Читать книгу The Golden Shoemaker or 'Cobbler' Horn - J. W. Keyworth - Страница 6

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HOW MISS JEMIMA MANAGED HER BROTHER’S HOUSE.

On entering upon the management of her brother’s house, Aunt Jemima laid down two laws, which were, that the house was to be kept spotlessly clean, and that everything was always to be in its right place; and her severe, and even fierce, insistence on the minute fulfilment of these unexceptionable ordinances soon threatened utterly to banish comfort from her brother’s house.

The restrictions this masterful lady placed upon her patient brother constituted a state of absolute tyranny. Lest her immaculate door-step should be soiled, she would rarely allow him to enter the house by the front-door. She placed a thick mat inside his workshop, at the doorway leading into the front-room; and she exercised a lynx-eyed supervision to ensure that he always wiped his feet before coming in. She would never permit him to go upstairs without putting off his boots. She removed his hat from the wall of the front-room, and hung it on a nail in a beam, which was just over his head as he sat at work in his shop; and whenever she walked, with her policeman-like tread, in the room above, the hat would fall down, and strike him on the head. He bore this annoyance for a day or two, and then quietly removed hat and nail to one of the walls.

Strong-natured though he was, “Cobbler” Horn felt it no weakness to yield to his sister in trifles; and he bore with exhaustless patience such vexations as she inflicted on him alone. But he was firm as a rock where the comfort of any one else was concerned. It was beautiful to see his meek submission to every restriction which she laid upon him; it was sublime to behold his stern resistance to such harsh requirements as she proposed to lay upon others.

More than one battle was fought between the brother and sister on this latter point. But it was on Marian’s account that the contention was most frequent and severe. Sad to say, the coming of Aunt Jemima seemed likely to drive all happiness from the lot of the hapless child. Rigid and cruel rules were laid upon the tiny mite. Requirements were made, and enforced, which bewildered and terrified the little thing beyond degree. She was made to go to bed and get up at preternaturally early hours; and her employment during the day was mapped out in obedience to similarly senseless rules. Her playthings, which had all been swept into a drawer and placed under lock and key, were handed out by Aunt Jemima, one at a time, at the infrequent intervals, during which, for brief periods, and under strict supervision, the child was permitted to play. Much of the day was occupied with the doing of a variety of tasks few of which were really within the compass of her childish powers. Aunt Jemima herself undertook to impart to Marian elementary instruction in reading, writing, and kindred acts. Occasionally also the child was taken out by her grim relative for a stately walk, during which, however, she was not permitted, on any account, to linger in front of a shop window, or stray from Aunt Jemima’s side. And then, in the evening, after their early tea, while Aunt Jemima sat at her work at the table, the poor little infant was perched on a chair before the fire, and there required to sit till her bed-time, with her legs dangling till they ached again, while the tiny head became so heavy that it nodded this way and that in unconquerable drowsiness, and, on more occasions than one, the child rolled over and fell to the floor, like a ball.

One lesson which Aunt Jemima took infinite pains to lodge in Marian’s dusky little head was that she must never speak unless she was first spoken to; and if, in the exuberance of child-nature, she transgressed this rule, especially at meal-times, Aunt Jemima’s mouth would open like a pair of nut-crackers, and she would give utterance to a succession of such snappish chidings, that Marian would almost be afraid she was going to be swallowed up. A hundred times a day the child incurred the righteous ire of this cast-iron aunt. From morning to night the little thing was worried almost out of her life by the grim governess of her father’s house; and Aunt Jemima even haunted her dreams.

Marian had one propensity which Aunt Jemima early set herself to repress. The child was gifted with an innate love of rambling. More than once, when very young indeed, she had wandered far away from home, and her father and mother had thought her lost. But she had always, as by an unerring instinct, found her way back. This propensity it was, indeed, necessary to restrain; but Aunt Jemima adopted measures for the purpose which were the sternest of the stern. She issued a decree that Marian was never to leave the house, except when accompanied by either her father or Miss Jemima herself. In order that the object of this restriction might be effectually secured, it became necessary that Miss Jemima should take the child with her on almost every occasion when she herself went out. These events were intensely dreaded by Marian; and she would shrink into a corner of the room when she observed Aunt Jemima making preparations for leaving the house. But she made no actual show of reluctance; and it would be difficult to tell whether she was the more afraid of going out with Aunt Jemima, or of letting Aunt Jemima see that she was afraid.

It was a terrible time for the poor child. On every side she was checked, frowned upon, and kept down. If she was betrayed into the utterance of a merry word she was snapped at as though she had said something bad; and ebullitions of childish spirits were checked again and again, until their occurrence became rare. And yet this woman thought herself a Christian, and believed that, in subjecting to a system of such complicated tyranny the bright little child who had been committed to her charge, she was beginning to train the hapless mite in the way she should go.

It was a very simple circumstance which first indicated to “Cobbler” Horn the kind of training his child was beginning to receive. Happening to go, one morning, into the living-room, he found that his sister had gone out, and, for once, left Marian a prisoner in the house. The child was seated on a chair, with her chubby legs hanging wearily down, and a woe-begone expression on her face. Taking courage from the absence of her dreadful aunt, Marian asked her father to give her some of her toys, and to let her play. Finding, to his surprise, on questioning the child, that she had been forbidden to touch her playthings without express permission, and that they were put away in the drawer, he readily gave her such of them as she desired, and crowned her happiness by remaining to play with her till Aunt Jemima returned.

This incident created a feeling of uneasiness in the father’s mind; but it was a circumstance of another kind which fully revealed to him the actual state of things. Passing through the room one evening when Marian was on the point of going to bed, he paused to listen to the evening prayer of his child. She knelt, in her little night-clothes, at Aunt Jemima’s knee. The father sighed, as he waited for the sound of the simple words which had been learnt at the dictation of the tender mother-voice which was now for ever still. What, then, were his astonishment and pain when Marian, instead of repeating her mother’s prayer, entered upon the recital of a string of theological declarations which Aunt Jemima dictated to her one by one!

“Cobbler” Horn strode forward, and laid a strong repressive hand upon the child; and Aunt Jemima will never forget the flash of his eye and the stern tones of his voice, as he demanded that Marian should be permitted to pray her mother’s prayer.

After this he noticed frequent signs of the tyranny of which Marian was the victim, and interposed at many points. But it was only in part that he was able to counteract the cruel discipline to which Aunt Jemima was subjecting his child.