Helen and Arthur; or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel. Caroline Lee Hentz
depositing her between the nice warm blankets. “Nobody ever troubles good little girls—the holy angels take care of them. There, good night—shut your eyes and go to sleep.”
“Please don’t take the light,” entreated Helen, “only just leave it till I get to sleep; I’ll blow it out as soon as I’m asleep.”
“I guess you will,” said Miss Thusa, “when you get a chance.” Then catching up the lamp, she shot out of the room, repeating to herself, “Poor child! She does hate the dark so! That was a powerful story, to be sure. I shouldn’t wonder if she dreamed about it. I never did see a child that listens to anything as she does. It’s a pleasure to amuse her. Little monkey! She really acts as if ’twas all true. I know that’s my master piece; that is the reason I’m so choice of it. It isn’t every one that can tell a story as I can—that’s certain. It’s my gift—I mustn’t be proud of it. God gives some persons one talent, and some another. We must all give an account of them at last. I hope ’twill never be said I’ve hid mine in a napkin.”
Such was the tenor of Miss Thusa’s thoughts as she wended her way down stairs. Had she imagined half the misery she was entailing on this singularly susceptible and imaginative child, instead of exulting in her gift, she would have mourned over its influence, in dust and ashes. The fears which Helen expressed, and which she believed would prove as evanescent as they were unreal, were a grateful incense to her genius, which she delighted with unconscious cruelty in awakening. She had an insane passion for relating these dreadful legends, whose indulgence seemed necessary to her existence, and the happiness of the narrator was commensurate with the credulity of the auditor. Without knowing it, she was a vampire, feeding on the life-blood of a young and innocent heart, and drying up the fountain of its joys.
Helen listened till the last sound of Miss Thusa’s footsteps died away on the ear, then plunging deeper into the bed, drew the blankets over head and ears, and lay immovable as a snow-drift, with the chill dew of terror oozing from every pore.
“I’m not a good girl,” said the child to herself, “and God won’t send the angels down to take care of me to-night. I played going to meeting with my dolls last Sunday, and Miss Thusa says that was breaking the commandments. I’ll say my prayers over again, and ask God to forgive me.”
Little Helen clasped her trembling hands under the bed-cover, and repeated the Lord’s Prayer as devoutly and reverentially as mortal lips could utter it, but this act of devotion did not soothe her into slumber, or banish the phantom that flitted round her couch. Finding it impossible to breathe under the bed-cover any longer, and fearing to die of suffocation, she slowly emerged from her burying-clothes till her mouth came in contact with the cool, fresh air. She kept her eyes tightly closed, that she might not see the darkness. She remembered hearing her brother, who prided himself upon being a great mathematician, say that if one counted ten, over and over again, till they were very tired, they would fall asleep without knowing it. She tried this experiment, but her heart kept time with its loud, quick beatings; so loud, so quick, she sometimes mistook them for the skeleton foot-tramps of the traveler. She was sure she heard a rustling in the chimney, a clattering against the walls. She thought she felt a chilly breath sweep over her cheek. At length, unable to endure the awful oppression of her fears, she resolved to make a desperate attempt, and rush down stairs to her mother, telling her she should die if she remained where she was. It was horrible to go down alone in the darkness, it was more horrible to remain in that haunted room. So, gathering up all her courage, she jumped from the bed, and sought the door with her nervous, grasping hands. Her little feet turned to ice, as their naked soles scampered over the bare floor, but she did not mind that; she found the door, opened it, and entered a long, dark passage, leading to the stairway. Then she recollected that on the left of that passage there was a lumber-room, running out slantingly to the eaves of the house, with a low entrance into it, which was left without a door. This lumber-room had long been her especial terror. Whenever she passed it, even in broad daylight, it had a strange, mysterious appearance to her. The twilight shadows always gathered there first and lingered last; she never walked by it—she always ran with all her speed, as if the avenger of blood were behind her. Now she would have flown if she could, but her long night dress impeded her motions, and clung adhesively round her ankles. Once she trod upon it, and thinking some one arrested her, she uttered a loud scream and sprang forward through the door, which chanced to be open. This door was directly at the head of the stairs, and it is not at all surprising that Helen, finding it impossible to recover her equilibrium, should pass over the steps in a quicker manner than she intended, swift as her footsteps were. Down she went, tumbling and bumping, till she came against the lower door with a force that burst it open, and in rolled a yellow flannel ball into the centre of the illuminated apartment.
“My stars!” exclaimed Mrs. Gleason, starting up from the centre table, and dropping a bundle of snowy linen on the floor.
“What in the name of creation is this?” cried Mr. Gleason, throwing down his book, as the yellow ball rolled violently against his legs.
Louis Gleason, a boy of twelve, who was seated with the fingers of his left hand playing hide and seek among his bright elf locks, while his right danced over a slate, making algebra signs with marvelous rapidity, jumped up three feet in the air, letting his slate fall with a tremendous crash, and destroying many a beautiful equation.
Mittie Gleason, a young girl of about nine, who was deep in the abstractions of grammar, and sat with her fore-fingers in her ears, and her head bent down to her book, so that all disturbing sounds might be excluded, threw her chair backward in the fright, and ran head first against Miss Thusa, who was the only one whose self-possession did not seem shocked by the unceremonious entrance of the little visitor.
“It’s nobody in the world but little Helen,” said she, gathering up the bundle in her arms and carrying it towards the blazing fire. The child, who had been only stunned, not injured by the fall, began to recover the use of its faculties, and opened its large, wild-looking eyes on the family group we have described.
“She has been walking in her sleep, poor little thing,” said her mother, pressing her cold hands in both hers.
Helen knew that this was not the case, and she knew too, that it was wrong to sanction by her silence an erroneous impression, but she was afraid of her father’s anger if she confessed the truth, afraid that he would send her back to the dark room and lonely trundle-bed. She expected that Miss Thusa would call her a foolish child, and tell her parents all her terrors of the worm-eaten traveler, and she raised her timid eyes to her face, wondering at her silence. There was something in those prophetic orbs, which she could not read. There seemed to be a film over them, baffling her penetration, and she looked down with a long, laboring breath.
Miss Thusa began to feel that her legends might make a deeper impression than she imagined or intended. She experienced an odd mixture of triumph and regret—triumph in her power, and regret for its consequences. She had, too, an instinctive sense that the parents of Helen would be displeased with her, were they aware of the influence she had exerted, and deprive her hereafter of the most admiring auditor that ever hung on her oracular lips. She had meant no harm, but she was really sorry she had told that “powerful story” at such a late hour, and pressed the child closer in her arms with a tenderness deepened by self-reproach.
“I suspect Miss Thusa has been telling her some of her awful ghost stories,” said Louis, laughing over the wreck of his slate. “I know what sent the yellow caterpillar crawling down stairs.”
“Crawling!” repeated his father, “I think it was leaping, bouncing, more like a catamount than a caterpillar.”
“I would be ashamed to be a coward and afraid of ghosts,” exclaimed Mittie, with a scornful flash of her bright, black eyes.
“Miss Thusa didn’t tell about ghosts,” said Helen, bursting into a passion of tears. This was true, in the letter, but not in the spirit—and, young as she was, she knew and felt it, and the wormwood of remorse gave bitterness to her tears. Never had she felt so wretched, so humiliated. She had fallen in her own estimation. Her father, brother and sister had