Читать книгу The Morgesons - Elizabeth Stoddard - Страница 12

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It was five o'clock on Saturday afternoon when father left me. Aunt Mercy continued her preparations for tea, and when it was ready, went to the foot of the stairs, and called, "Supper." Grand'ther came down immediately followed by two tall, cadaverous women, Ruth and Sally Aikin, tailoresses, who sewed for him spring and fall. Living several miles from Barmouth, they stayed through the week, going home on Saturday night, to return on Monday morning. We stood behind the heavy oak chairs round the table, one of which Grand'ther tipped backward, and said a long grace, not a word of which was heard; for his teeth were gone, and he prayed in his throat. Aunt Mercy's "Moltee" rubbed against me, with her back and tail erect. I pinched the latter, and she gave a wail. Aunt Mercy passed her hand across her mouth, but the eyes of the two women were stony in their sockets. Grand'ther ended his grace with an upward jerk of his head as we seated ourselves. He looked sharply at me, his gray eyebrows rising hair by hair, and shaking a spoon at me said, "You are playing over your mother's capers."

"The caper-bush grows on the shores of the Mediterranean sea,

Grand'ther. Miss Black had it for a theme, out of the Penny Magazine; it is full of themes."

"She had better give you a gospel theme."

He was as inarticulate when he quoted Scripture as when he prayed, but I heard something about "thorns"; then he helped us to baked Indian pudding—our invariable Saturday night's repast. Aunt Mercy passed cups of tea; I heard the gulping swallow of it in every throat, the silence was so profound. After the pudding we had dried apple-pie, which we ate from our hands, like bread. Grand'ther ate fast, not troubling himself to ask us if we would have more, but making the necessary motions to that effect by touching the spoon in the pudding or knife on the pie. Ruth and Sally still kept their eyes fixed on some invisible object at a distance. What a disagreeable interest I felt in them! What had they in common with me? What could they enjoy? How unpleasant their dingy, crumbled, needle-pricked fingers were! Sally hiccoughed, and Ruth suffered from internal rumblings. Without waiting for each other when we had finished, we put our chairs against the wall and left the room. I rushed into the garden and trampled the chamomile bed. I had heard that it grew faster for being subjected to that process, and thought of the two women I had just seen while I crushed the spongy plants. Had they been trampled upon? A feeling of pity stung me; I ran into the house, and found them on the point of departure, with little bundles in their hands.

"Aunt Mercy will let me carry your bundles a part of the way for you; shall I?"

"No, indeed," said Ruth, in a mild voice; "there's no heft in them; they are mites to carry."

"Besides," chimed Sally, "you couldn't be trusted with them."

"Are they worth anything?" I inquired, noticing then that both wore better dresses, and that the bundles contained their shop-gowns.

"What made you pinch the moltee's tail?" asked Sally. "If you pinched my cat's tail, I would give you a sound whipping."

"How could she, Sally," said Ruth, "when our cat's tail is cut short off?"

"For all the world," remarked Sally, "that's the only way she can be managed. If things are cut off, and kept out of sight, or never mentioned before her, she may behave very well; not otherwise."

"Good-by, Miss Ruth, and Sally, good-by," modulating my voice to accents of grief, and making a "cheese."

