Читать книгу Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio. - Fern Fanny - Страница 18

A stern, unyielding, line-and-plummet, May-flower descendant, was old Farmer Grey, of Allantown, Connecticut. Many a crop had he planted, many a harvest had he garnered in, since he first became owner of Glen Farm. During that time, that respected individual, “the oldest inhabitant,” could not remember ever to have seen him smile. The village children shied close to the stone wall, and gave him a wide berth, when he passed. Even the cats and dogs laid their ears back, and crept circumspectly by him, with one eye on his whip-lash.

Farmer Grey considered it acceptable to the God who painted the rainbow, and expanded the lily, and tinted the rose, to walk the bright earth with his head bowed like a bulrush, and his soul clad in sackcloth. No mercy fell from the lips of his imaginary Saviour; no compassion breathed in His voice; no love beamed in His eye; His sword of justice was never sheathed.

The old farmer’s wife was a gentle, dependent creature, a delicate vine, springing up in a sterile soil, reaching forth its tendrils vainly, for some object to cling to. God, in his mercy, twined them lovingly around a human blossom. Little Willy partook of his mother’s sensitive, poetical nature. A yearning spirit looked out from the fathomless depths of his earnest eyes. Only eight short summers the gentle mother soothed her boy’s childish pains, and watched his childish slumbers. While he grew in strength and beauty, her eye waxed dim, and her step grew slow and feeble.

And so sweet memories were only left to little Willy, – dear, loving eyes, whose glance ever met his on waking; a fair, caressing hand, that wiped away his April tears; a low, gentle voice, sweet to his childish ear as a seraph’s hymning.

Willy’s father told him that “his mother had gone to Heaven,” John, the plough-boy, said “she was lying in the church-yard.” Willy could not understand this. He only knew that the house had grown dark and empty, and that his heart ached when he stayed there; and so he wandered out in the little garden, (his mother’s garden;) but the flowers looked dreary, too; and her pretty rose-vine lay trailing its broken buds and blighted blossoms in the dust.

Then Willy crept up to his father’s side, and looked up in his face, but there was something there that made him afraid to lay his little hand upon his knee, or climb into his lap, or in any way unburden his little heart; so he turned away, more sorrowful than before, and wandered into his mother’s chamber, and climbed up in her chair, and opened her drawer, to look at her comb and hair brush; and then he went to the closet, and passed his little hand, caressingly, over her empty dresses, and leaning his little curly head against them, sobbed himself to sleep.

By and by, as years passed on, and the child grew older, he learned to wander out in the woods and fields, and unbosom his little yearning heart to Nature. Reposing on her breast, listening to the music of her thousand voices, his unquiet spirit was soothed as with a mother’s lullaby. With kindling eye, he watched the vivid lightnings play; or, saw the murky east flush, like a timid bride, into rosy day; or, beheld the shining folds of western clouds fade softly into twilight; or, gazed at the Queen of Night, as she cut her shining path through the cloudy sky; or, questioned, with earnest eyes, the glittering stars.

All this but ill pleased the old farmer. He looked upon the earth only with an eye to tillage; upon the sloping hill, with its pine-crowned summit, only with an eye to timber; upon the changeful skies, only as reservoirs for moistening and warming his crops; upon the silver streams, that laced the emerald meadows, only as channels for irrigation; upon the climbing vine, as an insidious foe to joists, and beams, and timbers; and upon flowers, only as perfumed aristocrats, crowding and over-topping the free-soil democracy of cabbage, onions, and potatoes.

In vain poor Will tried to get up, “to order,” an enthusiasm for self-acting hay-cutters, patent plows, rakes, hoes, and harrows. In vain, when Sunday came, and he was put “on the limits,” did the old farmer, with a face ten-fold more ascetic than the cowled monk, strive to throw a pall of gloom over that free, glad spirit, by rehearsing, in his ear, a creed which would forever close the gate of heaven on every dissenter, or inculcate doctrines, which, if believed, would fill our lunatic asylums with the frantic wailings of despair.

Restlessly did Will, with cramped limbs and fettered spirit, sit out the tedious hours of that holy day, which should be the “most blessed of all the seven,” and watch, with impatient eye, the last golden beam of the Sabbath sun sink slowly down behind the western hills.

