Fresh Leaves

“Where’s my umbrella, Susan?” said Mr. Wade, “it is raining, and I am in a hurry to go to my business.”

“It is Sunday, Mr. Wade; did you forget it was Sunday?”

“Sunday!” ejaculated Mr. Wade, in well-feigned surprise, “we didn’t have salt fish, I believe, for dinner yesterday.”

“No,” replied his wife, penitently, “but I believe it is the first time it has been omitted since our marriage.”

“It was an omission,” said Mr. Wade, solemnly, as he laid aside his hat and coat. “Sunday, is it, Mrs. Wade, I wish I hadn’t got up so early – I suppose you are going to take the children off to church, are you not? I’d like to be quiet, and go to sleep till dinner time.”

“Perhaps you would step over to Mary’s some part of the day,” suggested his wife. “She came here yesterday to leave some nice jelly that she had been making for me, and said you had not been there for nearly two months.”

“No,” replied Mr. Wade, “I had as lief encounter a hornet’s nest as those children of Mary’s; they are 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 to his wife’s room, to go through the ceremony of inquiring “how she was,” holding the door open for the cold wind to blow upon the invalid, while he received the faint “Easy, thank you,” from lips that contracted with pain, as the door closed after him in no gentle manner.

No thought of his children disturbed Mr. Wade’s equanimity. He did not see, day by day, the sorrowful face of his daughter lifted to his, as if in search of sympathy; nor notice the tip-toe steps of the playful little Neddy, as he passed to and fro, with messages from Mrs. Hereford to Betty.

“It’s infamous!” said the latter, slamming herself down in one of the kitchen chairs. “Is that man made of flesh and blood, or is he not? All last night, Mrs. Wade sat up in bed, with that dreadful distress for breath, tossing her arms up over her head, and that man snoring away like the seven sleepers. It’s infamous! Now, I’m no eaves-dropper: I scorn it; but I was in the kitchen this morning, and the slide was open through the closet into the basement, and I heard Mrs. Hereford say to her husband, who had called to inquire after Mrs. Wade: ‘Oh, James, James, how can I love or respect my father?’ and she sobbed as if her heart would break; and then she told him that the doctor had ordered some kind of drugs to be burned in Mrs. Wade’s room to help her breathing – something expensive – I don’t remember the name, and Mr. Wade said the doctor was an old granny, and it was a useless expense, and wouldn’t give his daughter the money for it. When Mrs. Hereford had finished telling, I heard her husband say a word I never expected to hear out of his mouth, and he kissed his wife, and handing her his pocket-book, told her to get whatever was necessary. Oh, dear; the Bible says, ‘Honor your parents;’ but whether such a man as that is a parent? that’s the question. Some of the ministers must settle it; I can’t. But it never will be clear to me that bringing a child into the world makes a parent. I don’t care what they say; it’s clear as day-light that the Lord meant that after that they should see ’em safe through it, no matter how much trouble turns up for ’em. When I’m married, if I ever am, I’ll say this to my young ones: ‘Now look here; tell me every thing. If you are sorry, tell me; if you are glad, tell me; if you are wicked, tell me; and I never, never, will turn away from you, no more than I want God to turn away from me. And if you break God’s laws and man’s laws, as I hope you won’t – if you love Him and me – still, I never will shut my door in your face, no matter what you do, no more than I want my Maker to shut heaven’s door in mine.’ Now, that’s my notion of a parent. Whether I shall ever have a chance to carry it out or not – that’s another thing; but as sure as I do, there’s where you’ll find me; and it’s my belief that many a man has swung on a gibbet, and many a woman has cursed God and man with her last breath, for want of just that. As if food, and drink, and clothes was all a child wanted, or a wife either, for that matter; as if that was all a husband or a father was bound to furnish; as if that was all the Lord would hold him accountable for; as if that was – gracious Gradgrind, there’s my toast burnt all to a crisp.”

Thanks to Mrs. Hereford, who procured the herbs ordered by the doctor, the poor sufferer was temporarily relieved.

“Who is that, Mary?” she asked, as she distinguished a strange footstep in the hall.

“It is Miss Alsop,” replied Mary.

No reply from the invalid, but a weary turning of the pale face toward the pillow, and a gathering moisture in the eyes.

“Come here, Mary – nearer – nearer” – Mrs. Hereford bent her head so low that her brown curls swept her mother’s pillow.

“That – woman – will – be – your – father’s – wife when – I – am – scarcely – cold.”

“God forbid – don’t, mother – don’t;” and poor Mary’s tears and kisses covered the emaciated face before her.

“You have a home – and a husband – and a kind one, Mary, but Susan and Neddy – it is hard to leave my children to her keeping. If I could but take them with me.”

As she said this, Betty beckoned Mrs. Hereford out of the room, saying “that Miss Alsop wished to see her, to inquire how dear Mrs. Wade had passed the night.”

“Tell her,” said Mary, “that she is very ill, and that I can not leave her to receive visitors.”

