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Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio.
Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio. Second Series
PREFACE
To my Readers:
Six months since, I was in a deplorable state of ignorance as to the most felicitous style of Preface; at this lapse of time, I find myself not a whit the wiser. You will permit me, therefore, in pressing again your friendly hands, simply to say, that I hope my second offering of “Fern Leaves” will be more worthy of your acceptance, than the first.
Fanny Fern.
SHADOWS AND SUNBEAMS
CHAPTER I
I can see it now: the little brown house, with its sloping roof, its clumsy old chimneys, and its vine-clad porch; where the brown bee hummed his drowsy song, and my silver-haired old father sat dozing the sultry summer noons away, with shaggy Bruno at his feet. The bright earth had no blight or mildew then for me. The song of the little birds, resting beneath the eaves, filled my heart with a quiet joy. It was sweet, when toil was over, to sit in the low door-way, and watch the golden sun go down, and see the many-tinted clouds fade softly away (like a dying saint) into the light of heaven, and evening’s glittering star glow, like a seraph’s eye, above them. ’Twas sweet, when Autumn touched the hill-side foliage with rainbow dyes, to see the gorgeous leaves come circling down on the soft Indian-summer breeze. ’Twas sweet, when the tripping, silver stream lay still and cold in Winter’s icy clasp, and the flowers fainted beneath his chilly breath, and the leafless trees stretched out their imploring arms, and shook off, impatiently, their snowy burthen, and the heavy wagon-wheels went creaking past, and the ruddy farmer struck his brawny arms across his ample chest, for warmth, and goaded the lazy, round-eyed oxen up the icy hill. Even then, it was sunshine still, in the little brown house: in the ample chimney glowed and crackled the blazing faggots; rows of shining pans glittered upon the shelves; the fragrant loaf steamed in the little oven; the friendly tea-kettle, smoking, sang in the chimney corner, and by its side still sat the dear old father, with the faithful newspaper, that weekly brought us news from the busy world, from which our giant forest-trees had shut us out.
Ah! those were happy days: few wants and no cares: the patriarch’s head was white with grave blossoms, yet his heart was fresh and green. Alas! that, under the lowliest door-way, as through the loftiest portal, the Guest unbidden cometh. The morning sun rose fair, but it shone upon silver locks that stirred with no breath of life, upon loving lips forever mute, upon a palsied, kindly hand that gave no returning pressure. Soon, over the heart so warm and true, the snow lay white and cold; the winter wind sang its mournful requiem, and from out the little brown house, the orphan passed with tearful gaze and lingering footstep.
CHAPTER II
Oh, the bitter, bitter bread of dependence! No welcome by the hearth-stone: no welcome at the board: the mocking tone, the cutting taunt, the grudged morsel. Weary days, and sleepless, memory-torturing nights.
“Well, Josiah’s dead and gone,” said my uncle, taking down his spectacles from the mantel, to survey me, as I sank on the settle, in the chimney corner. “Take off your bonnet, Hetty. I suppose we must give you house-room. Josiah never had the knack of saving anything – more’s the pity for you. That farm of his was awfully mismanaged. I could have had twice the produce he did off that land. Sheer nonsense, that shallow ploughing of his, tiring the land all out; he should have used the sub-soil plough. Then he had no idea of the proper rotation of crops, or how to house his cattle in winter, or to keep his tools where they wouldn’t rust and rot. That new barn, too, was a useless extravagance. He might have roofed the old one. It’s astonishing what a difference there is in brothers, about getting beforehand in the world. Now I’ve a cool thousand in the bank, all for taking care of little things. (There, Jonathan! Jonathan! you’ve taken the meal out of the wrong barrel: it was the damaged meal I told you to carry to Widow Folger.)
“Well, as I was saying, Hetty, in the first place, your father didn’t know how to manage; then he didn’t know how to say No. He’d lend money to anybody who wanted it, and pay his workmen just what they took it into their heads it was right to ask. Now, there’s Jonathan, yonder; a day or two since, he struck for higher wages. Well, I let him strike, and got an Irishman in his place. This morning he came whining back, saying that his wife was sick, and his youngest child lay dead in the house, and that he was willing to work on at the old wages. That’s the way to do, Hetty. If Jonathan chose to saddle himself with a wife and babies, before he was able to feed them, I don’t see the justice of my paying for it. But it’s time for family prayers: that will be something new to you, I suppose. I don’t want to judge any body: I hope your father has gone to Heaven, but I’m afraid he didn’t let his light shine. Don’t whimper, child; as the tree falls so it must lie. You must see that you do your duty: make yourself useful here in my house, and try to pay your way. Young people of your age consume a great deal in the way of food and clothes.”
