HOMESICK LONGINGS.
Oh, give me one clasp of her friendly hand,
One tender glance from those gentle eyes;
For my heart is alone in this mountain land,
And every joy of my childhood dies.
Poor Isabel. She had found her new home dreary enough, notwithstanding
its large airy rooms and elegant furniture, far too elegant for
country uses, where magnificence is seldom in good taste. While nature
is so beautiful, art should never appear, save to enhance its
splendor.
In her whole life she had never been thoroughly homesick before, for
never had her young heart been taken from all its loving support so
completely as now.
Mrs. Farnham made a great effort to be kind, and to impress upon the
child all the importance which she would henceforth derive from an
association with herself, and the immense difference that must
hereafter exist between her and Mary Fuller.
"Remember, my pet," said that lady, with bland self-complacency,
"remember, my pet, that you are the protege of--of, as I may assert,
of wealth and station, and though born I don't know where, and bred in
the Poor-House, the fact that you have my protection is enough to
overbalance that. You understand, Isabel--by the way, I think it best
to call you Isabel Farnham now--with your beauty the thing will pass
off without question; with that face, nothing would seem more natural
than that I should be your real mamma; so, be a very good girl, and,
who knows but I may have you called Miss Farnham!"
The color mounted into Isabel's face.
"No, ma'am, I would rather not; call me Isabel Chester, please, it was
my father's name, and I love it, oh, how much!"
"You are a naughty, ungrateful little--well, well, I was a fool to
expect anything else; Chester, as if I'd have a name in my house that
has been registered on the Alms House books!"
"Is it a disgrace then, to be poor?" asked the child, innocently.
"A disgrace to be poor! certainly it is, and a great disgrace, too!"
answered the lady, speaking from her heart, "or else why are people
ashamed to own it?"
"Are they ashamed to own it? I didn't know," answered the child. "My
father was poor, at the last, but I don't think he was ever ashamed of
it, or ever to blame for it either."
"I dare say not; poor people are always shameless."
Isabel's eyes kindled and her passion rose.
"I won't hear my father abused--please, ma'am, I won't stand it; he
wasn't poor till bad people made him so, and, and"--The child broke
off, and burst into a passion of tears.
Mrs. Farnham was gratified. She had worried the poor child out of her
silent moodiness, and now fell to soothing her exactly as she would
have pulled the ears of a lap-dog, till he was ready to bite, and then
patted him into good humor again.
And this was the training which was to prepare poor Isabel for the
great after-life of a soul, imbued with natural goodness, and yet
possessed of great faults.
The lovely child, who from her infancy had been the subject of some
superior care, was now at the mercy of a capricious, silly woman,
selfish as such women usually are, and with a dash of malice in her
nature, which more frequently accompanies a frivolous mind than we are
disposed to admit.
But Isabel had a good heart, and an intellect so much superior to that
of the woman who claimed to be her benefactress, that this constant
irritation of a naturally high temper, was more likely to end in
exciting her passions than in really undermining her principles.
Mary Fuller, with her gentleness and her beautiful Christianity, had,
up to this time, exercised the most worthy effect upon Isabel's
character, and never in her after-life did she entirely lose the noble
impressions thus obtained.
It is difficult to spoil a human being, entirely, who has spent the
first ten years of life under pure domestic influences. Chester's
daughter had carried a heart of gold to the Alms House, and she
brought all this wealth away; but she was an impulsive, sensitive
girl, and if Mrs. Farnham had no influence strong enough to pervert
her nature, she had the power to thwart and annoy her beyond her
capacities of patient endurance.
The truth was, Mrs. Farnham had no idea of the responsibility which
she had taken upon herself. Isabel was to her a pet--a subject upon
which to exercise her authority, and that promised to gratify her
vanity--not a human soul which it was her solemn duty to guard,
strengthen and develop. Benevolence in this woman amounted to nothing
higher than a caprice.
The conversation we have repeated was a sample of many others that
were constantly irritating the poor child, even amid her first hours
of homesickness. Unlike Mary Fuller, she had no occupation, for Mrs.
Farnham considered usefulness of any kind the height of vulgarity.
Indeed! she was so remarkably sensitive on this subject that a very
shrewd observer might have fancied that the lady had known a little
more of labor, in her younger days, than she was willing to admit.
The great want of Isabel's life was the society of her friend. No
child ever pined for the presence of its mother more longingly than
she desired the society of Mary Fuller. This was the ground of her
sadness. It was this want that kept her so restless. She was like a
bird shut up in a cage calling for its mate and drooping when no reply
came.
But with that distrust which a want of respect always produces, Isabel
kept this longing to herself. Something told her that Mrs. Farnham
would meet it with reproof to herself or insult to Mary, and she could
not force herself to speak of this, as a cause of her sadness, or ask
permission to visit her friend.