Oh, well-meaning, but mistaken, parent! let but one loving smile play over those frigid lips: let but one tear of sympathy flood that stony eye: let but one drop from that overflowing fountain of love, that wells up in the bosom of the Infinite, moisten the parched soil of that youthful heart! Open those arms but once, and clasp him to the paternal heart; for even now, his chafed spirit, like a caged bird, flutters against its prison bars; even now, the boy’s unquiet ear catches the far-off hum of the busy world: even now, his craving heart beats wildly for the voice of human love!

Weary feet, houseless nights, the scant meal, and the oft-repulsed request: what are they to the strong nerve, and bounding pulse, and hopeful heart of the young adventurer? Laurel wreaths, dizzy places on Ambition’s heights, have not its aspirants reached them by just such rugged steps?

“Will” is in the city. Will sits upon the steps of the New York City Hall, reading a penny paper: he has begged it from a good-natured newsboy, who has also shared with him a huge slice of gingerbread. As Will’s eye glances over the sheet, it falls upon the following paragraph:

“PROSPECTUS OF THE WEEKLY CHRONICLE.

“The Weekly Chronicle is a paper founded on the demands of the age for a first-class journal. It soars above all sectional and personal considerations, and fearlessly proffers its feeble aid, in developing the natural resources of the country, fostering the genius of the people, rewarding meritorious effort in every department of art, exalting virtue, however humble, and confounding vice, however powerful. The editor and proprietor of the Chronicle is Mr. Philanthropas Howard; office, No. 199 Cloud-street.

“Boy wanted immediately at the above office: one from the country would be preferred.”

Will threw down the paper, and started to his feet: “199 Cloud-street?” He asked orange-women; he asked image-boys; he asked merchants; he asked clerks; he asked lawyers; he asked clients; he investigated cellars; he explored attics; he traveled through parks, and through alleys; till finally, he coaxed a graceless, bare-footed urchin to shew him the way.

Mr. John Howard, editor and proprietor of the Weekly Chronicle, went upon the principle of paying nothing where nothing would pay, and paying as little as possible where he could get something for next to nothing. It was a fixed principle and confirmed practice with him, never to pay anything for contributions to the Chronicle. He considered that the great advantage that would accrue to an author from having his or her articles in his paper, would be ample remuneration. At the moment Will’s eye first fell upon him, he was reposing in a huge leathern arm chair, in the corner of his sanctum. His proportions very much resembled an apoplectic bag of flour, surmounted by an apple. His head was ornamented with sparse spires of fiery red hair; on his cheeks, a pair of cream-colored whiskers were feebly struggling into life; and sundry tufts of the same color, under his chin, shadowed forth his editorial sympathy with the recent “Beard Movement.” Before him was a table, of doubtful hue and architecture, laden with manuscripts, accepted, rejected, and under consideration; letters of all sizes, opened and unopened, prepaid and unpaid, saucy and silly, defiant and deprecatory. There was also an inkstand, crusted with dirt and cobwebs; a broken paper weight, pinning down some bad money, paid by distant subscribers; a camphene lamp, with a broken pedestal, propped up by a Directory on one side, and Walker’s Dictionary on the other; sundry stumps of cigars; a half-eaten apple; a rind of an orange; a lady’s glove, and a box of bilious pills.

Will stepped before him, and made known his errand. Mr. John Howard looked at him, with a portentous scowl, inspected him very much as he would a keg of doubtful mackerel, and then referred him to the foreman of the office, Mr. Jack Punch. Jack had been victimized, in the way of office boys, for an indefinite period, with precocious city urchins, who smoked long nines, talked politics, discussed theatricals, and knew more of city haunts than the police themselves. Of course he lost no time in securing a boy to whose verdant feet the plow-soil was still clinging. Will’s business was to open the office at half past six in the morning, sweep it out, make the fires, go to the post-office for letters and exchanges, wrap up papers for new subscribers, carry them to the post, and see that the mail was properly “got off.” To all these requirements, Will immediately subscribed.

On Will’s daily tramps to and from the office, he was obliged to pass Lithe & Co.’s magnificent show window, where the choicest pictures and engravings were constantly exposed for sale. There he might be seen loitering, entranced and spellbound, quite oblivious of the Chronicle, hour after hour, weaving bright visions – building air castles, with which his overseer, Mr. Jack Punch, had little sympathy. Yes; Will had at length found out what he was made for. He knew now why he had lain under the trees, of a bright summer day, watching the fleecy clouds go sailing by, in such a dreamy rapture; why the whispering leaves, and waving fields of grain, and drooping branches of graceful trees, and the mirror-like beauty of the placid lake, reflecting a mimic heaven; why the undulating hills, and mist-wreathed valleys, with their wealth of leaf, and buds and blossom, filled his eyes with tears and his soul with untold joy, and why, when slumber sealed each weary lid under the cottage eaves, he stood alone, hushing his very breath, awestruck, beneath the holy stars.

