Читать книгу Lewie; Or, The Bended Twig - Sarah H. Bradford - Страница 24

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Little Agnes.

"And she, not seven years old,

A slighted child."—WORDSWORTH.

"What is it Lewie wants? Does he want sister's pretty book?"

"No!" roared the cross baby boy, pointing with his finger to the side-board.

"Well, see here, Lewie! here is a pretty ball; shall we roll it? There! now roll it back to sister."

"No-o-o!" still screamed Master Lewie, the little finger still stretched out towards something on the side-board which he seemed much to desire.

"Here is my lovely dolly, Lewie. If you will be very careful, I will let you take her. See her beautiful eyes! Will Lewie make her open and shut her eyes?"

"No-o-o-o!" again shouted the fretful child, and this time so loud as effectually to arouse his youthful mamma, who was deep in an arm-chair, and deeper still in the last fashionable novel.

"Agnes!" she exclaimed sharply, "cannot you let that child alone? I told you to amuse him; and instead of doing so, you seem to delight in teazing him and making him scream."

Again the little girl tried in various ways to amuse the wayward child. He really was not well, and felt cross and irritable, and nothing that his little sister could do to please him would succeed. With the utmost patience and gentleness she labored to bring a smile to her little brother's cheek, or at least so to win his attention as to keep him from disturbing her mother. But the handkerchief rabbits, and the paper men and women she could cut so beautifully, and which at times gave little Lewie so much pleasure, were now all dashed impatiently aside. One by one her little playthings were brought out, and placed before him, but with no better success. Lewie had once seen the contents of a beautiful work-box of his sister's, which stood in the centre of the side-board: at this he pointed, and for this he screamed. Nothing else would please him; at nothing else would he condescend to look.

"Oh, Lewie! darling Lewie! play with something else! Don't you know Aunt Ellen gave sister that pretty work-box? and she said I must be so careful of it, and Lewie would break all sister's pretty things."

Again Master Lewie had recourse to the strength of his lungs, which he knew, by past experience, to be all-powerful in gaining whatever his fancy might desire, and sent forth a roar so loud as once more to arouse the attention of the novel-reading mamma; who, with a stamp of the foot, and a threatening shake of the finger, gave the little girl to understand that she must expect instant and severe punishment, if Lewie was heard to scream again.

Still Lewie demanded the work-box, and nothing that the patient little Agnes could do would divert his attention from it for a moment. The little angry brow was contracted, and the mouth wide open for another shriek, when little Agnes, with a sigh of despair, went to the side-board, and, mounting on a chair, lifted down her much-valued and carefully-preserved treasure, saying to herself:

"If Aunt Ellen only knew, I think she would not blame me!"

And now with a shout of delight the spoiled child seized on the pretty work-box; and in another moment, winders, spools, scissors, thimble, were scattered in sad confusion over the carpet. In vain did little Agnes try, as she picked up one after the other of her pretty things, to conceal them from the baby's sight; if one was gone, he knew it in a moment, and worried till it was restored to him.

Finally, laying open the cover of the box, he began to pound with a little hammer, which was lying near him, upon the looking-glass inside of it; and, pleased with the noise it made, he struck harder and still harder blows.

"No, no, Lewie! please don't! You will break sister's pretty looking-glass. No! Lewie must not!" And Agnes held his little hand. At this the passionate child threw himself back violently on the floor, and screamed and shrieked in a paroxysm of rage; in the midst of which, the threatened punishment came upon poor little Agnes, in the shape of a sharp blow upon her cheek, from the soft, white hand of her mother, who exclaimed:

"There! didn't I tell you so? It seems to be your greatest pleasure to teaze and torment that poor baby; and you know he is sick, too. Now, miss, the next time he screams, I shall take you to the north room, and lock you up, and keep you there on bread and water all day!"

Agnes retreated to a corner, and wept silently, but very bitterly, not so much from the pain of the blow, as from a sense of injustice and harsh treatment at the hands of one who should have loved her; and the mother returned to her novel, in which she was soon as deep as ever. At the same moment, the looking-glass in the cover of the work-box flew into fifty pieces, under the renewed blows of the hammer in Master Lewie's hand.

