the morning of the day before, nobody could be
surprised to see me pale.
Mrs. Johnson left her seat, too, almost as soon as I took mine. She was
in a great bustle, getting her covered wagon under way, and stocked with
eggs, butter, cheese, and green vegetables for her weekly trip to the
nearest market-town. She was, however, sufficiently mindful of her
nephew's lessons to regret that she must leave me poorly when he would
not be there to cheer me up, and to tell me to choose what I liked best
for my dinner while she was gone.
I chose a boiled chicken and rice. It was what my mother used to like
best to have me eat when I was not well. I often rebelled against it
when a child; but now I sought by means of it to soothe myself with the
fancy that I was still under her direction.
Mrs. Johnson also offered to do for me what I forgot to ask of her,--to
look in at the post-office and see if there was not a letter there for
me from my only sister. Fanny, for once, had sent me none the week
before. Mrs. Johnson went to town, and I to school.
I worked and worried through the lessons,--how, I never knew; but I dare
say the children were forbearing; children are apt to be when one is
not well. I came home and looked at the chicken and rice. But that would
not do. They _would_ have made me cry. So I hurried out again, away from
them, and away from the meadow, and walked in the woods all that
Saturday afternoon, thinking to and fro,--not so violently as in the
morning, for I was weaker, but very confusedly and in endless
perplexity. How could I stay in Greenville? I should have to be with
Jim! But how could I go? What reason had I to give? and what would
people think was my reason? But would it not be wrong to stay and see
Jim? But it would be wrong to break my engagement to the school
committee!
At length again the clock struck five, which was supper-time, and I saw
myself no nearer the end of my difficulties; and I had to say once
again, "God help me! God have mercy on me!" and so went home.
Mrs. Johnson was awaiting me, with this letter for me in her pocket. It
is not in Fanny's handwriting, however, but in that of a friend of ours
with whom she was staying, Mrs. Physick, the wife of the most eminent of
the younger physicians in Beverly, our native town. I opened it hastily
and read:--
"Friday.
"MY DEAR KATIE:--
"You must not be uneasy at my writing instead of Fannie, as
the Doctor thinks it too great an effort for her. She has
had an attack of influenza, not very severe, but you know
she is never very strong, and I am afraid she is too much
afraid of calling on me for any little thing she wants done.
So we think, the Doctor and I, it would do her good to have
a little visit from you. She wanted us to wait for the
summer vacation, so as not to alarm you; but you know that
is three whole weeks off, and nobody knows how much better
she may be within that time. The Doctor says, suggest to
Katie that the committee might, under the circumstances,
agree to her ending the spring term a little earlier than
usual, and beginning a little earlier in the fall.
"Yours as ever,
"JULIA.
"P. S. You must not be anxious about dear Fannie. She has
brightened up very much already at the mere thought of
seeing you. Her cough is not half so troublesome as it was a
week ago, and the Doctor says her very _worst_ symptom is
_weakness_. She says she _must_ write _one word_ herself."
O what a tremulous word!
"DEAR KATY:--
"_Do_ come if you can, and _don't_ be anxious. Indeed I am
growing stronger every day, and eating _so_ much meat, and
drinking _so_ much whiskey. It does me a great deal of good,
and would a great deal more if I could only tell how we were
ever to [pay for it, I knew she would have said; but Dr.
Physick had evidently interposed; for the signature,]
"Your mutinous and obstreperous
"SISTER FANNY,"
was prefaced with a scratched-out involuntary "Rx," and
looked like a prescription.
I might be as sad as I would now; and who could wonder? I sat down where
I was standing on the door-step, and held the letter helplessly up to
Mrs. Johnson. It did seem to me now as if Fate was going to empty its
whole quiver of arrows at once upon me, and meant to kill me, body and
soul. But I have since thought sometimes, when I have heard people say,
Misfortunes never came single, and How mysterious it was! that God only
dealt with us, in that respect somewhat as some surgeons think it best
to do with wounded men,--perform whatever operations are necessary,
immediately after the first injury, so as to make one and the same
"shock" take the place of more. In this way of Providence, I am sure I
have repeatedly seen accumulated sorrows, which, if distributed through
longer intervals, might have darkened a lifetime, lived through, and in
a considerable degree recovered from, even in a very few years.