Poor Will, his occupation became so distasteful! Poor Will, winged for a “bird of paradise,” and forced to be a mole, burrowing under the earth, when he would fain try his new-found pinions! To Jack’s intense disgust, he soon detected Will in drawing rude sketches on bits of paper, stray wrappers, and backs of letters; even the walls were “done in crayons,” by the same mischievous fingers. His vision was so filled “with the curved line of beauty,” that he was constantly committing the most egregious blunders. He misplaced the bundles of newspapers which he carried to the post-office; placing the “north” packages on the “south” table, the east on the north, the south on the east, &c.; mixing them up generally and indescribably and inextricably, so that the subscribers to the “Weekly Chronicle” did not receive their papers with that precision and regularity which is acknowledged to be desirable, particularly in small country places, where the blacksmith’s shop, the engine house, and “the newspaper” form a trio not to be despised by the simple-hearted, primitive farmers.

Jack, whose private opinion it was that he should have been christened Job, being obliged to shoulder all the short-comings of his assistants, and being worked up to a pitch of frenzy by letters from incensed subscribers, which Mr. Howard constantly thrust in his face, very unceremoniously ejected Will from the premises, one morning, by a vigorous application of the toe of his boot.

The world was again a closed oyster to Will. How to open it? that was the question. Our hero thought the best place to consider the matter was at Lithe & Co.’s shop-window. Just as he reached it, a gentleman passed out of the shop, followed by a lad bearing a small framed landscape. Perhaps the gentleman was an artist! Perhaps he could employ him in some way! Will resolved to follow him.

Up one street and down another, round corners and through squares – the gentleman’s long legs seemed to be shod with the famed seven-leagued boots. At length he stopped before the door of an unpretending looking building, and handing the lad who accompanied him a bit of money, he took from him the picture, and was just springing up the steps, when he lost his balance, and the picture was jerked violently from his hand, but only to be caught by the watchful Will, who restored it to its owner uninjured.

“Thank you, my boy,” said the gentleman, “you have done me a greater service than you think for;” at the same time offering him some money.

“No, I thank you,” said Will, proudly. “I do not wish to be paid for it.”

“As you please, Master Independence,” replied the gentleman, laughing; “but is there no other way I can serve you?”

“Are you an artist?” asked Will.

The gentleman raised his eyebrows, with a comical air, and replied, “Well, sometimes I think I am, and then, again, I don’t know; but what if I were?”

“I should so like to be an artist,” said Will, the quick flush mounting to his temples.

“You!” exclaimed the gentleman, taking a minute survey of Will’s nondescript toute ensemble, “Do you ever draw?”

“Sometimes,” replied Will, “when I can get a bit of charcoal, and a white wall. I was just kicked out of the Chronicle office for doing it.”

“Follow me,” said the gentleman, tapping him familiarly on the cheek.

Will needed no second invitation. Climbing one flight of stairs, he found himself in a small studio, lined on all sides by pictures; some finished and framed, others in various stages of progression. Pallets, brushes, and crayons, lay scattered round an easel; while in one corner was an artist’s lay figure, which, in the dim light of the apartment, Will mistook for the artist’s wife, whose presence he respectfully acknowledged by a profound bow, to the infinite amusement of his patron.

Mr. Lester was delighted with Will’s naive criticisms on his pictures, and his profound reverence for art. A few days found him quite domesticated in his new quarters; and months passed by swift as a weaver’s shuttle, and found him as happy as a crowned prince; whether grinding colors for the artist, or watching the progress of his pencil, or picking up stray crumbs of knowledge from the lips of connoisseurs, who daily frequented the studio; and many a rough sketch did Will make in his little corner, that would have made them open their critical eyes wide with wonder.