The little conqueror now had free range among his sister's hitherto carefully-guarded treasures; her bits of work, and little trinkets, tokens of affection from her kind aunt and her young cousins at Brook Farm, were ruthlessly torn in pieces, or broken and strewed over the floor. Agnes sat in mute despair. She knew that as long as her mother was absorbed in the novel, no sound would disturb her less powerful than Lewie's screams, and that all else that might be going on in the room would pass unnoticed by her. So, wiping her eyes, she sat still in the corner, watching Lewie with silent anguish, as he revelled among her precious things, as "happy as a king" in the work of destruction, and only hoping that he might not discover one secret little spot in the corner of the box where her dearest treasure was concealed.

But at length she started, and, with an exclamation of horror, and a cry like that of pain, she sprang towards her little brother, and violently wrenched something from his hand. And now the piercing shrieks of the angry and astonished child filled the house, and brought even Old Mammy to the room, to see what was the matter with the baby. Mammy opened the door just in time to witness the severe punishment inflicted upon little Agnes, and to receive an order to take that naughty girl to the north room, and lock her in, and leave her there till farther orders.

Agnes had not spoken before, when rebuked by her mother; but now, raising her mild blue eyes, all dimmed by tears, to her mother's face, she said:

"Oh, mamma! it was papa's hair!—it was that soft curl I cut from his forehead, as he lay in his coffin, Lewie was going to tear the paper!" But even this touching appeal, which should have found its way to the young widow's heart, was unheeded by her—perhaps, in the storm of passion, it was unheard; and Agnes was led away by Mammy to a cold, unfurnished room, where she had been doomed to spend many an hour, when Lewie was cross; while the fretful and half-sick child, now tired of his last play-thing, was taken in his mother's arms, and rocked till he fell into a slumber, undisturbed for perhaps an hour, except by a start, when the tears from his mother's cheek fell on his—tears caused by the well-imagined sufferings of the heroine of her romance.

All the time Mammy was leading little Agnes through the wide hall, and up the broad stairs and—along the upper hall to the door of the "North Room," the good old woman was wiping her eyes with her apron, and trying to choke down something in her throat which prevented her speaking the words of comfort she wished to say to the sobbing child. When they reached the door of the room in which little Agnes was to be a prisoner, Mammy sat down, and taking the child in her lap she took off her own warm shawl and pinned it carefully around her, and as she stooped to kiss her, Agnes saw the tears upon her cheek.

"Why do you cry, Mammy?" she asked, "mamma has not scolded you to-day, has she?"

"No, love."

"Are you crying then because you are so sorry for me?"

"That's it, my darling, I cannot bear to lock you up here alone for the day and leave you so sorrowful, you that ought to be as blithe as the birds in spring."

"Mammy, do you think I deserve this punishment?"

"No, sweet, if I must say the truth, I do not think you ever deserve any punishment at all. But I must not say anything that's wrong to you, about what your mamma chooses to do."

"Then, Mammy, don't you think I ought to be happier than if I had really been naughty and was punished for it. Don't you remember Mammy the verse you taught me from the Bible the last time Lewie was so fretful and mamma sent you to lock me up here. I learned it afterwards from my Bible: hear me say it:—"

'For what glory is it if when ye be buffeted for your faults ye take it patiently; but if when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.'

"Now, Mammy, I did try to be patient with Lewie, and I gave him everything I had, but I could not let him destroy that lock of papa's hair. I am afraid I was rough then, I hope I did not hurt his little hand. Mammy, do you think mamma loves me any."

"How could anybody help loving you, my darling!"

"But, oh! Mammy, if I thought she would ever love me as she does Lewie! She never kisses me, she never speaks kind to me. No, Mammy, I do not think she loves me; but how strange it is for a mother not to love her own little girl."

"Well, darling, we will talk no more of that, or we shall be saying something naughty; we will both try and do our duty, and then God will bless us, and whatever our troubles and trials may be, let us go to Him with them all. Now, darling, I must leave you."

"Mammy, will you please bring me my Bible; and my little hymn-book? I want to learn the"

'I am never alone.'

"God is always by my side, isn't he Mammy?"

"Yes, love, and he says, 'I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.'"

When little Agnes was left alone in the great cold room, she walked up and down the floor repeating to herself verses from her Bible and hymn-book. Sometimes she stopped at the window and looked across the country, towards a wooded hill, where just above the tops of the trees she could see the chimneys of her uncle's house; and she thought how happy her young cousins were in the love of their father and mother, and she remembered how her own dear papa had loved her, and she thought of the difference now; and the tears flowed afresh. Then she walked the room again, repeating in a low voice to herself the words:

"Never alone; though through deserts I roam

Where footstep of man has ne'er printed the sand.

