Fresh Leaves

Fanny, oppressed by the gloom within doors, crept out into the warm sunshine, and seating herself under a tree in the yard, was looking at a few clover blossoms which she had plucked beside her. She was thinking of the pleasant Sundays she had passed with her dear grandmother, and how she used to sit on the door-step of the cottage, and tell her how God taught the little birds to build their cradle nests, and find their way through the air; and how He provided even for the little ants, who so patiently, grain by grain, built their houses in the gravel walk; and how He kept the grass green with the dew and showers, and ripened the fruit, and opened the blossoms with the warm sunshine, and how He was always watching over us, caring for our wants, listening to our cries, pitying us for our sorrows, and making His sun to shine even on those who forget to thank Him for it. But see – Fanny has dropped her clover blossoms, for Mrs. Quip has seized her by the arm, and says,

“You wicked child, you! To think of picking a flower Sunday! What do you expect will become of you when you die? What do you think the neighbors will think? Sinful child! There” – slamming her down on a cricket in the sitting-room – “sit down, and see if you can learn what the chief end of man is, afore meeting time. Flowers of a Sunday! or flowers any day, for the matter of that, I never could see the sense of ’em. Even the Bible says, ‘they toil not, neither do they spin.’ Gracious goodness – Sewsan Quip, Mrs. Snow’s kerriage has just started for meetin’. Get your things, all of you. Sewsan, see to that peddler’s child; mind that she don’t take no flowers to the Lord’s temple; John Quip, you shan’t wear them gloves; they cost twenty-five cents at the finding-store; and if you think that I bought ’em for you to drive in, you are mistaken; now put ’em in your pocket till you get into the meetin’-us porch; that will save ’em a sight; them leather reins will wear ’em all threadbare in less than no time. Mercy on us, the string is off my bunnet. Sewsan, that’s your doing. Run and bring me a pin off the third shelf in the buttery, under the yellow quart bowl. I picked it up and put it there this morning. Make haste, now. John Quip, stop cracking your whip that way on the holy Sabbath day. What do you suppose your dead grandpa would think, if he should hear it?”

The wagon was brought, and its living freight stowed carefully away in the remote corners. The oil-cloth covering was buttoned carefully down on all sides, as it had been during the winter; Mrs. Quip said it was hot, but maybe it would crack the oil-cloth to roll it up for the breeze to play through. Susan, Mary, and Fanny, therefore, took a vapor bath, on the back seat. Mrs. Quip, seated at John’s side, excluded, with her big black bonnet, any stray breeze which might have found entrance that way, to the refreshing of the gasping passengers. Dobbin moved on; he had been up that hot, dusty hill, many a Sunday before, and understood perfectly well how to keep his strength in reserve for the usual accession to his load on the village green, in the shape of the Falstaffian Aunt Hepsibah, Miss Butts, the milliner, and Deacon Tufts, who were duly piled in on the gasping occupants behind. Mrs. Quip being also on the alert to fill up any stray chinks in the “waggin” with “them children who stopped to rest in the road, when they oughter go straight to meetin’.”

The unlading of Mrs. Quip’s wagon at the meeting-house door, was an exhibition much “reckoned on” by the graceless young men of the village, who always collected on the steps for the purpose, and with mock gallantry assisted Mrs. Quip in clambering over the wheels, suppressing their mirth at her stereotyped exhortation, as she glanced at Dobbin, “to see that they didn’t start the critter.”

It was a work of time to draw out the unctuous Aunt Hepsibah; Deacon Tufts, more wiry and agile, “helped hisself,” as Mrs. Quip remarked. The crowning delight was the evacuation of the wagon, by Miss Butts – who, with a mincing glance at the men, circumspectly extended one finger of her right hand – gingerly exposed the tip of the toe of her slipper, and with sundry little shrieks and exclamations, prolonged indefinitely the delicious agony of her descent, as the young gentlemen by turns profanely touched her virgin elbows. Thirty-nine years of single blessedness had fully prepared her to appreciate these little masculine attentions, of which she always made an exact memorandum in her note-book (affixing the date) on reaching her seat in church. The unappropriated Miss Butts wore rose-buds in her bonnet, as emblematical of love’s young spring-time, and dressed in shepherdess style; nature, perhaps, suggesting the idea, by placing the crook in her back.