“What a foolish match!” Was an engagement ever announced that did not call forth this remark, from some dissenting lip? Perhaps it was a “foolish match.” Meta had no dower but her beauty, and Will had no capital but his pallet and easel. The gossips said she “might have done much better.” There was old Mr. Hill, whose head was snow white, but whose gold was as yellow and as plenty as Meta’s bright ringlets; and Mr. Vesey, whose father made a clergyman of him, because he didn’t know enough to be a merchant; and Lawyer Givens, with his carrotty head and turn-up nose, and chin that might have been beat; and Falstaff-ian Captain Reef, who brought home such pretty china shawls and grass cloth dresses, and who had as many wives as a Grand Turk. Meta might have had any one of these by hoisting her little finger. Foolish Meta! money and misery in one scale, poverty and love in the other. Miserable little Meta! And yet she does not look so very miserable, as she leans over her husband’s shoulder, and sees the landscape brighten on the canvass, or presses her rosy lips to his forehead, or arranges the fold of a curtain for the desired light and shade, or grinds his colors with her own dainty little fingers; no, she looks anything but miserable with those soft eyes so full of light, and that elastic step, and voice of music, that are inspiration to her artist husband. No; she thinks the “old masters” were fools to her young master, and she already sees the day when his studio will be crowded with connoisseurs and patrons, and his pictures bring him both fame and fortune; and then, they will travel in foreign countries, and sleep under Italia’s soft blue skies, and see the Swiss glaciers, and the rose-wreathed homes of England, and the grim old chateaux of France, and perhaps beard old Haynau in his den. Who knows? Yes; and Will should feast his eyes on beauty, and they’d be as happy, as if care and sorrow had never dimmed a bright eye with tears, since the seraph stood, with a flaming sword, to guard the gate of Eden. Hopeful, happy, trusting Meta! the bird’s carol is not sweeter than yours; – and yet the archer takes his aim, and with broken wing it flutters to the ground.

Yes: Meta was an angel. Will said it a thousand times a day, and his eyes repeated it when his tongue was silent. Meta’s brow, and cheek, and lips, and tresses were multiplied indefinitely, in all his female heads. Her dimpled hand, her round arm, her plump shoulder, her slender foot, all served him for faultless models.

Life was so beautiful to him now! his employment so congenial, his heart so satisfied. It must be that he should succeed. The very thought of failure – “but then, he should not fail!” Poor Will! he had yet to learn that garrets are as often the graves as the nurseries of genius, and that native talent goes unrecognized until stamped with foreign approbation. Happily – hopefully – heroically he toiled on; morning’s earliest beam, and day’s last lingering ray finding him busy at his easel. But, alas! as time passed, though patrons came not, creditors did; and one year after their marriage, Meta might have been seen stealthily conveying little parcels back and forth to a small shop in the neighborhood, where employment was furnished for needy fingers. It required all her feminine tact and diplomacy to conceal from Will her little secret, or to hide the tell-tale blush, when he noticed the disappearance of her wedding ring, which now lay glittering in a neighboring pawn-broker’s window; yet never for an instant, since the little wife first slept on Will’s heart, had she one misgiving that she had placed her happiness unalterably in his keeping.

Oh, inscrutable womanhood! Pitiful as the heart of God, when the dark cloud of misfortune, or shame, bows the strong frame of manhood; merciless – vindictive – implacable as the Prince of Darkness, towards thy tempted, forsaken and sorrowing sisters!

The quick eye of affection was not long in discovering Meta’s secret; and now every glance of love, every caress, every endearing tone of Meta’s, gave Will’s heart a sorrow pang.

Meta! who had turned a deaf ear to richer lovers, to share his heart and home; Meta! whose beauty might grace a court, whose life should be all sunshine: that Meta’s bright eyes should dim, her cheek pale, her step grow prematurely slow and faltering, for him! – the thought was torture.

“To-morrow, Will – you said to-morrow,” said Meta, hiding her tears on her husband’s shoulder; “the land of gold is also the land of graves,” and she gazed mournfully into his face.

“Dear Meta,” said her husband, “do not unman me with your tears; our parting will be brief, and I shall return to you with gold – gold! Meta; and you shall yet have a home worthy of you. Bear up, dear Meta – the sun will surely break through the cloud rift. God bless and keep my darling wife.”

Poor little Meta! for hours she sat stupefied with sorrow, in the same spot where Will had left her. The sun shone cheerfully in at the little window of her new home, but its beams brought no warmth to Meta’s heart. The clinging clasp of Will’s arms was still about her neck: Will’s kiss was still warm upon her lips, and yet —she was alone.

