Autumn Leaves Part 11

"I was taking a mental daguerreotype of my companions, by twilight, and of all the scene round, too, in the same grey tint, just to look at some ten or fifteen years hence, when--"

"Let us all three agree," said I, "on the 28th of September, 18--, to remember this evening. I am certain _I_ shall look back to it with pleasure."

"O horrid!" shrieked Flora; "how can you talk so! By that time you will be a shocking, middle-aged sort of person! I always wonder how people can be resigned to live, when they have lost youth, and with it all that makes life bearable! Fifteen years! Dismal thought! I shall have outlived every thing I care about in life!" So moaned Little Handsome.

"But you may have found new sources of interest," suggested I, perhaps a little too tenderly, for I had some sympathy with her dread of that particular phase of existence, middle-agedness. "Perhaps as the mistress of a household--"

"Worse and worse!" screamed Flora. "A miserable comforter you are! As if it were not enough merely to grow old, but one must be a slave and a martyr, never doing any thing one would prefer to do, nor going anywhere that one wants to go,--bound for ever to one spot, and one perpetual companion--"

"Planning dinners every day for cooks hardly less ignorant than yourself," added I, laughing at her selfish horror of matronly bondage, yet provoked at it. "Miss Etty, would _you_, if you could, stand still instead of going forward?"

"My happiness is altogether different from Flora's," she replied, "though we were brought up side by side. What has taught me to be independent of the world and its notice was my being continually compared with her, and a.s.sured, with compa.s.sionate regret, that I had none of those qualifications which could give me success in general society."

"Which was a libel--" I began.

"Without the last syllable," said Flora, catching up the word.

"At any rate, I knew I was plain and shy, and made friends slowly. So I chose such pleasures as should be under my own control, and could never fail me. They make my life so much happier and more precious than it was ten years ago, that I feel certain I shall have a wider and fuller enjoyment of the same ten years hence."

What they are, I partly guess, and partly drew from her, in her uncommonly frank mood. I begin to perceive that I, as well as Flora, have been cheris.h.i.+ng most mistaken and unsatisfactory aims. My surly old inner self has often hinted as much, but I would not hear him.

Etty may have _her_ mistaken views too, but she has set me thinking.

Well, you crusty old curmudgeon, what has been my course since the awe of the schoolmaster ceased to be a sort of external conscience?

"You told me study was none of my business," says Conscience, "and a pretty piece of work you have made of it without me. Idle in college, and, when you began to perceive the connection between study and what people call success in life, overworking yourself, here you are, and just beginning to bethink yourself that I might have furnished just the right degree of stimulus, if you had but allowed it."--

Hark! hark! It is the duet! That silvery second is Etty's. I will steal down stairs, and when they have ended, pop in, and it shall go hard but I will have another song.

Parlor dark and empty. I fancied I heard Flora giggling somewhere, but I might be mistaken. Yet the voices sounded as if they came from that quarter--and--and I am sure I heard one note on the piano to give the pitch. Hark! I hear the parlor door softly shut, and now the stairs creak, and betray them stealing up, as they probably betrayed me stealing down. They only blew out the lights and kept perfectly still.--Witches!--Donkey!

Etty, your voice is still with me, clear, sweet, and penetrating, as it was when you talked so eloquently to-night, in our dreamy ramble.-- What if I had early adopted her idea, that with every conscious power is bound up both the duty and the pleasure of developing it? Might I not now have reached higher ground, with health of body and mind?

Ambition is an unhealthy stimulus. A wretchedly uneasy guest too, in the breast of an invalid. I would fain have a purer motive, which shall dismiss or control it.

Etty,--what are the uses to be made of _her_ talents, while she lives thus withdrawn into a world of her own? Certainly, she is wrong; I shall convince her of it, when our friends.h.i.+p, now fairly planted, I trust, shall have taken root. Now we shall be the best friends in the world, and I will confide to her my--my--O, I am nodding over my paper, and that click says the old clock at the stair-head is making ready to announce midnight.

_Sept. 29th_. Capricious are the ways of womankind! Little Ugly is more thoroughly self-occupied and undemonstrative than ever. I am chagrined,--I think I am an ill-used man. I am downright angry and have half a mind to flirt with Little Handsome, out of spite. Only Miss Etty is too indifferent to care. I did but leave my old aunt to Flora, and step back to remark that it was a pleasant Sunday, that the sermon was homely and dull, and that the singing was discordant. Miss Etty a.s.sented, but very coldly, and presently she bolted into an old red house, and left me to go home by myself. When we started for church again, she was among the missing, and we found her in the pew, on our arrival. Thus pointedly to avoid me!--It might be accident, however, for she did not refuse to sing from the same hymn-book with me, and pointed to a verse on the other page, quaint, but excellent. After all, old Watts has written the best hymns in the language.

_Evening_. Without choice, I found myself walking round the pond again. It was as smooth as gla.s.s, and the leaves scarcely trembled on the trees and bushes round it. And in my heart reigned a similar calm.

A strange quiet has fallen on my usually restless and anxious mind. I thought that in future I could be content not to look beyond the present duty, and, having done my best in all circ.u.mstances, that I could leave the results to follow as G.o.d wills. At that moment I could sincerely say, "Let him set me high or low, wherever he has work for me to perform." If I can remain thus quiet in mind, my health will soon return, I feel a.s.sured.

