Complete Prose Works
of the exuberance of young and joyful hearts. Frequent and hearty were
our jokes, by no means particular about the theme or the method, and
long and loud the peals of laughter that rang over the fields or along
the shore.
We took our seats round the same clean, white table, and received our
favorite beverage in the same bright tankards. They were set before us
by the sober Margery, no one else being visible. As frequently happen'd,
we were the only company. Walking and breathing the keen, fine air had
made us dry, and we soon drain'd the foaming vessels, and call'd for
more. I remember well an animated chat we had about some poems that
had just made their appearance from a great British author, and were
creating quite a public stir. There was one, a tale of passion and
despair, which Wheaton had read, and of which he gave us a transcript.
Wild, startling, and dreamy, perhaps it threw over our minds its
peculiar cast. An hour moved off, and we began to think it strange that
neither Ninon or the widow came into the room. One of us gave a hint to
that effect to Margery; but she made no answer, and went on in her usual
way as before.
"The grim old thing," said Wheaton, "if she were in Spain, they'd make
her a premier duenna!"
I ask'd the woman about Ninon and the widow. She seemed disturb'd, I
thought; but, making no reply to the first part of my question, said
that her mistress was in another part of the house, and did not wish to
be with company.
"Then be kind enough, Mrs. Vinegar," resumed Wheaton, good-naturedly,
"be kind enough to go and ask the widow if we can see Ninon."
Our attendant's face turn'd as pale as ashes, and she precipitately left
the apartment. We laugh'd at her agitation, which Frank Brown assigned
to our merry ridicule.
Quite a quarter of an hour elaps'd before Margery's return. When she
appear'd she told us briefly that the widow had bidden her obey our
behest, and now, if we desired, she would conduct us to the daughter's
presence. There was a singular expression in the woman's eyes, and
the whole affair began to strike us as somewhat odd; but we arose, and
taking our caps, follow'd her as she stepp'd through the door. Back of
the house were some fields, and a path leading into clumps of trees. At
some thirty rods distant from the tavern, nigh one of those clumps, the
larger tree whereof was a willow, Margery stopp'd, and pausing a minute,
while we came up, spoke in tones calm and low:
"Ninon is there!"
She pointed downward with her finger. Great God! There was a _grave_,
new made, and with the sods loosely join'd, and a rough brown stone at
each extremity! Some earth yet lay upon the grass near by. If we had
look'd, we might have seen the resting-place of the widow's son, Ninon's
brother--for it was close at hand. But amid the whole scene our eyes
took in nothing except that horrible covering of death--the oven-shaped
mound. My sight seemed to waver, my head felt dizzy, and a feeling of
deadly sickness came over me. I heard a stifled exclamation, and looking
round, saw Frank Brown leaning against the nearest tree, great sweat
upon his forehead, and his cheeks bloodless as chalk. Wheaton gave
way to his agony more fully than ever I had known a man before; he had
fallen--sobbing like a child, and wringing his hands. It is impossible
to describe the suddenness and fearfulness of the sickening truth that
came upon us like a stroke of thunder.
Of all of us, my brother Matthew neither shed tears, or turned pale,
or fainted, or exposed any other evidence of inward depth of pain. His
quiet, pleasant voice was indeed a tone lower, but it was that which
recall'd us, after the lapse of many long minutes, to ourselves.
So the girl had died and been buried. We were told of an illness that
had seized her the very day after our last preceding visit; but we
inquired not into the particulars.
And now come I to the conclusion of my story, and to the most singular
part of it. The evening of the third day afterward, Wheaton, who had
wept scalding tears, and Brown, whose cheeks had recovered their color,
and myself, that for an hour thought my heart would never rebound again
from the fearful shock--that evening, I say, we three were seated around
a table in another tavern, drinking other beer, and laughing but a
little less cheerfully, and as though we had never known the widow or
her daughter--neither of whom, I venture to affirm, came into our minds
once the whole night, or but to be dismiss'd again, carelessly, like the
remembrance of faces seen in a crowd.
Strange are the contradictions of the things of life! The seventh day
after that dreadful visit saw my brother Matthew--the delicate one, who,
while bold men writhed in torture, had kept the same placid face, and
the same untrembling fingers--him that seventh day saw a clay-cold
corpse, carried to the repose of the churchyard. The shaft, rankling
far down and within, wrought a poison too great for show, and the youth
died.
THE CHILD AND THE PROFLIGATE
Just after sunset, one evening in summer--that pleasant hour when the
air is balmy, the light loses its glare, and all around is imbued with
soothing quiet--on the door-step of a house there sat an elderly woman
waiting the arrival of her son. The house was in a straggling village
some fifty miles from New York city. She who sat on the door-step was a
widow; her white cap cover'd locks of gray, and her dress, though clean,
was exceedingly homely. Her house--for the tenement she occupied was her
own--was very little and very old. Trees clustered around it so thickly
as almost to hide its color--that blackish gray color which belongs to
old wooden houses that have never been painted; and to get in it you had
to enter a little rickety gate and walk through a short path, border'd
by carrot beds and beets and other vegetables. The son whom she was
expecting was her only child. About a year before he had been bound
apprentice to a rich farmer in the place, and after finishing his daily
task he was in the habit of spending half an hour at his mother's. On
the present occasion the shadows of night had settled heavily before the
youth made his appearance. When he did, his walk was slow and dragging,
and all his motions were languid, as if from great weariness. He open'd
the gate, came through the path, and sat down by his mother in silence.