Oh, the monotony of those weary days! how memory lingered over the sunny past: how thought shrank back affrighted from the gloomy future: how untiringly and thanklessly I strove to cancel the debt for daily bread, and how despairingly I prayed for relief from such bitter thraldom.
CHAPTER III
“Make up the bed in the north room, Hetty,” said my aunt; “it’s our turn to board the schoolmaster this week. You needn’t put on the best sheets: these book-learning folks are always wool-gathering. He never’ll know the difference. What a hungry set these schoolmasters are, to be sure: it keeps a body all the time cooking. A bushel of doughnuts is a mere circumstance. When the last master was here, our winter barrel of cider went off like snow in April. I hope Jonathan learned enough at school to pay for it, but I have my doubts: he trips in the multiplication table yet. Your uncle and I think that this boarding schoolmasters is a poor business – a losing bargain. He says I must put less on the table, but it is no use to try that game with George Grey. He’s as independent as Adam in Eden, before the serpent and his wife got in. He’d just as lief call for anything he wanted as not, and somehow or other, when he does, I always feel as if I had no choice about bringing it. That eye of his always makes me think of forked lightning; and yet he’s kindly spoken, too. He is as much of a riddle to unravel, as one of Parson Jones’ doctrinal sermons. But, go make his bed, Hetty, and mind you stuff a few rags in that broken pane of glass over it. I spoke to your uncle about getting it mended, but he said warm weather would be along in three months, and that’s very true, Hetty. Hist! your uncle is calling you. He says he is going out in the barn to thresh, and if Peter Tay comes up the road, and stops in here again, for him to subscribe towards the minister’s new cloak, you must say that he has gone to Jifftown, and will not be home for a week at least. Now don’t forget, Hetty: people seem to think one earns money now-a-days on purpose to give away. A new cloak! humph! I wonder if the Apostle Paul’s hearers ever gave him a new cloak? I wonder if John the Baptist ever had a donation party? Don’t the minister have his salary, two hundred dollars a year – part in produce, part in money; paid regularly, when the times ain’t too hard? Go make the school-master’s bed now, Hetty. One pillow will do for him. Goodness knows he carries his head high enough when he is awake. I shouldn’t wonder if he had been captain or colonel, or something, some muster day.”
The schoolmaster! Should I be permitted to go to school? or should I be kept drudging at home? Would this Mr. Grey think me very ignorant? I began to feel as if his forked-lightning eyes were already on me. My cheeks grew hot at the idea of making a blunder in his awful presence. What a miserable room my aunt had provided for him! If I could but put up some nice white curtains at the window, or get him a cushioned chair, or put in a bureau, or chest of drawers. It looked so comfortless – so different from the welcome my dear old father was wont to give to “the stranger within the gates;” and now memory pictured him, as he sat in the old arm chair, and I knelt again at the low foot-stool at his feet, and his hand strayed caressingly over my temples, and I listened to old continental stories, till the candle burned low in the socket, and only the fire-light flickered dimly on the old portrait of General Washington, and on my father’s time-worn face.
My aunt’s shrill voice soon roused me from my reverie. Dinner time had come, and with it Mr. Grey – a gentlemanly young man, of about two and twenty, with a bright, keen, blue eye, and a frank, decided, off-hand manner, that seemed to me admirably in keeping with his erect, imposing figure and firm step. Even my uncle reefed in a sail or two in his presence, and my aunt involuntarily qualified her usual bluntness of manner. I uttered a heartfelt thanksgiving when dinner was over.
CHAPTER IV
“Hetty,” said my uncle, as the door closed upon Mr. Grey. “I suppose you must go to school, or the neighbors will say we don’t treat you well. You ought to be very thankful for such a home as this, Hetty; women are poor miserable creatures, left without money. I wish it had pleased Providence to have made you a boy. You might then have done Jonathan’s work just as well as not, and saved me his wages and board. There’s a piece of stone wall waiting to be laid, and the barn wants shingling. Josiah now would be at the extravagance of hiring a mason and a carpenter to do it.