They retreated with a less staid pace than usual, and I sought Aunt Mercy, who was preparing the Sunday's dinner. Twilight drew near, and the Sunday's clouds began to fall on my spirits. Between sundown and nine o'clock was a tedious interval. I was not allowed to go to bed, nor to read a secular book, or to amuse myself with anything. A dim oil-lamp burned on the high shelf of the middle room, our ordinary gathering-place. Aunt Mercy sat there, rocking in a low chair; the doors were open, and I wandered softly about. The smell of the garden herbs came in faintly, and now and then I heard a noise in the water-butt under the spout, the snapping of an old rafter, or something falling behind the wall. The toads crawled from under the plantain leaves, and hopped across the broad stone before the kitchen door, and the irreverent cat, with whom I sympathized, raced like mad in the grass. Growing duller, I went to the cellar door, which was in the front entry, opened it, and stared down in the black gulf, till I saw a gray rock rise at the foot of the stairs which affected my imagination. The foundation of the house was on the spurs of a great granite bed, which rose from the Surrey shores, dipped and cropped out in the center of Barmouth. It came through the ground again in the woodhouse, smooth and round, like the bald head of some old Titan, and in the border of the garden it burst through in narrow ridges full of seams. As I contemplated the rock, and inhaled a moldy atmosphere whose component parts were charcoal and potatoes, I heard the first stroke of the nine o'clock bell, which hung in the belfry of the church across the street. Although it was so near us that we could hear the bellrope whistle in its grooves, and its last hoarse breath in the belfry, there was no reverberation of its clang in the house; the rock under us struck back its voice. It was an old Spanish bell, Aunt Mercy told me. How it reached Barmouth she did not know. I recognized its complaining voice afterward. It told me it could never forget it had been baptized a Catholic; and it pined for the beggar who rang it in the land of fan-leaved chestnuts! It would growl and strangle as much as possible in the hands of Benjamin Beals, the bell-ringer and coffin-maker of Barmouth. Except in the morning when it called me up, I was glad to hear it. It was the signal of time past; the oftener I heard it, the nearer I was to the end of my year. Before it ceased to ring now Aunt Mercy called me in a low voice. I returned to the middle room, and took a seat in one of the oak chairs, whose back of upright rods was my nightly penance. Aunt Mercy took the lamp from the shelf, and placed it upon a small oak stand, where the Bible lay. Grand'ther entered, and sitting by the stand read a chapter. His voice was like opium. Presently my head rolled across the rods, and I felt conscious of slipping down the glassy seat. After he had read the chapter he prayed. If the chapter had been long, the prayer was short; if the chapter had been short, the prayer was long. When he had ceased praying, he left the room without speaking, and betook himself to bed. Aunt Mercy dragged me up the steep stairs, undressed me, and I crept into bed, drugged with a monotony which served but to deepen the sleep of youth and health. When the bell rang the next morning, Aunt Mercy gave me a preparatory shake before she began to dress, and while she walked up and down the room lacing her stays entreated me to get up.

If the word lively could ever be used in reference to our life, it might be in regard to Sunday. The well was so near the church that the house was used as an inn for the accommodation of the church-goers who lived at any distance, and who did not return home between the morning and afternoon services. A regular set took dinner with us, and there were parties who brought lunch, which they ate off their handkerchiefs, on their knees. It was also a watering-place for the Sunday-school scholars, who filed in troops before the pail in the well-room, and drank from the cocoanut dipper. When the weather was warm our parlor was open, as it was to-day. Aunt Mercy had dusted it and ornamented the hearth with bunches of lilacs in a broken pitcher. Twelve yellow chairs, a mahogany stand, a dark rag-carpet, some speckled Pacific sea-shells on the shelf, among which stood a whale's tooth with a drawing of a cranky ship thereon, and an ostrich's egg that hung by a string from the ceiling, were the adornments of the room. When we were dressed for church, we looked out of the window till the bell tolled, and the chaise of the Baxters and Sawyers had driven to the gate; then we went ourselves. Grand'ther had preceded us, and was already in his seat. Aunt Mercy went up to the head of the pew, a little out of breath, from the tightness of her dress, and the ordeal of the Baxter and Sawyer eyes, for the pew, though off a side aisle, was in the neighborhood of the elite of the church; a clove, however, tranquilized her. I fixed my feet on a cricket, and examined the bonnets. The house filled rapidly, and last of all the minister entered. The singers began an anthem, singing in an advanced style of the art, I observed, for they shouted "Armen," while our singers in Surrey bellowed "Amen." When the sermon began I settled myself into a vague speculation concerning my future days of freedom; but my dreams were disturbed by the conduct of the Hickspold boys, who were in a pew in front of us. As in the morning, so in the afternoon and all the Sundays in the year. The variations of the season served but to deepen the uniformity of my heartsickness.