Mrs. Johnson's spectacles, meantime, were with eager curiosity peering
over the letter. "Dear heart!" cried she. "Do tell! My! What a
providence! There's Sister Nancy Newcome's Elviry jest got home this
arternoon from her situation to the South, scairt off with the
insurrections as unexpected as any_thing_. She's as smart a teacher as
ever was; an' the committee'd ha' gin her the school in a minute, an'
thank you, too; but she wuz alwuz a kind o' lookin' up'ards; an' I
s'pose she cal'lated it might for'ard her prospects to go down an' show
herself among the plantations. There's better opportoonities, they say,
sometimes for young ladies to git settled in life down there, owin' to
the scurcity on 'em. She'll be glad enough to fill your place, I guess,
till somethin' else turns up, for a fortni't or a month, or a term.
It'll give her a chance to see her folks, an' fix up her cloes, an' look
round her a spell. An' you can step into the cars o' Monday mornin' an'
go right off an' close that poor young creator's eyes, an' take your
time for 't. Seems as if I hearn tell your ma went off in a kind of a
gallopin' decline, didn't she?"
"No, she did not!" cried I, springing up with a renewal of energy that
must have surprised Mrs. Johnson. "Nothing of the kind! I will take my
letter again, if you please. My sister has a cold,--only a cold. But
where can I see Miss Newcome?"
"To home; but I declare, you can't feel hardly fit to start off ag'in.
Jest you step in an' sup your tea afore it's any colder, I've had mine;
an' I'll step right back over there, an' see about it for ye."
Mrs. Johnson, if coarse, was kind; and that time it would be hard to say
whether her kindness or her coarseness did me the most good; for the
latter roused me, between indignation and horror, to a strong reaction.
Mrs. Johnson, I said to myself, knew no more of the matter than I.
Nobody said a word, in the letter, of Fanny's being very ill; and there
had been, as I now considered, to the best of my recollection and
information, no consumption in our family. My father died when I was
five years old, as I had always heard of chronic bronchitis and nervous
dyspepsia, or, in other words, of over-work and under-pay. An early
marriage to a clergyman, who had no means of support but a salary of
five hundred dollars dependent on his own health and the tastes of a
parish, early widowhood, two helpless little girls to rear, years of
hard work, anxieties, and embarrassments, a typhoid fever, with no
physician during the precious first few days, during which, if she had
sent for him, Dr. Physick always believed he might have saved her, a
sudden sinking and no rallying,--it took all that to kill poor, dear,
sweet mamma! She had a magnificent constitution, and bequeathed much of
it to me.
Else I do not think I could have borne, and recovered from, those three
days even as well as I did. The cars did not run on Sunday. That was so
dreadful! But there was no other hindrance in my way. Everybody was very
kind. The school committee could not meet in form "on the Sabbath"; but
the chairman, who was Miss Elvira Newcome's brother-in-law, "sounded the
other members arter meetin', jest as he fell in with 'em, casooally as
it were," and ascertained that they would offer no objection to my
exchange. He advanced my pay himself, and brought it to me soon after
sunrise Monday morning; so that I was more than sufficiently provided
with funds for my journey.
Mrs. Johnson forced upon me a suspicious-looking corked bottle of
innocent tea,--one of the most sensible travelling companions, as I
found before the day was over, that a wayfarer can possibly have,--and a
large paper of doughnuts. Feverish as I was, I would right willingly
have given her back, not only the doughnuts, but the tea, to bribe her
not to persecute me as she did for a message for Jim. But I could leave
my thanks for all his kindness, and my regrets--sincere, though repented
of--that I could not see him again, before I went, to say good-by; and,
already in part effaced by the impression of the last blow that had
fallen upon me, that scene in the dreadful meadow seemed months and
miles away. The engine shrieked. The cars started. My hopes and spirits
rose; and I was glad, because I was going home,--that is, where, when I
had a home, it used to be.