“Crying? I wonder what’s the matter now? Well, it’s beyond me to keep track of anything in the shape of a woman. One moment they are up in the attic of ecstasy; the next, down in the cellar of despondency, as the Almanac says; and it is as true as if it had been written in the Apocrypha. I only said that it is a thousand pities that you were not a boy; then you could graft my trees for me, and hoe, and dig, and plant, and plough, and all that sort of thing. This puttering round, washing dishes a little, and mopping floors a little, and wringing out a few clothes, don’t amount to much toward supporting yourself. Let me see, you have had, since you came here” – and my uncle put on his spectacles, and pulled out a well-thumbed pocket memorandum – “You’ve had two pairs of shoes, at three shillings a pair, and nine yards of calico, for a dress, at six cents a yard. That ’mounts up, Hetty, ’mounts up. You see it costs something to keep you. I earned my money, and if you ever expect to have any, you must earn yours” – and my uncle took out his snuff-box, helped himself to a pinch, and, with the timely aid of a stray sunbeam, achieved a succession of very satisfactory sneezes.
The following day, under the overwhelming consciousness of my feminity and consequent good-for-nothingness, I made my debut at Master Grey’s school.
It was a huge barn of a room, ill lighted, ill warmed, and worse ventilated, crowded with pupils of both sexes, from the little, chubby A B C D-arian, to the gaunt Jonathan of thirty, who had begun to feel the need of a little ciphering and geography, in making out his accounts, or superscribing a business letter. There were rows of awkward, mop-headed, freckled, red-fisted boys; and rosy-cheeked, buxom lasses, bursting out of their dresses, half-shy, half-saucy, who were much more conversant with “apple bees,” and “husking frolics,” than with grammar or philosophy. There was the parson’s son, and the squire’s and the blacksmith’s son, besides a few who hadn’t the remotest idea whose sons they were, having originally been indentured to their farming masters, by the overseers of the county alms-house.
Amid these discordant elements, Master Grey moved as serenely as the August moon of a cloudless night; now patting some little curly head, cruelly perplexed by “crooked S;” now demonstrating to some slow, older brain, a stumbling block in Euclid; now closing the creaking door after an ill-mannered urchin; now overlooking the pot-hooks and trammels of an unsophisticated scribe, who clutched the pen as if it were a hoe-handle; now feeding the great, draftless Behemoth of a stove with green hickory knots, and vainly attempting to thaw out his own congealed fingers.
In a remote corner of the school-room sat Zeb Smith, the village blacksmith’s son, who came into the world with his fists doubled up, and had been pugilist-ing ever since. It was Zeb’s proud boast that “he had whipped every schoolmaster who had ever appeared in Frog-town,” and in his peaceful retreat from under his bent brows, he was now mentally taking the measure of Master Grey, ending his little reverie with a loud, protracted whistle.
Master Grey turned quickly round, and facing his overgrown pupil of thirty, said in a voice clear as the click of a pistol, “You will be pleased not to repeat that annoyance, Mr. Smith.” Zeb bent his gooseberry eyes full upon the master, and gave him a blast of “Yankee Doodle.”
All eyes were bent on Master Grey. The gauntlet of defiance was thrown in his very teeth. Zeb had a frame like an ox, and a fist like a sledge-hammer, and he knew it. Master Grey was slight, but panther-y; to their unscientific eyes, he was already victimized.
Not a bit of it! See! Master Grey’s delicate white fingers are on Zeb’s check shirt-collar; there is a momentary struggle: lips grow white; teeth are set; limbs twist, and writhe, and mingle, and now Zeb lies on the floor with Master Grey’s handsome foot on his brawny chest. Ah, Master Grey! science is sometimes a match for bone and muscle. Your boxing master, Monsieur Punchmellow, would have been proud of his pupil.
Peace restored, Master Grey shakes back from his broad forehead his curly locks, and summons the first class in geography. A row of country girls, round as little barrels and red as peonies, stand before him, their respect and admiration for “the master” having been increased ten per cent. by his victory over Zeb. Feminity pardons any thing in a man sooner than lack of courage. The recitation goes off very well, with the exception of Miss Betsey Jones, who persists in not reciting at all. Master Grey looks at her: he has conquered a man, but that’s no reason why he should suppose he can conquer a woman. He sees that written in very legible characters in Miss Bessie’s saucy black eye. Miss Bessy is sent to her seat, and warned to stay after school, till her lesson is learned and recited perfectly. With admirable nonchalance, she takes her own time to obey, and commences drawing little caricatures of the master, which she places in her shoe, and passes round under the desk, to her more demure petticoat neighbors.