“If you please,” said Betty, returning, “Miss Alsop says she is so weary that she will sit and rest for half an hour.”

“Just half an hour before father comes home; then, of course, he will invite her to partake his solitary dinner; that’s just what she came for; mother is right; how strange that I never should have thought of all this before!” and a thousand little things now flashed upon her mind in confirmation of what her mother had just said.

Miss Alsop was an unmarried woman of forty, and presented that strange anomaly, a fat old maid. Her teeth were good, her hair thick and glossy, and her voice softer than the cooing of a dove; one of those voices which are the never-failing herald of deceit and hypocrisy to the keen observer of human nature. For years she had had her eye upon Mr. Alsop, and actually claimed a sort of cousinly relationship, which she never had been able very clearly to establish, but upon the strength of which she had come, self-invited, twice a month, to spend the day. The first moment Mrs. Wade saw her, she was conscious of an instinctive aversion to her; but as she was never in the habit of consulting her own tastes or inclinations, she endured the infliction with her own gentle sweetness. No one who witnessed her offering Miss Alsop the easiest chair, or helping her to the daintiest bit on the table, would have supposed that she read the wily woman’s secret heart. Not a look, not a word, not a tone betrayed it; but when the weary day was over, and Miss Alsop had exhausted all her vapid nothings, and, tying on her bonnet, regretted that she must trouble Mr. Wade to wait upon her home, Mrs. Wade, as they passed through the door, and out into the darkness, would lean her cheek upon her hand, while tears, which no human eye had ever seen, fell thick and fast.

Not that Mr. Wade had any affection for Miss Alsop – not at all – he was incapable of affection for any thing but himself and his money; but Miss Alsop had a way of saying little complimentary things to which the most sensible man alive never yet was insensible, from the stupidest and silliest of women. What wonder that the profound Mr. Wade walked into the trap with his betters? and though he would not, for one of his money-bags, have owned it, he always left her doubly impressed with the value of his own consequence. Then – Miss Alsop knew how to be an excellent listener when occasion required, and Mr. Wade was, like all egregious stupidities, fond of hearing himself talk; and occasionally Miss Alsop would ask him to repeat some remark he had made, as if peculiarly struck with its acuteness, or its adaptation to her single-blessed-needs, upon which Mr. Wade would afterward pleasantly reflect, with the mental exclamation, “Sensible woman, that Miss Alsop!” Let it not be supposed that this depth of cunning was at all incompatible with obtuseness of intellect – not at all – there is no cunning like the cunning of a fool. Yes – Miss Alsop knew her man. She knew she could afford to bide her time; besides, were personal charms insufficient, had she not a most potent auxiliary in her bank-book, which placed to her spinster credit twenty thousand dollars in the “People’s Bank?”

CHAPTER VI

Mrs. Wade sat propped up in bed by pillows, for the nature of her disease rendered repose impossible; dreadful spasms – the forerunners of dissolution – at intervals convulsed her frame. Pale, but firm, the gentle Mary Hereford glided about her, now supporting the worn-out frame – now holding to her lips the cup meant for healing – now opening a door, or slightly raising a window, to facilitate the invalid’s labored breathing.

The fire had burned low in the grate, and when the gray light of morning stole in through the half open shutter, and the invalid would have replenished it, Mrs. Wade’s low whispered, “I shall not need it, Mary,” gave expression to the fearful certainty which her own heart had silently throbbed out through the long watches of that agonized night. Not a murmur escaped the sufferer’s lips – there was no request for the presence of the absent sleeper, who had promised “to cherish through sickness and health;” no mention was made of the children, who had been trustingly placed in the hands of Him who doeth all things well, and who wearily slumbered on, unconscious that the brightness of their childhood’s sky was fading out forever. The thin arms were wound around the neck of the first-born, about whom such happy hopes had once so thickly clustered, and peacefully as an infant drops asleep. Susan Wade closed her eyes forever; so peacefully that the daughter knew not the moment in which the desolate word – “motherless” – was written over against her name.

Motherless! – that in that little word should be compressed such weary weight of woe! It were sad to be written fatherless – but God and his ministering angels only know how dark this earth may be, when she who was never weary of us with all our frailties – she, to whom our very weaknesses clamored more loudly for love, lies careless of our tears.

“Henry!” said Mr. Wade to Mr. Hereford, “I had no idea, in fact – I didn’t think” – and the embarrassed man tried to rub open his still sleepy eyes – “I didn’t suppose, really, that Mrs. Wade would die yet; women are so notional, and that doctor seemed to be encouraging Mrs. Wade to be sick, as doctors always do – really I am quite taken by surprise, as one may say; I don’t know any thing about these things – I should like to have you do what is necessary. I suppose it will not be considered the thing for me to go to the store to-day,” and he looked for encouragement to do so in the face of his disgusted son-in-law.

“I should think not, decidedly,” said Mr. Hereford, dryly.

“Of course it would not be my wish,” said Mr. Wade, “when poor Susan lies dead; but one’s duty, you know, sometimes runs a different way from one’s inclination.”