Poor little Fanny was as much out of her element at Butternut farm as a humming-bird in a cotton-mill. She could not “heel a stocking,” although Mrs. Quip “knew how as soon as she was born.” She could neither chain-stitch, cross-stitch, button-hole-stitch, nor cat-stitch, though she often got a stitch in her side trying to “get out of Mrs. Quip’s way.” She did not know “whether her grandmother was orthodox or Unitarian;” whether Cousin John “belonged to the church,” or not; in fact, as Mrs. Quip remarked, the child seemed to her “not to have the slightest idea what she was created for.”

“Cousin John” came at last! with an empty pack, a full purse, and a fuller heart. Fanny flew into his outspread arms, and nestled into his bosom, with a fullness of joy which the friendless only can feel. Out of sound of Mrs. Quip’s trip-hammer tongue, out of sight of Mrs. Quip’s omniscient eyes, Fanny whispered in “Cousin John’s” ear, crying, laughing, and kissing the while, all her little troubles. Cousin John did not smile, for he knew too well how keenly the little trusting heart, which beat against his own, could suffer or enjoy; so he wiped her tears away, and told her that she should say good-by to Butternut farm, and accompany him on his next trip, as far as Canton, where he would leave her with a nice old lady, who had a red and green parrot, and who taught a school for the village children.

It was a pretty sight – Cousin John and Fanny; she, skipping on before him to pluck a flower, then returning to glide her little hand in his, and walk contentedly by his side; or, standing on some stile, waiting to be lifted over, with her bonnet blown back, and her bright little face beaming with smiles; Cousin John sometimes answering her questions at random, as the tones of her voice, or the expression of her face, recalled her lost mother; sometimes looking proudly upon the bud, as he thought how sweet and fair would be the blossom, but more often gazing at her tearfully, as Lucy’s last solemn words rang in his ears.

Percy was a riddle to himself. In the child’s pure presence, every spot upon his soul’s mirror he would have wiped away. Lips which had never framed a prayer for themselves, now murmured one for her. Feet which had strayed into forbidden paths, would fain have found for her tiny feet the straight and narrow path of life.

Insensibly “a little child was leading him” – nearer to Thee, O God, nearer to Thee.

Little Fanny’s joy on this pedestrian tour was irrepressible; but the journey was not all performed on foot: many a good-natured farmer gave them a lift of a mile or two, and many a kind-hearted farmer’s wife offered Fanny a cake, or a drink of milk, for the sake of her own sun-burnt children, yet blessed in a mother’s love. Then there were friendly trees to shade them from the scorching noon-day sun, where the peddler could unstrap his pack, and Fanny throw off her bonnet and go to sleep in his lap. Sparkling brooks there were, to lave their faces, or quench their thirst, and flowers whose beauty might have tempted on tardier feet than Fanny’s. Their only trouble was “Cousin John’s pack;” and Fanny’s slender stock of arithmetic was exhausted in trying to compute how many pieces of tape, how many papers of needles, how many skeins of thread, must be sold before he could buy a horse and wagon to help him to carry his load. The peddler, too, had his air-castles to build, to which the afore-mentioned tape, needles, and thread were but the stepping-stones. Fanny once placed where she could be contented, and kindly treated, and Cousin John must leave her, to woo Dame Fortune, for her sake, more speedily.

Fanny shed a few tears when she heard this, poor child! and wondered if there were many Mrs. Quips in the world; but the motherly face of Mrs. Chubbs, with her three chins, the queer gabble of the red and green parrot, and more than all, the society of playfellows of her own age, were no small mitigations of the parting with Cousin John.

Mrs. Chubbs would most decidedly have been turned out of office by any modern school committee. When a little creature who should have been in the nursery, was sent to her charge, “to be out of the way,” Mrs. Chubbs oftener allowed it to stretch its little limbs on the grass-plat, front of the door, than she set it poring over a spelling-book. She never thumped geography or arithmetic into her pupils with a ferule. A humming-top string, or a kite-tail fragment protruding from a childish pocket, excited in her no indignation. A bit of gingerbread, or an apple, munched by a little urchin who had made an early or an indifferent breakfast, did not appear to her old-fashioned vision an offense worthy of the knout or the guillotine. In fact, Mrs. Chubb’s heart was as capacious as her pockets, and their unfathomable depths were a constant marvel to her pupils.

As to the parrot, he constituted himself “a committee” of one, and called out occasionally, “Mind your lessons, I say,” to Fanny’s great diversion. And Fanny did “mind” them; for she loved good Mrs. Chubb, and then she had a little private plan of her own for astounding Cousin John, one of these days, with her profound erudition.

