Fresh Leaves. Fern Fanny
just like eels, slipping up and slipping down; slipping in, and slipping out; never still. Mary is spoiling them. The last time I was there I found her playing puss in the corner with them; puss in the corner, Mrs. Wade! – how does she expect to keep them at a proper distance, and make them reverence her, as your Bible calls it, if she is going to frolic with them that way? and Henry is not a whit better; they are neither fit to bring up a family. Mary used to be a sedate, steady girl, before she was married; I don’t know that I remember having ever heard her laugh in her life, while she was at home; I can’t think what has changed her so.”
His wife drooped her head, but made no answer.
The cold, hard man before her had no key with which to unlock the buried sorrows of those long weary years which Susan Wade was at that moment passing in review.
“Yes; I can’t think what has changed her so,” resumed Mr. Wade; “I think it must be Henry’s fault – she was brought up so carefully; but after all, a great deal depends upon the sort of man a woman marries. I dare say,” added he, complacently, “you would have been a very different woman had you married any body but me.”
“Very likely,” answered his wife, mournfully.
“To be sure, you would; I am glad you have the good sense to see it; I consider that a woman is but a cipher up to the time she is married – her husband then invests her with a certain importance, always subservient to his, of course. Then a great deal depends, too, on the way a man begins with his wife. Now I always had a great respect for Dr. Johnson, for the sensible manner in which he settled matters on his wedding day; it seems that he and his wife were to ride horseback to the church where they were to be married. Soon after starting his bride told him, first, that they rode too fast, then, too slow. ‘This won’t do,’ said he to himself; ‘I must begin with this woman as I mean to go on; she must keep my pace, not I hers:’ and so, putting spurs to his horse, he galloped out of sight; when she rejoined him at the church-door, she was in tears – in a proper state of submission – he never had any trouble with her afterward; it was more necessary as she was a widow; they need an uncommon tight rein. Sensible old fellow, that Johnson. I don’t know that I ever enjoyed any thing more than his answer to a lady who was going into ecstasies at some performance she had seen, and wondered that the doctor did not agree with her; ‘My dear,’ said he, ‘you must remember that you are a dunce, and, therefore, very easily pleased.’ Very good, upon my word – ha – ha – very good; ‘Doctor Johnson’s Life’ is the only book I ever had patience to read; he understood the sex; ha – ha – upon my word, very good” – and Mr. Wade rubbed his spectacles with such animation that he rubbed out one of the glasses.
“Two and sixpence for getting excited!” said he, as he picked up the fragments; “well – it is a little luxury I don’t often indulge in; but really that old Johnson was such a fine old fellow – I like him. Now take the children off to church, Susan; I want to go sleep.”
“I hope he may never be sorry for sending that pale, sickly woman out in such a driving rain as this,” muttered Betty, as her mistress walked over the wet pavements to church. “If there’s a selfisher man than Mr. Wade, I’d like to know it; well, he won’t have her long, and then maybe he’ll think of it. I would have left here long ago if it had not been for her; it’s work – work – work – with him, and no thanks, and that’s what is fretting the soul out of her; she can’t please him with all her trying. And Miss Susan and Neddy – cooped up here like birds in a cage, and never allowed to speak above their breath; they’ll fly through the bars sometime, if he don’t open the door wider; and Miss Susan getting to be a young lady, too – looking as solemn as a sexton, when she ought to be frisking and frolicking about like all other innocent young creturs. I used to get her down here, and make molasses candy for her, but she has out-grown candy, now – well, I don’t know what will come of it all. At her age I was going to husking and quilting frolics, and singing-school; bless me – what a time I used to have coming through the snow-drifts. I really believe Isaiah Pettibone used to upset the sleigh on purpose. I suppose I might have married him if I had been as forrard as some girls – leastways I know he gave me a paper heart, with a dart stuck through it; but when I look at Mr. Wade, I say it is all right – ten to one he might have turned out just such a cranky curmudgeon. People say that for every bad husband in the world, there’s a bad wife somewhere to balance it; I don’t believe it – but, anyhow, if there is, I wish they’d each torment their own kind, and not be killing off such patient creturs as Mrs. Wade. I’ll go up stairs and put her slippers to the fire, and then get something nice and hot for her to take when she comes back. I used to think that a poor servant-girl was not of much account in the world – I don’t think so since I came here to live; I know it is a comfort to Mrs. Wade to feel that somebody in the house is caring for her, who is always doing for other people; and though she never says a word about her troubles, and I am not the girl to let her know that I see them, yet the way in which she says, ‘Thank you, Betty; you are always kind and thoughtful,’ shows me that, humble as I am, she leans on me, and pays me a hundred times over for any little thing I do for her. I think, after all, that God made nobody of so little account that he could not at some time or other help somebody else. There’s the bell, now! Mercy on us! there’s that croaking raven, Mr. Doe, coming here to dinner; he will be sure to eat up every thing good that I make for Mrs. Wade. I wonder how a man who is eternally grumbling and growling at every thing the Lord has made, can have the face to gormandize His good things, as Mr. Doe does. I’d either let ’em alone, or say Thank you – he don’t do nary one.”
CHAPTER V
The bleak winds of March were abroad, causing even the healthy and rugged to shrink from their piercing breath, and fold more closely around their shivering limbs the warm garments of winter; while the delicate invalid, warned by his irritated lungs, ventured not beyond the equable temperature of his closely-curtained chamber.
Mrs. Wade’s accustomed place at the table was vacant; her busy fingers no longer kept the domestic treadmill in motion. Ah! how seldom we feel till the “mother” is stricken down, how never-ceasing is the vigilance, how tireless the patience that ministers to our daily wants; – dropping noiseless, like the gentle dew, too common and unobtrusive a blessing to be noticed – till absence teaches us its value.
Death had no terrors for Mrs. Wade. It was only when looking upon the children whom she must leave behind, that she prayed, with quivering lips – “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!”
If in the thorny path her woman’s feet had trod, her daughter’s trembling feet must walk! What human arm would sustain her? what human voice whisper words of cheer? And Neddy – the impulsive, generous, warm-hearted Neddy; quick to err – as quick to repent – what human hand would weigh justly in the scales of praise and blame, his daily deeds? What hand, save a mother’s, in uprooting the weeds, would crush not the tender flowers? Oh, what mother, while pondering these things in her heart, and looking round upon the dear faces, in the near or distant prospect of dissolution, has not felt her heart-tendrils tighten around them, with a vice-like clasp that almost defied separation? Nature’s voice is clamorous; but over, and above, and through its importunate pleadings, comes there to the Christian mother, the still, small whisper, “My grace is sufficient for thee!”
Mr. Wade at first refused to believe in the reality of his wife’s sickness. Women, he said, were always ailing, and fancying themselves dying. But, as the parlor was vacated for the chamber, and the easy-chair for the bed, and the doctor’s chaise stopped twice a day before the door, and Mrs. Hereford left her own little family to sit beside her mother, and Betty wiped her eyes with her apron every time she left the chamber door – and, more than all, when Mr. Wade’s toast was not browned as she used to brown it, and his favorite pudding was wanting, and the lamp burned dimly on the lonely tea-table, and his slippers were not always in the right place – he resigned himself to what seemed inevitable, with the air of a deeply-injured man; and slept as soundly at night, in the room next his wife’s, as if death’s shadow had not even then fallen across the threshold.
At breakfast he drove Betty distracted with orders and counter-orders about egg-boiling and toast-making, after eating which, he drew on a pair of creaking boots and an overcoat, and mounted