Never alone; though the ocean's wild foam

Rage between me and the loved ones on land.

Though hearts that have cherished are laid 'neath the sod,

Though hearts which should cherish are colder than stone,

I still have thy love and thy friendship my God,

Thou always art near me; I'm never alone."

Soon she grew tired of walking, and seating herself at the table, she laid her head upon her crossed arms and was soon in a sweet slumber, and far away in her dreams from the cold desolate north room, at "the Hemlocks."

At the end of an hour the youthful widow was disturbed by the sound of merry sleigh-bells, and she had only time to throw her novel hastily aside, when the door opened and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Wharton, entered, accompanied by two of her little girls, their bright faces glowing with health and happiness.

"And how are the children?" Mrs. Wharton asked, after the first salutations were over.

"Why, Lewie does not seem well, he has been complaining for a day or two."

"And where is Agnes? We rode over to see if you let her go over and pass the holidays with us."

"Why, to tell the truth, Agnes has been very naughty, and I have been obliged to shut her up."

"Again!" exclaimed Mrs. Wharton, while glances of indignation shot from the eyes of her two little girls. "Agnes naughty, and shut up again! Why, Harriet, do you know she appears to me so perfectly gentle and lovely, that I can hardly imagine her as doing anything wrong. Mr. Wharton and I often speak of her as the most faultless child we have ever met with."

"She is not so bad in other ways, but she does delight to tease Lewie, and keep him screaming. Now, it has been one incessant scream from the child all this morning, and Agnes can amuse him very well when she chooses."

"Judging from all her own pretty things scattered about the floor here, I should think she had been doing her best to amuse him," said Mrs. Wharton; "she has even taken down her beautiful work-box, of which she has always been so careful. You may be sure it was a case of extremity, which compelled her to do that."

"Why, what a sad litter they have made to be sure; I did not observe it before. The fact is, Ellen, I have been exceedingly occupied this morning, and did not know what the children were about, only that Agnes kept Lewie screaming, and, at last, with the utmost rudeness, for that I saw myself, she snatched something from his hand, and for that, I punished her."

"Ah, yes, I see, Harriet," said Mrs. Wharton, glancing at the yellow-covered publication on the table; "I see how it is, now; you have been wholly absorbed in one of those wretched novels, and left little Agnes to take care of a sick, cross baby. That child is very sick, Harriet; do you see what a burning fever he has?"

"Ellen, do you think so?" said the mother hastily and in great agitation. "Oh, Ellen, what shall I do; oh, what shall I do! perhaps my baby, my darling, is going to be very ill."

"Do not agitate yourself so, Harriet, I will send Matthew directly over to the village for the doctor; but first, may I have Agnes?"

"Oh, do what you please with Agnes, only send the doctor to my baby; call Mammy, she will bring Agnes, and do go, quick!"

The bell was rung, and Mammy was despatched to bring the little prisoner down; she found her as we left her, sleeping with her head upon her arms.

"Precious lamb!" said Mammy, "she has cried herself to sleep." Then, kissing her, and rousing her gently, she told her that her aunt and cousins had come to take her to Brook Farm.

Agnes was at first very happy at the idea of once more enjoying the sunshine of her aunt's cheerful home, but, when she heard that Lewie was sick, a cloud came over her face.

"Aunty," she whispered, "I think I had better not go, perhaps I can do something for Lewie. I can almost always amuse him."

"Lewie is too sick to be amused now, my dear, and you can do no good here; besides, I want to get you away as quickly as possible, for I think it may be the scarlet fever that Lewie has. Come, darling, we will go."

Agnes drew her hand quietly from that of her aunt, and running back, she stooped over her little brother as he lay in his mother's arms, and kissed him; and then, standing a moment before her mother, she raised her eyes to her face. But her mother's eyes, with a gaze of almost despair, were fixed on her darling boy, and she did not seem to be aware even of the presence of her little daughter.

A look of disappointment passed over the face of Agnes, as, without intruding upon her mother by even a word of farewell, she turned, and put her hand once more in that of her aunt. And now, as, comfortably wrapped in buffalo skins, Mrs. Wharton and the little girls are flying over the country roads, to the sound of the merry sleigh-bells, we will relate a conversation which took place between Mammy and Bridget; and by so doing, will give a little insight into the history of the young widow, whom we have introduced to the reader.