And so time passed – the little homesick lump in her throat had quite disappeared; she sang – she skipped – she laughed – a merrier little grig never danced out a slipper.

Will my indulgent reader skip over ten years with me? – he might take a more dangerous leap – and enter yonder substantial-looking building, in which young ladies are “finished.” Passing by the long dining-hall, with its bare tavern-y looking table, and rows of bamboo chairs, let us ascend yonder marble stairs (for the school-house, let me tell you, was once an aristocratic old mansion), and turn down that long passage to the right. Now let us stop before No. 29. Remove your hat, if you please, because I am about to usher you into the presence of two very pretty girls, and though I do not approve of eaves-dropping, suppose we just step behind that friendly screen, and listen to what they are saying.

CHAPTER XIX

“Fanny, what pains you are taking with your hair to-day!” said Kate. “Is this Cousin John who has written you such interminable letters from ‘El-Dorado,’ to turn out, after all, your lover? I hope not, for I fancy him some venerable Mentor, with a solemn face, and oracular voice, jealous as Bluebeard of any young man who looks at you. How old is this paragon? – handsome or ugly? I am dying to know.”

“Thirty-six,” replied Fanny; “and as I remember him, with dark, curling hair, a broad, expansive brow, eyes one would never weary looking into, a voice singularly rich and sweet, and a form perfect but for a trifling stoop in the shoulders. That is my Cousin John,” said Fanny, drawing the comb through her ringlets.

“Stoop in the shoulders! I thought as much,” mockingly laughed the merry Kate. “If he had ‘a stoop in the shoulders’ ten years ago, how do you suppose your Adonis looks now?”

“It matters very little to me,” replied Fanny, with a little annoyance in her tone; “it matters very little to me, were he as ugly as Caliban.”

“How am I to construe that?” asked Kate, crossing her two forefingers (“it matters very little to you”). “Does it mean that love is out of the question between you two, or that you would have him if Lucifer stood in your path?”

“Construe it as it best suits you,” replied Fanny, with the most provoking nonchalance.

“But ‘a stoop in the shoulders,’” persisted the tormenting Kate. “I don’t care to have a man’s face handsome, provided it is intelligent, but I do insist upon a fine form, correct morals, and a good disposition.”

Fanny laughed – “I suppose you think to wind your husband round your little finger, like a skein of silk.”

“With Cupid’s help,” replied Kate, with mock humility.

“Of course you will be quite perfect; – never, for instance, appear before your husband in curl papers, or slip-shod?” asked Fanny; “never make him eat bad pies or puddings?”

“That depends,” answered Kate, “if he is tractable – not; if not – why not?”

“You will wink at his cigars?”

“He might do worse.”

“You will patronize his moustache?”

“If he will my snuff-box,” said Kate, laughing. “Heigho – I feel just like a cat in want of a mouse to torment. I wish I knew a victim worthy to exercise my talents upon.”

“Talons, you mean,” retorted Fanny – “I pity him.”

“He would get used to it,” said Kate; “the mouse – the husband, you know – I should let him run a little way, and then clap my claws on him. I’ve seen it tried; it works like a charm.”

“Kate, why do you always choose to wear a mask?” asked Fanny; “why do you take so much pains to make a censorious world believe you the very opposite of what you are?”

“Because paste passes as current as diamond; because I value the world’s opinion not one straw; because if you own a heart, it is best to hide it, unless you want it trampled on. But I don’t ask you to subscribe to all this, Fanny, with that incomparable Cousin John in your thoughts; there he is – there’s the door-bell – Venus! how you blush! but ‘a stoop in the shoulders.’ How can you, Fanny? Thirty-six years old, too – Lord bless us!”

CHAPTER XX

Was this “little Fanny?” this tall, graceful creature of seventeen, the little thing who bade him good-by at Mrs. Chubb’s door, ten years since, with her pinafore stuffed in the corner of her eye? “Little Fanny,” with that queenly presence? Cousin John almost felt as if he ought to ask leave to touch her hand; ah – she is the same little Fanny after all – frank, guileless, and free-hearted. She flies into his arms, puts up her rosy lips for a kiss, and says “Dear Cousin John.”

“God bless you,” was all he could find voice to say, for in truth, she was Mary’s own self.

