Everything in this world is of use, even a black thing crawling over the
nape of one's neck! Grim unknown, I shall make of thee--a simile!
I think, ma'am, you will allow that if an incident such as I have
described had befallen yourself, and you had a proper and lady-like
horror of earwigs (however motherly and fond of their offspring), and
also of early hornets,--and indeed of all unknown things of the insect
tribe with black heads and two great horns, or feelers, or forceps, just
by your ear,--I think, ma'am, you will allow that you would find it
difficult to settle back to your former placidity of mood and innocent
stitch-work. You would feel a something that grated on your nerves and
cr'd-cr'd "all over you like," as the children say. And the worst is,
that you would be ashamed to say it. You would feel obliged to look
pleased and join in the conversation, and not fidget too much, nor
always be shaking your flounces and looking into a dark corner of your
apron. Thus it is with many other things in life besides black insects.
One has a secret care, an abstraction, a something between the memory
and the feeling, of a dark crawling cr which one has never dared to
analyze. So I sat by my another, trying to smile and talk as in the old
time, but longing to move about, and look around, and escape to my own
solitude, and take the clothes off my mind, and see what it was that had
so troubled and terrified me; for trouble and terror were upon me. And
my mother, who was always (Heaven bless her!) inquisitive enough in all
that concerned her darling Anachronism, was especially inquisitive that
evening. She made me say where I had been, and what I had done, and how
I had spent my time; and Fanny Trevanion (whom she had seen, by the way,
three or four times, and whom she thought the prettiest person in the
world), oh, she must know exactly what I thought of Fanny Trevanion!
And all this while my father seemed in thought; and so, with my arm over
my mother's chair, and my hand in hers, I answered my mother's
questions, sometimes by a stammer, sometimes by a violent effort at
volubility; when at some interrogatory that went tingling right to my
heart I turned uneasily, and there were my father's eyes fixed on mine,
fixed as they had been when, and none knew why, I pined and languished,
and my father said, "He must go to school;" fixed with quiet, watchful
tenderness. Ah, no! his thoughts had not been on the Great Work; he had
been deep in the pages of that less worthy one for which he had yet more
an author's paternal care. I met those eyes and yearned to throw myself
on his heart and tell him all. Tell him what? Ma'am, I no more knew
what to tell him than I know what that black thing was which has so
worried me all this blessed evening!
"Pisistratus," said my father, softly, "I fear you have forgotten the
saffron bag."
"No, indeed, sir," said I, smiling.
"He," resumed my father, "he who wears the saffron bag has more
cheerful, settled spirits than you seem to have, my poor boy."
"My dear Austin, his spirits are very good, I think," said my mother,
anxiously.
My father shook his head; then he took two or three turns about the
room.
"Shall I ring for candles, sir? It is getting dark; you will wish to
read."
"No, Pisistratus, it is you who shall read; and this hour of twilight
best suits the book I am about to open to you."
So saying, he drew a chair between me and my mother and seated himself
gravely, looking down a long time in silence, then turning his eyes to
each of us alternately.
"My dear wife," said he, at length, almost solemnly, "I am going to
speak of myself as I was before I knew you."
Even in the twilight I saw that my mother's countenance changed.
"You have respected my secrets, Katherine, tenderly, honestly. Now the
time is come when I can tell them to you and to our son."