Chapter LXIII

It was four o’clock of a hot August afternoon. The sun had crept round to the front piazza of the doctor’s cottage. No friendly trees warded off his burning rays, for the doctor “liked a prospect;” i. e. he liked to sit at the window and count the different trains which whizzed past in the course of the day; the number of wagons, and gigs, and carriages, that rolled lazily up the hill; to see the village engine, the “Cataract,” drawn out on the green for its weekly ablutions, and to count the bundles of shingles that it took to roof over Squire Ruggles’ new barn. No drooping vines, therefore, or creepers, intruded between him and this pleasant “prospect.” The doctor was an utilitarian; he could see “no use” in such things, save to rot timber and harbor vermin. So a wondrous glare of white paint, (carefully renewed every spring,) blinded the traveler whose misfortune it was to pass the road by the doctor’s house. As I said, it was now four o’clock. The twelve o’clock dinner was long since over. The Irish girl had rinsed out her dish-towels, hung them out the back door to dry, and gone down to the village store to buy some new ribbons advertised as selling at an “immense sacrifice” by the disinterested village shopkeeper.

Let us peep into the doctor’s sitting room; the air of this room is close and stifled, for the windows must be tightly closed, lest some audacious fly should make his mark on the old lady’s immaculate walls. A centre table stands in the middle of the floor, with a copy of “The Religious Pilot,” last year’s Almanac, A Directory, and “The remarkable Escape of Eliza Cook, who was partially scalped by the Indians.” On one side of the room hangs a piece of framed needle-work, by the virgin fingers of the old lady, representing an unhappy female, weeping over a very high and very perpendicular tombstone, which is hieroglyphiced over with untranslateable characters in red worsted, while a few herbs, not mentioned by botanists, are struggling for existence at its base. A friendly willow-tree, of a most extraordinary shade of blue green, droops in sympathy over the afflicted female, while a nondescript looking bird, resembling a dropsical bull-frog, suspends his song and one leg, in the foreground. It was principally to preserve this chef-d’œuvre of art, that the windows were hermetically sealed to the entrance of vagrant flies.

The old doctor, with his spectacles awry and his hands drooping listlessly at his side, snored from the depths of his arm-chair, while opposite him the old lady, peering out from behind a very stiffly-starched cap border, was “seaming,” “widening,” and “narrowing,” with a precision and perseverance most painful to witness. Outside, the bee hummed, the robin twittered, the shining leaves of the village trees danced and whispered to the shifting clouds; the free, glad breeze swept the tall meadow-grass, and the village children, as free and fetterless, danced and shouted at their sports; but there sat little Katy, with her hands crossed in her lap, as she had sat for many an hour, listening to the never-ceasing click of her grandmother’s needles, and the sonorous breathings of the doctor’s rubicund nose. Sometimes she moved uneasily in her chair, but the old lady’s uplifted finger would immediately remind her that “little girls must be seen and not heard.” It was a great thing for Katy when a mouse scratched on the wainscot, or her grandmother’s ball rolled out of her lap, giving her a chance to stretch her little cramped limbs. And now the village bell began to toll, with a low, booming, funereal sound, sending a cold shudder through the child’s nervous and excited frame. What if her mother should die way off in the city? What if she should always live in this terrible way at her grandmother’s? with nobody to love her, or kiss her, or pat her little head kindly, and say, “Katy, dear;” and again the bell boomed out its mournful sound, and little Katy, unable longer to bear the torturing thoughts it called up, sobbed aloud.

It was all in vain, that the frowning old lady held up her warning finger; the flood-gates were opened, and Katy could not have stopped her tears had her life depended on it.

Hark! a knock at the door! a strange footstep!

“Mother!” shrieked the child hysterically, “mother!” and flew into Ruth’s sheltering arms.

“What shall we do, doctor?” asked the old lady, the day after Ruth’s visit. “I trusted to her not being able to get the money to come out here, and her father, I knew, wouldn’t give it to her, and now here she has walked the whole distance, with Nettie in her arms, except a lift a wagoner or two gave her on the road; and I verily believe she would have done it, had it been twice the distance it is. I never shall be able to bring up that child according to my notions, while she is round. I’d forbid her the house, (she deserves it,) only that it won’t sound well if she tells of it. And to think of that ungrateful little thing’s flying into her mother’s arms as if she was in the last extremity, after all we have done for her. I don’t suppose Ruth would have left her with us, as it is, if she had the bread to put in her mouth. She might as well give her up, though, first as last, for she never will be able to support her.”

“She’s fit for nothing but a parlor ornament,” said the doctor, “never was. No more business talent in Ruth Ellet, than there is in that chany image of yours on the mantle-tree, Mis. Hall. That tells the whole story.”