Yes – Fanny was very lovely, with those rippling waves of silken hair, and the light and shadow, flitting like summer clouds over her speaking face. Cousin John held her off at arm’s length. Yes, she was very lovely. “How much she had changed!”

“And you, too,” said Fanny, seating herself beside him. “You look so much better; the stoop in your shoulders is quite gone; you are bronzed a little, but all the better for that.”

“Thank you,” said Cousin John, “more especially as I could not help it, not even to please ‘little Fanny.’”

“Ah – but I am no longer little Fanny,” she said, blushing slightly. “I have crammed a great many books into my head since I saw you, and done considerable thinking beside.”

“And what has your thinking all amounted to?” asked Cousin John, half playfully, half seriously.

“Just to this – that you are the very best cousin in the world, and that I never can repay you for all you have been to the poor, little friendless orphan,” said Fanny, with brimming eyes.

“God bless you,” said Cousin John. “I am more than repaid in these last ten minutes.”

Hours flew like seconds, while Percy narrated his adventures by sea and land, and listened to Fanny’s account of herself; the old duenna, meanwhile, walking uneasily up and down the hall, occasionally making an errand into the sitting-room, and muttering to herself as she went out, that she had heard before of boarding-school “cousins,” and that he was altogether too handsome a man to be allowed such a long tête-à-tête with Miss Fanny; and so she reported at head-quarters, but the Principal being just then unfortunately engaged in examining a new French teacher, who had applied for employment, could not give the affair the attention Miss Miffit insisted upon.

Mr. Thurston Grey, too, was on the anxious seat; for the mischievous Kate had informed him “that Fanny was holding a protracted meeting in the best parlor, with the handsomest man she ever saw.”

Nothing like a rival to precipitate matters! The declaration which had so long been trembling on Mr. Grey’s lips, found its way into a billet-doux, and was forwarded to Fanny that very night, and presented by Kate in the presence of Cousin John, “to test,” as she said, “the quality of his cousin-ship.”

Cousin John was not jealous of “little Fanny!” how absurd! Little Fanny! whom he had carried in his arms, who had slept on his breast. In fact he laughed quite merrily at the idea, louder than was at all necessary to convince himself of the nonsense of the thing, when he read Mr. Grey’s proposal; (for Fanny had no secrets from “Cousin John.”) True he wound up his watch twice that morning, and put on odd stockings, and found it quite impossible to decide which of his cravats he should wear that day, and looked in the glass very attentively for some time, and forgot to smoke, but he wasn’t jealous of little Fanny. Of course he wasn’t!

CHAPTER XXI

“A gin-sling, waiter! Strong, hot, and quick; none of your temperance mixtures for me; and waiter, here, a beef-steak smothered in onions; and waiter, some crackers and cheese, and be deuced quick about it, too. I’m not a man to be trifled with, as somebody besides you will find out, I fancy,” said Mr. Scraggs, hitching his heels to the mantel, as the waiter closed the door.

Mr. Scraggs was a plethoric, pursy, barrel-looking individual, with a peony complexion, pink, piggy eyes, and a nose sky-wardly inclined. His neck-cloth was flashy and greasy; his scarlet vest festooned with a mock chain; his shirt bosom fastened with green studs, and his nether limbs encased in a pair of snake-skin pantaloons. As the waiter closed the door to execute his order, he delivered himself of the following soliloquy, between the whiffs of his cigar:

“Ha-ha! pardoned out, was he? turned peddler, did he? fathered the little gal, and sold tape to pay her board, hey? put her to boarding-school, and went to New Orleans to seek his fortin’? got shipwrecked and robbed, and the Lord knows what, and then started for Californy for better luck, did he? Stuck to gold-digging like a mole – made his fortin’, and then came back to marry the little gal, hey? That’ll be as I say. She’s a pretty gal – may I be shot, if she ain’t; a deuced pretty gal – but she don’t come between me and my revenge. Not ’xactly! That blow you struck in the prison, my fine fellow, is not forgotten quite yet. John Scraggs has a way of putting them little things on file. Hang me if it don’t burn on my cheek yet. Your fine broadcloth suit don’t look much like your red and blue prison uniform, Mr. Percy Lee. Your crop of curly black hair is rather more becoming than your shaven crown; wonder what your pretty love would say if she knew all that? if she knew she was going to marry the man who killed her own mother? and, pretty as she is, by the eternal, she shall know it. But, patience – John Scraggs; a little more billing and cooing first; a little more sugar before the drop of gall brims over the cup. Furnish the fine house you have taken, Mr. Percy Lee, pile up the satin and damask, and picters, and statters, and them things – chuckle over the happiness you are not a going to have – for by the eternal, the gal may go the way the mother did, but my hand shall crush you; and yet, I ain’t got nothing agin the gal, neither: she’s as pretty a piece of flesh and blood as I’ve seen this many a day. A delicate mate for a jail-bird, ha – ha.”