"You are sullen to-night, Charley," said the widow, after a moment's
pause, when she found that he return' d no answer to her greeting.
As she spoke she put her hand fondly on his head; it seem'd moist as if
it had been dipp'd in the water. His shirt, too, was soak'd; and as
she pass'd her fingers down his shoulder she left a sharp twinge in her
heart, for she knew that moisture to be the hard wrung sweat of severe
toil, exacted from her young child (he was but thirteen years old) by an
unyielding taskmaster.
"You have work'd hard to-day, my son."
"I've been mowing."
The widow's heart felt another pang.
"Not _all day_, Charley?" she said, in a low voice; and there was a
slight quiver in it.
"Yes, mother, all day," replied the boy; "Mr. Ellis said he couldn't
afford to hire men, for wages are so high. I've swung the scythe ever
since an hour before sunrise. Feel of my hands."
There were blisters on them like great lumps. Tears started in the
widow's eyes. She dared not trust herself with a reply, though her heart
was bursting with the thought that she could not better his condition.
There was no earthly means of support on which she had dependence enough
to encourage her child in the wish she knew he was forming--the wish not
utter'd for the first time--to be freed from his bondage. "Mother," at
length said the boy, "I can stand it no longer. I cannot and will not
stay at Mr. Ellis's. Ever since the day I first went into his house I've
been a slave; and if I have to work so much longer I know I shall run
off and go to sea or somewhere else. I'd as leave be in my grave as
there." And the child burst into a passionate fit of weeping.
His mother was silent, for she was in deep grief herself. After some
minutes had flown, however, she gather'd sufficient self-possession to
speak to her son in a soothing tone, endeavoring to win him from his
sorrows and cheer up his heart. She told him that time was swift--that
in the course of a few years he would be his own master.--that all
people have their troubles--with many other ready arguments which,
though they had little effect in calming her own distress, she hoped
would act as a solace to the disturb'd temper of the boy. And as the
half hour to which he was limited had now elaps'd, she took him by the
hand and led him to the gate, to set forth on his return. The youth
seemed pacified, though occasionally one of those convulsive sighs that
remain after a fit of weeping, would break from his throat. At the gate
he threw his arms about his mother's neck; each press'd a long kiss
on the lips of the other, and the youngster bent his steps towards his
master's house.
As her child pass'd out of sight the widow return'd, shut the gate and
enter'd her lonely room. There was no light in the old cottage that
night--the heart of its occupant was dark and cheerless. Love, agony,
and grief, and tears and convulsive wrestlings were there. The thought
of a beloved son condemned to labor--labor that would break down a
man--struggling from day to day under the hard rule of a soulless
gold-worshipper; the knowledge that years must pass thus; the sickening
idea of her own poverty, and of living mainly on the grudged charity of
neighbors--thoughts, too, of former happy days--these rack'd the widow's
heart, and made her bed a sleepless one without repose.
The boy bent his steps to his employer's, as has been said. In his way
down the village street he had to pass a public house, the only one the
place contain'd; and when he came off against it he heard the sound of
a fiddle--drown'd, however, at intervals, by much laughter and talking.
The windows were up, and, the house standing close to the road, Charles
thought it no harm to take a look and see what was going on within. Half
a dozen footsteps brought him to the low casement, on which he lean'd
his elbow, and where he had a full view of the room and its occupants.
In one corner was an old man, known in the village as Black Dave--he
it was whose musical performances had a moment before drawn Charles's
attention to the tavern; and he it was who now exerted himself in a
violent manner to give, with divers flourishes and extra twangs, a tune
very popular among that thick-lipp'd race whose fondness for melody is
so well known. In the middle of the room were five or six sailors, some
of them quite drunk, and others in the earlier stages of that process,
while on benches around were more sailors, and here and there a person
dress'd in landsman's attire. The men in the middle of the room were
dancing; that is, they were going through certain contortions and
shufflings, varied occasionally by exceeding hearty stamps upon the
sanded floor. In short the whole party were engaged in a drunken frolic,
which was in no respect different from a thousand other drunken frolics,
except, perhaps, that there was less than the ordinary amount of anger
and quarreling. Indeed everyone seem' d in remarkably good humor.
But what excited the boy's attention more than any other object was an
individual, seated on one of the benches opposite, who, though evidently
enjoying the spree as much as if he were an old hand at such business,
seem' d in every other particular to be far out of his element. His
appearance was youthful. He might have been twenty-one or two years
old. His countenance was intelligent, and had the air of city life and