"_If!_" A well-founded distrust, I fear. This peace must be only a mood, to pa.s.s away when my natural spirits return. The fever of covetousness, of rivalry, of envy, and ambitious earthly aspirations, will come back. Like waves upon the lake, these uneasy feelings will chase each other over my soul. I picked up a little linen wristband at this moment, which I recognized. "She does not deserve to have it again, sulky Little Ugly!" said I. "I will put it in my pocket-book, and keep it as a remembrancer, for--I am glad to perceive--this is the very spot where we stood when we agreed to remember it and each other fifteen years hence. We will see what I shall be then, and I shall have some aid from this funny little talisman; it will speak to me quite as intelligibly and distinctly as its owner in a _silent_ mood, at any rate."--

Heigh-ho! How lonely I feel to-night! Every human soul is--must be--a hermit, yet there might be something nearer companions.h.i.+p than I have found for mine as yet. No one knows me. My real self--Ha! old fellow, I like you better than I did; let us be good friends.

_Sept. 30th_. A golden sunrise. How much one loses under a false idea of its being a luxury to sleep in the morning! Reclining under Farmer Puddingstone's elm, and looking upon the gla.s.sy pond, in which the glowing sky mirrored itself, my soul was fired with poetic inspiration. On the blank page of a letter, I wrote:

"How holy the calm, in the stillness of morn,"--

and threw down my paper, being suddenly quenched by self-ridicule, as I was debating whether to write "To Ethelind" over the top. Returning that way after my ramble, I found the following conclusion pinned to the tree by a jackknife:--

"How holy the calm, in the stillness of morn,-- When to call 'em to breakfast Josh toots on the horn, The ducks gives a quack, and the caow gives a moo, And the childen chimes in with their plaintive boo-hoo.

"How holy the calm, in the stillness of neune, When the pot is a singin its silvery teune,-- Its soft, woolly teune, jest like Aribi's Darter, While the tea-kettle plays up the simperny arter.

"How holy the calm, in the stillness of night, When the moon, like a punkin, looks yaller and bright; While the aowls an' the katydids, screeching like time, Jest brings me up close to the eend o' my rhyme."

And underneath was added, as if in scorn of my fruitless endeavor:--

"I wrote that are right off, as fast as you could sh.e.l.l corn. S.P."

I suppose it is by way of thanks for my having driven the pigs from the garden, that I find a great bunch of dahlias adorning my mantelpiece. A brown earthen pitcher! And in the middle of the dahlias, a magnificent sunflower! It must be my aunt's doing, and its very homeliness pleases me, just as I love her homely sincerity of affection. Who arranges the gla.s.ses in the parlor? Etty, I would not fear to affirm, from the asters and golden-rod, cheek by jole with petunias and carnations. I wonder if she would not like some of the clematis I saw twining about a dead tree by the pond. It is more beautiful in its present state than when it was in flower. Etty loves wild flowers because she is one herself, and loves to hide here in her native nook, where no eye (I might except my own) gives her more than a casual glance.--

_Noon_. "I shall think it quite uncivil of Little Ugly if she does not volunteer to arrange my share of the booty I am bringing, now that I have almost broken my neck, and quite my cane, to obtain it." This I said to myself, as I came into the house by the kitchen entrance, and proceeded to deposit my trailing treasures on Norah's table, by the side of a yellow squash.

"Do go with me to Captain Black's," said Etty's voice at the side door. "The old folks have not seen you since your return."

"I can't!" said Flora with a drawl.

"Yes, do! Be coaxable, for once!"

"It only makes me obstinate to coax. Why not go without me, I beg?"

"I am no novelty. I was in twice only yesterday. Old people like attention from such as you, because--"

"Because it is unreasonable to expect it."

"The old man is failing."

"I can't do him any good. It is dusty, and my gown is long."

"It would please him to see you. I went to sit with him yesterday, but Timothy Digfort came in, with the same intent. So I went to church, having walked in the graveyard till the bell rang."

"Owl that you are! I don't envy you the lively meditations you must have had. Why don't you go? It's of no use waiting for me."

"What! Will you let me carry both these baskets?"

"There, put the little one on the top of the other. I don't think three or four peaches and a few flowers can add much to the weight. It is tiresome enough to do what I don't want to do, when it is really necessary."

And Little Handsome danced into the parlor, without perceiving me. I laid a detaining hand on Etty's basket as she put herself in motion, on which she turned round with a look of unfeigned astonishment.

"May I not be a subst.i.tute for Flora?" I inquired.

"I do not require any aid," said Miss Etty shyly. "It is not on that account I was urging Flora. Please to let me have the basket.--Indeed, it is quite unnecessary you should trouble yourself," she insisted, as I persevered in carrying off my load.

"It is the old red house, is it not?" said I, "with the roof sloping almost to the ground. And shall I say that _you_ sent this? A view of my strange phiz will not refresh the old people like the sight of Flora's fresh young face, but I shall go in, and make the agreeable as well as I can."

"Are you really in earnest?" asked Etty, looking full in my face, with a smile of wonder that made her radiantly beautiful. She turned away blus.h.i.+ng at my surprised and eager gaze, and, taking up her little basket, joined me, without a word of answer on my part. It was some time before I quite recovered from a strange flurry of spirits, which made my heart b.u.mp very much as it does when I hear any unexpected good news. And then I dashed away upon the subject of old age, and any thing else that came uppermost, in the hope of drawing the soul-lighted eyes to mine again, with that transfiguring smile playing upon the lips.