“Waiter! waiter another gin-sling; hotter and stronger than the last; ’gad – fire itself wouldn’t be too strong for me to swallow to-day. Percy Lee’s wedding-day, is it? We shall see!

“He will curl his fine hair, don his broad-cloth suit, satin vest and white gloves; look at his watch, and be in a devil of a hurry, won’t he? ha – ha. He will get into a carriage with his dainty bride, and love her all the better for her blushing and quivering; he will look into her pretty face till he would sell his very soul for her; he will lead her by the tips of her little white gloved fingers into church; then they’ll kneel before the parson, and he will promise all sorts of infernal lies. Then the minister will say, ‘if any one present knows any reason why these two shouldn’t be joined in the holy state of matrimony, let him speak, or forever after hold his peace.’

“Then is your time, John Scraggs – leap to his side like ten thousand devils; hiss in the gal’s ear that her lover is a jail-bird – that he’s her mother’s murderer – laugh when she shrinks from his side in horror, and falls like one stone dead; for by the eternal, John Scraggs is the man to do all that – and yet I ain’t got nothing agin the gal either.

“But, stay a bit; that will be dispatching the rascal too quick. I’ll make slower work of it. I’ll prolong his misery. I’ll watch him writhe and twist like a lion in a net. I’ll let the marriage go on – I’ll not interrupt it; and then I’ll make it the hottest hell! The draught shall be ever within reach of his parched lips, and yet, he shall never taste it; for his little wife shall curse him. She shall be ever before him, in her tempting, dainty beauty, and yet a great gulf shall separate them. That’s it —slow torture; patience – I won’t dispatch him all at once. I’ll lop off first a hand, then a foot, pluck out an eye, touch up a quivering nerve, maim him – mangle him – let him die a thousand deaths in one. Good! I’ll teach the aristocrat to fell me to the earth like a hound. A jail-bird – ha, ha; salt pork and mush, instead of trout cooked in claret; water in a rusty tin cup, instead of old Madeira, and Hock, and Sherry, and Champagne. Mush and salt pork – ha, ha. Too cursed good, though, for the dainty dog. I wish I’d been warden of the Bluff Hill prison. I’d have lapped up his aristocratic blood, drop by drop.”

CHAPTER XXII

“Mine forever,” whispered Percy, as he drew Fanny’s hand within his arm, on their wedding morning, and led her to the carriage.

Not a word was spoken on the way; even the rattling Kate vailed her merry eyes under their soft lashes, and her woman’s heart, true to itself, sent up a prayer for the orphan’s happy future. And Percy; he was to be all to Fanny – father, brother, husband; there were none to divide with him the treasure he so jealously coveted.

Happy Percy! The lightning bolt, indeed, had fallen; riving the stately tree, dissevering its branches, but again it is covered with verdure and blossoms, for lo – the cloud has rolled away, the rainbow arches the blue sky, and hopes, like flowers, sweeter and fresher for nature’s tears, are springing thick in his pathway.

All this and more, passed through Percy’s mind as he watched the shadows come and go on Fanny’s changeful cheek.

“Get out of the way,” thundered the coachman, to a man who, with slouched hat, and Lucifer-ish frown, stood before the carriage. “Get out of the way, I say;” and he cracked his whip over his shoulders. “Staring into the carriage window that way, at a young ’oman as is going to be married. Get out of the way!”

“Go to – ,” muttered the man. “Get out of the way! ha – that’s good – it will be a long time before I get out of the way, I can promise you. But, drive on – drive on – I’ll overtake you – and ride over you all, too, rough-shod, hang me, if I don’t. ‘The horns of the altar,’ as the ministers call it, will prove the horn of a dilemma to you, Mr. Percy Lee, or there was no strength in the horn I swallowed this morning.”

The words were said which never may be unsaid; the twain were one – joy to share together – sorrow to bear together – smooth or rough the path, life’s journey to travel together. A few words from holy lips – a short transit of the dial’s fingers – a blush – perchance a tear – a low response – and heaven or hell, even in this world, was to be their portion.