And vice versâ, thought Henry, but he merely remarked that he would take any message for him to his place of business.

Mr. Wade could do no less than accept his offer, so, after eating his usual breakfast with his usual appetite, he paced up and down the parlor; got up and sat down; and looked out at the window, and tried in various ways to stifle certain uncomfortable feelings which began to disturb his digestion. It was uncomfortable – very. The awe-struck face of Betty as she stole in and out, the swollen eyes of the children, the pallid face of Mrs. Hereford, who was trying to give them the consolation she so much needed herself, and the heavy step of the undertaker over-head performing his repulsive office. And so the day wore away; and the form, that a child might have lifted, was laid in the coffin, and no trace of pain or sorrow lay upon the face upon which the death-angel had written Peace!

Why did he fear to look upon its placid sweetness? No reproach ever came from the living lips – did he fear it from the dead?

How still lay the once busy fingers! What a mockery seemed the usual signs and sounds of domestic life! How empty, purposeless, aimless, seemed life’s petty cares and needs. How chilling this total eclipse of light, and love, and warmth! Blessed they, who can ease their pained hearts by sobbing all this out to the listening ear of sympathy. But what if the great agony be pent up within the swelling heart till it is nigh bursting? What if it be pent up thus in the gushing heart of childhood? What if no father’s arms be outstretched to enfold the motherless? What if the paternal hand never rests lovingly on the bowed young head? What if the moistening eye must send back to its source the welling tear? What if the choking sob be an offense? What if childhood’s ark of refuge – mother’s room – echo back only its own restless footsteps? O, how many houses that present only to the careless eye, a blank surface of brick and mortar, are inscribed all over with the handwriting, legible only to those whose baptism has been – tears!

But why count over the tears of the orphans, why tell of their weary days and sleepless nights – of honest Betty’s home-spun attempts at consolation – of Mr. Wade’s repeated refusals of Mrs. Hereford’s invitation for them to spend that part of the day with her in which he was absent at his business? Why tell of the invisible web the cunning Miss Alsop was weaving? Why tell of her speedy success? Why tell of the soft-eyed dove transformed by Hymen to the vulture? Why tell of his astonishment, who prided himself upon his lynx-eyed and infallible penetration of the sex, at being forced to drain to the dregs that bitter cup he had held so unsparingly to the meek lips upon which death had set his seal of silence? Why tell of that pitiful old age, which, having garnered the chaff, and thrown away the wheat of a life-time, finds itself on the grave’s brink with no desire for repentance, clutching with palsied hands the treasure of which Death stands ready to rob it!

VISITING AND VISITORS

“When are you coming to spend the day with us?” asked a lady of my acquaintance of another. “Spend the day with you, my dear!” replied the latter; “I should be tired to death spending the day with you; maybe I’ll take tea with you sometime.”

I have often pleased myself imagining how the wheels of society would creak greased with such honesty as that! and yet how many, if they but dared to speak their real sentiments, would make a similar response. Now, I respect that old lady; she had made good use of her years; she probably knew what it was to talk at a mark for hours on the stretch, to some one-idea-d statue, who, with crossed hands and starched attitude, seemed remorselessly exacting of her weary tongue – Give – Give! She knew what it was to long for dinner to reprieve her aching jaws, or, at least, afford them a diversion of labor. She knew what it was to be gladder to see one’s husband home on such a day, than on any other day in the year; and she knew what it was to have those hopes dashed to earth by that inglorious sneak selfishly retreating behind his newspaper, instead of shouldering the conversation as he ought. She knew what it was to have the hour arrive for her afternoon nap (I won’t call it “siesta,”) instead of which, with leaden lids, and a great goneness of brain and diaphragm, she must still keep on ringing changes on the alphabet, for the edification of the monosyllabic statue, who – horror of horrors! – had “concluded to stay to tea.” She knew what it was in a fit of despair to present a book of engravings to the statue, and to hear that interesting functionary remark as she returned it, that “her eyes were weak.” She knew what it was to send in for a merry little chatterbox of a neighbor to relieve guard, and receive for answer, “that she had gone out of town!” She knew what it was to wish that she had forty babies up stairs, with forty pains under their aprons, if need be, that she might have an excuse for leaving the statue for at least one blessed half-hour. She knew what it was to have the inglorious sneak later to tea on that wearisome day than ever before; and on his entrance, blandly and coolly to unfurl a business letter, which, with a Chesterfieldian bow, he hoped the statue would excuse him for retiring to answer; and she knew what it was, five minutes later, to spy the wretch on the back piazza reveling in solitude and a cigar. She knew what it was, when the statue finally – (for every thing comes to an end some time, thank heaven) – took protracted leave – to cry hysterically from sheer weariness, and a recollection of pressing family duties indefinitely postponed, and to think for the forty-eleventh time, what propriety there was in calling her the weaker sex, who had daily to shoulder burdens which the strongest man either couldn’t or —wouldn’t bear. And so again, I say – sensible old lady – would there were more like her!