For two or three days she was compelled to follow Mrs. Farnham about
her sumptuous home--sumptuous and yet replete with discomfort--to pick
up her handkerchief, bring her eye-glass and listen to the confusion
of commands with which the lady tormented her servants from morning
till night. It was an irksome life, this forced companionship with a
person whom she could neither respect nor even like.
The poor child's heart was famishing for love, and she began to grieve
for her mother as if the mournful funeral of her last parent had taken
place but yesterday.
Mrs. Farnham had fitted up a chamber next to her own for the little
girl. Here intense selfishness seemed to have worked the effect of
good taste. Isabel's room was superior to any thing in the
neighborhood, but secondary to the gorgeous appointments of her own
chamber. Her pretty rose-wood bed was hung with lace that seemed like
frost-work, instead of the orange silk drapery that fell like an
avalanche of gold over the couch on which Mrs. Farnham took her
nightly repose. Everything around her was pure white, but the walls
were covered with clustering roses, and the carpet under her feet
glowed out with flowers like the turf in a forest-glade.
When the door stood open between this room and Mrs. Farnham's the
contrast was striking. The cold white and green, warmed up only by a
few rich flowers, seemed exquisitely cool as you turned to it for
relief from the heavy drapery and costly furniture with which Mrs.
Farnham smothered the fresh mountain air that visited her apartment.
At first, Isabel was dazzled with this splendor; but after she had
been all day long following Mrs. Farnham like a lap-dog, till the very
sound of her voice became wearisome, it was an overtax on her patience
when she was obliged to share almost the same chamber, and listen to
that voice so long as the lady could keep herself awake.
But when her tormentress was once asleep, when Isabel could turn on
her pillow and look upon the moonlight as it flooded her room, with a
free spirit, she began to weep with a bitterness that had never fallen
upon her straw cot at the Nursery Hospital. A spirit of utter
loneliness possessed her, and while the delicate lace brooded over her
couch like the wings of a spirit, she murmured out--
"Oh, mother--oh, my dear, dear father--oh, Mary, dear Mary Fuller, if
I were only with you anywhere, oh, anywhere but here!"
Thus, night after night the child lay and wept. Her eyes were so heavy
one morning, after a night of silent anguish, that Salina Bowles
observed it, and in her rude way inquired the cause.
Mrs. Farnham was still asleep, and Isabel had crept down to the
kitchen, resolved to ask counsel of the housekeeper, for it seemed to
her impossible to live another day without seeing Mary.
It was a great relief to the child when Salina lifted her face from
the tin oven, in which she had just arranged the morning biscuit for
baking, and asked in her curt but not really unkind way, what had
brought her into that part of the house, and what on earth made her
eyes look so heavy.
"Oh, I have come to tell you--to ask you what is best; I am so
miserable, so very unhappy without Mary; I cannot live another day
without seeing Mary Fuller!"
Salina Bowles dusted the flour from her hands, and wiped them on her
apron.
"Mary Fuller! that's the little gal that came with you I calculate!"
she said, walking up to the child, who retreated a step, for Salina
had a fierce way of doing things, and marched toward her like a
grenadier.
"Yes," said Isabel, "that was Mary; do you know where she is? Oh, I
must see her or, it seems to me as if I should die!"
"So you don't know where she is?"
"No! but, oh, do tell me!"
"Why didn't you ask madam up yonder?"
"I don't know; I was afraid; I feel quite sure she won't let me go,"
replied the child.
"Let you go, of course, she won't--no more feelin' than a chestnut
stump."
"Then, what can I do?"
"What can you do--why, go without asking, and I'll help you; it's
right, and I'll do it,--there!"
"Will you, oh, will you?" cried the child, with a burst of joy.
"Will I!--who'll stop me, I'd like to know?"
"But, how--when?" inquired the child, breathless with joy.
"To-night, I reckon?"
"Isabel--Isabel! where is the creature gone?" cried a voice from the
stairs.
"Scamper!" exclaimed Salina, with an emphatic motion of the hand,
"scamper, or she'll be coming down here, and I'd rather see old
scratch any time."
"But you will certainly take me?" pleaded the child, breathlessly.
"When I give my word I give it!"
"Oh, thank you--thank you!"
Isabel sprang up--flung her arms around Salina's neck, and kissed her.
Before Miss Bowles could recover from her astonishment the child was
gone.
"Well, now, I never did!" exclaimed the housekeeper, blushing till the
hue of her face was like that of a brick fresh from the kiln; "it's a
great while since I've had a kiss before, and it raly is a
refreshment."
With this observation, Salina drew one hand across her lips and bent
over the tin oven again.
It was in this way that the orphans commenced life in their new homes.