Helen and Arthur; or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel. Caroline Lee Hentz
a sudden and unutterable horror of the color of yellow, formerly her favorite hue. She mentally resolved never to wear that horrible yellow night dress, which had drawn upon her so many odious epithets, even though she froze to death without it. She would rather wear her old ones, even if they had ten thousand patches, than that bright, new, golden tinted garment, so late the object of her intense admiration.
“I declare,” cried Louis, unconscious of the Spartan resolution his little sister was forming, and good naturedly seeking to turn her tears into smiles, “I do declare, I thought Helen was a pumpkin, bursting into the room with such a noise, wrapped up in this yellow concern. Mother, what in the name of all that’s tasteful, makes you clothe her by night in Chinese mourning?”
“It was her own choice,” replied Mrs. Gleason, taking the weeping child in her own lap. “She saw a little girl dressed in this style, and thought she would be perfectly happy to be the possessor of such a garment.”
“I never will put it on again as long as I live,” sobbed Helen. “Every body laughs at it.”
“Perhaps somebody else will have a word to say about it,” said her mother, in a grave, gentle voice. “When I have taken so much pains to make it, and bind it with soft, bright ribbon, to please my little girl, it seems to me that it is very ungrateful in her to make such a remark as that.”
“Oh, mother, don’t,” was all Helen could utter; and she made as strong a counter resolve that she would wear the most hideous garment, and brave the ridicule of the whole world, rather than expose herself to the displeasure of a mother so kind and so indulgent.
“You had better put her back in bed,” said Mr. Gleason; “children acquire such bad habits by indulgence.”
Helen trembled and clung close to her mother’s bosom.
“I fear she may again rise in her sleep and fall down stairs,” said the more anxious mother.
“Turn the key on the outside, till we retire ourselves,” observed the father.
To be locked up alone in the darkness! Helen felt as if she had heard her death-warrant, and pale even to blueness, she leaned against her mother, incapable of articulating the prayer that trembled on her ashy lips.
“Give her to me,” said Miss Thusa, “I will take her up stairs and stay with her till you come.”
“Oh, no, there is no fire in the room, and you will be cold. Mr. Gleason, the child is sick and faint. She has scarcely any pulse—and look, what a blue shade round her mouth. Helen, my darling, do tell me what is the matter with you.”
“Her eyes do look very wild,” said her father, catching the infection of his wife’s fears; “and her temples are hot and throbbing. I hope she is not threatened with an inflammation of the brain.”
“Oh! Mr. Gleason, pray don’t suggest such a thought; I cannot bear it,” cried Mrs. Gleason, with quivering accents. They had lost one lovely child, the very counterpart of Helen, by that fearful disease, and she felt as if the gleaming sword of the destroying angel were again waving over her household.
“You had better send for the doctor,” she continued; “just so suddenly was our lost darling attacked.”
Mr. Gleason started up and seized his hat, but Louis sprang to the door first.
“Let me go, father—I can run the fastest.”
And those who met the excited boy running through the street, supposed it was a life-errand on which he was dispatched.
The doctor came—not the old family physician, whose age and experience entitled him to the most implicit confidence—but a youthful partner, to whom childhood was a mysterious and somewhat unapproachable thing.
Of what fine, almost imperceptible links is the chain of deception formed! Helen had no intention of acting the part of a dissembler when she formed the desperate resolution of leaving her lonely chamber. She expected to meet reproaches, perhaps punishment, but anything was preferable to the horrors of her own imagination. But when she found herself greeted as a sleep-walker, she had not the moral courage to close, by an avowal of the truth, the door of escape a mother’s gentle hand had unconsciously opened. She did nut mean to dissemble sickness, but when her mother pleaded sickness as a reason for not sending her back to the lone, dark chamber, she yielded to the plea, and really began to think herself very ill. Her head did throb and ache, and her eyes burned, as if hot sand were sprinkled over the balls. She was not afraid of the doctor’s medicine, for the last time he had prescribed for her, he had given her peppermint, dropped on white sugar, which had a very pleasing and palatable taste. She loved the old doctor, with his frosty hair and sunny smile, and lay quietly in her mother’s arms, quite resigned to her fate, surprising as it was. But when she beheld a strange and youthful face bending over her, with a pair of penetrating, dark eyes, that looked as if they could read the deepest secrets of the heart, she shrank back in dismay, assured the mystery of her illness would all be revealed. The next glance reassured her. She was sure he would be kind, and not give her anything nauseous or dreadful. She watched his cheek, as he leaned over her, to feel her pulse, wondering what made such a beautiful color steal over it growing brighter and brighter, till it looked as if the fire had been glowing upon it. She did not know how very young he was, and this was the first time he had ever been called to visit a patient alone, and that she, little child as she was, was a very formidable object to him—considered as a being for whose life he might be in a measure responsible.
“I would give her a composing mixture,” said he, gently releasing the slender wrist of his patient—“her brain seems greatly excited, but I do not apprehend anything like an inflammation need be dreaded. She is very nervous, and must be kept quiet.”
Helen felt such inexpressible relief, that forgetting her character of an invalid, she lifted her head, and gave him such a radiant look of gratitude it quite startled him.
“See!” exclaimed Louis, rubbing his hands, “how bright she looks. The doctor’s coming has made her well.”
“Don’t make such a fuss, brother, I can’t study,” cried Mittie, tossing her hair impatiently from her brow. “I don’t believe she’s any more sick than I am, she just does it to be petted.”
“Mittie!” said her mother, glancing towards the young doctor.
Mittie, with a sudden motion of the head peculiar to herself, brought the hair again over her face, till it touched the leaves of the book, in whose contents she seemed absorbed; but she peeped at the young doctor through her thick, falling locks, and thought if she were sick, she would much rather send for him than old Doctor Sennar.
The next morning Helen was really ill and feverish. The excitement of the previous evening had caused a tension of the brain, which justified the mother’s fears. At night she became delirious, and raved incoherently about the worm-eaten traveler, the spinning-woman, and the grave-house to which they were bound.
Mrs. Gleason sat on one side of her, holding her restless hand in hers, while Miss Thusa applied wet napkins to her burning temples. The mother shuddered as she listened to the child’s wild words, and something of the truth flashed upon her mind.
“I fear,” said she, raising her eyes, and fixing them mildly but reproachfully on Miss Thusa’s face—“you have been exciting my little girl’s imagination in a dangerous manner, by relating tales of dreadful import. I know you have done it in kindness,” added she, fearful of giving pain, “but Helen is different from other children, and cannot bear the least excitement.”
“She’s always asking me to tell her stories,” answered Miss Thusa, “and I love the dear child too well to deny her. There is something very uncommon about her. I never saw a child that would set and listen to old people as she will. I never did think she would live to grow up; she wasn’t well last night, or she wouldn’t have been scared; I noticed that one cheek was red as a cherry, and the other as white as snow—a sign the fever was in her blood.”
Miss