She thought, with a shudder, of the treacherous sea; of the pestilence that walketh in darkness; of a sick-bed, on a foreign shore; of the added bitterness of the death pang, when the eye looks vainly for the one loved face; and bowing her face in her hands, she wept convulsively.

“Dear heart! Goodness alive!” said Meta’s landlady, peeping in at the door. “Don’t take on so; bless me, how long have you been married? you’re nothing better than a child now. Why didn’t you go to Californy with your husband? Where’s your folks? – whose picter is that? Ah! I see now, it is meant for you. But why didn’t you have on a gown, dear, instead of being wrapped up in them clouds? It makes you look like a sperit. Come now, don’t sit moping here; come down stairs and see me work; it will amuse you like. I’m going to make some brown bread. I dare say you never made a bit of brown bread in your life. I put a power of Ingin in mine. I learned that in the country. I was brought up in the country. I hate city folks; they’ve no more heart than a sexton; much as ever they can stop frolicking long enough to bury one another. They’ll sleep, too, like so many tops, while the very next street is all of a blaze, and their poor destitute fellow-creatures are turned naked into the streets. They’ll plow right through a burying ground, if they take a notion, harrowing up dead folks, and live ones, too, I guess. And as to Sunday – what with Jews, and Frenchmen, and down Easters, and other foreigners, smoking and driving through the streets, ’tisn’t any Sunday at all. Well, I never knew what Sodom meant till I came to the city. Why Lot’s wife turned round to take a second look at it, is beyond me. Well, if you won’t come down stairs I must leave you, for I smell my bread burning; but do cheer up – you look as lonesome as a pigeon on a spout of a rainy day.”

A letter from the best beloved! How our eye lingers on the well-known characters. How we torture the words to extract hidden meanings. How tenderly we place it near the heart, and under the pillow. How lingeringly comes the daylight, when our waiting eyes would re-peruse what is already indelibly written on the heart!

Will’s voyage had been prosperous – his health was good – his hope and courage unabated. Meta’s eye sparkled, and her cheek flushed like a rose, as she pressed the letter again and again to her lips; but, after all, it was only a letter, and time dragged so heavily. Meta was weary of sewing, weary of reading, weary of watching endless pedestrians pass and repass beneath her window, and when twilight came, with its deepening shadows – that hour so sweet to the happy, so fraught with gloom to the wretched – and Meta’s eye fell upon the little house opposite, and saw the little parlor lamp gleam like a beacon light for the absent husband, while the happy wife glided about with busy hands, and lightsome step, and when, at last, he came, and the broken circle was complete, poor Meta turned away to weep.

Joy, Meta, joy! dry your tears! Will has been successful. Will is coming home. Even now the Sea-Gull plows the waves, with its precious living freight. Lucky Will! he has “found gold,” but it was dug from “the mine” of the artist’s brain. Magical Will! the liquid eyes and graceful limbs of Senor Alvarez’s only daughter are reproduced on canvas, in all their glowing beauty, by your magic touch! The Senor is rich – the Senor is liberal – the Senor’s taste is as unimpeachable as his credit – the Senor has pronounced Will “a genius.” Other Senors hear it; other Senors have gold in plenty, and dark-eyed, graceful daughters, whose charms Will perpetuates, and yet fails to see, for a sweeter face which comes between.

Dry your tears, little Meta – smooth the neglected ringlets – don his favorite robe, and listen with a flushed cheek, a beating heart and a love-lit eye, for the long absent but well remembered footstep.

Ah! Meta, there are meetings that o’erpay the pain of parting. But, dear Reader, you and I are de trop.

You should have seen how like a little brigand Will looked, with his bronzed face and fierce beard and mustache – so fierce that Meta was half afraid to jump into his arms; you should have seen Meta’s new home to know what a pretty little nest love and taste may weave for a cherished bird; you should have seen with what a Midas touch Will’s gold suddenly opened the eyes of people to his wonderful merit, as an artist; how “patrons” flocked in, now that he lived in a handsome house in Belgrave Square; how Mr. Jack Punch repented with crocodile tears, that he had ever kicked him out of “the Chronicle office,” and how Will immortalized him on canvas, in the very act; not forgetting to give due prominence, in the foreground, to the figure of his philanthropic employer, Mr. John Howard, who, in the touching language of his Prospectus, always made it a point to “exalt virtue, however humble!”